This text traces the many strands of study in the field of word formation that have developed since the seminal work of Marchand and Lees in the 1960s. It covers the historical development of theories of word formation within generative grammar.

Using extensive data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies, 2008), this groundbreaking book shows that the syntactic patterns in which English nominalizations can be found and the range of possible readings they can express are very different from what has been claimed in past theoretical treatments, and therefore that previous treatments cannot be correct. Lieber argues that the relationship between form and meaning in the nominalization processes of English is virtually never one-to-one, but rather forms a complex web that can be likened to a derivational ecosystem. Using the Lexical Semantic Framework (LSF), she develops an analysis that captures the interrelatedness and context dependence of nominal readings, and suggests that the key to the behavior of nominalizations is that their underlying semantic representations are underspecified in specific ways and that their ultimate interpretation must be fixed in context using processes available within the LSF.

Morphology and Lexical Semantics explores the meanings of morphemes and how they combine to form the meanings of complex words, including derived words (writer, unionise), compounds (dog bed, truck driver) and words formed by conversion. Rochelle Lieber discusses the lexical semantics of word formation in a systematic way, allowing the reader to explore the nature of affixal polysemy, the reasons why there are multiple affixes with the same function and the issues of mismatch between form and meaning in word formation. Using a series of case studies from English, this book develops and justifies the theoretical apparatus necessary for raising and answering many questions about the semantics of word formation. Distinguishing between a lexical semantic skeleton that is featural and hierarchically organised and a lexical semantic body that is holistic, it shows how the semantics of word formation has a paradigmatic character.

A lively introduction to morphology, this textbook is intended for undergraduates with relatively little background in linguistics. It shows students how to find and analyze morphological data and presents them with basic concepts and terminology concerning the mental lexicon, inflection, derivation, morphological typology, productivity, and the interfaces between morphology and syntax on the one hand and phonology on the other. By the end of the text students are ready to understand morphological theory and how to support or refute theoretical proposals. Providing data from a wide variety of languages, the text includes hands-on activities designed to encourage students to gather and analyse their own data. The third edition has been thoroughly updated with new examples and exercises. Chapter 2 now includes an updated detailed introduction to using linguistic corpora, and there is a new final chapter covering several current theoretical frameworks.

This book presents a comprehensive, data-rich, theory-neutral description of English word formation, including inflection and derivation, compounding, conversion, and such minor processes as subtractive morphology. It also offers analyses of the theoretical challenges these phenomena present. It is the first to make systematic use of large linguistic corpora, including the Corpus of Contemporary American English, the British National Corpus, and the American National Corpus by which, for example, the authors are able to measure the productivity of different patterns and to trace semantic developments as they happen. After setting out their methodology and theoretical assumptions, the authors describe word formation and inflection in contemporary English. They give equal weight to form and meaning and cover nominalizations, agentive forms, comparatives, root and synthetic compounds, as well as more recondite topics such as the abstract noun-forming suffixes -hood, -dom, and -ship, neoclassical compounds, and the morphology of numbers. They examine the relations between orthography and phonological form. While their focus is on contemporary morphology, they trace the history of phenomena wherever doing so helps to understand and explain current form and function. The final part of the book shows how the data assembled within it bear on current theoretical issues and reveal new lines of research. This outstanding book will interest all scholars and students of English and of linguistic morphology more generally.

A lively introduction to morphology, this textbook is intended for undergraduates with relatively little background in linguistics. It shows students how to find and analyze morphological data and presents them with basic concepts and terminology concerning the mental lexicon, inflection, derivation, morphological typology, productivity, and the interfaces between morphology and syntax on the one hand and phonology on the other. By the end of the text students are ready to understand morphological theory and how to support or refute theoretical proposals. Providing data from a wide variety of languages, the text includes hands-on activities designed to encourage students to gather and analyse their own data. The third edition has been thoroughly updated with new examples and exercises. Chapter 2 now includes an updated detailed introduction to using linguistic corpora, and there is a new final chapter covering several current theoretical frameworks.

