Derivational Suffix Productivity in Persian: A Fuzzy Analysis

ABSTRACT The main aim of this article is to introduce a new way of dealing with the vague concept of suffix productivity in Persian. This approach, that is fuzzy set theory, gives each suffix a degree of membership from [0,1] to different productivity categories. To estimate morphological productivity of Persian suffixes, first Baayen’s proposed measures, i.e. realized productivity, expanding productivity and potential productivity were applied to Bijankhan corpus. Correspondingly, 2.6 million words in the corpus were investigated and analysed using MATLAB and Microsoft Excel software. In the next step, the results of the three productivity measures were illustrated on separate fuzzy diagrams. The findings showed that the three measures employed could give a broader view of different aspects of derivational suffix productivity in Persian. Using fuzzy set theory makes it possible for a given suffix to belong simultaneously to different categories with different degrees of membership. According to the statistics of this research, suffixes – i and – e in Persian had the highest degrees of membership among the most productive suffixes up to now. Likewise, they continue to contribute the most to the growth rate of the contemporary Persian lexicon.