29.4566, Review: Morphology; Syntax: Booij (2018)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-4566. Mon Nov 19 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.4566, Review: Morphology; Syntax: Booij (2018)

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Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2018 11:20:30
From: Saizhu Hu [saihu at amu.edu.pl]
Subject: The Construction of Words, Advances in Construction Morphology

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/29/29-2153.html

EDITOR: Geert  Booij
TITLE: The Construction of Words, Advances in Construction Morphology
PUBLISHER: Springer
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: Saizhu Hu, Adam Mickiewicz Univerisity in Poznan

  SUMMARY

  The book “The Construction of Words: Advances in Construction Morphology”
edited by Geert Booij is a collection of 21 articles dealing with Construction
Morphology (abbreviated as CxM) in such domains as theoretical, empirical and
applied linguistic research and in related subdomains of linguistics, such as
historical linguistics and psycholinguistics. It aims to show the relevance of
the CxM model in various domains of linguistics, and to demonstrate recent
advances in the research within the framework of Construction Morphology.

 The 21 articles are sorted into 5 separate but interrelated parts mostly
based on the different domains within the CxM model. Part I is the
introduction; Part II explores the theoretical issues; Part III deals with the
studies of specific languages; Part IV is concerned with diachronic case
studies; Part V tackles the psycholinguistic aspects of Construction
Morphology.

Part I Introduction

1. “The Construction of Words: Introduction and Overview” (pp. 3-16)

 As the introduction to the volume, the first article by the editor Geert
Booij defines the theory of Construction Morphology so as to set the
foundation for all the following articles. At the same time, the article also
gives an overview of the following 20 articles by focusing on their findings
in the domain of CxM and in the application of CxM in different domains of
linguistics.  

Part II Theoretical Issues

2. “Modeling Signifiers in Constructional Approaches to Morphological
Analysis” (pp. 19-57)

 This article by Jeff Good examines the modeling of non-standard signifiers,
which deviate from the ideal of the “linear nature” proposed by Saussure
(1916/1959:70). He catalogues patterns of signifier deviations, including 1)
significative absence, 2) discontinuities in signifier structure and
infixation, 3) signifiers of defective signs, 4) a relative signifier of tonal
distinctions, 5) a “sheared” signifier with the displacement of segmental
features and tonal features, 6) phonologically-blocked signifiers, and 7)
templates as constructive signifiers. Good points out that Construction
Morphology is “especially well suited” (p. 51) to deal with patterns of
non-canonical signifiers, and thus more attention should be devoted to the
modeling of signifiers within Constructive Morphology.

3. “Partial Motivation, Multiple Motivation: The Role of Output Schemas in
Morphology” (pp. 59-80)

 In this article, Geert Booij and Jenny Audring argue that constructional
schemas can be used to characterize morphologically complex words, whether
productive or unproductive, in terms of their form-meaning correspondences and
their functions in specifying both properties of existing words and the ways
how new words are coined. Based on examples of Dutch simplex and complex verbs
in -elen and -eren, Booij and Audring demonstrate that simplex verbs are
motivated partially or fully by one schema typically when involving words that
lack a base, and that complex words may be motivated by multiple schemas. This
generalization can also be applied to substantial numbers of verbs, borrowed
words and acronyms in German and English.

4. “Schemas and Discontinuity in Italian: The View from Construction
Morphology” (pp. 81-109)

 The article by Francesca Masini and Claudio Iacobini examines non-contiguous
morphological and lexical constructions in Italian. The article is based on
four case studies, and provides a new analysis of three more widely known
linguistic phenomena: 1) particle shift and discontinuous idioms, 2)
bracketing paradoxes, and 3) parasynthesis. This article also contributes both
new data and a new approach to the phenomenon of discontinuous reduplication
with numerals. Thus, Masini and Iacobini conclude that CxM can be “a flexible
theoretical framework” (p. 106) to deal with the tricky models of
discontinuity in morphology. 

5. “A Construction-Based Approach to Multiple Exponence” (pp. 111-139)

 In this article, Gabriela Caballero and Sharon Inkelas argue that various
types of multiple exponence (ME) can emerge from the interaction of principal
constraints in Optimal Construction Morphology (OCM) (cf. Caballero and
Inkelas 2013). Caballero and Inkelas examine the constructional schemas of all
the four types proposed by Harris (2017): periodic, alternating, reinforcement
and accidental ME, and devote special attention to compounding-style ME. They
propose that “ME patterns exhibiting recurring characteristics result from a
stem-identity mechanism that relates ME to other cross-linguistically common
morphological phenomena” (p. 136) and that the addition of OCM to CxM can
contribute to our understanding of the interaction between morphology and
phonology. 

