LING 323 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Lexeme
8 Feb 2019
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Document Summary
Productive: can be applied to new bases and new words can be formed with it. According to one view, speakers" competence (knowledge of the words and rules of the language) and morphological performance (actual use of that knowledge for communication and other tasks) should be studied separately. By this view, productivity is treated in relation to performance. Another view says that productivity is exclusively a diachronic phenomenon - meaning that it only has to do with how languages change over time. But this fails to explain why some morphological patterns are more likely than others to be used to coin new words. Speakers" knowledge of their language seems to include productivity. Synchronic: having to do with language at a given point in time. The productivity of a rule should be considered part of speakers" (synchronic) knowledge of their language. One approach is to relate productivity with restrictedness. Domain: the set of bases to which a rule could apply in principle.
