Andrew Koontz-Garboden
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199693498
- eISBN:
- 9780191741715
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199693498.003.0006
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics, Syntax and Morphology
This chapter addresses the issue of what are possible and impossible word formation operations from a semantic perspective, exploring the Monotonicity Hypothesis, the idea, itself a consequence of ...
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This chapter addresses the issue of what are possible and impossible word formation operations from a semantic perspective, exploring the Monotonicity Hypothesis, the idea, itself a consequence of compositionality, that word formation operations do not remove operators from lexical semantic representations. The nature of morphology in the evaluation of this hypothesis is discussed, followed by the presentation of a case study that examines the derivational relationship of state-denoting words (red, broken) to their change-of-state counterparts (redden, broken). Potential counterexamples to the predictions of the hypothesis are discussed and shown ultimately to provide support for the hypothesis, when properly understood. Finally, additional empirical domains worth exploring are discussed.Less
This chapter addresses the issue of what are possible and impossible word formation operations from a semantic perspective, exploring the Monotonicity Hypothesis, the idea, itself a consequence of compositionality, that word formation operations do not remove operators from lexical semantic representations. The nature of morphology in the evaluation of this hypothesis is discussed, followed by the presentation of a case study that examines the derivational relationship of state-denoting words (red, broken) to their change-of-state counterparts (redden, broken). Potential counterexamples to the predictions of the hypothesis are discussed and shown ultimately to provide support for the hypothesis, when properly understood. Finally, additional empirical domains worth exploring are discussed.
