scholarly journals Reflections on Noun-to-Verb Conversion In English

2006 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heike Baeskow

AbstractEnglish denominal verbs formed by conversion adopt complex morphosyntactic and semantic information in a rather mysterious way. For example, the lexical item

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly Findlay ◽  
Gareth Carrol

Abstract Idiom studies typically consider variables such as familiarity, decomposability and literal plausibility, and the contributions of these to how figurative phrases are processed are well established. In this study we consider the effect of a previously untested variable: semantic richness. Semantic richness refers broadly to the range of semantic information denoted by a lexical item, and reflects features such as imageability, number of senses, semantic neighbourhood, etc. This has generally been restricted to single words and sometimes to metaphors, so here we investigate how some aspects of this measure – specifically those reflecting perceptual characteristics – contribute to the processing of idiomatic expressions. Results show that aspects of semantic richness affect idiom processing in different ways, with some (emotional valence) contributing to faster processing of figuratively related words, and others (those that highlight physical and literal aspects of the idiom) showing an inhibitory effect. We also show that for some of the dimensions of semantic richness considered here, there is a significant correlation between a measure constructed from the ratings of component words, and one gathered from ratings for the phrase as a whole, suggesting a straightforward way to operationalise semantic richness at a multiword level.


2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darya L. Zabelina ◽  
Emmanuel Guzman-Martinez ◽  
Laura Ortega ◽  
Marcia Grabowecky ◽  
Mark Beeman ◽  
...  

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heike Baeskow

For many decades there has been a consensus among linguists of various schools that derivational suffixes function not only to determine the word-class of the complex expressions they form, but also convey semantic information. The aspect of suffix-inherent meaning is ignored by representatives of a relatively new theoretical direction – Neo-Construction Grammar – who consider derivational suffixes to be either purely functional elements of the grammar or meaningless phonological realizations of abstract grammatical morphemes. The latter view is maintained by adherents of Distributed Morphology, who at the same time emphasize the importance of conceptual knowledge for derivational processes without attempting to define this aspect. The purpose of this study is first of all to provide support for the long-standing assumption that suffixes are inherently meaningful. The focus of interest is on the suffixes -ship, -dom and -hood. Data from Old English and Modern English (including neologisms) will show that these suffixes have developed rich arrays of meaning which cannot be structurally derived. Moreover, since conceptual knowledge is indeed an important factor for word-formation processes, a concrete, theory-independent model for the representation of the synchronically observable meaning components associated with -ship, -dom and -hood will be proposed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 79 (7) ◽  
pp. 77-82
Author(s):  
E. P. Andreeva

The road image in the worldview of Northern-Russian countryman is described in the article. The semantic and derivational potential of the common Russian word in the dialect context is analyzed, the motivated reasons of the dialect words named ‘place, area that is moving on’are defined. The language means explicating characteristics of the one of the key images in the dialect linguistic worldview are marked. The article purpose is show the functioning of the common Russian word road in the dialect from the one side and to watch what other dialect units make the list of the lexical item group, what links and relations are among them.


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