Part of
Competition in Word-FormationEdited by Alexandra Bagasheva, Akiko Nagano and Vincent Renner
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 284] 2024
► pp. 104–138
Edited by Alexandra Bagasheva, Akiko Nagano and Vincent Renner
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 284] 2024
► pp. 104–138
Chapter 4Measuring affix rivalry as a gradient relationship
In many languages, affixes can be used to derive words with the same semantic types and can therefore compete in word formation. This paper discusses how to quantitatively assess the competition between derivational affixes based on their semantic similarity. Two possible measures of affix rivalry drawn from studies in ecology are examined: the Sørensen index, which considers the proportion of shared functions between rival affixes; and the Percentage similarity coefficient, which is based on the realization frequency of functions. Two complementary measures (Balanced richness and Balanced abundance) are also proposed to further analyze the semantic dissimilarity between rival affixes. Using the semantic competition between six French deverbal suffixes as a case study, we show how these four measures suit the quantification of affix rivalry and help capture different aspects of the phenomenon.
Keywords: affix rivalry, quantitative method, nominalization, deverbal suffix, French
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Rivalry and polyfunctionality
- 3.Measures of rivalry
- 3.1Quantifying competition
- 3.2Possible measures
- 3.2.1Similarity coefficients
- 3.2.2Complementary indices
- 4.Case study: Deverbal nominalizing suffixes in French
- 4.1Data collection
- 4.2Semantic analysis
- 4.3Results
- 4.3.1General information
- 4.3.2Incidence-based measures
- 4.3.3Abundance-based measures
- 4.3.4Comparison of the different measures
- 5.Conclusion
- Supplementary material
-
Acknowledgements -
Notes -
References
References
Anderson, Marti J., Crist, Thomas O., Chase, Jonathan M., Vellend, Mark, Inouye, Brian D., Freestone, Amy L., Sanders, Nathan J., Cornell, Howard V., Comita, Liza S., Davies, Kendi F., Harrison, Susan P., Kraft, Nathan J. B., Stegen, James C. & Swenson, Nathan G.
2011 Navigating
the multiple meanings of β diversity: A roadmap for the
practicing ecologist. Ecology
Letters 14(1): 19–28. 
Arndt-Lappe, Sabine
2014 Analogy
in suffix rivalry: The case of English ‑ity
and
‑ness. English
Language &
Linguistics 18(3): 497–548.
Aronoff, Mark
2020 -less
and
‑free. In Complex
Words: Advances in Morphology, Lívia Körtvélyessy & Pavol Štekauer (eds), 55–64. Cambridge: CUP.
Asher, Nicholas
2011 Lexical
Meaning in Context: A Web of
Words. Cambridge: CUP.
Baayen, R. Harald
1993 On
frequency, transparency, and
productivity. In Yearbook
of Morphology 1992, Geert E. Booij & Jaap van Marle (eds), 181–208. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
2009 Corpus
linguistics in morphology: Morphological
productivity. In Corpus
Linguistics: An International
Handbook, Anke Lüdeling & Merja Kytö (eds), Vol. 2, 899–919. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Baayen, R. Harald, Endresen, Anna, Janda, Laura A., Makarova, Anastasia & Nesset, Tore
2013 Making
choices in Russian: Pros and cons of statistical methods for
rival affixes. Russian
Linguistics 37(3): 253–291.
Baselga, Andrés
2013 Separating
the two components of abundance-based dissimilarity:
Balanced changes in abundance vs. abundance
gradients. Methods in Ecology
and
Evolution 4(6): 552–557.
Bauer, Laurie
2001 Morphological
Productivity. Cambridge: CUP.
2002 What
you can do with derivational
morphology. In Morphology
2000: Selected Papers from the 9th Morphology Meeting,
Vienna, 24–28 February 2000, Sabrina Bendjaballah, Wolfgang U. Dressler, Oskar E. Pfeiffer & Maria D. Voeikova (eds), 37–48. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bonami, Olivier & Thuilier, Juliette
2019 A
statistical approach to rivalry in lexeme formation: French
‑iser and
‑ifier. Word
Structure 12(1): 4–41.
