Abstract

Suffixation is one of the most frequent and most productive word-formation processes in the Romance languages. One branch of it, the formation of verbs through suffixes, is particularly productive, especially regarding the formation of causative verbs with learned or borrowed verb stems (e.g., Fr. glorifier ‘to glorify’, Sp. alfabetizar ‘to alphabetize’, Pt. modernizar ‘to modernize’, Rom. a steriliza ‘to sterilize’). Other derivation techniques, however, such as evaluative verb suffixation (e.g., It. dormicchiare ‘to doze’), are not or are only slightly productive but semantically very complex. In this article, all common verb formations by means of suffixes in all major and some minor Romance languages are treated systematically. A fundamental division is made into non-evaluative and evaluative verbal suffixations. By considering Latin, the etymological foundations and the pre-Romance derivation suffixes are also briefly touched on. Finally, using dictionaries and digital corpora, the aspect of productivity of word formation patterns is considered. As far as evaluative derivation is concerned, it has been shown that the two parameters of quantity and quality across all Romance languages are neither stable nor predictable for any of the relevant suffixes but depend on the meaning of the underlying verb, the situational context, and the attitude of the speakers.

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