Morphology课件.pptVIP

323 Morphology The Structure of Words 3. Lexicon and Rules (This page last updated 25 OC 06) 3.1 Productivity and the Lexicon 3.1 Productivity and the Lexicon 3.2 The form of Morphological Rules 3.2 The form of Morphological Rules 3.2 The form of Morphological Rules 3.2 The form of Morphological Rules 3.2 The form of Morphological Rules 3.2 The form of Morphological Rules 3.2 The form of Morphological Rules 3.2 The form of Morphological Rules 3.2 The form of Morphological Rules 3.2 The form of Morphological Rules 3.2 The form of Morphological Rules 3.2 The form of Morphological Rules 3.3 The form of Morphological Rules 3.3 The form of Morphological Rules 3.3 The form of Morphological Rules Go to Course Outline, Go to Chapter 2, Go to Chapter 4, Go to Exercise 3 * 3.1 Productivity and the Lexicon The lexicon is in theory infinite, but in practice it is limited. Human beings know only a certain amount of information at any one time and it is impossible for a human to know an infinite amount of information. This holds in the lexicon, as well. Comparing a lexicon to a dictionary (the printed lexemes), a dictionary can hold only so much information at one time. The list can grow and grow, but it is never infinite. The potentiality for making up new words by means of the rules of word building is potentially infinite, but this has never been proved. Nevertheless, it possible to create a large number of words, larger than what most humans could possibly memorize. Thus we must distinguish between actual words and potential words. A neologism is a new word that has been created. Neologisms that do not catch on except occasionally are called occasionalisms. Note that this word was probably created recently and I doubt if it has really caught on. If true, then the word occasionalism is itself an occasionalism. Affixes that are readily adjoined to words to create new words (bases and stems) are called productive. E.g. The English suffix ‘-er’ can be added to most ver