Corbin, Danielle
1987 Morphologie
dérivationnelle et structuration du
lexique. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Cruse, D. Alan
1995 Polysemy
and related phenomena from a cognitive linguistic
viewpoint. In Computational
Lexical Semantics, Patrick Saint-Dizier & Evelyne Viegas (eds), 33–49. Cambridge: CUP.
Denistia, Karlina, Shafaei-Bajestan, Elnaz & Baayen, R. Harald
2021 Exploring
semantic differences between the Indonesian prefixes
PE‑ and PEN‑ using a
vector space model. Corpus
Linguistics and Linguistic
Theory 18(3): 573–598.
Díaz-Negrillo, Ana
2017 On
the identification of competition in English derivational
morphemes. The case of ‑dom,
‑hood and
‑ship. In Competing
Patterns in English
Affixation, Juan Santana-Lario & Salvador Valera (eds), 119–161. Lausanne: Peter Lang.
Dubois, Jean
1962 Étude
sur la dérivation suffixale en français moderne et
contemporain: essais d’interprétation des mouvements
observés dans le domaine de la morphologie des mots
construits. Paris: Larousse.
Fábregas, Antonio
2010 A
syntactic account of affix rivalry in Spanish
nominalizations. In The
Semantics of Nominalizations across Languages and
Frameworks, Artemis Alexiadou & Monika Rathert (eds), 67–92. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Fernández-Domínguez, Jesús
2013 Morphological
productivity measurement: Exploring qualitative versus
quantitative
approaches. English
Studies 94(4): 422–447.
2017 Methodological
and procedural issues in the quantification of morphological
competition. In Competing
Patterns in English
Affixation, Juan Santana-Lario & Salvador Valera (eds), 67–117. Lausanne: Peter Lang.
Flaux, Nelly & Van de Velde, Danièle
2000 Les
noms en français: esquisse de
classement. Paris: Editions Ophrys.
Fradin, Bernard
2019 Competition
in derivation: What can we learn from French doublets in
‑age and
‑ment? In Competition
in Inflection and Derivation, Franz Rainer, Francesco Gardani, Wolfgang U. Dressler & Hans Christian Luschützky (eds), 67–93. Cham: Springer.
Fradin, Bernard & Kerleroux, Françoise
2003 Quelle
base pour les procédés de la morphologie
constructionnelle? Silexicales 3: 76–84.
Godard, Danièle & Jayez, Jacques
1996 Types
nominaux et anaphores : le cas des objets et des
événements. In Anaphores
temporelles et
(in-)cohérence [Cahiers Chronos
1], Walter De Mulder, Liliane Tasmowski-De Ryck & Carl Vetters (eds), 41–58. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías & Bonami, Olivier
2023 A
distributional assessment of rivalry in word
formation. Word
Structure 16(1): 87–114.
Haas, Pauline, Barque, Lucie, Huyghe, Richard & Tribout, Delphine
2023 Pour
une classification sémantique des noms en français appuyée
sur des tests
linguistiques. Journal of
French Language
Studies 33(1): 52–81.
Huyghe, Richard
2015 Les
typologies nominales:
présentation. Langue
française 185(1): 5–27.
Huyghe, Richard & Wauquier, Marine
2021 Distributional
semantics insights on agentive suffix rivalry in
French. Word
Structure 14(3): 354–391.
Huyghe, Richard, Lombard, Alizée, Salvadori, Justine & Schwab, Sandra
2023 Semantic
rivalry between French deverbal neologisms in
‑age, ‑ion and
‑ment. In The
Semantics of Derivational Morphology. Theory, Methods,
Evidence, Sven Kotowski & Ingo Plag (eds), 125–158. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Huyghe, Richard & Varvara, Rossella
2023 Affix
rivalry: Theoretical and methodological
challenges. Word
Structure 16(1): 1–23.