Using extensive data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies, 2008), this groundbreaking book shows that the syntactic patterns in which English nominalizations can be found and the range of possible readings they can express are very different from what has been claimed in past theoretical treatments, and therefore that previous treatments cannot be correct. Lieber argues that the relationship between form and meaning in the nominalization processes of English is virtually never one-to-one, but rather forms a complex web that can be likened to a derivational ecosystem. Using the Lexical Semantic Framework (LSF), she develops an analysis that captures the interrelatedness and context dependence of nominal readings, and suggests that the key to the behavior of nominalizations is that their underlying semantic representations are underspecified in specific ways and that their ultimate interpretation must be fixed in context using processes available within the LSF.

The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology is intended as a companion volume to the Oxford Handbook of Compounding (OUP 2009), aiming to provide a comprehensive and thorough overview of the study of derivational morphology. Written by distinguished scholars, its 41 chapters are devoted to theoretical and definitional matters, formal and semantic issues, interdisciplinary connections, and detailed descriptions of derivational processes in a wide range of language families. It presents the reader with the current state of the art in the study of derivational morphology. The handbook begins with an overview and a consideration of definitional matters, distinguishing derivation from inflection on the one hand and compounding on the other. From a formal perspective, the handbook treats affixation (prefixation, suffixation, infixation, circumfixation, etc.), conversion, reduplication, root and pattern and other templatic processes, as well as prosodic and subtractive means of forming new words. From a semantic perspective, it looks at the processes that form various types of adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs, as well as evaluatives and the rarer processes that form function words. Chapters are devoted to issues of theory, methodology, the historical development of derivation, and to child language acquisition, sociolinguistic, experimental, and psycholinguistic approaches. The second half of the book surveys derivation in fifteen language families that are widely dispersed in terms of both geographical location and typological characteristics. It ends with a consideration of both areal tendencies in derivation and the issue of universals.

Morphology and Lexical Semantics explores the meanings of morphemes and how they combine to form the meanings of complex words, including derived words (writer, unionise), compounds (dog bed, truck driver) and words formed by conversion. Rochelle Lieber discusses the lexical semantics of word formation in a systematic way, allowing the reader to explore the nature of affixal polysemy, the reasons why there are multiple affixes with the same function and the issues of mismatch between form and meaning in word formation. Using a series of case studies from English, this book develops and justifies the theoretical apparatus necessary for raising and answering many questions about the semantics of word formation. Distinguishing between a lexical semantic skeleton that is featural and hierarchically organised and a lexical semantic body that is holistic, it shows how the semantics of word formation has a paradigmatic character.

This volume, intended both for advanced students and scholars of linguistics, traces the many strands of study in the field of word formation that have developed since the seminal work of Marchand and Lees in the 1960s. In mapping the state of the art in the field of word formation, it avoids a biased approach by presenting different, but mutually complementary frameworks within which research into word formation has taken place. It covers the historical development of theories of word formation within generative grammar, and affords a solid introduction to the treatment of word formation in cognitive grammar, natural morphology, optimality theory, Lexeme Morpheme Base Morphology, onomasiological theory, and other recent frameworks. Each topic is presented by an expert who has contributed significantly to the field. In addition to surveying theoretical developments from both European and North American perspectives, it looks specifically at individual English word formation processes (derivation, compounding, conversion) and reviews some of the ways in which they have been analyzed since Marchanda (TM)s comprehensive treatment nearly five decades ago.

This book presents a comprehensive review of theoretical work on the linguistics and psycholinguistics of compound words and combines it with a series of surveys of compounding in a variety of languages from a wide range of language families. Compounding is an effective way to create and express new meanings. Compound words are segmentable into their constituents so that new items can often be understood on first presentation. However, as keystone, keynote, and keyboard, and breadboard, sandwich-board, and mortarboard show, the relation between components is often far from straightforward. The question then arises as to how far compound sequences are analysed at each encounter and how far they are stored in the brain as single lexical items. The nature and processing of compounds thus offer an unusually direct route to how language operates in the mind, as well as providing the means of investigating important aspects of morphology, and lexical semantics, and insights to child language acquisition and the organization of the mental lexicon. This book is the first to report on the state of the art on these and other central topics, including the classification and typology of compounds, and approaches to cross-linguistic research on the subject from generative and non-generative, synchronic and diachronic perspectives.