6. “A Construction Morphology Approach to Sign Language Analysis” (pp.
141-172)

 This article by Ryan Lepic and Corrine Occhino proposes that a usage-based
theory of Construction Morphology can help analyze sign language structure.
Based on examples from ASL (American Sign Language) and instances in
multimodal communication, Lepic and Occhino demonstrate that treating core and
classifier signs in a uniform way can resolve the two long-standing
categorization problems in the field of sign language linguistics: the Core
vs. Classifier problem, which arises from the distinction of monomorphemic
lexical from multimorphemic construction signs, and the Language vs. Gesture
problem, which results from the differentiation of the more discrete and
listable aspects from the more holistic or gradient aspects of signing.  

Part III Studies of Specific Languages

7. “Combinatorial Morphology in Visual Languages” (pp. 175-199)

 In this article, Neil Cohn explores combinatorial morphology in visual
languages, focusing on the lexicons of bound morphemes and isolatable forms
(monomorphs). He argues that the meanings of the graphic elements are created
out of the interaction of their intrinsic meanings and their spatial
distribution by strategies such as affixation, suppletion/substitution and
reduplication, and the meanings may involve a variety of semiotic reference
types with the conceptualized meanings derived from idiomatic expressions and
metaphors. This structure in visual languages is similar to those found in the
other modalities, typically in verbal languages, and thus more empirical
research should be conducted on visual languages in terms of cross-cultural
variation, process, and acquisition in the domain of linguistic sciences. 

8. “De-adjectival Human Nouns in French” (pp. 201-217)

 In this article, Dany Amiot and Delphine Tribout apply override coercion (cf.
Michaelis 2003) to the analysis of de-adjectival human nouns in French. Based
on an analysis of the properties of these nouns as “in-between category” (p.
207) of nouns and adjectives, the Authors point out that previous
interpretations are not satisfactory. Amiot and Tribout propose that the
analysis of coercion can account for the phenomenon of de-adjectival human
nouns, that is, the adjectives are “coerced” by the nominal contexts and
assume a nominal behavior. However, Amiot and Tribout also point out that this
analysis may not be the most satisfactory one in the case of de-adjectival
inanimate individual nouns, and further corpus-based analysis should be
conducted on these nouns in general. 

9.  “The Construction Morphology Analysis of Chinese Word Formation” (pp.
219-253)

 Chinese has been known as a language of multimorphemic words presenting many
tricky questions as to, e.g. how to define Chinese morphemes, roots, words,
and constituents such as affixes or affixoids etc. In this article, Giorgio
Francesco Arcodia and Bianca Basciano conduct an analysis of Chinese complex
words in the framework of Construction Morphology. They demonstrate how CxM
provides schemas to account for the formation of complex words and the
emergence of new meanings of lexical morphemes in Chinese. They also argue
that this analysis can best explain the formation of Chinese complex words on
the basis of the actual constructions rather than in terms of the categories
of root, compound and affix in traditional morphology. In this article, a
detailed case study on the morpheme 客 kè ‘guest’ is also conducted to show how
it becomes a righthand constituent in new coined complex words and indicates a
general sense of ‘person’. 

10. “Super-Complexity and the Status of ‘Word’ in Gunwinyguan Languages of
Australia” (pp. 255-286)

 The ‘super-complex words’ in many Indigenous Australian languages have posed
great challenges to linguists as to whether to describe these language
phenomena as words (lexical compounds) or phrases (syntactic compounds). In
the article, Brett Baker refers to these words as ‘constructions’ with
“particular constellations of propositional, lexico-semantic,
morpho-syntactic, phonological and prosodic features” (p. 256). He argues that
CxM can be a useful and straightforward way to describe these constructions as
products of the lexicon. As previous models of morphology are not very
satisfactory in addressing problems related to the semantic interpretation and
the prosodic constituency of ‘super-complex words’, Baker develops a model of
the lexicon along Constructionist lines, and proposes that the standard model
of Prosodic Phonology can account for the syntactic meaning expressed in word
structure.

