A Corpus Based Study on Productivity Measurement of Suffixes -ous and -ish

Abstract

In recent years, a growing number of studies have been conducted on the productivity of word formation. -ous and -ish are common adjective suffixes which have the same general meaning of to be similar to something and are consequently regarded as synonymous affixes. However, most prior studies have addressed lexical productivity from a single perspective, such as diachronic analysis or synchronic measurement, while few have combined the above aspects to conduct multi-angle studies. The comprehensive research perspective adopted in this paper provides several novel ideas for developing a further understanding of the productivity of the two affixes, and even for the wider study of morphological productivity.