Productivity and the Mental Lexicon*

Abstract

Outline In this chapter we will look at the mechanisms that are responsible for the fact that some affixes can easily be used to coin new words while other affixes can not. First, the notions of ‘possible word’ and ‘actual word’ are explored, which leads to the discussion of how complex words are stored and accessed in the mental lexicon. This turns out to be of crucial importance for the understanding of productivity. Different measures of productivity are introduced and applied to a number of affixes. Finally, some general restrictions on productivity are discussed. Introduction: what is productivity? We have seen in the previous chapter that we can distinguish between redundancy rules that describe the relationship between existing words and word formation rules that can in addition be used to create new words. Any theory of word-formation would therefore ideally not only describe existing complex words but also determine which kinds of derivative could be formed by the speakers according to the regularities and conditions of the rules of their language. In other words, any word-formation theory should make predictions about which words are possible in a language and which words are not. Some affixes are often used to create new words, whereas others are less often used, or not used at all, for this purpose. The property of an affix to be used to coin new complex words is referred to as the productivity of that affix.