ON THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE CHINESE SUFFIXES −兒 −R, −化 −HUÀ AND −頭 −TOU
The notion of ‘productivity’ is an essential one in the study of linguistic morphology, but its definition is indeed challenging, and there are different ways to measure different aspects of the productivity of a morphological process. In this paper we shall adopt Baayen’s P measure of productivity...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Crane Publishing Co
2012-12-01
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| Series: | Taiwan Journal of Linguistics |
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| Online Access: | http://tjl.nccu.edu.tw/volume10-2/10.2-3.pdf |
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| author | Giorgio Francesco Arcodia Bianca Basciano |
| author_facet | Giorgio Francesco Arcodia Bianca Basciano |
| author_sort | Giorgio Francesco Arcodia |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The notion of ‘productivity’ is an essential one in the study of linguistic morphology, but its definition is indeed challenging, and there are different ways to measure different aspects of the productivity of a morphological process. In this paper we shall adopt Baayen’s P measure of productivity for a corpus-based study of the productivity of three Mandarin derivational suffixes, namely the nominalizer/diminutive −兒 −r, −化 −huà ‘−ise, −ify’ and −頭 −tou, a ‘dummy’nominal suffix (Lin 2001:82), in order to assess how this index relates to our received knowledge about the productivity of such forms, and, also, to compare our results with a previous study by Nishimoto (2003) on a small corpus of Modern Chinese. Moreover, in a diachronic perspective, we shall compare data from the Academia Sinica Tagged Corpus of Early Mandarin Chinese and from the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese. We shall show that our P values mostly reflect what descriptive works tell us about the productivity of the affixes considered here in two different periods of the history of the language; when corpus data for previous stages of a language are available, they appear as a better basis for assessments on the profitability of a morphological process than dictionary data. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-a971d5b4a1ef4b5581a97b70f82f16c7 |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 1729-4649 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2012-12-01 |
| publisher | Crane Publishing Co |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Taiwan Journal of Linguistics |
| spelling | doaj-art-a971d5b4a1ef4b5581a97b70f82f16c72025-08-20T02:09:38ZengCrane Publishing CoTaiwan Journal of Linguistics1729-46492012-12-0110289118ON THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE CHINESE SUFFIXES −兒 −R, −化 −HUÀ AND −頭 −TOUGiorgio Francesco ArcodiaBianca BascianoThe notion of ‘productivity’ is an essential one in the study of linguistic morphology, but its definition is indeed challenging, and there are different ways to measure different aspects of the productivity of a morphological process. In this paper we shall adopt Baayen’s P measure of productivity for a corpus-based study of the productivity of three Mandarin derivational suffixes, namely the nominalizer/diminutive −兒 −r, −化 −huà ‘−ise, −ify’ and −頭 −tou, a ‘dummy’nominal suffix (Lin 2001:82), in order to assess how this index relates to our received knowledge about the productivity of such forms, and, also, to compare our results with a previous study by Nishimoto (2003) on a small corpus of Modern Chinese. Moreover, in a diachronic perspective, we shall compare data from the Academia Sinica Tagged Corpus of Early Mandarin Chinese and from the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese. We shall show that our P values mostly reflect what descriptive works tell us about the productivity of the affixes considered here in two different periods of the history of the language; when corpus data for previous stages of a language are available, they appear as a better basis for assessments on the profitability of a morphological process than dictionary data.http://tjl.nccu.edu.tw/volume10-2/10.2-3.pdfChinesemorphologyderivationproductivity |
| spellingShingle | Giorgio Francesco Arcodia Bianca Basciano ON THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE CHINESE SUFFIXES −兒 −R, −化 −HUÀ AND −頭 −TOU Taiwan Journal of Linguistics Chinese morphology derivation productivity |
| title | ON THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE CHINESE SUFFIXES −兒 −R, −化 −HUÀ AND −頭 −TOU |
| title_full | ON THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE CHINESE SUFFIXES −兒 −R, −化 −HUÀ AND −頭 −TOU |
| title_fullStr | ON THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE CHINESE SUFFIXES −兒 −R, −化 −HUÀ AND −頭 −TOU |
| title_full_unstemmed | ON THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE CHINESE SUFFIXES −兒 −R, −化 −HUÀ AND −頭 −TOU |
| title_short | ON THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE CHINESE SUFFIXES −兒 −R, −化 −HUÀ AND −頭 −TOU |
| title_sort | on the productivity of the chinese suffixes 兒 r 化 hua and 頭 tou |
| topic | Chinese morphology derivation productivity |
| url | http://tjl.nccu.edu.tw/volume10-2/10.2-3.pdf |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT giorgiofrancescoarcodia ontheproductivityofthechinesesuffixesérrhuàhuaandtóutou AT biancabasciano ontheproductivityofthechinesesuffixesérrhuàhuaandtóutou |