Word-Formation Theories VII & Typology and Universals in Word-Formation VI

In addition to the general session, the Conference will also include four workshops:

Methods of research into sound-symbolism

Workshop convenors: Livia Körtvélyessy (P.J. Safarik University, Kosice, Slovakia), Pius W. Akumbu (LLACAN – CNRS, Paris, France), Iraide Ibarretxe-Antunano (University of Zaragoza, Spain)

The idea of sound symbolism as “an inmost, natural similarity association between sound and meaning” (Jakobson and Waugh 2002: 182), and as “a recurrent and remarkable singularity of meaning and form correspondence” (Childs, 2014: 302) in onomatopoeia and, more broadly, in ideophones, has a long tradition. As noted by Akita (2015: 5), “the large majority of studies agree that languages involve sound symbolism, and speakers of the languages can more or less sense this”. Well-known is Humboldt’s view (1836: 79) that unlike direct imitation, in the case of sound symbolism a language “selects sounds which partly independently and partly in comparison with others produce an impression which to the ear is similar to that which the object makes upon the mind.”
While the idea underlying the term sound symbolism might seem to be simple and unambiguous, i.e., a sound or a combination of sounds, retrieved from the phonological stock of a particular language, stands for a meaning, the opposite is true. As noted by Johansson et al. (2020: 255) “[d]espite the progress made in the field of sound symbolism and iconicity… our understanding of sound symbolism and its mechanisms remains patchy.”
Given this situation, the workshop aims to focus on methods of exploration of sound-symbolic phenomena – both experimental and empirical methods – that contribute to our understanding of their role in onomatopoeia-formation and, more broadly, in ideophones. By implication, the workshop should devote special attention to the status, identification and function of phonesthemes in individual languages as well as from a cross-linguistic point of view.

Abstract submission:
Abstracts of 300 words max., devoted to these and any other related sound-symbolic questions, should be sent to Livia Körtvélyessy (livia.kortvelyessy@upjs.sk) and Pius Akumbu (pius.akumbu@cnrs.fr) by 31 March 2025. Acceptance will be notified by 15 April, 2025.

References
Akita, Kimi. 2015. “Sound symbolism.” In Handbook of Pragmatics Online, Volume 19, edited by Jan-Ola Östman and Jef Verschueren, 1–24. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Childs, Tucker G. 1994. “African Ideophones.” In Sound Symbolism, edited by Leanne Hinton, Johanna Nichols, and John J. Ohala, 178–204. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jakobson, Roman and Linda R. Waugh. 2002. The sound shape of language. Bloomington/London: Indiana University Press.
Johansson, Niklas Erben, Andrey Anikin, Gerd Carling, and Arthur Holmer. 2020. “The typology of sound symbolism: Defining macro-concepts via their semantic and phonetic features.” Linguistic Typology 24, no. 2: 253–310.
Von Humboldt, Wilhelm. 1836. Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues. Berlin: Königliche Akademie der Sprachwissenschaft.

Boundaries and continua in affixation: Diachronic and synchronic perspectives

Workshop convenors: Alexandra Bagasheva (Sofia, Bulgaria), Jesús Fernández Domínguez (Granada, Spain), Akiko Nagano (Shizuoka, Japan), Vincent Renner (Lyon, France)

