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This introductory chapter discusses the subject matter of this book, namely, word formation in Ancient Greek. The study will look at the morphological and semantic characteristics of the s-stem formations. As a result of this investigation, a number of traditional views will be challenged. In particular, it will emerge that the conventional notion of ‘Caland's Law’ is inadequate, at least for Greek and quite possibly for the parent language as well. It is also shown that these morphological and semantic characteristics of the individual types and their historical development can be defined more closely.

The neuter s-stem nouns constitute one of the best established word formation categories in the Indo-European languages and it is certain that they are deep-rooted in the parent language itself. The Proto-Indo-European background of these nouns is briefly assessed in this chapter, giving due regard to problems concerning their inflection and derivation. The conditions under which new s-stem neuter nouns could be formed will then be determined. In keeping with the aim of his book of looking at morphologically and semantically closely defined classes of words in the context of the language system as a whole, the most important suffixes competing with the formations in -εσ/-οζ are examined here.

This chapter addresses characteristics of the single-word period, including definitions applied in this book and some areas of current controversy in lexical development. Topics covered include methods for studying children's entry into language, when a word is a word, the formation of patterns that represent objects and events, learning words, the holistic nature of single-word utterances, context-limited words, the nature of referential words, the rate of lexical development, and an analysis of Vihman and McCune data.

Morphology deals with the internal structure of words. Morphological rules specify how new words and word forms are formed and function as redundancy rules with respect to existing complex words in the lexicon. Morphology is therefore important for the description of languages and the theory of grammar.

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.

This paper undertakes a detailed comparison of the properties of derived nominals with –ing with the properties of –ing Synthetic Compounds. Focusing on the presence of event structure and obligatory compositionality for the former, vs. the absence of both for the latter, it shows that an adequate account for these surprising contrasts may only be obtained by adopting a syntactic approach to the derivation of complex words.

In the discussion of morphology in his Parallel Architecture, Jackendoff (2002, 2010) does not distinguish between inflection and derivation, but only between productive and non-productive rules. In terms of Corbin’s (1987) analysis of productivity, Jackendoff’s notion of productivity is based on regularity and rentabilité (‘profitability’), rather than on disponibilité (‘availability’). This causes problems when we consider processes that are available, but not entirely automatic in their application, a phenomenon which Jackendoff calls semiproductivity. As I argue here, partial regularity and partial profitability can be explained as a result of the need for a new name. A new word is not produced because the rule is available, but because a new concept is to be named. This concept then contributes decisively to the resulting meaning. The crucial point is whether a word formation process is available for the formation of new lexical entries or not. This cannot be expressed propertly in Jackendoff’s system unless a separate word formation components is added to his Parallel Architecture. As a consequence, semiproductivity is reduced to an epiphenomenon, emerging from the interaction of the word formation component with naming needs.

The comprehensive nature of John Palsgrave’s endeavour to analyse and describe the French language in Lesclarcissement de la langue francoyse (1530) also encompasses the formation of words. Whereas Chapter 6 focused on his pioneering achievement as a grammarian and lexicographer, this chapter describes his most impressive work as a sixteenth-century lexicologist analysing the word-structures of a vernacular. The coining of words is embedded in a word class-based grammatical framework. For each word class, e.g. nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, etc., he discusses the formative processes (derivation and composition), specifies the formal patterns (with their changes to the base), paraphrases the meaning of each formation, and then provides a good number of examples. Exceptions are also pointed out.

This chapter presents the proposal that, like grammatical constructionalization, the development of lexical or contentful constructions involves both expansion and reduction. Expansion is illustrated by the development of word-formation patterns, such as the nominal word-formations with nouns for ‘status’ in Old English (e.g. -dom, as in kingdom). Such developments may be followed by expansion or obsolescence of subschemas and of members. Individual members may undergo phonological reduction (e.g. gar ‘spear’ + leac ‘leek’ 〉 garlic). The development of ‘snowclones’ (e.g. Fake is the new real) is shown to be an instance of lexical constructionalization. The question whether ‘extragrammatical’ word-formation processes, such as clippings (e.g. ism) and acronyms (e.g. NASA), constitute constructionalizations, is also addressed.

