Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T17:51:50.960Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Accounting for the semantic extension of derived action nouns1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2010

ALAN K. SCOTT
ALAN K. SCOTT*
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
*
Author's address: Department of German, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UKalan.scott@nottingham.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines the German action nouns derived with the suffix -ung which have acquired an additional sense denoting either the result of the action (e.g. Veröffentlichung ‘publishing (action)’+‘publication (object)’, or a concrete referent connected with the action in some other way, e.g. Bewachung ‘guarding (action)’+‘group of people who guard’. The phenomenon is analysed as a (non-prototypical) type of polysemy; a monosemic approach fails to explain the cases in which the referent of the additional senses of the nouns is established and/or idiosyncratic. The action nouns acquire extra senses as a way of ensuring economy in the morphological system as this avoids the need for large numbers of derivational affixes, each with an individual function. An unexpected implication of the findings is that the nouns studied – abstract nouns which acquire a second, often concrete sense – move against the accepted direction of semantic change, in which items with a specific sense acquire a more general sense.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , November 2010 , pp. 711 - 734
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[1]

Early versions of this paper were presented at CamLing 2006 (University of Cambridge), LangUE 2006 (University of Essex), LAEL 2006 (Lancaster University) and the LAGB Annual Meeting 2006 (University of Newcastle upon Tyne). I would like to thank the participants of these conferences, as well as the two anonymous JL referees, for helpful suggestions. The research for this paper was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

References

REFERENCES

Anshen, Frank & Aronoff, Mark. 1988. Producing morphologically complex words. Linguistics 26, 641–655.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aronoff, Mark. 1976. Word-formation in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA & London: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Aronoff, Mark & Anshen, Frank. 1998. Morphology and the lexicon: Lexicalization and productivity. In Spencer, Andrew & Zwicky, Arnold (eds.), The handbook of morphology, 237–247. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 1983. English word-formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bisetto, Antonietta & Melloni, Chiara. 2007. Result nominals: A lexical-semantic investigation. In Booij, Geert, Ducceschi, Luca, Fradin, Bernard, Guevara, Emiliano, Ralli, Angeliki & Scalise, Sergio (eds.), The Fifth Mediterranean Morphology Meeting (MMM5), Fréjus, 15–18 September 2005, 393–412. Bologna: University of Bologna. http://mmm.lingue.unibo.it/mmm-proc/MMM5/393-412-Bisetto-Melloni.pdf (2 March 2010).Google Scholar
Blank, Andreas. 2003. Polysemy in the lexicon and in discourse. Nerlich, et al. (eds.), 267–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Booij, Geert. 2005. The grammar of words: An introduction to linguistic morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Booij, Geert & Lieber, Rochelle. 2004. On the paradigmatic nature of affixal semantics in English and Dutch. Linguistics 42, 327–357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1970. Remarks on nominalization. In Chomsky, Noam (ed.), Studies on semantics in generative grammar (3rd printing), 11–61. The Hague & Paris: Mouton.Google Scholar
Copestake, Ann & Briscoe, Ted. 1996. Semi-productive polysemy and sense extension. In Pustejovsky, James & Bogureav, Branimir (eds.), Lexical semantics: The problem of polysemy, 15–67. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Cruse, D. Alan. 2004. Meaning in language: An introduction to semantics and pragmatics, 2nd edn.Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U. 2005. Word-formation in natural morphology. In Štekauer, Pavol & Lieber, Rochelle (eds.), Handbook of word-formation, 267–284. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duden, . 2001. Deutsches Universalwörterbuch [CD-ROM], version 3.0. Mannheim, Leipzig, Wien & Zürich: Dudenverlag.Google Scholar
Erben, Johannes. 2000. Einführung in die deutsche Wortbildungslehre, 4th edn.Berlin: Erich Schmidt.Google Scholar
Fleischer, Wolfgang & Barz, Irmhild. 1995. Wortbildung der deutschen Gegenwartssprache (Unter Mitarbeit von Marianne Schröder), 2nd edn.Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Fretheim, Thorstein. 2001. In defence of monosemy. In Németh, Enikö & Bibok, Károly (eds.), Pragmatics and the flexibility of word meaning, 79–115. Amsterdam: Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fritz, Gerd. 1998. Historische Semantik. Stuttgart & Weimar: J. B. Metzler.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fu, Jingqi, Roeper, Thomas & Borer, Hagit. 2001. The VP within process nominals: Evidence from adverbs and the VP anaphor do-so. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 19, 549–582.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glušak, Tamara & Balakirev, Viktor. 1994. Eigenschaften der Verbalsubstantive als Spracheinheiten. Das Wort: Germanistisches Jahrbuch 1994, 27–33.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2002. Understanding morphology. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd, Claudi, Ulrike & Hünnemeyer, Frederike. 1991. Grammaticalization: A conceptual framework. London, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lehrer, Adrienne. 2003. Polysemy in derivational affixes. In Nerlich, et al. (eds.), 217–232.Google Scholar
Lieber, Rochelle. 2004. Morphology and lexical semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Löbner, Sebastian. 2002. Understanding semantics. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Lyons, John. 1963. Structural semantics: An analysis of part of the vocabulary of Plato. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Matthews, P. H. 1991. Morphology, 2nd edn.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melloni, Chiara. 2006. Logical polysemy in word formation: E and R suffixes. Lingue e Linguaggio 2, 281–308.Google Scholar
Motsch, Wolfgang. 1999. Deutsche Wortbildung in Grundzügen. Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nerlich, Brigitte, Todd, Zazie, Herman, Vimala & Clarke, David C. (eds.). 2003. Polysemy: Flexible patterns of meaning in mind and language. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruhl, Charles. 1989. On monosemy: A study in linguistic semantics. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Scott, Alan K. 2006. Polysemy in derived nouns and its role in the lexicon. In Chang, Charles, Dugarova, Esuna, Theodoropoulou, Irene, Vilar Beltrán, Elina & Wilford, Edward (eds.), CamLing 2006: The Fourth University of Cambridge Postgraduate Conference in Language Research held on 17 March 2006, 189–196. Cambridge: Cambridge Institute of Language Research.Google Scholar
Sweetser, Eve E. 1990. From etymology to pragmatics: Metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, John R. 2003. Polysemy's paradoxes. Language Sciences 25, 637–655.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Dasher, Richard B.. 2002. Regularity in semantic change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wellmann, Hans. 1998. Die Wortbildung. In Duden, , Grammatik der deutschen Gegenwartssprache, 6th edn., 408–557. Mannheim, Leipzig, Wien & Zürich: Dudenverlag.Google Scholar
Zucchi, Alessandro. 1993. The language of propositions and events: Issues in the syntax and semantics of nominalization. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar