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Word Formation Rules and the Generative Lexicon: Representing Noun-to-Verb Versus Verb-to-Noun Conversion in French

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Advances in Generative Lexicon Theory

Part of the book series: Text, Speech and Language Technology ((TLTB,volume 46))

Abstract

This paper focuses on the interface between lexical semantics and word formation. These two linguistic domains give us distinct types of intrinsic information on the semantic content of morphologically constructed words. A common formalism, called Morphological Structure Composition Schema (MS-CS), designed within Generative Lexicon Theory (GL), establishes strong links between these domains. It is illustrated in French by the representation of the Noun-to-Verb (NtoV) versus Verb-to-Noun (VtoN) conversion word formation processes. The relevance of this word formation type for lexical semantics is threefold. It consists in a non-conventional, affix-free, and hence uniquely semantics-driven mechanism. It is a topic of interest to the morphology, syntax, and semantics communities. Finally, it is both a productive and frequent phenomenon, observed in several languages. After an overview of linguistic theories related to this phenomenon, an analysis follows based on a large corpus designed to build a frequency-ranked semantics-based typology of NtoV and VtoN conversion. On the basis of such a classification, a unified GL-inspired model is proposed and illustrated through several examples

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Phonetics blocks semantics if one is competing with the other. This phenomenon will not be addressed in this paper, since we focus only on WF semantic constraints: for a detailed description, see Plénat and Roché (2004).

  2. 2.

    See Sect. 17.3 for a more accurate definition of conversion.

  3. 3.

    i.e. an underspecified referential lexical unit.

  4. 4.

    For a detailed description of the model, see Jacquey and Namer (2003) and Namer and Jacquey (2003).

  5. 5.

    As is well-known in the framework of typed feature structures, indices are used to ensure value unification (Shieber 1986).

  6. 6.

    Some authors, especially those who belong to the Government and Binding tradition, call conversion by means of the term zero affixation.

  7. 7.

    We choose to represent verbs by means of their infinitive form: the inflection ending marking the V infinitive –er is put between brackets. Some phonological variations, such as here/ε/→/εj/, graphically realized by the [ai] → [ay] alternation, may occur within the conjugation paradigm.

  8. 8.

    Inflectional endings, such as infinitive –er, are surface marks which have nothing to do with word formation.

  9. 9.

    When conversion involves morphologically complex lexical units, orientation may be decided from the input and output internal structure. For instance, the suffix –ure, building deverbal nouns, appears in the pair hachure N/hachur(er) V [hatching, zebra marking N /hatch V ], forcing the N →conv V orientation. In fact, the other orientation would imply the output noun be formed both by conversion, from hachur(er), and by suffixation, from hach(er) [chop, cut, mince V ], which is not possible since hachure is not polysemous. See Namer (2003), which follows Corbin (1987), for a conversion typology according to input/output morphological complexity.

  10. 10.

    His approach, that follows e.g. Marchand (1969), Adams (1973), Kiparsky (1982) is not applicable for French. Also it is not useful for providing outputs with a definition involving their input.

  11. 11.

    also called ‘overt analogue’ principle (Sanders 1988).

  12. 12.

    Actually, -eur/-euse are nothing but two gender variations of the same affix: -euse is a possible feminine form corresponding to -eur. We assume that gender variation has to do with inflection, and thus is not a matter of wf, at least for nouns referring to inanimate entities, see (Corbett 1991) for an accurate discussion on this issue.

  13. 13.

    TLFnome is a lexicon of inflected forms developed at the INaLF based on the nomenclature of the Trésor de la Langue Française, a general language multi-volumes dictionary. It currently contains 63,000 lemmas, 390,000 forms and 500,000 entries. It is in the course of being supplemented by 36,400 additional lemmas from the TLF index.

  14. 14.

    Due to the technique we used to collect our corpus, N/V pairs exhibiting strong allomorphy or suppletive variations are not included in our study (e.g. pleuv-oir V /pluie N [rain V/N ]). A manual checking should be necessary to confirm their behaviour to be in conformity with the obtained conclusions (Sect. 17.3.5, Table 17.1).

  15. 15.

    VtoN conversion class -1-, Table 17.2 in which N denotes the agent (guide, garde) gathers a non-representative amount of Noun/Verb pairs; therefore we have chosen not to take them into account in our model.

  16. 16.

    See Pustejovsky (1995:175) for an illustration of this type of denotation with the ambiguous noun belief.

  17. 17.

    Following Pustejovsky (1996), the distinction between endocentric and exocentric dotted types is based on the acceptability of the contextual cooperation between the two readings of a logical polysemic word, these readings being accounted for by two corresponding types which are embedded in the dotted type. The readings of a word associated to an exocentric dotted type do not cooperate, while the two readings of a word associated to an endocentric dotted type do. The exocentric/endocentric distinction seems to be close to that of Cruse (1986) between cooperative versus non cooperative readings of word.

  18. 18.

    Since nouns carry only default event parameters, there is no headedness involved in their event structure, so, for accomplishments such as transport, both process and state can be realized. And since deverbal nouns inherit input verb argument structure content only as default arguments, noun arguments are always optional.

  19. 19.

    Actually, only dance and butter are mentioned in Pustejovsky (1996): we assume that walk and drain would be represented in the same way.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UMR 7118 ATILF CNRS & Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France

    Fiammetta Namer & Evelyne Jacquey

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  1. Fiammetta Namer
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  2. Evelyne Jacquey
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department Of Computer Science, Volen Center for Comples Systems, Brandeis University, South Street 415, Waltham, 02454, Massachusetts, USA

    James Pustejovsky

  2. , Faculté de Traduction, Université de Genève, Geneva, 1211, Switzerland

    Pierrette Bouillon

  3. , Information and Media Center, Toyohashi University of Technology, 1-1 Hibarigaoka, Tenpakucho, Toyohashi, 441-8580, Japan

    Hitoshi Isahara

  4. , Dept. of Ling Theory & Structure, Nat. Inst. f. Japanese Lang. and Ling., 10-2 Midoricho, Tachikawa, Tachikawa, 190-8561, Japan

    Kyoko Kanzaki

  5. Dept. Linguistics, Seoul National University, Seoul, 151-742, Korea, Republic of (South Korea)

    Chungmin Lee

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Namer, F., Jacquey, E. (2013). Word Formation Rules and the Generative Lexicon: Representing Noun-to-Verb Versus Verb-to-Noun Conversion in French. In: Pustejovsky, J., Bouillon, P., Isahara, H., Kanzaki, K., Lee, C. (eds) Advances in Generative Lexicon Theory. Text, Speech and Language Technology, vol 46. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5189-7_17

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