Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Morphology Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Comparative and Historical Linguistics

Borrowing

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Morphology

The History Of -Eer In English: Suffix Competition Or Symbiosis?, Zachary Dukic, Chris C. Palmer Mar 2024

The History Of -Eer In English: Suffix Competition Or Symbiosis?, Zachary Dukic, Chris C. Palmer

Faculty and Research Publications

Ecological models of competition have provided great explanatory power regarding synonymy in derivational morphology. Competition models of this type have certainly shown their utility, as they have demonstrated, among other things, the relevance of frequency measures, productivity, compositionality and analyzability when comparing the development of morphological constructions. There has been less consideration of alternative models that could be used to describe the historical co-development of suffixes that produce words with sometimes similar forms or meanings but are not inevitably or solely in competition. The symbiotic model proposed in this article may help answer larger questions in linguistics, such as how …


Base And Suffix Paradigms: Qualitative Evidence Of Emergent Borrowed Suffixes In Multiple Late Middle And Early Modern English Registers, Chris C. Palmer Dec 2010

Base And Suffix Paradigms: Qualitative Evidence Of Emergent Borrowed Suffixes In Multiple Late Middle And Early Modern English Registers, Chris C. Palmer

Chris C. Palmer

Even though many studies of historical morphology have described trends and changes in
the productivity of borrowed suffixes in English, such as -able, -age, -ance, -ity, -cion,
-ment and -ous, few studies have been able to illustrate how borrowed suffixes initially
came to be perceived by speakers as independent, productive units. This study aims to
identify and analyze two types of textual evidence – so-called base paradigms and suffix
paradigms – to demonstrate how and when English writers and readers might have
perceived the endings of borrowings as analyzable, detachable suffixes. Textual examples
are selected from a variety of …