Debonding of affixoids: a comparative constructionist account

In this article I analyze a specific mechanism of linguistic change by which new adjectives and adverbs may be created out of former compound members or affixoids. This process is called ‘debonding’ by Norde (2009). I demonstrate that debonding occurs in several European languages and provide corpus examples from French, English, Dutch and German. Moreover, it is shown that language-specific properties such as the degree of compound cohesion and the complexity of the inflectional system may either favor (as in English or French) or disfavor (as in Dutch and German) the debonding process. The data are described and analyzed from a constructionist approach to language and language change. More precisely, I apply the notions of ‘multiple inheritance’ and ‘multiple source constructions’ to the debonding of two particular case studies, French clé and Dutch top

Approximation in Morphology

This Special Issue "Approximation in Morphology" has been collated from peer-reviewed papers presented at the ApproxiMo 'discontinuous' workshop (2022), which was held online between December 2021 and May 2022, and organized by Francesca Masini (Bologna), Muriel Norde (Berlin) and Kristel Van Goethem (Louvain)

From Crystal-clear to Limpide: Translating English [Noun+adj] Compound Adjectives with a Figurative-intensifying Noun into French

English [Noun+Adj] compound adjectives containing an intensifying metaphor (e.g. crystal-clear) pose particular challenges for French translation, due in part to the absence of a direct equivalent construction. Our study examines morphosyntactic and conceptual-semantic translation procedures that capture how these challenges are resolved. We also explore the little-investigated aspect of translation variation (the number of different solutions for each item). We analyze the potential effects of two factors: the presence or absence of figurative intensification and the items’ frequency of use in English. Our results indicate that translators prefer different morphosyntactic procedures for different compound subtypes. Overall, an adjective constituent is most frequently retained, although complete reformulations with a noun or verb also occur. Semantically, the intensifying meaning is often rendered non-figuratively, depending on what is available in idiomatic French usage. Intensification is also frequently dropped. Translation variation is remarkably high, due in part to extensive use of near-synonyms. High-frequency items do not appear to converge on a smaller number of translations, but instead provide more opportunities for diversification

The French construction 'nouveau + past participle' revisited. Arguments in favour of a prefixoid analysis of nouveau

The article focuses on the French construction ‘nouveau + past participle’ (e.g. nouveau-né ‘newborn baby’) in which nouveau is traditionally assigned an adverbial value. However, it will be claimed that an alternative analysis, classifying nouveau as an adjective grammaticalizing into a prefix, viz a ‘prefixoid’, provides a more accurate account of the construction. The article proposes a set of four parameters applying to the grammaticalization of French prefixoids (resemanticization, decategorialization, paradigmaticization and productivity). These parameters will be applied to the construction ‘nouveau + past participle’ and it will be shown that they conflict with the traditional adverbial analysis and plead in favour of a prefixoid analysis of nouveau

Le statut des séquences "N+N à N2 productif". Le cas de N-clé

Cet article examine le statut des séquences N+N en français dans lesquelles le N2 se combine productivement avec différents N1 (p.ex. réunion marathon, examen marathon, plaidoyer marathon, etc.). Dans la littérature, cette construction a été analysée de très différentes façons, notamment comme une composition N+N ordinaire ou comme la combinaison syntaxique d’un nom avec un second nom converti en adjectif. Dans une première section, les arguments en faveur de ces différentes analyses sont présentés. La seconde section est consacrée à un cas spécifique dans lequel la construction N+clé (mot-clé, fonction-clé, élément-clé, etc.) est sujette à une analyse sémantique, orthographique, morphologique et syntaxique approfondie. Il sera observé que dans des emplois récents la construction N+clé a développé certaines nouvelles propriétés syntaxiques qui pourraient être vues comme le résultat d’un processus de dégrammaticalisation

Affixation in morphology

Affixation is the morphological process that consists of adding an affix (i.e. a bound morpheme) to a morphological base. It is cross-linguistically the most common process that human languages use to derive new lexemes (derivational affixation) or to adapt a word’s form to its morpho-syntactic context (inflectional affixation). Suffixes, i.e. bound morphemes following the base, and prefixes, i.e. bound morphemes preceding the base, are the most common affixes, with suffixation being more frequently recorded in the world’s languages than prefixation. Minor types of affixation include circumfixation and infixation. Conversion and back-formation are related derivational processes that do not make use of affixation. Many studies have concentrated on the need to differentiate derivation from inflection, but these morphological processes are probably best described as two endpoints of a cline. Prototypically, derivation is used to change a word’s category (part of speech) and involves a semantic change. A word’s inflectional distinctions make up its paradigm, which amounts to the different morphological forms that correlate with different morpho-syntactic functions. Form-function mapping in (derivational and inflectional) affixation is a key issue in current research on affixation. Many deviations from the canonical “one form-one meaning” principle can be observed in the field of affixation. From a diachronic point of view, it has been demonstrated that affixes often derive from free lexemes by grammaticalization, with affixoids being recognized as an intermediate step on this cline. More controversial, but still attested, is the opposite change whereby affixes and affixoids develop into free morphemes through a process of degrammaticalization

Les constructions préverbales du français et du néerlandais: typologie et grammaticalisation

Dans cette étude, nous présenterons en premier lieu une typologie des verbes français et néerlandais introduits par un préverbe de forme prépositionnelle. Cette typologie comporte quatre grandes classes de constructions préverbales : les constructions relationnelles où le préverbe est toujours proche de son pendant prépositionnel ou postpositionnel (p.ex. survoler une île), les constructions adverbiales prédicatives où le préverbe (néerlandais) est issu d’un adverbe prédicatif (p.ex. zijn geld opdoen /son argent sur-faire/ “dépenser son argent”), les constructions préfixales où le préverbe se comporte comme un vrai préfixe (p.ex. surestimer les capacités de quelqu’un) et les constructions préverbales lexicalisées (p.ex. pourlécher ses phrases). Dans un deuxième temps, nous montrerons que les constructions préverbales distinguées peuvent être situées sur une échelle de grammaticalisation