Morphological

Productivity
ABDUL MAJEED
What is morphological productivity
 Productivity was presented by Charles F. Hockett. It refers to the dynamic nature of language.

 Language changes pronunciation and spellings and even meaning of the words.

 Morphological productivity refers to the process used by native speakers in lexeme formation to form new lexemes.

 -ness (adjectives into nouns)

 Happy happiness

 Dark darkness

 -en (adjective into verbs)

 Short shortness

 Weak weakness
Productivity Affixes and Non-
productive affixes
 Affixes are the letters that are attached to the beginning (Prefixes) or at the end (suffixes).

 Some affixes are productive while others are non-productive

 Productive suffixes -ness, -en, -er

 Happy (adj) Happiness (n)

 Teach (V) Teacher (n)

 Short (adj) shorten (V)

 Beautiful (adj) Beautifully (adv)

 Non-productive suffixes -th

 Warm (adj) warmth (n)

 True (adj) truth (n)

 The above words are used but very few, they are used rarely in English.
 More productive and less productive suffixes

 Dark (adj) darkness (n)

 Good (adj) Goodness (n)

 Less productive suffixes (-ity)

 Modern (adj) modernity (n)

 Pure (adj) purity (n)

 Native sppeakers use these words very rarely

Factors contributing to morphological
Productivity
 A. Transparency: words with a transparent process are compositional or non-lexicalized. The term
compositionality or non-lexicalization means that complex words can easily segmented. There is one to
one correspondence between the form and meaning. On the other hand compositionality or non-
lexicalization means words cannot be easily segmented and also that there is no one to one
correspondence between the form and meaning.

 Compositionality: words can be segmented.

compositionality or non-lexicalization
 Dark+ness darkness

 Good+ness goodness

 Teach+er teacher

 Non-compositionality or lexicalization

 Author+ity: authority (incorrect)

 Loca+ity: locality (incorrect)

 Odd+ity oddity (incorrect)

B. Frequency of the base (root) type

 It is where we can attach an affix to form a new word.

 1. –er to attach to bases (verbs to form noun) (more productive)

 Teacher, painter, giver, doer, learner etc. (but not coocker) (lamukamal-namukamal)

 -esque (in the style of) (less productive)

 Mountainesque, Kafkaesque, bidenesque (but not trumpesque)

C. Usefulness
 A process of lexeme formation is useful to the extent that speakers of a language use new words of
particular sort.

 Steward stewardess (in old English)

 Murderer murderess

 Author authoress

 Poet (for both male and female) poetess

 Mankind humankind
D. Restrictions on Morphological Productivity
 It can be summarized under following ways:

 1. Categorical restrictions: almost all affixes are restricted to bases of specific categories. For example, -ity
attaches to nouns and adjectives (realize, symthize) or un attaches to adjectives or verbs (unknown, undo,
important).

 2. Phonological restrictions

 Sometimes affixes will attach only to bases that fit certain phonological patterns. For example –ize prefers
nouns and adjectives that consist of two or more syllables, where the final syllable does not bear primary
stress. The suffix –en which forms verbs from adjectives attaches only to bases that end in obstruents (stops,
fricatives, and affirictives). So we can get darken, brighten, and deafen but slimmen and tallen ahich end in
sonorant consonants are impossible.
 3. the meaning of the base: For example negative un- prefers bases that are not themselves negative in
meaning, we find unlovely but not unugly,

 unhappy but not unsad

 Hapax Legmenon: it is a term used in linguistics to refer to a word or expression that occurs only once
within a particular context, either in the written record of an entire language, in the works of a specific
author, or in a single text. These rare occurance can be of interest to scholars and linguistics because they
may provide insights into the usage and evolution of language.

 An example is from Shakespeare’s play “love’s labour’s lost” the word is “sesquipedalian”. It appears only
ones in Shakespeare play it means a long word.