Cover not available
Part of
Paradigms in Word Formation: Theory and applications
Edited by Alba E. Ruz, Cristina Fernández-Alcaina and Cristina Lara-Clares
[Studies in Language Companion Series 225] 2022
► pp. 249–282

Chapter 10
Complex verbs

The interplay of suffixation, conversion, and parasynthesis in Portuguese and English

 | Universidade de Lisboa | The Word Lab
Denominal and deadjectival complex verbs form a heterogenous set. They all belong to the coarse-grained class of causative verbs, but they may be obtained by different morphological processes, namely suffixation (coden → codifyv; laicadj → laicizev), conversion (watern → waterv; dryadj → dryv), or parasynthesis (globen → englobev; richadj → enrichv). The focus of this paper is on the description and comparative analysis of the three processes, based mainly on data from European Portuguese (e.g., planificarv ‘plan’, jogarv ‘play’, esburacarv ‘make a hole’, fragilizarv ‘fragilize’, secarv ‘dry’, envelhecerv ‘grow old’) and English (e.g., codify, play, debug, fragilize, dry, enrich). The analysis will deal with each of these verb-forming processes individually and how they relate with each other.
Keywords: complex verbs, conversion, parasynthesis, Portuguese, English
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Denominal and deadjectival verbs: General differences and similarities
    • 2.1A phonetic constraint
    • 2.2Semantic generalization and semantic constraint
    • 2.3Summary
  • 3.Verb-forming suffixation
    • 3.1The Latin suffix -ific-
    • 3.2The Latin suffix -sc-
    • 3.3The Greek suffix -ίζειν (-izein)
    • 3.4Summary
  • 4.Conversion
    • 4.1English data
    • 4.2Portuguese data
    • 4.3Summary
  • 5.Parasynthesis
    • 5.1The status of parasynthetic prefixes
    • 5.2Suffixes in parasynthetic verbs
    • 5.3Conversion in parasynthetic verbs
    • 5.4English parasynthetics
    • 5.5Summary
  • 6.The interplay of verb-forming suffixation, conversion, and parasynthesis
  • 7.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 September 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.225.10vil
References (43)
References
Adams, Valerie. 2001. Complex Words in English. New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Allen, Andrew S. 1981. The development of prefixal and parasynthetic verbs in Latin and Romance. Romance Philology 35(1): 79–88. <[URL]>
Bassani, Indaiá da Santana. 2008. Verbos denominais parassintéticos com prefixo em-/en- no Português do Brasil. XI Encontro dos Alunos de Pós-Graduação em Lingüística da USP, June 17–20, São Paulo.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie & Valera, Salvador. 2005. Conversion or zero-derivation: An introduction. In Approaches to Conversion/Zero-derivation, Laurie Bauer & Salvador Valera (eds), 7–18. Münster: Waxmann.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 1983. English Word-formation. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cançado, Márçia & Gonçalves, Anabela. 2016. Lexical semantics: Verb classes and alternations. In The Handbook of Portuguese Linguistics, W. Leo Wetzels, João Costa & Sergio Menuzzi (eds), 374–391. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Eve V. & Clark, Herbert H. 1979. When nouns surface as verbs. Language 55(4): 767–811. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Corpus de Referência do Português Contemporâneo. 2021. <[URL]> (20 November 2021).
Corpus do Português: Genre/Historical. 2006. <[URL]> (20 November 2021).
Darmesteter, Arsène. 1894. Traité de la formation des mots composés dans la langue française comparée aux autres langues romanes et au latin. Paris: Émile Bouillon Éditeur.Google Scholar
Dinu, Dana. 2012. Prefix derivation in Latin. Studii şi cercetări de onomastică şi lexicologie (SCOL) V(1–2): 125–135. <[URL]> (20 November 2021).
Gonçalves, Francisco Rebelo. 1966. Vocabulário da língua portuguesa. Coimbra: Coimbra Editora.Google Scholar
Houaiss, Antônio & Villar, Mauro. 2009. Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa. Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva.Google Scholar
Huber, Daniel. 2014. Notes on the history of suffixation in -ize: The historical competition between -ize and -ify. Symposium on Historical Phonology, 13–14 January, Edinburgh <[URL]>
Iacobini, Claudio. 2010. Les verbes parasynthétiques: de l’expression de l’espace à l’expression de l’action. De Lingua Latina 3: 1–16. <[URL]> (20 November 2021).
Latin Dictionary Headword. 2021. <[URL]> (20 November 2021).
Levin, Beth. 2010. What is the best grain-size for defining verb classes? Conference on Word Classes: Nature, Typology, Computational Representations, March 24–26, Rome. <[URL]>
Lewis, Charlton T. & Short, Charles. 1879. A Latin Dictionary. Founded on Andrews’ edition of Freund’s Latin dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. <[URL]> (20 November 2021).
Lieber, Rochelle. 1998. The suffix -ize in English: Implications for morphology. In Morphology and its Relation to Phonology and Syntax, Steven G. Lapointe, Diane K. Brentari & Patrick M. Farell (eds), 12–33. Stanford CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
