Word formation, meaning and lexicalization

Abstract

This chapter gives a historical overview of the study of the semantic aspects of word formation and lexicalization. It starts with Saussure and the developments in the European tradition, including the Prague School, which pay a lot of attention to semantics. Also the classical terminological tradition of Wüster is included. The American tradition was much more reluctant to study meaning. Bloomfield’s approach was in this respect inherited by generative grammar. Current approaches in the European tradition include the onomasiological approach, both in word formation and terminology, which evolved from the Prague School. In generative grammar, Distributed Morphology (DM) continues the tradition that prioritises the form, but there are also approaches such as Jackendoff’s Parallel Architecture, Lieber’s lexical semantics of word formation, and Pustejovsky’s Generative Lexicon, which provide a much better background for the study of the semantics of word formation and lexicalization. In addition, Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar prioritizes semantic considerations and Beard’s Lexeme-Morpheme-Base Morphology tries to bridge the gap between the European and American traditions. The chapter gives an overview of the positions of each of these frameworks and the relations between them. Against this theoretical background, the individual chapters are presented.