Morphological competition in present‑day English nominalisation

Abstract

In linguistic morphology, competition is expected to be resolved, on the grounds that it is not economical for a system to keep two or more processes for one purpose (Hock & Joseph 2009: 213). Research on competition in word formation has focused on the variables that may favour or constrain the resolution of competition (Aronoff 1976; Plag 1999; Bauer et al. 2010; Bauer et al. 2013). Based on a restrictive view of competition, whereby competitors derive from the same base and express the same meaning, this thesis researches overt suffixation and zero‑affixation for the nominalization of the semantic categories ACTION, AGENTIVE, INSTRUMENT and STATE aiming at hints of resolution, diachronically and in present‑day English (henceforth, PDE). The analysis is by senses instead of by lemmas. For the diachronic analysis, the earliest and latest attestation dates of the competing sense of each form in the Oxford English Dictionary are explored. The results show that in nearly 50% of cases both forms in the set of competitors (here named cluster) fall out of use, and one of the forms falls out of use only in c. 15% of clusters. The analysis in PDE explores resolution in terms of specialisation regarding mode, register, and meaning. To this aim, the frequency of use of the competing sense in the British National Corpus is computed for every competitor. Statistical analysis reveals a significant association between mode and word‑formation process and also between register and word‑formation process. Semantic specialisation is explored in individual clusters but, in this regard, the conclusions are uneven for each pattern: some clusters show semantic specialisation, others still overlap clearly in meaning. The results obtained enlarge on the claim that competition may take place at varying degrees (Huyghe & Wauquier 2021; Huyghe & Varvara 2023a) and prove that it needs to be researched at a sense level.