11. “Phrasal Names in Polish: A+N, N+A, and N+N Units” (pp. 287-313)

 In this article, Bożena Cetnarowska examines multi-word expressions in
Polish. Cetnarowska finds that most of these expressions should be treated as
phrasal lexemes with different degrees of syntactic restrictions and semantic
transparency. Phrasal schemas can be used to analyze the internal structure of
existing phrasal nouns and provide templates for coining new ones. The second
order schemas can provide an adequate grammatical model for a proper account
of these phrasal nouns in terms of paradigmatic relatedness.  

12. “Arabic Nonconcatenative Morphology in Construction Morphology” (pp.
315-339)

 In this article, Stuart Davis and Natsuko Tsujimura give an account of Arabic
nonconcatenative morphology with particular attention devoted to the
incorporation of the typical prosodic templates in Arabic morphology into the
schema of CxM. Based on an analysis of two forms of verbal derivation in
Arabic, this article shows how Arabic traditional root-based and word-based
approaches can be accounted for in terms of construction schemata. The authors
investigate the nonverbal templatic morphology of Arabic including the
comparative, nouns of profession, and the diminutive, and further demonstrate
that a typical prosodic template in Arabic morphology is a part of the
syntactic component of the morphological construction, but the templates may
differ in the nature of the base as root or word. 

13. “Foreign Word-Formation in Construction Morphology: Verbs in -ieren in
German” (pp. 341-371)

 This article by Matthias Hüning applies an output-oriented and exemplar-based
approach to the analysis of the word-formation of borrowed words in German. By
analyzing the verbal suffix -ier(en) and its variants in German verbs, Hüning
demonstrates that complex foreign words can be interpreted by the schemas in
Construction Morphology in terms of generalization and abstraction and by
means of paradigmatic association with similar words. The schemas can be
further specified by subschemas by relating a group of verbs to proper nouns
in terms of syntactic and semantic coherence and thus explaining the
productivity of these patterns. Furthermore, unification of different schemas,
such as for verbs in -isier(en) and nouns in -isierung, can account for the
merging of two word-formation processes in the formation of new words, such as
nouns in -isierung. Thirdly, the notion of ‘second order schema’ in
Construction Morphology can be used to explain the structure and the relation
of morphologically complex words in terms of their paradigmatic relations.
Hüning concludes that Construction Morphology is ideal for providing models to
describe foreign word-formation.

14. “Japanese Word Formation in Construction Morphology” (pp. 373-398)

 Natsuko Tsujimura and Stuart Davis illustrate how insightful the Construction
Morphology approach is in analyzing the form-meaning-usage complex of four
different word formation phenomena in Japanese: 1) formation of innovative
verbs, 2) truncated hypocoristics, 3) intensified mimetic adverbs, and 4)
innovative prenominal noun modifiers. Tsujimura and Davis demonstrate that
these four morphological constructions can be best analyzed within the model
of Construction Morphology and exhibit schemata, which respectively account 
for the unique properties in the four morphological constructions.
Furthermore, the study shows the conceptual and technical advantages of
Construction Morphology in dealing with language phenomena that constitute
challenges to general morphology. 

15. “The Hulle and Goed Constructions in Afrikaans” (pp. 399-437)

 In this article, Gerhard B. van Huyssteen provides a synchronic,
corpus-based, constructionist description of the Hull (‘they’) and goed
constructions to address issues concerning whether these constructions should
be regarded as noun phrases, compounds, derived words, or new nodes in a
construction network. Based on seven different corpora of 86 million words and
a variety of identified schemas and subschemas, Huyssteen argues that “hulle
and goed1/2 (goed1 ‘things, stuff’; goed2 ‘hypocoristical; ‘things, stuff’,
SH) constructions should be analyzed as constructional idioms, in-between
subordinate compounds and category-preserving suffixal constructions, while
the goed3 (‘good’, SH) construction is a subschema of subordinate compounds.”
(p. 430). Huyssteen also provides a categorization network of the schemas and
subschemas of these constructions. 

