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This paper explores an area of nominalization in English for which there are no dedicated affixes, specifically, deverbal nominalizations that mean 'thing, stuff or non-human that is verb-ed'. The suffix -ee in English typically creates only patient nouns that denote humans, for example, employee, nominee. English, of course, does have complex nouns that express this meaning, and this paper provides a preliminary discussion of how we might study them. First, I discuss a range of established forms that denote this meaning (baking, acquisition, inheritance, additive, mixture, etc.). Two methods of finding novel forms are also discussed, first eliciting them from native speakers in an informal production experiment, and second searching for them in the Corpus of Contemporary American English. Finally the theoretical implications of the data are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students in a content-area reading course examined the vocabulary of each of their disciplines, focusing on recurrent roots and affixes. They wanted to become teachers of math, science, English, music, and history; therefore, they needed to learn discipline-specific morphemes so they could help their future students figure out new words in their content areas. The students: analyzed words in their disciplinary vocabularies, using recurrent roots and affixes to aid in comprehension of word meaning;, adapted traditional reading strategies for disciplinary use;, discovered that many roots and affixes which were seemingly particular to one discipline also contributed to the meanings of words in other disciplines;, designed content-area lessons using a morphemic approach., The class learned that teaching the meanings of morphemes could improve disciplinary literacy and could also help with vocabulary in other content areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: High and low tones on Swedish word stems are associated with different classes of suffixes. We tested the electrophysiological effects of high and low stem tones as well as tonally cued and uncued suffixes. Two different tasks were used involving either choosing the suffix-dependent meaning of the words, or pressing a button when the word ended. To determine whether effects were in fact due to association of tones with lexical material, delexicalized stimuli were also used. High tones in lexical items produced an increase in the P2 component in both tasks, interpreted as showing passive anticipatory attention allocated to the associated upcoming suffix. This effect was absent for delexicalized forms, where instead an N1 increase was found for high tones, indicating that the high pitch was unexpected in the absence of lexical material, and did not lead to anticipatory attention. A P600 effect was found for uncued high-associated suffixes in the semantic task, which was also where the largest increase was found in reaction times. This suggests that the tonal cues were most important when participants were required to process the meaning of the words. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study determined to what extent morphological processing of spoken inflected and derived words is attention-independent. To answer these questions EEG and MEG responses were recorded from healthy participants while they were presented with spoken Finnish inflected, derived, and monomorphemic words. In the non-attended task, the participants were instructed to ignore the incoming auditory stimuli and concentrate on the silent cartoon. In the attended task, previously reported by Leminen et al. (2011), the participants were to judge the acceptability of each stimulus. Importantly, EEG and MEG responses were time-locked to the onset of critical information [suffix onset for the complex words and uniqueness point (UP) for the monomorphemic words]. Early after the critical point, word type did not interact with task: in both attended and non-attended tasks, the event-related potentials (ERPs) showed larger negativity to derived than inflected or monomorphemic words ∼100ms after the critical point. MEG source waveforms showed a similar pattern. Later than 100 ms after the critical point, there were no differences between word types in the non-attended task either in the ERP or source modeling data. However, in the attended task inflected words elicited larger responses than other words ∼200 ms after the critical point. The results suggest different brain representations for derived and inflected words. The early activation after the critical point was elicited both in the non-attended and attended tasks. As this stage of word recognition was not modulated by attention, it can be concluded to reflect an automatic mapping of incoming acoustic information onto stored representations. In contrast, the later differences between word types in the attended task were not observed in the non-attended task. This indicates that later compositional processes at the (morpho)syntactic-semantic level require focused attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article carries out an analysis of the Old English verbal prefix ge- that is based on a paradigmatic organization of the lexicon, which allows for the inclusion of synchronic and diachronic data into a panchronic approach. On the synchronic side, the focus is on the spread of ge- in the derivational morphology of the language and the assessment of productivity, while on the diachronic side the emphasis is on the lexicalization and grammaticalization of the affix at stake. A path of grammaticalization is described as starting from the Proto-Germanic derivational prefix *ga- and leading to inflectional ge- in Old English. Quantitative evidence is gathered in favour of a progressive loss of the derivational productivity of the prefix that is paralleled by a gradual increase in inflectional distribution. The conclusion is reached that the neuter noun which is zero derived from the strong verb contributes through its derivatives to the decategorialization of the prefix ge-, which undergoes grammaticalization for reasons of over-markedness, becomes exclusively inflectional and, ultimately, disappears. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article explores several strategies that can be implemented by upper elementary, middle, and high school teachers to help students develop their general vocabulary knowledge while also increasing their comprehension of content area words and concepts. Particular focus is given to methods in which teachers allow students to explore the etymology of words through an understanding of roots, prefixes, and suffixes that are common to the English language. Other topics explored include morphological knowledge, direct instruction, and spelling-meaning connections.

Abstract: Convergence in case mapping strategies in the oral speech of Quechua–Spanish bilinguals is examined. In principle, Quechua case suffixes could be analyzed as postpositions or as case markers. The data show that in code mixing utterances, Spanish prepositions and Quechua case suffixes co-occur and that mapping strategies converge. The fact that, in Quechua–Spanish code switching, Spanish prepositions are combined with Quechua case suffixes is taken as evidence that the latter are case markers, not postpositions. Further support for this view is the fact that no obvious differences were found in the data between non-oblique and oblique case markers. This distribution is consistent with an analysis of Quechua case suffixes as the spell out of an agree relationship between a null prepositional head and a DP. Cases of case suffix dropping in differential object marking expressions are analyzed as a possible source of instability in case marking in code mixing utterances. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The study investigates the gradual development of morphological specification, as reflected in use of early non-finite verb forms in the speech of three Hebrew-acquiring children (mean age range 1;4-2;2). Children acquiring different languages have been shown to make use of non-finite forms in their initial verb usage. Use of uninflected verbs in matrix clauses has been attributed to the Root or Optional Infinitives phenomenon in generative frameworks, or to the generally stepwise path of acquisition in developmental approaches. Analyses of the longitudinal data presented here suggest that Hebrew-acquiring children do not use infinitival forms before they begin to master inflections productively. Instead, they rely, for several months, on non-affixed "bare stems" as their initial verb forms. Prefix-marked "full" infinitives occur later, typically in well-formed syntactic contexts, alongside productive use of affixed Present-tense (benoni) participial forms. Hebrew-acquiring children thus appear to make selective use of different types of nonfinite forms (initial bare stems followed by Infinitives and benoni), each representing different levels of inflectional knowledge. It is therefore argued here that non-finiteness in early child language is in itself a developmental concept consisting of several sub-phases each of which demonstrates a particular level of linguistic knowledge, motivated by typological features of the ambient language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effect of phonological development on the acquisition of Hebrew verb inflectional suffixes, comparing between two monolingual typically developing children (SR and RM). Examination of the order at which the suffixes appeared in the children's speech reveals one distinction; SR produced the number (plural) suffix -im before the person (1st singular) suffix -ft', while RM produced these suffixes in the opposite order. All other suffixes were produced in the same order. As these suffixes differ in the presence vs. absence of a coda, I attribute the distinction between the children to the development of word final codas, which was faster in SR's speech than in RM's. This interaction between phonology and morphology is known as prosodic licensing, whereby the prosodic structure hosting a grammatical morpheme is a prerequisite for the production of this morpheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]