Jacquey, Evelyne
2006 Un
cas de « polysémie logique » : modélisation de noms d’action
en français ambigus entre processus et
artefact. TAL 47(1): 137–166.
Kipper-Schuler, Karin
2005 VerbNet:
A Broad-Coverage, Comprehensive Verb
Lexicon. PhD
dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.
Legendre, Pierre
2014 Interpreting
the replacement and richness difference components of beta
diversity. Global Ecology and
Biogeography 23(11): 1324–1334.
Legendre, Pierre & Legendre, Louis
2012 Numerical
Ecology. Third
edition. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Lieber, Rochelle
2015 The
semantics of
transposition. Morphology 25(4): 353–369.
2016 English
Nouns: The Ecology of
Nominalization. Cambridge: CUP.
Lieber, Rochelle & Plag, Ingo
2022 The
semantics of conversion nouns and ‑ing
nominalizations: A quantitative and theoretical
perspective. Journal of
Linguistics 58(2): 307–343.
Lignon, Stéphanie
2007 Les
noms de spécialistes en ‑iste et en
‑ien: le chimiste perturbé ou comment
le physicien se
réajuste. In Perturbations
et réajustements: langue et
langage, Béatrice Vaxelaire, Rudolph Sock, Georges Kleiber & Fabrice Marsac (eds), 287–296. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de l’Université Marc Bloch.
Lindsay, Mark & Aronoff, Mark
2013 Natural
selection in self-organizing morphological
systems. In Morphology
in Toulouse. Selected Proceedings of Décembrettes 7
(Toulouse, 2–3 December 2010), Nabil Hathout, Fabio Montermini & Jesse Tseng (eds), 133–153. München: Lincom Europa.
Liu, Zhenyuan, Heino, Jani, Soininen, Janne, Zhou, Tingting, Wang, Weimin, Cui, Yongde, Chen, Yushun, Li, Zhengfei, Zhang, Junqian & Xie, Zhicai
2022 Different
responses of incidence-weighted and abundance-weighted
multiple facets of macroinvertebrate beta diversity to
urbanization in a subtropical river
system. Ecological
Indicators 143: 1–11.
Martin, Fabienne
2010 The
semantics of eventive suffixes in
French. In The
Semantics of Nominalizations across Languages and
Frameworks, Artemis Alexiadou & Monika Rathert (eds), 109–140. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Melʹčuk, Igor A.
1994 Cours
de morphologie
générale. Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal.
Melloni, Chiara
2011 Event
and Result
nominals. Bern: Peter Lang.
Murphy, Elliott
2021 Linguistic
Representation and Processing of
Copredication. PhD
dissertation, University College London.
Naccarato, Chiara
2019 Agentive
(para)synthetic compounds in Russian: A quantitative study
of rival
constructions. Morphology 29(1): 1–30.
Nagano, Akiko
2023 Affixal
rivalry and its purely semantic resolution among English
derived adjectives. Journal
of
Linguistics 59(3): 499–530.
Odum, Eugene P.
1950 Bird
populations of the Highlands (North Carolina) Plateau in
relation to plant succession and avian
invasion. Ecology 31(4): 587–605.
Petukhova, Volha & Bunt, Harry
2008 LIRICS
semantic role annotation: Design and evaluation of a set of
data
categories. In Proceedings
of the Sixth International Conference on Language Resources
and Evaluation (LREC’08), Nicoletta Calzolari, Khalid Choukri, Bente Maegaard, Joseph Mariani, Jan Odijk, Stelios Piperidis & Daniel Tapias (eds), 39–45. Paris: European Language Resources Association.
