On word-formation: a typological study

Author : Pavol Štekauer, Salvador Valera, Livia Kőrtvélyessy

Publication date : 2012

Bibliographical references :

Štekauer, Pavol, Valera, Salvador and Kőrtvélyessy, Livia. 2012. Word-Formation in the World's Languages: A Typological Survey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Goals

This questionnaire aims to help the linguist in analysing the word formation processes in the investigated language, especially in terms of productivity (high and low productive processes).

Going along with the questionnaire, a 100-feature list on word-formation, used by the authors in their most recent research into word-formation systems in 73 European languages.

Protocol summary

This questionnaire consists in different tables that have to be filled up.

It is divided in three parts:
1. Listing the word formations processes available in the target language, according to a detailed checklist given in the questionnaire. Linguists are also asked to give an example of each process, as well as to provide a literal translation of constituent morphemes and the English equivalent. Then they need to rate the productivity of each process, and answer questions about suffixation, prefixation, compounding, reduplication, stress and pitch.
2. Linguists are required to give examples for each question asked, and estimate the productivity by means of five degree scale.
3. Additional comments completing the picture of productive word-formation processes.

Development context

This questionnaire can be found as an appendix (appendix II) in the book Word-Formation in the World's languages: a typological survey, (Štekauer, Valera and Kőrtvélyessy, 2012)