Denominal verb-formation in English, Dutch and German. A comparative corpus-based study

Van Goethem, Kristel [UCL] Koutsoukos, Nikolaos [UCL] Houtart, Virginie [UCL]

Denominal verb-formation is an umbrella term referring to various morphological processes that derive verbs on the basis of nouns, such as conversion (e.g. English bottleN > bottleV), prefixation (e.g. Dutch armN ‘arm’ > om-armenV ‘embrace’) and suffixation (e.g. German KatapultN ‘catapult’ > katapult-ierenV ‘catapult’). Languages do not show the same proportions in the use of the different patterns of denominal word formation (cf. Štekauer et al. 2012). For example, ‘easy conversion of nouns to verbs has been part of English grammar for centuries; it is one of the processes that makes English English’ (Pinker 1994: 379). However, cross-linguistic variation in denominal verb formation has not received so much attention (cf. McIntyre 2015) and detailed analyses of the factors that motivate these preferences are still sparse. The literature review of this topic allows us to suggest that the synchronic distribution of denominal verb-formation patterns may be linked to different language-specific parameters, such as inflectional complexity (cf. Marchand 1969), syntactic properties related to word order and configurationality (cf. Hawkins 2004, Lamiroy 2011, Bentz & Christiansen 2013), and different systems of word-class assignment (cf. Lehmann 2008). In this study, we propose a comparative corpus-based analysis of denominal verb-formation patterns in three Germanic languages: English (cf. Gottfurcht 2008, among others), Dutch (cf. Booij 2018, among others) and German (cf. Eschenlohr 1999, among others). According to the so-called “Germanic Sandwich Hypothesis” (among others, van Haeringen 1956, Hüning et al. 2006, Lamiroy 2011), English, Dutch and German are situated along a cline from [+ analytic] to [+synthetic]. We examine the correlation of this parameter with the different use of denominal verb-formation patterns in these three languages and we explore the synchronic motivations behind the observed differences. Our dataset consists of 1,000 randomly selected verb types per language. These data have been extracted from the TenTen comparable corpora available on SketchEngine (Kilgariff et al. 2014) and have been annotated for normalized token frequency. Each derived form was first looked up in (etymological) dictionaries to check the direction of derivation, while its actual use has been double-checked in the corpus. Subsequently, all relevant denominal verbs have been classified according to their specific denominal verb-formation pattern: conversion (with or without phonological change), prefixation, suffixation, parasynthesis, back-formation, separable/inseparable complex verb. We set out specific criteria for the description of these processes and their cross-linguistic comparison. The main results of this comparative study and their correlation with language-specific morpho-syntactic properties will be presented in detail in our poster. Based on our findings, we will argue that derivational morphology may serve as a correlating property of morpho-syntactic features related to different degrees of analyticity, such as inflection and configurationality. References Bentz, C. & M. H. Christiansen. 2013. Linguistic adaptation: the trade-off between case marking and fixed word orders in Germanic and Romance languages. In: F. Shi & G. Peng (eds.), Eastward flows the great river. Festschrift in honor of Prof. William S-Y.Wang on his 80th birthday. Hong Kong: City University of Hong. 45-61. Booij, G. 2018. Word formation. Taalportaal. Retrieved from http://www.taalportaal.org/taalportaal/topic/pid/topic-14029029700962378. (accessed 23 January 2019). Eschenlohr, S. 1999. Vom Nomen zum Verb : Konversion, Präfigierung und Rückbildung im Deutschen. Hildesheim: Olms. 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