Prefixation in English and Catalan - Departament de Filologia ...

The pattern in (17a) is more frequent than those in (17b) and (17c). Although the picture
for English is a bit different, due to the absence of the inflectional morpheme, it also
provides some evidence for the more restrictive option. Compare (18a) with (18b), the
former being more frequent than the latter.
(18) a. circleN - circleV - encircleV
b. drawerN - !endrawerN/V
In addition, there are many cases of conversion from a N or A to a V without any prefix,
which can be explained by using the same process, i.e. a conversion-suffix process:
(19) a. salN ‘salt’ - salarV ‘to salt’ (20) a. saltN - to saltV
b. arrelN ‘root’- arrelarV ‘to root’ b. rootN - to rootV
Now it remains to be seen whether there are enough reasons to postulate a Ø-suffix
responsible for the conversion (N/A→V) and how we account for the potentiation of
–ment by the prefix en- if the prefix is not a head. Apart from being the element
responsible for the category change, I will argue that this suffix is responsible for a [+c]
role present in the derived word.
19