Morphology Reading Group : Bernard Fradin

Bernard Fradin (LLF)
Affixes and polysemy

The talk will argue that, in several cases, affixes that were analyzed as polysemous are not so because they do not alone carry the meaning of the derived lexemes. It is the meaning of the base instead that allows us to determine the meaning of the derived lexeme, in other words of the combination <base, affix>. This idea will be supported through the account of derived lexemes suffixed by -ier, -ière, -on, -eau, etc. such as cendrier ‘ashtray’, canardier ‘duck- hunter’, pommier ‘apple-tree’. It will be shown that the analysis proposed here is an obvious one once a word and paradigm approach is adopted. It is not sure however that all affixes can be accounted for in this way. The issue of the limits of the analysis as well as the reasons why it works will be addressed. Aspects crucially calling for a quantitative approach will be suggested, with the hope that the discussion would result in proposals allowing to test them.