The fate of ‘pseudo-’ words: a contrastive corpus-based analysis
(2021) UCCTS 2021, Using Corpora in Contrastive and Translation Studies (6th edition) — Location: Bertinoro, Italy (9.September.2021)
Files
Thefateofpseudo-wordsTALK.pdf
Powerpoint
Restricted Access - Adobe PDF
- 571.78 KB
Details
- Authors
- Abstract
- Evaluative morphology is by now a well-established domain of investigation (e.g. Bauer 1997, Grandi & Körtvélyessy 2015). However, while large-scale typological studies are available (e.g. Körtvélyessy 2015), in-depth contrastive studies that aim at comparing specific formatives in different languages are still scarce. In addition, evaluative morphology has essentially been restricted to the expression of diminution and augmentation, and their pejorative or ameliorative connotations (e.g. Dressler & Barbaresi 1994, Bakema & Geeraerts 2000), whereas other crucial functions such as the expression of ‘approximation’ (in a broad sense) have been largely ignored (Masini & Micheli 2020). The present case study, which forms part of a broader collaborative project on approximation in morphology, intends to bridge this double gap by examining the formal and semantic properties of the prefix pseudo- in 8 European languages: Danish, Dutch, English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Swedish. Pseudo- constitutes an interesting case due to its historical development. Originally a compounding element in Ancient Greek (e.g. in pseudologia ‘a false speech’), pseudo- was borrowed into a variety of European languages. Initially, Greek compounds were borrowed as a whole (e.g. English pseudonym). Later, pseudo- came to be combined with native words, mostly pertaining to (spurious) science (e.g. Dutch pseudo-deskundige ‘pseudo-expert’, pseudowetenschappelijk ‘pseudoscientific’; WNT). Contemporary data, however, show that pseudo- is expanding to collocational contexts in which the prefix is used to convey approximation, typically with an ironic tone or negative connotation (1-5). (1) Il fatto è che il calcio […] è diventato in Italiai [sic] uno sport per vecchi ricchi e per pseudotifosi in pantofole. ‘The thing is that, in Italy, football has become a sport for rich old people and pseudo-supporters in slippers’ [Italian] (2) This must be a new trend in pseudo left thinking, a total failure to understand basic logic. [English] (3) Een pseudo historische roman gebaseerd op oeroude Britse bronnen ‘a pseudo historical novel based on age-old British sources’ [Dutch] (4) psykoanalytikeren Otto Rank, der er lidt mindre pseudo end Freud og Jung. ‘the psychoanalyst Otto Rank, who is a bit less pseudo than Freud and Jung.’ [Danish] (5) Rodeamos de pseudos filósofos, pseudos intelectuales, pseudos artistas. ‘We are surrounded by pseudo-philosophers, pseudo-intellectuals, pseudo-artists.’ [Spanish] At the morphological level, we observe that pseudo- combines with both nouns (1) and adjectives (2). Of particular interest are constructions where pseudo- takes scope over a noun phrase (3), or where pseudo is developing into an independent adjective meaning ‘fake’, as in (4), a process known as ‘debonding’ (e.g. Norde & Van Goethem 2018). Example (5) shows that debonding may even result in morphological reanalysis as an adjective, including adjectival inflection. In order to gain a better understanding of the morphosyntactic behaviour and productivity of pseudo- words in contemporary European languages, we carry out a cross-linguistic analysis based on 1000-token samples per language extracted from the TenTen web corpora (Kilgarriff et al. 2014). All relevant occurrences are annotated for their morphological properties, and their productivity is calculated based on type/token ratio and potential productivity scores. In particular, we focus on (i) the construction type, (ii) the productivity of the prefix, and (iii) its degree of debonding. These data lead to an extensive comparative analysis of the synchronic use of pseudo- in the 8 languages in our study, while taking into account the process of morphological adaptation specific to each of the receiving languages (cf. Seifart 2015 and Gardani 2020 on morphological borrowing). Based on previous research into Italian and Dutch approximative morphemes (Masini & Micheli 2020, Van Goethem & Norde 2020) and into debonding in English, French and Dutch (Van Goethem & De Smet 2014), we address the following research questions: RQ1: Do language-specific properties such as morphological cohesion and inflection affect the degree of debonding of pseudo-? RQ2: Is there a correlation between the morphological productivity of pseudo- in a particular language and its degree of debonding? More generally, we will explore whether the morphological properties of pseudo- confirm the grammaticalization clines from synthetic to analytic languages, as observed for the Germanic and Romance language families (Lamiroy 2011) and compare the integration of pseudo- in Germanic and Romance. In addition, we will perform linear regression modelling (Levshina 2015) to establish whether there is a correlation between productivity and debonding. Preliminary analyses suggest that languages differ considerably both in terms of type/token ratios and debonding ratios, presumably because of typological differences. For instance, the Romance languages present a higher degree of debonding than the Germanic languages, which may be due to a lower degree of morphological cohesion in the former language family. In addition, the formal resemblance of pseudo- with Spanish and Italian adjectives ending in -o may facilitate debonding and adjectival reanalysis . References Bakema, P. & Geeraerts, D. (2000). Diminution and augmentation. In G. Booij et al. (eds.) Morphology. An International Handbook on Inflection and Word Formation. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1045-1052. Bauer, L. (1997). Evaluative morphology: In search of universals. Studies in Language 21(3), 533-575. Dressler, W. U. & Barbaresi, L.M. (1994). Morphopragmatics. Diminutives and intensifiers in Italian, German, and other languages. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Gardani, F. (2020). Borrowing matter and pattern in morphology. An overview. Morphology 30, 263-282. Grandi, N. & Körtvélyessy, L. (eds.). (2015). Edinburgh Handbook of Evaluative Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Kilgarriff, A. et al. (2014). The Sketch Engine: ten years on. Lexicography 1, 7-36. Körtvélyessy, L. (2015). Evaluative morphology from a cross-linguistic perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Lamiroy, B. (2011). Degré de grammaticalisation à travers les langues de la même famille. Mémoires de la Société de linguistique de Paris 19, 167-192. Levshina, N. (2015). How to do Linguistics with R. Data exploration and statistical analysis. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. Masini, F. & Micheli, S. (2020). The morphological expression of approximation: the emerging simil- construction in Italian. Word Structure 13(3), 371-402. Norde, M. & Van Goethem, K. (2018). Debonding and clipping of prefixoids in Germanic: Constructionalization or constructional Change? In G. Booij (ed.) The Construction of Words. Cham etc.: Springer, 475-518. Seifart, F. (2015). Direct and indirect affix borrowing. Language 91(3), 511-532. Van Goethem, K. & De Smet, H. 2014. How nouns turn into adjectives. The emergence of new adjectives in French, English and Dutch through debonding processes. Languages in Contrast 14(2), 251-277. Van Goethem, K. & Norde, M. (2020). Extravagant “fake” morphemes in Dutch. Morphological productivity, semantic profiles and categorical flexibility. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 16(3), 425-458. WNT = Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal: http://gtb.inl.nl
- Affiliations
Citations
Van Goethem, K., Norde, M., & Masini, F. (2021). The fate of ‘pseudo-’ words: a contrastive corpus-based analysis. UCCTS 2021, Using Corpora in Contrastive and Translation Studies (6th edition), Bertinoro, Italy. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/113724