Versatility?

[Lise Menn]

Yes - and again, psycholinguists have been working with this kind of  
base/derivative relative frequency effect for a long time.
Lise

On Mar 20, 2011, at 6:41 PM, Angus B. Grieve-Smith wrote:

>    Aya, I've been thinking about your "rooster" example.  I think  
> one important factor is that the noun "rooster" has become much more  
> frequent than the verb "roost."  As English-speaking societies have  
> become less and less agricultural, we see roosters a lot less  
> frequently, our opportunities to see them roosting dwindle, and thus  
> roosting has become less significant as a characteristic of  
> roosters.  In contrast, I think that most English speakers would be  
> able to tell you why a particular kind of bird is called a "roaster."
>
>    Other derived words that have similarly outpaced their roots,  
> like "computer," and we'd expect them to be treated similarly.
>
> -- 
> 				-Angus B. Grieve-Smith
> 				grvsmth at panix.com
>

Lise Menn                      Home Office: 303-444-4274
1625 Mariposa Ave	Fax: 303-413-0017
Boulder CO 80302
http://spot.colorado.edu/~menn/index.html	

Professor Emerita of Linguistics
Fellow, Institute of Cognitive Science
University of  Colorado

Secretary, AAAS Section Z [Linguistics]
Fellow, Linguistic Society of America

Campus Mail Address:
UCB 594, Institute for Cognitive Science

Campus Physical Address:
CINC 234
1777 Exposition Ave, Boulder