This book presents a comprehensive review of theoretical work on the linguistics and psycholinguistics of compound words and combines it with a series of surveys of compounding in a variety of languages from a wide range of language families. Compounding is an effective way to create and express new meanings. Compound words are segmentable into their constituents so that new items can often be understood on first presentation. However, as keystone, keynote, and keyboard, and breadboard, sandwich-board, and mortarboard show, the relation between components is often far from straightforward. The question then arises as to how far compound sequences are analysed at each encounter and how far they are stored in the brain as single lexical items. The nature and processing of compounds thus offer an unusually direct route to how language operates in the mind, as well as providing the means of investigating important aspects of morphology, and lexical semantics, and insights to child language acquisition and the organization of the mental lexicon. This book is the first to report on the state of the art on these and other central topics, including the classification and typology of compounds, and approaches to cross-linguistic research on the subject from generative and non-generative, synchronic and diachronic perspectives.

The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology is intended as a companion volume to The Oxford Handbook of Compounding (OUP 2009) Written by distinguished scholars, its 41 chapters aim to provide a comprehensive and thorough overview of the study of derivational morphology. The handbook begins with an overview and a consideration of definitional matters, distinguishing derivation from inflection on the one hand and compounding on the other. From a formal perspective, the handbook treats affixation (prefixation, suffixation, infixation, circumfixation, etc.), conversion, reduplication, root and pattern and other templatic processes, as well as prosodic and subtractive means of forming new words. From a semantic perspective, it looks at the processes that form various types of adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs, as well as evaluatives and the rarer processes that form function words. The book also surveys derivation in fifteen language families that are widely dispersed in terms of both geographical location and typological characteristics.

The field of morphology has gained expanded importance in contemporary linguistics with the realization that it can no longer be narrowly construed as the study of the means by which complex words are formed. Rather, the study of morphology must be situated in the context of our understanding of the mental lexicon as a whole. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Morphology offers a sweeping introduction to the field, showing that morphology is not only an active area of study in its own right, but also a critical link between different subfields of linguistics. Led by Editor in Chief Rochelle Lieber and an editorial board of international experts, this collection includes 115 wide-ranging and in-depth articles, encompassing all aspects of morphology, such as morphological units, inflection, derivation, compounding, and formal morphological means. Contributors at the forefront of the field discuss the major theoretical debates and methodological approaches, exploring the interface between morphology and phonology, syntax, and semantics, along with psycholinguistic, neurolinguistics, and sociolinguistic issues. The final section of the encyclopedia presents illustrative sketches of the morphological systems of a wide range of language families, from Arawak and Dravidian to Sino-Tibetan and Indo-European, offering a wide range of cross-linguistic data that will be useful to both researchers and teachers.

This volume presents a data-rich description of English inflection and word-formation. Based on large corpora including the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British national Corpus, it is the first comprehensive treatment of contemporary English morphology that includes both inflection and word-formation. It covers not only well-studied topics such as compounding, conversion, and the inflection and derivation of nouns and verbs, but also areas that have received less scholarly attention, such as the formation of adjectives, locatives, negatives, evaluatives, neoclassical compounds and blends, among many other topics. Equal wieght is given to form and meaning. The volume also contains sections devoted to phonological and orthographics aspects of morphology and to combinatorial and paradigmatic properties of English morphology. It ends with a series of chapters that assess the implications of English morphology for morphological theory, discussing topics such as stratification, blocking and comprtition, the analysis of conversion, and the relationship between inflection and derivation. Winner of the 2015 Bloomfield Book Award and written by three outstanding scholars, this outstanding book will interest all scholars and students of English and of linguistic morphology more generally.