LUCL Colloquium 28 October 2011

Information

On Friday 28 October Geert Booij (LUCL) will give a talk entitled "The rise of word-level constructional idioms as a type of word formation change".

Abstract

In my talk I will deal with a particular type of word formation change, the rise of new subpatterns of compounding.

The best known type of word level constructional idiom is the affixoid, that is, a lexical morpheme with a specific, productive meaning that is bound to its occurrence as part of a compound. Examples are the prefixoid hoofd- as in hoofd-bezwaar in Dutch, and the prefixoid Riesen-, as in Riesen-erfolg, in German. I will argue that affixoids receive an enlightening analysis in the framework of Construction Morphology which assumes a hierarchical lexicon in which patterns, subpatterns, and individual complex words are specified (Booij 2010). In many languages we find ‘lexical affixes’, that is bound morphemes with a lexical meaning.
Affixoids form an intermediate step in the development of derivational affixes from words. There is a debate in the literature as to whether this is to be considered a case of lexicalization or a case of grammaticalization. I will argue that the most appropriate term to characterize the rise of affixoids is ‘constructionalization’.
The lexically specified part of a word level constructional idiom may also be a complex word, such as -matig in kunst-matig and -technisch in belasting-technisch. An intriguing example is the pattern N-ganger (as in congres-ganger), which is a productive type of subcompounds although the word ganger does not occur by itself. Phrases may also function as ‘affixoids’, for instance huis-tuin-en-keuken in huis-tuin-en-keuken-onderwerpen.
The mechanism through which constructional idioms arise is analogy. Constructional idioms characterize compound word families, and these families may be extended if the pattern is productive (which is not always the case). Productivity depends on register, style and fashion. The rise of constructional idioms enhances the expressive power of the word formation systems.

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