Plag, Ingo
1999 Morphological
Productivity: Structural Constraints in English
Derivation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Pustejovsky, James
1995 The
Generative
Lexicon. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Rainer, Franz
2015 Agent
and instrument
nouns. In Word-Formation:
An International Handbook of the Languages of
Europe, Peter O. Müller, Ingeborg Ohnheiser, Susan Olsen & Franz Rainer, Vol. 2, 1304–1316. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Roché, Michel
2004 Mot
construit? Mot non construit? Quelques réflexions à partir
des dérivés en
‑ier(e). Verbum 26(4): 459–480.
Roswell, Michael, Dushoff, Jonathan & Winfree, Rachael
2021 A
conceptual guide to measuring species
diversity. Oikos 130(3): 321–338.
Salvadori, Justine & Huyghe, Richard
2023 Affix
polyfunctionality in French deverbal
nominalizations. Morphology 33(1): 1–39.
Säily, Tanja
2011 Variation
in morphological productivity in the BNC: Sociolinguistic
and methodological
considerations. Corpus
Linguistics and Linguistic
Theory 7(1): 119–141.
Schäfer, Roland
2015 Processing
and querying large web corpora with the COW14
architecture. In Proceedings
of Challenges in the Management of Large Corpora 3
(CMLC-3), Piotr Bański, Hanno Biber, Evelyn Breiteneder, Marc Kupietz, Harald Lüngen & Andreas Witt (eds), 28–34. Mannheim: Institut für Deutsche Sprache.
Schäfer, Roland & Bildhauer, Felix
2012 Building
large corpora from the Web using a new efficient tool
chain. In Proceedings
of the Eighth International Conference on Language Resources
and Evaluation (LREC’12), Nicoletta Calzolari, Khalid Choukri, Thierry Declerck, Mehmet Uğur Doğan, Bente Maegaard, Joseph Mariani, Asuncion Moreno, Jan Odijk & Stelios Piperidis (eds), 486–493. Paris: European Language Resources Association.
Schirakowski, Barbara
2020 (No)
competition between deverbal nouns and nominalized
infinitives in
Spanish. Borealis: An
International Journal of Hispanic
Linguistics 9(22): 257–283.
Schnedecker, Catherine & Aleksandrova, Angelina
2016 Les
noms d’humains en ‑aire: essai de
classification. In 5e
Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française – CMLF
2016, Franck Neveu, Gabriel Bergounioux, Marie-Hélène Côté, Jean-Michel Fournier, Linda Hriba & Sophie Prévost (eds), 12001. Paris: Institut de Linguistique Française.
Schulte, Marion
2015 Polysemy
and synonymy in derivational affixation: A case study of the
English suffixes ‑age and
‑ery. Morphology 25(4): 371–390.
Sørensen, Thorvald A.
1948 A
method of establishing groups of equal amplitude in plant
sociology based on similarity of species content and its
application to analyses of the vegetation on Danish
commons. Kongelige Danske
Videnskabernes Selskabs Biologiske
Skrifter 5: 1–34.
ten Hacken, Pius
2015 Transposition
and the limits of word
formation. In Semantics
of Complex Words, Laurie Bauer, Lívia Körtvélyessy & Pavol Štekauer (eds), 187–216. Cham: Springer.
Thiele, Johannes
1987 La
formation des mots en français
moderne. Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal.
Thuilier, Juliette, Tribout, Delphine & Wauquier, Marine
2023 Affixal
rivalry in French demonym formation: The role of linguistic
and non-linguistic
parameters. Word
Structure 16(1): 115–146.
Varvara, Rossella
2020 Constraints
on nominalizations: Investigating the productivity domain of
Italian ‑mento and
‑zione. Zeitschrift
für Wortbildung / Journal of Word
Formation 4(2): 78–99.
Varvara, Rossella, Lapesa, Gabriella & Padó, Sebastian
2021 Grounding
semantic transparency in context: A distributional semantic
study of German event
nominalizations. Morphology 31(4): 409–446.
Wilson, J. Bastow
2012 Species
presence/absence sometimes represents a plant community as
well as species abundances do, or
better. Journal of Vegetation
Science 23(6): 1013–1023.