aronoff & schvaneveldt (productivity)

7/24/2019 Aronoff & Schvaneveldt (Productivity)

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TESTING MORPHOLOGICAL PRODUCTIVITY

Mark Aronoff

Department of Linguistia

State University of New York

at Stony Brook

Stony Brook, New York 11794

Roger Schvaneveldt

Department

of

Psychology

New Mexico State University

Lm Cruces, New Mexico

88001

Chapter 1

of

Jespersens Philosophy

of

Grammaris called Living Grammar.

Here, in a discussion of I he psychological side of linguistic ac tivity

Jespersen

sets out the important distinction between

formulas

and

free expressions.

A formula

is a linguistic string in w hich everything is fii ed , whereas free expressions

.

. .have to

be created in each case anew by the sp ea ke r. .

As

examples of syntactic formulas,

Jespersen given H ow d o you do? and Go od morning Examples

of

free expres-

sions are Jo hn gave M ary the apple. and M y uncle lent the joiner five shillings.

Modern linguistics has made Jespersens distinction familiar to us all. Indeed, the

progress of syntax is du e in great part t o a realization th at th e central task of a gram-

mar is accounting for a speakers ability to produce and understand novel ut-

terances, the ability which Chom sky

calls

linguistic creativity, an d w hich Jespersen

more aptly called Living Grammar. But Jespersen said that living grammar is not

confined to syntax: The distinction between formulas and free expressions per-

vades all parts of gram mar. Here the m ode m s have not heeded his word. This is

especially true in morphology. It has been argued elsewhere* hat no study of mor-

phology can succeed which fails to distinguish between two distinct types

of

mor

phological phenomena: the actual words of a language and the possible words of a

language (in Jespersens terms, f l e d formulas and free expressions). The actual

words, the fixed formulas, constitute the lexicon of a language, and as such ar e in-

herently unpredictable (it has been recognized at least since Bloom field3 tha t the

basic criterion fo r

a

words being listed in

a

speakers lexicon is its unpre dictability

or

irregularity). A theory th at attempts

to

generate th e actual words

of a

language with

all their idiosyncracies is boun d t o face insurm ounta ble difficulties. These difficulties

can only be overcome by turning ones attention away fr om th e lexicon and concen-

trating instead on the possible words, the speakers potential for forming and

understandig new words. By focusing on this potential one can arrive at a highly

constrained and interesting theory of morphology in which the lexicon and its ir-

regularities can also be accommo dated, albeit in a (properly) derivative fashion. T he

elements

of

such a theory are presented in the abo ve mentioned work.

The theory is concerned with defining the notion

possible word

of

a language.

Since the set

of

possible words contains the set

of

existing words, the dictionary of

existing words fulfills par t of this definition. Th e oth er part, th e definition of possi-

ble but non-occurring words, is accomplished by a set of Word Formation Rules

WFRs),

which provide the patterns according t o which new words m ay be formed in

the language. These rules,which define the notion morphological structure, are the

central concern of any theory of morphology.

This app roa ch th us distinguishes itself from others in its decision t o study m or-

106

0077-8923/78/0318-01~ 01.7512 @ 1978. NYAS


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Aronoff Schvaneveldt: Morphological Productivity

107

phology in the same way as we now study syntax, devoting our attention to the

languages rule-governed creativity. Morphology differs from syntax, however, in

one crucial regard with respect to this analogy: we make up and accept new words

much more infrequently a nd reluctantly tha n we d o new sentences. Why this should

be is not altogether clear, b ut it do es have practical consequences when we try to test

morphological hypotheses. Another difference between morphology and syntax is

that of productivity. Thoug h speakers ar e generally reluctant to accept new words,

some new words are more successful tha n others. In the case

of

a suffix like agentive

-er, which is very productive, new words a re constantly entering the language, alm ost

unnoticed programmer, synthesizer, lettuce dryer). Th e suffix -ous by contrast, is

much less successful. Only

a

few words ending in

-ow

have managed to enter the

language since 1800, and most of these are obscure or facetious: magnetiferous,

edacious, scrumptious.

Finally, once productive

-th

has had

no

success since the

coining of width in

1627

despite such valiant attemp ts a s greenth, illth, and lowth.

