7/29/2019 The Morphology and Semantics of Expressive Affixes

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Title: The Morphology and Semantics of Expressive

AffixesAdd Dissertation 

Author: Antonio FortinUpdate

Dissertation 

Email: click here to access email Homepage: http://oxford.academia.edu/AntonioFortin 

Degree Awarded: University of Oxford , D.Phil. in Linguistics

Completed in: 2011

Linguistic

Subfield(s):General Linguistics Morphology Pragmatics Semantics Typology

Language 

Family(ies): 

Niger-Congo 

Germanic 

Romance 

Slavic Subgroup 

Indo-European New English 

Director(s): 

Martin Maiden 

Christopher Potts 

Ash Asudeh 

Abstract:

This dissertation focuses on two aspects of expressive affixes:

their

morphological/typological properties and their semantics. With

regard to

the former, it shows that the expressive morphology of many

differentlanguages (including Bantu, West Atlantic, Walman, Sanskrit,

Germanic,

Romance, Slavic, and others), has the following properties: 1) it is

systematically anomalous when compared to plain morphology, or

the ordinary

processes of word-formation and inflection. From this, it follows

that many

familiar morphological arguments that adduce the data of 

expressive

morphology ought to be reconsidered; and 2) it is far more

pervasive than

has been traditionally thought. For example, the Sanskrit preverb,

and the

Indo-European aspectual prefix/particle generally, are shown to

have

systematically expressive functions.

With respect to the semantics of expressive affixes, it develops anovel

multidimensional account, in the sense of Potts (2005), of Spanish

'connotative affixes,' which can simultaneously convey descriptiveand

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expressive meaning. It shows that their descriptive meaning is that

of a

gradable adjective, viewed as a degree relation which includes a

measure

function, in the sense of Kennedy (1997). The expressive meaning

of connotative affixes, and expressives generally, arises as they

manipulate

the middle coordinate, [b]I[/b], of expressive indices which, I

propose, is

inherently specified on all lexical items and canonically set to

'neutral.'

I propose a new mechanism, [b]AFF[/b], which is an algebraic

operation for

manipulating [b]I[/b], and which accounts for the well-known,

and seemingly

'contradictory,'range of meanings that expressive affixes canexpress.

Whereas prior work assumes that expressive affixes are inherently

polysemous, this approach derives their many attested meanings

and

functions (e.g., 'small,' 'young,' 'bad,' deprecation, appreciation,

hypocorism, intensification/exactness, and

attenuation/approximation)

compositionally, from the interactions of their

multidimensionality with

the meanings of the roots to which they attach.