Communications in Humanities Research ISSN: 2753-7072
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Research Article

A Corpus Based Study on Productivity Measurement of Suffixes ‘-ous’ and ‘-ish’

Mengxuan BaiEnglish Department, University College London, WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom*

* Corresponding author: [email protected]

Abstract

In recent years, a growing number of studies have been conducted on the productivity of word formation. ‘-ous’ and ‘-ish’ are common adjective suffixes which have the same general meaning of ‘to be similar to something’ and are consequently regarded as synonymous affixes. However, most prior studies have addressed lexical productivity from a single perspective, such as diachronic analysis or synchronic measurement, while few have combined the above aspects to conduct multi-angle studies. The comprehensive research perspective adopted in this paper provides several novel ideas for developing a further understanding of the productivity of the two affixes, and even for the wider study of morphological productivity.

Keywords: Productivity; ‘-ous’; ‘-ish’; Multi-angle; Word formation
Published: May 17, 2023
DOI: 10.54254/2753-7064/3/20220495
Volume: CHR Vol.3
pp. 520-527
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