grammaticality, acceptability, possible words and large corpora-4

MorphologyDOI 10.1007/s11525-014-9234-z

Grammaticality, acceptability, possible words and largecorpora

Laurie Bauer

Received: 14 February 2013 / Accepted: 27 February 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract The related notions of possible word, actual word and productivity aredifficult to work with because of the difficulty with the notion of actual word. Whenlarge corpora are used as a source of data, there are some benefits for the practisingmorphologist, but the notion of actual word becomes even more difficult. This isbecause it rapidly becomes clear that in corpora there may be more than one form forthe same morphosemantic complex, so that rules may have multiple outputs. One ofthe factors that may help determine the output of a variable rule in morphology is theproductivity of the process involved. If that is the case, the notion of productivity hasto be reevaluated.

Keywords Actual word Possible word Productivity Grammaticality Corpuslinguistics

1 Introduction

Notions of possible words, actual words and productivity have become well estab-lished in recent morphological studies, and these notions are entangled with eachother.1 If you cannot tell what words are actual words, you cannot recognize newwords and therefore cannot tell whether something is or is not productive. The notionof new word and the notion of productivity both require that there be a notion of an

1An earlier version of this paper was presented at the conference on Data-Rich Approaches to EnglishMorphology, held in Wellington, New Zealand, in July 2012. I should like to thank attendees at the confer-ence, Liza Tarasova and Natalia Beliaeva, and referees for Morphology for feedback on earlier versions,and Jonathan Newton for the example in (2). The research for this paper was supported by a grant fromthe Royal Society of New Zealand through its Marsden Fund to the author.

L. Bauer (B)Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealande-mail: [email protected]

L. Bauer

actual word. The notion of an actual word, though, is incredibly fraught. The pro-posal from Halle (1973) that all words which are the output of the grammar shouldbe marked with a value for a feature [ lexical insertion] these days seems impos-sibly nave. Part of the difficulty here is that Halle is working with the notion of anideal speaker-listener (Chomsky 1965); these days there is much more focus on anindividual speaker in a speech community. Also, these days, we have access to largecorpora of text which repeatedly show that the individual linguist has very little ideaabout what might be a possible word of the language. Part of the topic of this paperis a consideration of what happens when large corpora are used to provide data formorphologists.

It would no doubt be possible to remove all the problems to which these notionsgive rise by defining a synchronic state of a language or variety so narrowly thatno neologism or exposure to unfamiliar words is possible. But to do this would becontrary to all the beliefs about the productivity of the language system that have beenin vogue since before the onset of the generative period in linguistics. If we cannotproduce or meet new words, then we have no need for rules at all because everythingcan be listed. At the same time, we lose all ability to account for the fact that there isa well-attested ability for real speakers to create words to which they have never beenexposed.

In this paper I begin by returning to such well-worn notions as grammaticality andacceptability and the way they apply in morphology; I then look at the notions ofpossible words and productivity; in the core of the paper, I look at the way in whichthe data available from large corpora influence the study of such phenomena, and thebenefits and problems such devices give rise to; and finally, I return to the notion ofproductivity in the light of such observations.

2 Grammaticality and acceptability

Since Chomsky (1957), linguists have been familiar with the notions of grammat-icality and acceptability. Grammaticality is defined by what a particular grammarcan have as its output, while acceptability is speaker-oriented and depends uponwhat speakers will consider appropriate. The two need not match, as is shown byChomskys (1957:15) celebrated example in (1), which is presumed to be grammat-ical but not acceptable, while (2), a quotation from Paul McCartney (Live and LetDie, 1973), is presumably acceptable (the structure may be heard relatively frequentlyfrom speakers) but not grammatical (because the same preposition is both maintainedin its original position and strandedon the construction in (2) see further Radfordet al. 2012).(1) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.(2) But if this ever changing world in which we live in

Makes you give in and crySay live and let die

While the distinction between grammaticality and acceptability is an importantone, it is clear that in general terms it is expected that acceptability will follow

Grammaticality, acceptability, possible words and large corpora

from grammaticality (always assuming that the pragmatics associated with the lexicalitems chosen to fill the relevant syntactic slots is appropriate). Sentence (1) is unac-ceptable because (among other things) sleeping is not something which can pragmat-ically be felicitously described as being done furiously. It is the pragmatics which isodd. If a grammar of English produced sequences like (3), on the other hand, it wouldbe taken that the grammar did not reflect the way the language was used by speakers,and should be corrected, because here it is the fundamental order of elements whichis wrong, not just the pragmatics.(3) Furiously ideas colorless sleep green.