Once on e accepts the approach to m orphology that we have outlined, one must

find methods of analysis that are compatible with it. Since we are modeling our

enterprise afte r that

of

the syntactician, we should first look a t how syntax is studied.

The most common analytic tool of the modern syntactician is the grammaticality

judgment. Th e investigator constructs sentences the gramm aticality of which is

predicted by a hypothesis. The value of the investigators hypothesis is determined

by the extent to which its predictions agree with the judgment of native speakers.

Thou gh this method is not perfect, it has greatly expanded ou r syntactic horizons.

On the analogy of this syntactic metho d, we should be able to make u p words in ac-

cordance with

a

certain morphological hypothesis and submit them t o speakers for

judgment. Such

a

simple test, however, is blocked by speakers reluctance to deal

with new words, even when they a re well formed, an d by the variation in productivi-

ty

of

patterns. The work cited above has depended

on

raditiona l techniques involv-

ing dictionaries and word-lists (Aronoff, chapters

3

and

6,

contains examples of

analyses within this tradition). These techniques, though , a re somewhat deficient

in

that they deal in a very indirect fashion with those aspects of morpho logy which are

our most central concern: creativity, and productivity.

The major goal of our general project, then, is to develop other methods for

dealing with morphological structure, particularly the notion possible but non-

occurring word, an d to find mo re subtle ways of testing hypotheses which deal w ith

such entities. Psychologists have long been interested in words (much m ore so than

in sentences, traditionally) and the ways in which people use and process them.

Recently, workers in cognitive psychology have developed reliable techniques for in-

vestigating the semantic, phonological, an d o rthographic structures of words, as well

as the ways in which people process these structures.

One

of

these techniques is know n

as

he lexical-decision

task.

In this task, people

ar e required to judge whether various stimuli ar e instances of English words or not.

Both the decision (yes

or no

and the time taken to reach the decision provide dat a

for testing hypotheses about linguistic structures and the psychological processes

that represent and use these structures. Several recent experiments have used the

lexical-decision task

to

investigate the role

of

lingusitic structure in recognizing

words and nonwords.

Rubenstein, Lewis, and Rubenstein found that unpronounceable nonwords

(e.g., BRAKV are judged faster and more accurately than pronounceable nonw ords

(e.g., BEAN . The latter were judged faster th an nonwords whose pronunc iation is

homophonic with an actual word (e.g., BRUDE, homophonic with

BROOD).

These

findings suggest that the time required to classify nonwords in the lexical-decision

task provides a scale of wordness according to phonological structure. T he more


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108

A n n a l s N ew York A c a d e m y

of

Sciences

a nonword embodies the phonological structure of words, the longer the time re-

quired for people to judge that it is a nonword.

Other recent experiments have shown that phonological structure influences

lexical-decision perform ance w ith actual w ords as well as with nonwords.

5 , 6

These

investigators found t hat judgm ents ab ou t words were influenced by the orthograph ic

and phonological similarity

of

the preceding word. For example, the word DIME is

judged faster following TIME than it would be if it followed an unrelated word. In

contrast,

LEMON

is more difficult t o judge following DEMON than following a

dissimilar word. Presumably the phonological structure is responsible for the dif-

ferences in the two cases. The important point for our purposes is that linguistic

structure on a phonological level can be investigated for both words a nd nonw ords in

the lexical-decision task.

More directly related to

our

own work, a few studies have investigated mor-

phological structure using the lexical-decision task. M ackay presented subjects with

verbs (e.g.,

DECIDE)

and asked them to produce a related noun

DECISION)

as fast as

possible by add ing either -merit,-ence,

or

-ion. Reaction times and errors were related

to morphological and morphophonological complexity.

Taft and Forster found evidence to support the hypothesis that, in a lexical-

decision task, prefixed words a re analyzed into their constituent morphemes before

lexical access occurs. They found that nonwords which are the stems

of

prefixed

words (e.g., JUVENATE) take longer to classify than nonwords which are not stems

(e.g., PERTOIRE). They also found that prefixed nonwords took longer to classify

when they contained

a

real stem (e.g.,

DEJWENATE)

compared with con trol items

which did not (e.g., DEPERTOIRE). Th us nonw ords which are morphologically closer

to real words lake longer

to

react to.