. 2004. Morphology and Lexical Semantics. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marchand, Hans. 1960. The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation: A Synchronic-Diachronic Approach, 1st edn. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
. 1969. The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation: A Synchronic-Diachronic Approach, 2nd edn. München: C.H. Beck.Google Scholar
Martsa, Sándor. 2002. Homonymy vs. polysemy: Conversion in English. In Proceedings of the Tenth International Symposium on Lexicography, Henrik Gottlieb, Jens E. Mogensen & Arne Zettersten (eds), 211–229. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. Conversion in English: A Cognitive Semantic Approach. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Nagano, Akiko. 2007. Marchand’s analysis of back-formation revisited: Back-formation as a type of conversion. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 54(1): 33–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Online Etymology Dictionary. 2021. <[URL]> (20 November 2021).
Padrosa Trias, Susanna. 2005. Argument Structure and Morphology: The Case of en- Prefixation in English and Catalan. MA dissertation, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Pinker, Steven. 1994. The Language Instinct. New York NY: Harper Perennial Modern Classics. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Plag, Ingo. 2003. Word-Formation in English. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reinheimer-Rîpeanu, Sanda. 1974. Les Dérivés Parasynthétiques dans les Langues Romanes. The Hague: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rio-Torto, Graça Maria. 1994. Formação de verbos em português: Parassíntese, circunfixação e/ou derivação? Actas do IX Encontro da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, 351–362. Lisboa: Colibri. <[URL]>
Sanders, Gerald. 1988. Zero derivation and the overt analogue criterion. In Theoretical Morphology: Approaches in Modern Linguistics, Michael Hammond & Michael Noonan (eds), 155–175. San Diego CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Serrano-Dolader, David. 2015. Parasynthesis in Romance. In Word Formation. An International Handbook of the Languages of Europe, Peter O. Müller, Ingeborg Ohnheiser, Susan Olsen & Franz Rainer (eds), 524–536. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Štekauer, Pavol. 1996. A Theory of Conversion in English. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Sweet, Henry. 1891. A New English Grammar. Logical and Historical. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Urban Dictionary. 2021. <[URL]> (20 November 2021).
Valente, Ana Carolina Mrad de Moura, Castro da Silva, Caio Cesar, Gonçalves, Carlos Alexandre & Almeida, Maria Lúcia Leitão. 2009. Enfoques sobre parassíntese em português: Da tradição gramatical à lingüística cognitiva. Revel 7(12) <[URL]>
Villalva, Alina & Gonçalves, Carlos Alexandre. 2016. The phonology and morphology of word formation. In The Handbook of Portuguese Linguistics, W. Leo Wetzels, João Costa & Sergio Menuzzi (eds), 167–187. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Villalva, Alina. 1995. Configurações não-binárias em morfologia. Actas do X Encontro da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, 583–597, Évora, 1994. Lisboa: Colibri. <[URL]>
. 2013a. Estruturas convergentes. In Actas del XXVI Congreso Internacional de Lingüística y de Filología Románicas. Tome III. Valencia 2010, Emili Casanova Herrero & Cesáreo Calvo Rigual (eds), 643–652. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013b. Bare morphology. Linguística. Revista de Estudos Linguísticos da Universidade do Porto 8: 121–141. <[URL]>
. 2021. A formação de um corpus de verbos denominais: o caso particular dos verbos parassintéticos. In Paulino Vandresen, Marco Martins, & Isabel Monguilhott (eds), variação e mudança linguística no português falado e escrito na região sul e outras: uma trajetória de pesquisa; uma homenagem à Izete Lehmkuhl Coelho, 137–158. São Paulo: Blucher. <[URL]>
Williams, Edwin. 1981. On the notions “lexically related” and “head of a word”. Linguistic Inquiry 12(2): 245–274. <[URL]>
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Hledíková, Hana & Magda Ševčíková
2024. Conversion in languages with different morphological structures: a semantic comparison of English and Czech. Morphology 34:1 ► pp. 73 ff. DOI logo
Iacobini, Claudio & Maria Pina De Rosa
2024. A diachronic perspective on competition in denominal verb formation in Italian. In Competition in Word-Formation [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 284], ► pp. 247 ff. DOI logo
Nagano, Akiko, Alexandra Bagasheva & Vincent Renner
2024. Towards a competition-based word-formation theory. In Competition in Word-Formation [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 284], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Fábregas, Antonio
2022. Structural and lexical aspects of the morphology of English participles. In Paradigms in Word Formation [Studies in Language Companion Series, 225], ► pp. 285 ff. DOI logo
Ševčíková, Magda & Hana Hledíková
2022. Paradigms in English and Czech noun/verb conversion. In Paradigms in Word Formation [Studies in Language Companion Series, 225], ► pp. 181 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 december 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.