The morphological productivity of selected ... - Helda - Helsinki.fi

Studies concentrating on or touching upon the productivity of
combining forms have mainly been theoretical. Warren, for example, rather
cryptically writes that prefixes have “productive force”, while combining forms
“need not have productive force” but can be nonce formations (1990: 123). 22
Similarly, Prćić states that the productivity of prefixes is systematic, since they are
used regularly in “ready-made morpho-syntactic patterns”, and that each prefix
can be assigned a value of high, restricted, or low productivity (2005: 325).
Combining forms, on the other hand, “are simply there to be used if/when need
for them arises”, and thus display non-systematic productivity, comparable to that
of elements in compounding (Prćić 2005: 325). Fischer states that dictionaries can
be used to assess the productivity of combining forms since if a combining form
has its own entry in a dictionary, it can be said to have at least some degree of
productivity (1998: 63). However, the fact that all the elements studied in this
paper have an entry in the OED is too weak an indicator in itself to gauge their
productivity.
It is also worthwhile to consider the general tendencies or
underlying changes that might be going on in terms of the English word-formation
system. Bauer argues that since many of the native prefixes in English have lost
ground, having been replaced by learned “prefix-like elements”, a gradual
typological shift from prefixation towards “something more like compounding”
might be taking place (2003a: 35, 37). Even though he does not state it explicitly,
by these “learned prefix-like elements” Bauer seems to specifically mean
neoclassical combining forms. Szymanek seems to hold a similar view as well,
claiming that the neoclassical compounds have gained ground in the English
word-formation system, especially during the last few decades (2005: 432).
However, Bauer and Szymanek do not discuss whether these tendencies apply to
suffixes and final combining forms as well.
Szymanek also points out that coining new words, at least nouns, by
compounding, is easy for speakers, due to recursion and the absence of any major
grammatical restrictions (2005: 432). The same holds true for prefixes, as they,
22 Bauer (1983: 45–46) defines nonce formations as complex words that are created “on the spur of
the moment”, usually to cover an immediate need. Thus they are usually unique and rare. Nonce
formations must not be confused with hapax legomena: hapaxes are always defined in terms of a
certain corpus. When nonce formations start to be used regularly in the speech community and
become institutionalized, they become neologisms (Fischer 1998: 15–16).
62