It is of som e note tha t despite Berkos pioneering study 9 h ere have been very few

attem pts by linguists to study morph ology experimentally. This situation can largely

be traced to the lack of

a

sufficiently explicit theory

of

morphological structure.

Within the small amount

of

literature that exists, it is not difficult to find work

which is marred by elementary misunderstandings. For example, Steinbergs studylo

of the reality of the phonological system

of

Chomsky and Halle is rendered

useless by the fact that the test items used in it, which are supposed to be novel, mor-

phologically complex words

of

English, consistently break well-attested rules of

English word formation an d hence are impossible. In general, Steinberg pays no at-

tention to such crucial variables

as

the final morpheme

of

the word to which

a

suffix

is attached. The suffix

-iry

for example, seldom attaches

to

native

or

monomor-

phemic words, yet we find a m on g th e -iry forms in Steinbergs study only t he follow-

ing, all

of

which are either native

or

monomorphemic

or

both: SNIDE ity, EFFETE

ity, OVERGROWN ity. O ne cannot expect a speaker of English, when faced with

these bizarre new words to react in anything but

a

puzzled fashion.

The mere possession of a coherent theory thus puts

us

on a much firmer base

tha n was previously available. Furtherm ore,

our

ambitions are quite modest. W e do

not presuppose some broad and unsupported linguistic foundation and then build

experimental work on that. Rather,

our

purpose is to

use

experiments to test the

strength of the linguistic theory, b efore going on to further psychological study.

The Productivity Experiment

A central construct

of our

theory is the possible bu t non-occurring w ord. A mon g

such words, we can further establish a ranking

of

probability of occurrence, a rank-

ing which is associated with the notion prod uctivity. If a given Word Formation

Rule (i.e., a ff ii ) is more productive than another such rule, then words formed by


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A ron of f Schvaneve ld t : M orpholog ica l P roduc t iv i ty 109

the former a re more likely to enter the language tha n those formed by the latter. P ro-

ductivity and this particu lar way of viewing it are discussed in more detail in chapter

3 of Aronoff.

A question th at imm ediately comes to the m ind

of

one w ho regards word forma-

tion as part

of

living grammar is whether productivity is a simple historical fact

(some patterns a re more successful tha n othe rs in the long run) or wh ether it figures

in the individuals know ledge of the language. T he latter possibility is much the m ore

intriguing, a nd the re is some anec dotal evidence tha t it may be true. If you present

speakers of English with the two words obsessiveness and obsessivity, neither of

which is defined in Websters 111, most of them will tell you that obsessiveness

sounds better. This judgment parallels the fact that the -ness suffix is mo re pro-

ductive than -ifywith words ending in

-be.

Speakers thus seem to possess an ability

analogous to the productivity m etric. The purpose of this experiment is to verify the

existence of such an ability and its consistency across individual words and across

speakers.

Material:

Xive ness

a n d

Xiv

ity

The English nominal suffixes -ness and - i ty are rivals in that they both often

attach to the same morphological and semantic class of adjectives CON-

CRUOUS/CONGRUOUSNESS/CONCRUITY;OROUS/POROUSNESS/PORO.SITY;

IMMENSE/IM-

MENSENES~IMMENSITY:SCARCE/SCARCENESS/SCARC~Y). The productivity of each of

the suffixes varies with the morphology of the base:

-ity

is more productive with

bases ending in ic ELECTRIC/ELECTRICITY) and ile SENILE/SENILITY), while -ness is

more productive with om (DEVIOUS/DEVIOUSNESS)nd

ive DECISIVE/DECISIVENESS).

Note th at thou gh o ne suffix is mo re productive with a certain class

of

base, the other

is not impossible: SPECIFICNESS, JUVENILENESS,

UNCTUOSITY

and DECEPTMTY are all

attested.

Productivity a nd its analogues can thu s be studied in

a

very narrow range: the at-

tachment of two rival affixes to bases of the same morphological class. Th e experi-

ment deals with

-ness

and -ity attached to bases of the form

Xive,

where we know

that -ness is far the more productive. This is easily demonstrated by the analytic

techniques o f A ron ofP ; most obviously, there exist only 28 words of the form Xivity

in W alker,I2 versus 140of the form Xiveness. Similar studies can be do ne w ith -ness

and -ity attached to other bases, as well as with other rival pairs

of

suffixes.

