Book chapter

Chapter 4. Measuring affix rivalry as a gradient relationship

BLE-BLL

  • 2024
Published in:
  • Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today / Bagasheva, Alexandra ; Nagano, Akiko ; Renner, Vincent. - John Benjamins Publishing Company. - 2024, vol. 284, p. 104-138
English In many languages, affixes can be used to derive words with the same semantic types and can therefore compete in word formation. This paper discusses how to quantitatively assess the competition between derivational affixes based on their semantic similarity. Two possible measures of affix rivalry drawn from studies in ecology are examined: the Sørensen index, which considers the proportion of shared functions between rival affixes; and the Percentage similarity coefficient, which is based on the realization frequency of functions. Two complementary measures (Balanced richness and Balanced abundance) are also proposed to further analyze the semantic dissimilarity between rival affixes. Using the semantic competition between six French deverbal suffixes as a case study, we show how these four measures suit the quantification of affix rivalry and help capture different aspects of the phenomenon
Faculty
Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines
Department
Département de français
Language
  • English
Classification
Language, linguistics
License
CC BY
Open access status
green
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/329831
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