Word-Formation in English (review)

Twenty years after the publication of Laurie Bauer’s classic in the same series (English word formation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), Ingo Plag presents an introductory textbook to the study of word formation in English and a concise up-to-date survey of the developments and advancements in morphological theory and research methodology during the last two decades. The book is divided into seven chapters, and each chapter is accompanied by a short summary, a further reading section, and a set of basic and advanced-level exercises. The volume is rounded off by an answer key to the exercises, a reference section, and subject, affix, and author indices.

Ch. 1 opens with a discussion of the different notions of ‘word’ and introduces the basic concepts needed for the analysis of morphologically complex words. It also gives a brief overview and classification of the different branches of morphology by exemplifying the major English word-formation processes. Finally, the chapter provides a comparative analysis of inflection and derivation and their distinctive characteristics. Ch. 2 presents a problem-oriented discussion of the notion of ‘morpheme’ and outlines the different types of allomorphy and conditioning, as well as word-formation rules and the concept of multiple affixation. Ch. 3 defines and examines the concept of morphological productivity of affixes and how this is related to the representation, storage, and processing of words in the mental lexicon. It then introduces and compares the major research tools (electronic dictionaries and corpora, i.e. the Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM and the British National Corpus) and evaluates the different methods for measuring morphological productivity (dictionary- vs. corpus-based approach) by means of an exemplary study of the suffix {-able}. The chapter closes with an overview of the restrictions that constrain productivity: pragmatic restrictions, structural restrictions, and blocking.

Ch. 4 examines the notion of ‘affix’ and surveys general properties of affixation in English. It then addresses further practical issues and pitfalls of empirical research and explains in a step-by-step manner how data for studies on English affixation can be retrieved and analyzed by making use of dictionaries and corpora. The second part of this chapter consists of an overview of the properties of a large number of English affixes. Thus it serves both as a research manual for students’ own small-scale empirical studies and as an up-to-date reference section for individual affixes.

Ch. 5 deals with conversion and familiarizes the reader with prosodic morphology by discussing less productive word-formation processes such as truncation, blending, abbreviation, and acronym coinage. Ch. 6 is dedicated to the different types and characteristics of compounding such as headedness and stress, and to the syntax-morphology boundary. Finally, Ch. 7 presents an overview of different morphological theories, focusing on the phonology-morphology interface and lexical phonology, with additional discussions of word- vs. morpheme-based approaches to morphological theory.

There are two main aspects that make this book stand out from more traditional textbooks on (English) morphology. First, by adopting a problem-oriented approach and looking at the topic from a student perspective, P succeeds in providing a highly accessible text that enables students with little prior linguistic knowledge to do even complex morphological analyses. Second, it introduces both the theoretical foundations of research methodology and the major research tools in a succinct and very comprehensible manner. Practical issues and pitfalls of empirical research are explicitly addressed, thereby guiding and encouraging students to carry out their own small-scale empirical projects on English word formation. Thus, it is an ideal textbook for (undergraduate) courses in English morphology and word formation, especially for those with an empirical, data-driven component.