Design

In this experiment there ar e three different types of items, each consisting of an

equal number o f letter strings of the form Xiveness and Xivify. Th e three types are

defined as follows:

(1)

words-actual words in the language (listed in Websters Col-

legiate D ictionary);

(2)

possible words-these items do not occur in the language but

the form

Xive

does; (3) nonwords-these items d o not occur in the language, nor

does the form

Xive,

nor does the form

X.

Each subject judges

40

words, 100 possible words, and

40

nonwords. All subjects

judge the same 40 words, but the possible words and th e nonwords come from two

different lists such th at

a

particular

Xive

form will appear

as

Xivify

n one list and as

Xiveness in the other. This counter-balancing ensures tha t performance o n the possi-

ble words and nonwords can be attributed to the ending (-nessand -ity)and not to

any peculiar characteristics of the Xive items. Furthermore, each subject judges

a

particular

Xive

stem only o nce, precluding any effects of repeating the stems.

An outline of th e assignment of ma terials in the experiment is shown in TABLE .

TABLE contains a complete list of the materials we use in the experiment.


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Annals New York A c a d e m y of Sciences

TABLE

Examples from

Number Per

Type

of

Stem Suffix Subject List

1

List

2

Word -ness 20

perceptiveness perceptiveness

Possible Word

-ness 5 0 augm en iveness propulsiveness

-ity 20

captivity captivity

-ity 50 pr opulsivit y augm entivity

Nonword

-ness 20

depulsiveness remortiveness

-ity 20 remortivity depulsivity

The choice of a

2:5:2

ratio for the three item types was motivated by the

hypothesis at issue. The subject should see some clear cases

of

words, some clear

cases

of

nonwords, an d m any instances that could be judged either way. Th e selected

ratio should encourage subjects to discriminate am ong the possible words, judging

some to be words and some, nonwords. The hypothesis makes clear predictions

abo ut which possible words ar e mo re likely to be judged words.

An additional variable in this experiment is the instructions given t o the subjects.

One group is asked to judge whether the items are in their vocabulary. Another

group judges whether the items ar e English words. A third group judges w hether the

items are meaningful words. This instructional m anipulation shou ld provide some

useful information a bo ut the effect of altering the task criterion. W e expect the pro-

portions

of

affirmative judgm ents for possible words to change with instructions,

but the predictions should still hold.

Anticipated Results

If speakers can consistently distinguish productivity, we expect that nonexistent

words of the form Xiveness will be judged t o be actual words m ore often th an nonex-

istent words of the form Xivity. We also expect results both within and across

speakers, a s well as within and across

Xive

stems. Th is may tell

us

something a bou t

the extent t o which productivity of Word Formation Rules is an individual or social

phenom enon and the extent to w hich productivity holds fo r particular words.

Procedure

We asked 141 students at the State University

of

New York at Stony Brook to

make judgments about the items listed in TABLE . The students were divided into

three groups

of

47 persons each, and each group

was

given different instructions as

described above. Th e suffixes

-ity

and tress were counterbalanced with the stems for

the possible words an d th e nonwords. Th e items were presented in six rando m orders

on

mimeographed sheets. Subjects mad e yes or no judgmen ts by circling Y or

N

in

adjacent columns. O bviously, we were

n o t

able

to

collect response tim e with this pro-

cedure. This makes o ur study d ifferent from most experiments involving the L exical

Decision Task, where response time is considered the central variable. Our decision

was motivated by several considerations. Firstly, the items tha t we are testing are dif-

ferent from most of those used in previous experiments of this type: We are in-

terested in possible words, rather than simple words or nonwords. Secondly, by not


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Aronoff Schvaneveldt: Morphological Productivity

111

TABLE

A. Words:

20

words of the form Xivity and

20

words of the form Xiveness

proclivity

negativity

relativity

activity

objectivity

productivity creativity retroactivity

sensitivity perceptivity

reactivity

positivity passivityapt ivit

y

nativity conductivity receptivity

festivity subje ctivity selectivity

decisiveness

explosiveness permissiveness

effectiveness

compulsiveness massiveness exclusiveness

destructiveness

expansiveness

aggressiveness elusiveness

primitiveness

offensiveness

expressiveness

obtrusiveness deceptiveness

responsiveness

possessiveness

attractiveness assertiveness

B.

