Semantic analysis of verb – noun zero derivation in Princeton WordNet

Abstract This study offers insights into the similarities and differences between the zero suffix and overt English suffixes involved in verb-to-noun and noun-to-verb derivation. It is based on morphosemantically related pairs of noun and verb senses released as a Princeton WordNet standoff file, which are annotated with a set of fourteen semantic relations further enriched with information about the affix(es) used in the derivation process. We compare the zero suffix and the overt suffixes with respect to their overall frequency in the dataset and their frequency as per semantic relation. We describe their semantics in terms of the relation between the base and the derived word senses, and of the semantic classes of words involved in affixal and zero derivation. We argue that the zero suffix is highly underspecified, occurring with all semantic relations, even though it manifests some preferences with respect to both the semantic relations expressed and the semantic classes of words it attaches to.