Greek derivational affixes roots or categorizers?

Artemis Alexiadou

doi:10.21747/16466195/lingespa7

Abstract

In this paper, I am concerned with the status of derivational affixes in Distributed Morphology: are these roots or categorizers? I will compare Greek to English and Dutch, as some derivational affixes in these two languages have been claimed to be roots. I will show that Greek derivational affixes are categorizers, and I will offer an explanation that capitalizes on the stress properties of Greek derivational affixes.

Highlights

Distributed Morphology, DM, is a theory of grammar that takes the syntactic component to build complex hierarchical representations from abstract morphemes via Merge
I have argued that Greek derivational affixes are categorizers
I discussed here and Lowenstamm, as well as De Belder and Creemers et al are right about English and Dutch, and their cases do not involve accidental homophony, the question arises what determines this cross-linguistic variation

Summary

Introduction

Distributed Morphology, DM, is a theory of grammar that takes the syntactic component to build complex hierarchical representations from abstract morphemes via Merge. Several authors have questioned the analysis of derivational affixes as realizations of categorizing heads, claiming that at least certain such affixes may be roots. This is a very interesting debate, which highlights the need for diagnostics of what a root is. De Belder (2011), Lowenstamm (2015) and Creemers et al (2018) among others argue that all or some derivational affixes in Dutch and English are roots, cf Borer (2013) In this contribution, I will revisit this discussion by comparing Greek to English and Dutch.

Derivational affixes as categorizers

Derivational affixes as roots

Some background on Greek morphology

Greek affixes: roots or categorizers?

Discussion and general conclusions