Possible

Words: the list contains

100

words of the form

Xive.

Fro m each of these is

forme d a pair of words of the forms Xivity and Xiveness.

effervescive

abrasive

propulsive

ascensive

ostensive

implosive

errosive

asper sive

contorsive

recursive

accessive

assuasive

egressive

irrepressive

suppressive

obsessive

omissive

concussive

tussive

refusive

extrusive

contusive

siccative

indicative

amplificative

vellicative

supplicative

explicative

domesticative

inculcative

reciprocative

evocative

gradative

oxidative

exudative

permeative

derogative

arrogative

conjugative

mediative

retaliative

expiative

initiative

ablative

dilative

extrapolative

legislative

emulative

stimulative

granulative

inflammative

affirmative

reformative

rheumative

emanative

combina tive

subordinative

contaminative

culminative

illuminative

agglutinative

inchoative

emancipative

ex tirpative

adumbrative

reverberative

enumerative

vituperative

asseverative

elaborative

invigorative

pejorative

impetrative

administrative

remonstrative

eructative

cantative

mutative

extenuative

enervative

relaxative

tractive

reflective

inflective

maledictive

deductive

structive

inhibitive

exploitive

inceptive

redemptive

presumptive

invertive

assortive

contrastive

congestive

insistive

por tative

deflective

C . Nonwords:

the list contains 40 nonwords of the form Xive. From each of these is

formed a pair of words of the forms

Xivity

and

Xiveness.

remortive

nebiative

marbicative promutative

ditestive

tulsive

fulgurative exputitive

malipestive carmosive

ramitive mtusive

transemptive

valiative lugative

redunsive

affentive

incrative quentive

florsive

mortentive pulmerative

pervictive

ancotive

amnective argitive

aliomutive entractive

condictive

sebutive

rubictive hortentive

rassive

agrancive laspat ive

plastive

ollutive

permulsive

prensive axiative


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112

A n n a l s N e w

York

A c a d e m y

of

Sciences

TABLE

Proportion

of

Yes

Possible

Instruction Qu estion) Suffix Words Words No

nword

s

In

your

vocabulary? +it y . 8 8 . 2 8 . 0 9

m ss

. 84 . 34 .10

An English word? +ity .90 .39 . 1 8

m e s s .87 .46

.20

A meaningful word? +ity

. 92

.47 .20

m e s s

. 93

.52

. 1 9

measuring reaction time, we make the experiment much simpler to perform. It can

be administered to large numbers of subjects in a very short time.

Results

The

results are shown in

TABLES, 4 ,

and 5 .

As

can be seen from

TABLE,

the ex-

pected results were obtained with the possible words. People responded affirmatively

to the possible words with -ness suffixes more than they did with -ity suffixes,

regardless of the instructions. This e ffect is statistically reliable.

Th e instructions were effective in varying the proportion of positive judgm ents

people made, with

.42,

.SO,

and

.54

of

the total responses being affirmative with

vocabulary, English word, and meaningful word instructions, respectively. T he in-

structional effect shows that people can vary their criterion for what counts as a

word, b ut m ore importantly fo r ou r purpose, such variations have little effect on the

influence of morphological structure o n their judgment. In other words, the possible

words show a very similar influence of morphological structure for the different in-

structions. We take this to

mean that the phenomenon is robust.

The actual words and the nonwords showed less influence

of

morphological

structure. This may reflect the relatively leisurely judgm ents peop le.were allowed t o

mak e in the experiment. With the words, different items are involved in th e two suf-

fix categories an d since they were selected as foils, no e ffort was m ade to control for

other factors. The addition of

a

reaction-time measure m ay show effects where the

judgm ent propo rtions d o not. Particularly with the nonwords we used, the final

TABLE

Entries Are Numbers of

Items

Possible W ords

Vocabulary Language Meaning

More Yeses

to

i ry

form

33

27 38

Equal Yeses

to

ity and ness forms 5 9 6

More Yeses

to

ness form

6 2 6 4 5 6

Sign test p < .01 p

aronoff & schvaneveldt (productivity)

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