Keywords - L323.12

Lexical Morphology: an Appraisal

Week 12

  • type 1: changing: long, length; deep, depth.
  • type 2: nonchanging: high, hight; warm,warmth.
  • 'various, va'riety, 'variously
  • That is, -ly is added to the base vari-ous, and in particular -ous which permits -ly, ness; variety or rather the suffix "-ety" does not permit them (but 'ly' can only be added to adjectival bases: * varietily, *varietiness.
  • 1: 'catholic, ca'tholicize.
  • 2: Ber'muda, Ber'mudaize.
  • doesn't affect the stress
  • fails to delete final vowel.
  • K wants to have two homophonous suffixes.
  • one S1 and the other S2.
  • able/ible, S1: defend, defensible; divide, divisible.
  • S1. causes truncation of "-ate": tolerate, tolerable
  • able (only, S2: decifer, deciferable.
  • divisible, dividable; perceptible, perceivable.
  • S1 is semantically opaque: possible, sensible, reasonable.
  • And when it becomes productive, it doesn't affect stress.
  • It does argue for suffixes undergoing a change in properties.

Go to Keywords

Course outline.

This page last updated 22 MR 2004