Word Formation Head and the Typology Analysis of the Word Formation Corpus in Albanian

Abstract

Word formation in Albanian studies represents many problems that have been identified not only in university level but even in the pre-university one. This paper intends to examine the concept of the head as part of the word formation process, as this is a term, which is not encountered in the Albanian traditional studies. It will be introduced in this study from the perspective of the generative grammar theory. The aim of this paper is to discuss and argue about the similarity of the process and of the terminology when used at the syntactic and morphological level. Furthermore, there will be introduced some criteria based on which the head is defined at each level, and by providing arguments that some of these criteria are not applied at both levels. Then, it will be examined how the term head is applied at the morphological level, by describing its features when it is a derivational morpheme, or when it is the root/base form. Finally, two ways of approaching word-formation will be presented: one of them is based on the morpheme and it includes the concept of the head (morpheme-based morphology), and the other is based on the word (word-based morphology), where the concept of the head has not been excluded, while word-formation rules are being drafted. The approach of the study will be from an analytical and comparative perspective.
 
 Received: 22 August 2023 / Accepted: 27 September 2023 / Published: 5 November 2023