Word formation and borrowing can both be used to create neologisms. Their interaction is a topic that has not been widely discussed, because they have generally been assigned to different domains of linguistics. The study of word formation is usually considered part of the domain of morphology, whereas the study of borrowing has been undertaken partly in lexicography and etymology, partly in sociolinguistics and language policy. Word formation and borrowing are both responses to naming needs. As such they can be in competition. The competition is quite unequal, however, because the two processes operate very differently. Whereas a borrowing is based on an individual expression (typically a word) from another language, word formation is based on the application of rules to existing lexical material. When we consider the origin of a particular word, it is not always straightforward to determine whether the word is the result of borrowing or word formation. In some cases, the two processes may in fact both be involved and the relative contribution of each may vary among speakers.

This chapter provides an introduction to the book as a whole. It begins with a detailed critical review of historical approaches to Words, focusing, in particular, on the rationale for listedness and lexical word formation, and attempting to show that from both a phonological and syntactic perspective, that move is conceptually and theoretically problematic. This is followed by a preliminary presentation of the specifics of the system to be used throughout the book, eventually to be justified in detail in Chapters 6–10. Specifically, roots are introduced as a phonological index, and two distinct functors are introduced—a categorial functor (C-functor), responsible for the division of the categorial space, and a semantic functor (S-functor) responsible for valuing otherwise null terminals to project — once valued and thus categorized — as segments of Extended Projections. Extended Projections are likewise defined as a universally fixed set of segments of Extended Projections dominating a categorial core (C-core). The chapter ends with an outline and discussion of the general organization of the book.

The basic question to be addressed in this chapter is: what is the status of the notions ‘inheritance’ and ‘default inheritance’ in the theoretical framework of Construction Morphology (CM)? This framework, developed in Booij (2010), assumes a hierarchical lexicon with both abstract morphological schemas and stored complex words that instantiate these schemas. The lexicon of a language can be modelled in such a way that the abstract word formation schemas dominate their individual instantiations. Thus, the lexicon is partially conceived of as a hierarchical network in which lower nodes, the existing complex words, can be assumed to inherit information from dominating higher nodes. Advantages of a full-entry theory over an impoverished entry theory are outlined, and the chapter includes discussion of polysemy, allomorphy, and the class of items that fall between derivatives and compounds using ‘affixoids’.

Based on the case studies in this volume, we identify three central themes that reflect the interaction between borrowing and word formation. One is neoclassical word formation. Based on the reanalysis of borrowed words, a new system may emerge, but whether it actually does, depends on the language. A second is internationalisms. Their reanalysis may lead to new word formation rules which show a strong cross-linguistic resemblance. A third theme is anglicisms. Most contemporary borrowings in languages other than English are from English. In some languages, the resistance to anglicisms has led to an increased use of word formation rules to replace them. Two other topics addressed in several of the case studies are the interaction of analogy with compound formation and the need to adapt borrowings to the morphology of the borrowing language by means of word markers.

The article deals with the development of scientific vocabulary for botany in 19th century Finland. The first Finnish-language flora was published in 1860, and because of this a large number of new terms for plant systematics had to be formed at this point. The purpose was to come up with vocabulary that could be understood by Finnish, mainly agricultural, people. Instead of loanwords, terms were formed from the material available in the language by methods of word formation: derivation and compounding. The article describes the analysis of the semantics and origin of a set of 1500 terms coined for plant morphology, and demonstrates that the scientific vocabulary does not arise ex nihilo. Instead, the structures and meanings of terms have a motivation from many directions: various parts of the language itself, other languages and the traditions in the domain. The basic terminology formed for Finnish plant morphology in the 19th century is still used in Finnish-language botany, and the later terms have mainly been formed by the same methods and principles too.

A major theme of this book is the lexcial specification of prosodic information, and the consequences that this has for the understanding of word formation and the shape of the lexicon in Swedish. It also help for the understanding of the stress system as such. Thus, there are four types of morphemes: tonic (i.e. stressed), pretonic, posttonic and unspecified. Given the previously introduced constraints on Culminativity within the minimal prosodic word, this system now predicts that certain combinations of morphemes should be better formed than others, and those predictions are shown to be borne out. Where no stress is in place, a phonological routine will provide stress at the right edge of the word, where however a posttonic morpheme can steer stress to the preceding syllable. This system explains the pattern of how “Germanic” and “foreign” morphemes combine or don’t combine in Swedish, as a purely prosodic phenomenon.