Van Goethem (2020: 1) defines affixation as “the morphological process that consists of adding an affix (i.e., a bound morpheme) to a morphological base. It is cross-linguistically the most common process that human languages use to derive new lexemes (derivational affixation) or to adapt a word’s form to its morphosyntactic context (inflectional affixation). Suffixes (i.e., bound morphemes following the base) and prefixes (i.e., bound morphemes preceding the base) are the most common affixes, with suffixation being more frequently recorded in the world’s languages than prefixation. Minor types of affixation include circumfixation and infixation. Conversion and back-formation are related derivational processes that do not make use of affixation.”
This traditional theory-neutral definition of affixation seems exhaustive and straightforward, but it makes numerous assumptions, none of which is unproblematic. First, it assumes that the structure of words is based on morphemes, as has been the norm since the late nineteenth century and through much of the twentieth century (Aronoff 2018: 3). Second, it assumes that there are clear boundaries between word-formation processes. Third, it distinguishes between derivational and inflectional affixation, assigning different values and types of products to the two processes. Fourth, it recognizes boundedness as a definitional property of affixes as linguistic elements.
All of these assumptions have been questioned and doubts have been voiced about all of the implicated categorical distinctions. First, there are significant differences between morpheme-based (employing an item-and-arrangement approach), lexeme-based (associated with an item-and-process approach) and word-based (utilising a word-and-paradigm approach) architectures (for an overview see e.g. Stewart 2016) and between syntagmatic and paradigmatic approaches to word-formation (see e.g. Booij 2001; Booij & Lieber 2004; Štekauer 2014; van Marle 1985), which undermines the first assumption of the morpheme (including affixes) as the central element in the structure of words. Second, as Ralli (2010: 58) notes, “although different, derivation and compounding are not sharply distinguished, and […] their borderline can be permeable in both ways”, leading to disputes over the demarcation between the concepts of splinter, (bound) root, affixoid, and affix. Third, as ten Hacken (2014: 1) points out, “Whereas the core opposition between inflection and derivation is fairly obvious, the precise boundary between the two is more difficult to determine”. Fourth, and more generally, Trousdale and Traugott (2010: 1) emphasize that “gradience has been at the center of recent discussion about the synchronic architecture of grammars”.
In view of all the debatable issues and still open questions, we invite word-formationists to revisit a number of boundaries and continua in affixation, from a diachronic or synchronic perspective, through specific case studies or more theoretically oriented discussions. The list of topics includes, but is not limited to:

1. derivation and inflection,
2. splinters, (bound) roots, affixoids, and affixes,
3. the emergence of new derivational affixes (= derivational affixization),
4. affixization and other „ization“ processes (cf. Narrog & Heine 2021: 271) such as constructionalization, grammaticalization, lexicalization, and morphologization,
5. evaluative and non-evaluative affixation,
6. affixation and deaffixation (= back-formation),
7. affixes in language contact situations.

Abstract submission:
Abstracts of no more than 300 words (plus references and figures/tables if any) should be sent to the 4 workshop organizers: a.bagasheva@uni-sofia.bg, jesusferdom@go.ugr.es, nagano.9@u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp, and vincent.renner@univ-lyon2.fr by February 28, 2025. Acceptance will be notified by March 15, 2025.

References
Aronoff, Mark (2018). Morphology and words: A memoir. In O. Bonami, G. Boyé, G. Dal, H. Giraudo & F. Namer (Eds.), The Lexeme in Descriptive and Theoretical Morphology, 3–18. Berlin: Language Science Press.
Booij, Geert (2001). The Morphology of Dutch. Oxford: OUP.
Booij, Geert & Lieber, Rochelle (2004). On the paradigmatic nature of affixal semantics in English and Dutch. Linguistics 42(2): 327–357.
Narrog, Heiko & Heine, Bernd (2021). Grammaticalization. Oxford: OUP.
Ralli, Angela (2010). Compounding vs. derivation. In S. Scalise & I. Vogel (Eds.), Cross-Disciplinary Issues in Compounding, 57–73. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Stewart, Thomas (2016). Contemporary Morphological Theories: A User’s Guide. Edinburgh: EUP.
Štekauer, Pavol (2014). Derivational paradigms. In R. Lieber & P. Štekauer (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology, 354–369. Oxford: OUP.
ten Hacken, Pius (2014). Delineating derivation and inflection. In R. Lieber & P. Štekauer (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology, 10–26. Oxford: OUP.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Trousdale, Graeme (Eds.) (2010). Gradience, Gradualness and Grammaticalization. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
van Goethem, Kristel (2020). Affixation in morphology. In M. Aronoff (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. https://doi.org/…4655.013.678
van Marle, Jaap (1985). On the Paradigmatic Dimension of Morphological Creativity. Dordrecht: Foris.

