MORPHOLOGY AND LEXICAL SEMANTICS

Morphology and Lexical Semantics explores the meanings of morphemes and how they combine to form the meanings of complex words, including derived words (writer, unionize), compounds (dog bed, truck driver), and words formed by conversion. Rochelle Lieber discusses the lexical semantics of word formation in a systematic way, allowing the reader to explore the nature of affixal polysemy, the reasons why there are multiple affixes with the same function, and the issues of mismatch between form and meaning in word formation. Using a series of case studies from English, this book develops and justifies the theoretical apparatus necessary for raising and answering many questions about the semantics of word formation. Distinguishing between a lexical semantic skeleton that is featural and hierarchically organized, and a lexical semantic body that is holistic, it shows how the semantics of word formation has a paradigmatic character.

ROCHELLE LIEBER is Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire. She is the author of On the Organization of the Lexicon (1980), An Integrated Theory of Autosegmental Processes (1987) and Deconstructing Morphology (1992), as well as numerous articles on word formation.

In this series

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN LINGUISTICS

General editors: P. AUSTIN, J. BRESNAN, B. COMRIE, W. DRESSLER, C. J. EWEN, R. LASS, D. LIGHTFOOT, I. ROBERTS, S. ROMAINE, N. V. SMITH

Morphology and Lexical Semantics

MORPHOLOGY AND LEXICAL SEMANTICS

ROCHELLE LIEBER

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Rochelle Lieber 2004

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2004

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

Typeface Times 10/13 pt. System LATEX 2_e [TB]

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Lieber, Rochelle, 1954–
Morphology and lexical semantics / Rochelle Lieber.
p. cm. – (Cambridge studies in linguistics; 104)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 521 83171 7
1. Grammar, Comparative and general – Word formation.   2. Semantics.   I. Title.   II. Series.
P245.L54   2004
415′.92 – dc22   2003065263 CIP

ISBN 0 521 83171 7 hardback

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Contents

Acknowledgments

This book was written under the best conditions imaginable. Its gestation period was prolonged by my heavy administrative duties as Chair of the English Department at UNH – ultimately a good thing, as it gave me time to discover the depths of my ignorance and to read widely while waiting for the next crisis to hit the fan. Although the book was a long time in coming, in the end I had the time to produce the manuscript in virtually one fell swoop, thanks to a full year of freedom with nothing to do but write and housetrain a puppy. I am therefore most grateful to the Center for the Humanities at UNH for a Senior Fellowship which allowed me to extend a sabbatical leave. I am grateful, as well, to the Netherlands Science Agency (NWO) for the support which allowed me to spend a month at the Free University in Amsterdam in October, 2001, and to Geert Booij for hosting me at VU. I also thank the Linguistics Department at the University of Washington for giving me Visiting Scholar status. Special thanks too go to Julia Hershensohn, Ellen Kaisse, and Fritz Newmeyer for collegiality, friendship, and hospitality during my stay in Seattle.

   I also wish to thank audiences at the Free University of Amsterdam, the University of Madrid, the University of Girona, the Third Mediterranean Morphology Meeting, and the Linguistics Departments at the CUNY Graduate Center and the University of Washington, who commented on various parts of this book at various stages of its development, and contributed substantially to the honing of my ideas.

   I would also like to acknowledge the help of a number of colleagues and friends. This work started some years ago in lively discussions with Harald Baayen. Our discussions resulted in several joint publications early on, before I decided to embark on an extended treatment of the subject of morphology and lexical semantics on my own. Harald will recognize some of his ideas developed here, and he’ll find some ideas which he would heartily disavow. Both sets of ideas are much the better for those discussions with him. I also thank Lluisa Gracia and Geert Booij for extensive discussion of parts of this book, and Pavol Stekauer and Julia Hershensohn for reading earlier versions of the manuscript. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers for Cambridge University Press.

   Finally, special thanks go to my husband David Hirsch for being my heart, my soul, my baseball consultant, and sometimes my most critical reader. This book is dedicated to him.