Part IV Diachronic Case Studies
 
16. “Schema Unification and Morphological Productivity: A Diachronic
Perspective” (pp. 441-474)

 In this article, Luise Kempf and Stefan Hartmann provide three case studies
to give evidence to support the core assumption about complex word-formation
schemas or unified schemas in Construction Morphology. In the first two case
studies the Authors apply a corpus-based quantitative approach to two German
word-formation patterns, i.e. nominal derivation with -ung and adjectival
derivation with -lich, from a diachronic perspective, and find that the
unified schemas of these two constructions have undergone a more productive
development compared with the parent schemas of their simple constructions. In
the third case study, Kempf and Hartmann explore pseudo-participles (as in
bebrillt ‘bespectacled’) based on web data and find that the split-compound
scheme is much preferred to the incorporated-compound pattern and the complex
pattern can provide semantically more uniform derivatives than its parent
schemas. The results of the three case studies indicate that the concept of
unified schemas can account for the morphological productivity of the
(sub)constructions and the stylistic and semantic development of these
patterns. 

17. “Debonding and Clipping of Prefixoids in Germanic: Constructionalization
or Constructional Change?” (pp. 475-518)

 This article by Muriel Norde and Kristel Van Goethem examines the debonding
and clipping of three Germanic prefixoids, i.e. Dutch kei ‘boulder’, German
Hammer ‘hammer’, and Swedish kanon ‘cannon’, with the aim to investigate
whether debonding can best be accounted for by Traugott and Trousdale’s (2013)
concept of ‘constuctionization’, or by Hilpert’s (2013) concept of
‘constructional change’. Based on an extensive corpus-based study and
contrastive statistical analysis of the bound and free uses of the Germanic
constructions in terms of their formal properties, semantics, collocational
properties and productivity, the Authors show that the bound and the free
forms differ from each other as constructions and nodes in the constructions
and that the debonding of these three prefixoids is more an instance of
‘constructional change’ than ‘constructionalization’. 

18. “Iterated Exaptation” (pp. 519-544)

 In this article, Freek Van de Velde examines exaptation based on two case
studies of the Proto-Indo-European nominal -n-affix and the perfect with
ǒ-grade. The case studies show that the two morphological patterns, obsolete
forms realizing new functions in Germanic, have undergone successive waves of
exaptation. The iterated exaptation is motivated by one or more construction
schemata in that construction schemata are output oriented, and morphemes can
obtain their meanings by occurring in morphological constructions. These
findings provide evidence of the “unpredictability and capriciousness” (p.
539) of morphological changes, but at the same time, they also raise questions
about unidirectionality in grammaticalization (cf. Lehmann 2002; Hopper and
Traugott 2003). 

Part V Psycholinguistic Aspects

19. “Learning Morphological Constructions” (pp. 547-581)

 This article by Vsevolod Kapatsinski examines learning mechanisms from a
constructionist perspective and proposes that morphological constructions are
a primary outcome of the learning process. Kapatsinski reviews the two major
learning mechanisms responsible for morphological acquisition, focusing on
discriminative associative models against generative Bayesian approaches, as
there is no obvious line between lexical retrieval and grammatical computation
within the constructionist framework. This article also addresses issues
concerning the directionality of associations, the roles of present and absent
stimuli, paradigmatic mappings, abstraction and specification, and the roles
of type and token frequency. Kapatsinski concludes that the acquisition of
constructions “is based on both perceptual experience and production
experience” (p. 575). 

20. “Processing and Representation of Morphological Complexity in Native
Language Comprehension and Production” (pp. 583-602)

 This article by Pienie Zwitserlood examines the processing and representation
of morphologically complex words by adults in their native language. Based on
a review of psycholinguistic theories and data on the role of morphology in
language comprehension and production, Zwitserlood finds that in language
processing, productive/regular and unproductive/irregular words are mainly
accessed as a whole rather than as compositions, and that in Dutch and German
derived words and compounds are sensitive to their morphological composition,
independent of their semantic transparency. Zwitserlood argues therefore that
Construction Morphology can further contribute to the study of the
representation of complex words. 

21. “Towards a Constructional Approach of L2 Morphological Processing” (pp.
603-622)

 In this article, Hélène Giraudo and Serena Dal Maso review recent
psycholinguistic studies on second language acquisition. They focus on the
highly debated issue whether L1 and L2 speakers process morphologically
complex words differently, with L2 learners being less efficient in computing
their morphological structure and consequently relying more on their lexical
storage. The review shows that a dual route ‘decompositional’ psycholinguistic
model is not satisfactory to describe L2 processing. The Authors suggest a
Constructive Morphology approach can better account for L2 processing
mechanisms without being entangled in the opposition between inflection and
derivation, as in Constructive Morphology both are represented as
constructions with holistic properties.

