University of Zadar

English Department
Morphology
Frane Malenica, Assistant

Petra Karmeli
Morphology and the Lexicon: Lexicalization and Productivity
Seminar paper

Zadar, January 2016

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Petra Karmeli
Frane Malenica, Assistant
Morphology
English Department
University of Zadar
14 January 2016
Morphology and the Lexicon: Lexicalization and Productivity
In this seminar paper we are going to deal with the connection between the
morphology and the lexicon. At first, it may seem that the morphology of a language and the
lexicon of a language do not have anything in common. The morphology deals primarily with
the internal structure of the potential complex words, while the lexicon of a language is a list
of existing items in the language. To put it differently, the morphology deals only with
potential words and the lexicon only with existing words. However, these two systems have a
great deal in common. Firstly, they serve the same role in a language: the morphology and the
lexicon both provide words. Secondly, the morphology and the lexicon are both independent.
Finally, morphology finds the words to deal with in the lexicon.
The morphology creates regular words and the lexicon stores irregular words. To
understand the rivalry of the morphology and the lexicon in the larger system of the language,
we must consider a single speaker or hearer. We talk about the individuals mental lexicon,
which is the list of irregular items the speaker or hearer has in his or her mind. Now it is easier
to define existing words and potential words: any words stored in a single speakers or
hearers mental lexicon is an existing word, and those words that a speaker or hearer does not

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have in his or her mental lexicon are potential words. A word that is potential does not exist
for a person, even if the person has heard of a word but has no stored it in his or her individual
lexicon. The morphology and the lexicon interact when they are both capable of being
evoked. For example, most plural forms come from the morphology, but some plural forms
come from the lexicon. The plural comes from the morphology in case it is regular, for
example: flowers, books, etc. But in case it is irregular, the plural comes from the lexicon, for
example: mice, children, etc. Second example is irregular past tenses of verbs. Most of the
verbs have regular past tenses forms; therefore they come from the morphology, for example:
played, looked, etc. Some of the verbs have irregular past tenses forms; these come from the
lexicon, for example: cut, written, etc. The morphology and the lexicon interact in assuring
that only one form will be used. Speaker will use a form from his or her lexicon rather than
produce a new word with the same meaning. Languages usually tend to avoid synonyms. This
phenomenon is called blocking. It depends on psychological factors. Firstly, blocking is
subject to the span of a mental lexicon. Usually, children fail to block some words because
their mental lexicon is not so complex. Secondly, blocking is subject to frequency. The more
frequently an irregular form is used, the more likely it is to block the corresponding regular
form.
Morphological patterns are abstract but they are affected by the lexicon. We cannot
add any suffix to any base. For example, classify is a word created with suffix ify, but
lividify is not even though it was created in the same way. The inheritance of irregularity also
shows how the morphology depends on the lexicon. Complex words usually have
conventional meanings that slightly differ from the predictable meaning. For example, word
immeasurable: we could assume from the morphemes it consists of that the word means that
cannot be measured, but it means very large. There are also different phonological
irregularities of words in our lexicon. For example, probably is pronounced [prabli] while

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probable is not pronounced [prabl]. This presents that the derived word deviate
phonologically from its base and it acquires its own entry in the lexicon. To conclude, we
have seen how the morphology differs from the lexicon and how it depends on it.
To continue with, we are going to discuss morphological productivity. It can be
defined as the extent to which a particular affix is likely to be used in the production of new
words in a certain language. There are quantitative factors of productivity. In English
language there are completely unproductive affixes, which will probably never again be used
for producing new words. For example, suffix th. On the other hand, some affixes are highly
productive, which are constantly used. For example, suffix ing or suffix -ness. Of course,
there are suffixes in the middle. There are also qualitative factors of productivity. These refer
to rival affixes, affixes that are very similar in their semantic and syntactic states. For
example, affix ness is unrestricted, it acts as the default. One of the members of any similar
set of rival affixes will usually be default, qualitatively restricted. Qualitative difference is
usually obvious quantitatively since the quantitatively least restricted among a set of rivals
will be the quantitatively most productive. Baayern has developed a number of procedures for
measuring quantitative productivity. Firstly, the growth rate of the vocabulary is estimated
from a large corpus as the ratio of those words occurring only once in the corpus (hapax
legomena) to the total number of word tokens in the corpus. The other measure is global
productivity, which depends on the likelihood of encountering new words as well as on the
number of words that a speaker is already familiar with. For example, suffix ness is sic times
more productive than suffix -ity if we consider the growth rate, but it is not even three times if
we talk about global productivity.
Word frequency is related to blocking and productivity. The less productive a
morphological pattern is, the more frequent on average its individual members will be.

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Usually less productive affixes are connected to higher-frequency base words due te link
between frequency and lexical recognition.
Some scholars believe have insisted that the study of morphological productivity
should restrict itself to studying words formed involuntarily. This leaves out completely the
study of unproductive morphology. For example, formation of blends or acronyms, which are
more voluntary. By comparing words made by a less productive affixe to words made by a
rival affix it is obvious that the meaning of the less productive word is less predictable.
Therefore, less productive affixes are used to coin more narrow terms. For example, word
specialism means very restrictedly what a medical specialist practices. We can explain that
by two Gricean pragmatic principles. The principle of relation tends not to use the less
productive form because there is the more productive form available, while the principle of
quantity tends to use the less productive form to make a special point. To sum up, the
morphology and pragmatics combined enrich languages expressive potential.