This paper aims at an overview on the competition between nominalising
affixes to see how competition may be resolved (or not) in a case study.
In contrast with Bertram et al.'s (2000) study, we did not select a small number of derivative and inflectional
affixes to carry out the experiment, but rather we concentrated on the case of derivative suffixes, selecting a broad sample of these (see Appendix A).
And due to the decreasing character of all P curves, such a procedure will always imply an overestimation of the values of P for the less frequent suffixes, which can reach dramatic proportions if the
affixes to be compared show great difference in token frequency, as is the case for van Marle's example of Dutch -er vs.
This work highlighted the efficacy of introducing semantic rules of verb-frame alternation and semantic typeshifting in order to maximize the generative capacity of the lexicon, thereby allowing the productivity of these
affixes to be apparent.
galant galant-isch (Jones 1976: 91, 355) In a similar fashion, some languages use verbalizing
affixes to introduce borrowed verbs into their lexicons.
These are the basic categories of the simplex lexicon, and we use derivational
affixes to extend these categories.
Let us now turn to the comparison of evaluative
affixes to -ia and -dzis, since these affixes and evaluative ones do not "change the category" of their bases.
a tendency of
affixes to repeatedly choose certain sound sequences instead of others, also legitimate.