EVALUATION

 This book achieves its main goal, as stated by the editor (p. 4): “The
present volume aims to show the relevance and fruitfulness of the model of CxM
in various domains of linguistic research.” 

 The book presents the latest studies on Construction Morphology. In the
framework of CxM, it addresses various theoretical issues in linguistics, such
as the motivation of words, non-concatenative morphology, and discontinuous
lexical forms. It provides both synchronic and diachronic empirical support
for the theory and applies CxM to analyze various languages such as Chinese,
German and Gunwinyguan, and nonverbal languages such as sign languages and
visual language. For example, in the article by Arcodia and Basciano, the
schema generalizing over English right-headed compounds is applied to Chinese
right-headed compounds and is further extended to the analysis of left-headed
and exocentric compounds in the language. The schemas in CxM thus demonstrate
how well they can be applied to different languages and how similar
constructions assume different meanings and interpretations in the same
language. The analysis of the different languages in the framework of CxM is
conducted in separate articles in the book, but comparisons between two or
three languages can also be found such as in the articles by Booij and Audring
and by Hüning. Furthermore, the book relates CxM to findings in historical
linguistics and psycholinguistics. For example, the article by Norde and Van
Goethem relates CxM to two concepts in historical linguistics and addresses
whether the debonding of profixoids in Germanic is a result of
‘constructionization’ or ‘constructional change’, and the article by Giraudo
and Dal Maso suggests a word-based approach in CxM to account for L2
processing mechanisms in the domain of psycholinguistics. 

 This book is a valuable resource as it provides new approaches and answers to
issues involving word structure in general as well as morphological phenomena
in specific languages. Linguists dealing with morphological and syntactic
forms, semantic meanings and prosodic features of words and phrases can be
inspired by the theory of CxM and its application to various languages.
Beginners in the field of linguistics, such as MA and Ph.D. students, can also
regard this book as a starting point to develop their interest in CxM and to
carry on further studies, as this book lists a number of cases, examples and
linguistic issues in different languages that can be accounted for in the
framework of CxM but need to be further explored. 

 Overall, the volume is a unified piece of work in terms of content and
formatting. All the articles in the book are formatted in a consistent way.
The cited works are all included in the references. However, a slight
difference is found in the formatting of references. When multiple works by
the same author are cited in an article, the author’s name is used only in the
first entry, with the others replaced by a hyphen in all articles with the
exception of the article by Good.

 The book could be more accessible if lists of the abbreviations, tables,
figures and indexes were provided. In addition, spelling mistakes should be
avoided in such a scientific work. Spelling mistakes include: “though” (p.
112)—through, “OfME” (p. 114)—of ME, “latter” (p.117)—later, “isinvolved” (p.
190) —is involved, “as long a” (p. 237) —as long as, and “in in language
comprehension” (p. 583)—in language comprehension. 

REFERENCES

Caballero, G., and S. Inkelas. 2013. Word construction: Tracing an optimal
path through the lexicon. In New theoretical tools in the modeling of
morphological exponence, ed. Jochen Trommer. Heidelberg: Springer. Special
issue of Morphology 23(2): 103–143. 

Harris, A. C. 2017. Multiple exponence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hilpert, M. 2013. Constructional change in English: Developments in
allomorphy, word formation, and syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hopper, P.J., and E.C. Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization. 2nd ed. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. 

Lehmann, Ch. 2002. Thoughts on grammaticalization. 2nd ed. Erfurt:
Arbeitspapiere des Seminars für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Erfurt.

Michaelis, L.A. 2003. Word meaning, sentence meaning and constructional
meaning. In Cognitive perspectives on lexical semantics, ed. H. Cuyckens, R.
Dirven, and J. Taylor, 163–210. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1916/1959. Course in general linguistics (translated
by Wade Baskin). New York: McGraw Hill. 

Traugott, E.C., and G. Trousdale. 2013. Constructionalization and
constructional changes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Saizhu Hu is a doctorate student in the Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz
University in Poznań, Poland, and a lecturer in the School of Foreign Language
Studies in Zhejiang University Ningbo Institute of Technology, China. Her work
has primarily dealt with nominal classification, morphology and corpus-based
translation.





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