Add a prefix to your verb: An (international) cookbook of word formation Cover Image

Doe een voorvoegsel bij je werkwoord: Een (internationaal) woordvormingskookboek
Add a prefix to your verb: An (international) cookbook of word formation

Author(s): Agata Kowalska-Szubert
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Theoretical Linguistics, Morphology, Semantics
Published by: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL & Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II
Keywords: word formation; comparative study; Polish; Dutch; complex forms; morphological equivalent; semantic equivalent

Summary/Abstract: The word-formation process is like cooking. Like the ingredients of dishes, word-formation affixes blend together. Depending on what we blend with what, we will obtain a new semantic or inflectional unit. This paper is devoted to word-formation from a comparative perspective. On the basis of the selected lexical material, the author examines whether word-formation processes occur in a parallel way in various languages (in this paper we are dealing with one Germanic and one Slavonic language, thus representatives of two different language groups) and whether — on the basis of the compound analysis — it is possible to predict the form of a semantic equivalent in the other language. As this study is a pilot study, it doesn’t contain far-reaching and completely underpinned applications for the semantic equivalence of individual members of compound words in different languages. Nevertheless, the possibility of such equivalences cannot be excluded definitely.

  • Issue Year: 64/2016
  • Issue No: 5S
  • Page Range: 95-103
  • Page Count: 9
  • Language: Dutch