Latest developments in evaluative morphology

Workshop organizers: Dimitra Melissaropoulou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), Angeliki Efthymiou (Democritus University of Thrace, Greece)

Evaluation and its realization in grammar is a hotly debated domain in linguistic theory and has led to the publication of many important studies (e.g., that by Scalise 1984, 1988 inaugurating the field, Stump 1993, Dressler & Barbaresi 1994, Grandi 2002, Manova et al. 2023 to mention just a few). Amongst them, the Handbook of Evaluative Morphology edited by Nicola Grandi & Lívia Körtvélyessy in 2015 holds a prominent position, summarizing all major topics and theoretical advances in the field until then, shedding light on aspects that merit further investigation and analysis (e.g. Aktionsart and gradation in evaluative morphology) and providing a broad empirical coverage of the evaluative morphology in 52 under- or less-described languages representing forty-four genera and twenty-six language families. A decade after the publication of this seminal work, the question that naturally arises is where research on evaluative morphology is headed and what are the latest advances in the field.
To this end, aiming to capitalize on the latest developments in evaluative morphology, we welcome all theoretically- empirically- or methodologically based studies to evaluative morphology. Potential topics could include but are not limited to the followingː
(i) productivity and competition in evaluative morphological processes (suffixation, prefixation, compounding, reduplication, etc.),
(ii) synchrony and diachrony of evaluative morphology,
(iii) variationist and language contact aspects of evaluative morphology,
(iv) the relation of evaluation with other grammatical categories,
(v) new methods and/or approaches (acquisitional, experimental etc.) to the study of evaluative morphology,
(vi) new perspectives in the study of semantics and pragmatics of evaluation,
(vii) combinability of morphological elements and/or processes for the realization of evaluation.

Abstract submission
If you are interested in participating in this workshop, please send an anonymized abstract of max. 500 words (excluding examples and references) to dmelissa@lit.auth.gr and aefthym@eled.duth.gr. The deadline for abstract submission is March 31, 2025.

Publication:
Selected papers from the workshop will be published in a special issue of the SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics.

References
Grandi, N. 2002. Morfologie in contatto. Le costruzioni valutative nelle lingue del Mediterraneo. Milano: Franco Angeli
Grandi, N. & L. Körtvélyessy eds. 2015. The Edinburgh handbook of evaluative morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Dressler, W. U. & L. M. Barbaresi. 1994. Morphopragmatics. Diminutives and intensifiers in Italian, German, and other languages. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Manova, S., Grestenberger L. & K. Korecky-Kröll eds. 2023. Diminutives across languages, theoretical frameworks and linguistic domains. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
Scalise, S. 1984. Generative Morphology. Dordrecht: Foris
Scalise, S. 1988. The notion of ‘head’ in Morphology. In G. Booij, G. & J. van Marle, J. (eds.) Yearbook of Morphology 1, 229–245. Dordrecht: Foris
Stump, G. 1993. How Peculiar is Evaluative Morphology? Journal of Linguistics 29: 1–36.

Compound formation with more than two lexemes

Workshop convenors: Makiko Mukai (University of Kochi, Japan), Masaharu Shimada (University of Tsukuba, Japan)

Compound formation has been one of the major topics in morphological studies in linguistics. Coffee cup is a compound consisting of two lexemes, that is, two nouns coffee and cup, and compounds of this type are usually taken up as a material to investigate the process of compounding, with their intrinsic properties revealed. In this workshop, we turn our attention to compounds consisting of more than two lexemes, which are found in languages across the world. For example, kitchen towel rack is an English compound made up from the three lexemes, kitchen, towel and rack, and can be referred to as a tri-constituent compound (Huber 2023). The aim of the workshop is to descriptively or theoretically explore properties of this kind of multi-constituent compounds, especially using comparative or experimental methods.

