Predicting the Semantics of English Nominalizations: A Frame-Based Analysis of -ment Suffixation

Abstract

It has long been known that derivational affixes can be highly polysemous, exhibiting a range of different, often related, meanings. To account for this problem, it is commonly assumed that polysemy arises through the interaction of affix semantics with the meaning of the base (e.g. Plag I, The polysemy of -ize derivatives: the role of semantics in word formation. In: Booij G, van Marle J (eds) Yearbook of morphology 1997. Foris, Dordrecht, pp 219–242, 1998). This paper investigates the relationship between input semantics and output readings using the English nominal suffix -ment as a test case. From a sample of deverbal neologisms dating from the past 100 years, we investigate the largest semantic subclass of base verbs in the data set, i.e. psych verbs (Levin B, English verb classes and alternations: a preliminary investigation. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1993). The analysis employs common semantic categories such as event, state, result and stimulus and formalizes the results with the help of frames (Barsalou LW, Cognitive psychology: an overview for cognitive sciences. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, 1992a; Frames, concepts, and conceptual fields. In: Lehrer A, Kittay EF (eds) Frames, fields and contrasts. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, pp 21–74, 1992b; Lobner S, Understanding semantics, 2nd edn. Arnold, London, 2013). It is shown that -ment almost exclusively attaches to verbs from two clearly defined sub-classes of psych verbs, i.e. amuse verbs and marvel verbs. Within these sub-classes, -ment derivatives can be merely transpositional in meaning (denoting events or states, depending on the kind of base verb), or the suffix can induce a metonymic shift to the participants stimulus and result state, but not to experiencer. In the light of the frame analysis it becomes clear that, if the base verb denotes a complex psych causation event, shifts to the two sub-events are also possible, which calls into question the traditional concept of transposition. Our findings support an approach in which the semantics of a derivational process is conceptualized as its potential to induce particular metonymic shifts in the semantic representation of its bases.