8 - Theory and practice

Summary

We are pleading here for the systematic description of synchronically productive word-formation processes in individual languages, with the conditions of the creation, use and understanding of so-called ‘nonceformations’ as the main aim.

(Brekle, 1978: 70)

Introduction

Although the general points discussed in the first six chapters of this book were illustrated with individual examples, the general tenor of those chapters was theoretical. Chapter 7, while less theoretically oriented, was mainly concerned with illustrating the range of patterns that are found in English rather than with applying the theory to those patterns. In this chapter the main emphasis shifts to the detailed study of word-formation, to see how well the theoretical points discussed in the main body of this book hold in practice. Further theoretical points will emerge from the consideration of actual data.

Each section in this chapter is based on a corpus of attested cases of word-formation, and discusses the problems raised by the attested data for the elaboration of lexical entries. The particular examples have been chosen to illustrate a range of limitations on productivity. While these may look unfamiliar and even, in some cases, unlikely, all the forms given have been attested (though not necessarily by me), and it is often the unfamiliar items which show7 the productivity of the process in question. Recent neologisms are also taken as evidence for the productivity of a process. It is assumed that all the processes described in this chapter are at least marginally productive.