Tri-constituent compounds like kitchen towel rack can be two-way ambiguous (Mukai 2008, Wang and Holmberg (2021), among others). In one interpretation, kitchen towel rack has the left-branching constituent structure [[kitchen towel] rack], with rack functioning as a head of the whole compound. In the other interpretation, it has the right-branching structure [kitchen [towel rack]] and its head is the compound towel rack. This kind of tri-constituent compound thus contains a compound like kitchen towel or towel rack as a part and is often called a recursive compound. To give one of the previous studies on recursive compounds, Mukai’s (2024) aim is to clarify similarities and differences between right-branching and left-branching recursive compounds from semantic, syntactic, and phonological viewpoints by conducting empirical or experimental tests to 20 examples. She suggests that the target compounds tend to be interpreted as left-branching ones; for example, kitchen towel rack is preferably interpreted ‘a rack for kitchen towels’ rather than ‘a towel rack in a kitchen.’ Also, she observes that left-branching types in principle obey the Lexical Category Prominence Rule (Lieberman and Prince 1977), according to which one constituent is always more prominent with respect to its immediate sister constituent. Right-branching types, on the other hand, do not strictly obey it, even though there were variations among the participants for some of the compounds.

It should be noted that all of the tri-constituent compounds are not of recursive type. In fact, there is also a tri-constituent compound of coordinate type. For example, we find such a Japanese tri-constituent compound as sho-chiku-bai ‘maple-bamboo-cherry.’ In this case, unlike recursive compounds, the three constituents are combined to establish a coordinate relation, giving such an interpretation as “maple, bamboo and cherry.” Coordinate compounds have been cross-linguistically or typologically classified into several types (Olsen 2001, Bauer 2008, Arcodia 2010, Shimada 2013) and the identification of their morpho-syntactic structures has also been a topical issue (Mukai and Shimada 2021, Yonekura et al. 2023). However, a major target was a two-member coordinate compound, and there are few previous studies shedding light on a coordinate compound with more than two constituents.

Taking all the above into consideration, we would like to invite linguists to discuss several debatable issues of multi-constituent compounding. The list of topics includes, but is not limited to:

a. Comparison between right-branching and left-branching recursive compounds

b. Comparison between recursive compounds and coordinate compounds

c. Phonological, semantic, morphosyntactic or/and pragmatic properties of recursive compounds or/and coordinate compounds

d. Classification of recursive compounds or/and coordinate compounds

e. Issues on the lexical integrity

f. Typological or cross-linguistic issues on recursive compounds or/and coordinate compounds

g. Processing or acquisition issues on recursive or/and coordinate compounds

Abstract submission
Abstracts of no more than 300 words (plus references and figures/tables if any) should be sent to the 2 workshop organizers, mukai@cc.u-kochi.ac.jp, shimada.masaharu.fu@u.tsukuba.ac.jp by March 7, 2025. Acceptance will be notified by March 22, 2025.

References

Arcodia, Giorgio F, Nichola Grandi, and Bernhard Wlchlli (2010). Coordination in compounding. Edited by S. Scalise and I. Vogel. Cross-disciplinary issues in compounding. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 177–197.

Bauer, Laurie (2008). Dvandvas. Word Structure 1: pp. 1–20.

Huber, Elizabeth (2023). Tri-constituent compounds: A usage-based account of complex nominal compounding. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Lieberman, Mark, and Sproat (1992). Stress and structures of modified noun-phrases in English. In Lexical Matters. Edited by Sag Ivan and Anna Szabolsi. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 131–81.

Mukai, Makiko (2008). Recursive compounds. Word Structure 1: pp. 178–198.

Mukai, Makiko (2024). A descriptive and experimental investigation of recursive compounds in English: Their semantic, syntactic, and phonological characterization. Languages 2024, 9, 175.

Mukai, Makiko and Masaharu Shimada (2021). Reduplication and Compounding with Mimetic Roots. Language Association of Great Britain. Paper presented at the Annual General Meeting, online, September 9 2021.

Olsen, Susan (2001). Copulative compounds: a closer look at the interface between syntax and morphology. Edited by G.E. Booji and J. Marle. Yearbook of morphology 2000. Dordrecht: Springer, pp.279–320.

Shimada, Masaharu (2013). Coordinated compounds: Comparison between English and Japanese. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics 10: pp. 77–96.

Wang, Qi and Anders Holmberg (2021). Reduplication and the structure of nouns in Xining Chinese. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 39: pp. 923–958.

Yonekura, Hiroshi, Akko Nagano, and Masaharu Shimada (2023). Eigo to nihongo ni okeru toifukugogo (Co-compounds in English and Japanese). Tokyo: Kaitakusha.