That is, the distinction between grammaticality and acceptability is not necessarilya comment on the vagaries of human perception, but a comment on how far linguistsare expected to make their grammars approximate the kind of output speakers/writersactually produce. An alternative formulation is that linguists expect their grammarsto overgenerate (that is, to produce output sequences which real speakers would notuse), but will accept this as a criticism of their grammars only if certain, ill-defined,boundaries are overstepped. For some discussion of this problem in terms of selec-tional restrictions, see Chomsky (1965:148163).

This notion of grammaticality was carried forward into morphological studies by,for instance, Aronoff (1976). In another famous passage, which has set the tone formuch morphological work, Aronoff (1976:1718) says

The simplest task of a morphology, the least we demand of it, is the enumera-tion of the class of possible words of a language.

This, in effect, keeps the Chomskyan focus on grammaticality: the notion of enu-meration is not obviously different from the Chomskyan use of generation. It alsoaligns morphology (perhaps, more specifically, word-formation) with syntax in im-plicitly claiming that just as we cannot list the actual sentences of a language, sowe cannot list the actual words, but we can provide a statement by which we candetermine whether a given form can be expected to be admissible as a word of thelanguage provided that it is pragmatically adequate. I have previously (Bauer 1983:Sect. 4.2) argued in favor of this position, in a way that I would no longer wish toargue.

Enumerating the possible words of the language has generally been seen as a mat-ter of stating the relevant rules of word-formation (which Aronoff terms WFRsWord Formation Rules). The notion of a rule as it has developed within generativegrammar has typically demanded some form or structure which is affected by the rule(the input), some process which has an effect on that input, and, by implication, theoutput form created by the rule. When we consider morphology, this means that rules(or, specifically, WFRs) create new derivatives from bases which are simpler wordsor obligatorily bound bases.2 This is, in essence, not greatly different from what wemight characterize as a pre-generative structuralist position, except in that the rule

2In the case of conversion I assume that this still applies, in that the simpler word has not undergone theidentity operation which creates the derivative. Clearly, an alternative position would be possible, in whichcase the characterization of a rule given here would have to be modified slightly.

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notation is formulated as a rule of creation, while the structuralists would probablyhave seen their formulae as being pieces of analysis. Given that it is a commonplaceof generative theory that rules are not directional, but work equally for productionand perception (Lyons 1991:43), it is not clear just how much importance should begiven to this difference.

There are, of course, now alternatives to such an explicit statement of rules, in par-ticular connectionism eschews any explicit statement of relationship between inputand output, although it maintains the input and output. The same might be said forOptimality Theoretic formulations, where the optimal output emerges from the set ofprioritized constraints. Nonetheless, even in such cases, there is an input (typically aword) and an output (a word) linked by some, presumably generalized, procedure.

The precise status of the output is not necessarily clear. Is the output of any suchrule an actual word (and if so, is the rule a once-only rule: Aronoff 1976:22), or is ita possible word (aka a potential word)? To some extent, this is the problem that wassolved by Halles [ lexical insertion] feature, although it was never clear how thefeature marking (and the status it attempted to encode) was supposed to be changedfrom minus to plus.

Difficulties begin to emerge with these notions before we go any further. The statusof potential words is not consistent in the eyes of real speakers. Some potential wordsare not real words (4), (6), (8) or are words which have just been made up (5),others, if we follow Aronoff (1976), are (because of the great productivity of theprocesses involved) so automatic as to be unnoticeable to the speaker in context,and cannot be blocked by actual words. On the other hand, some words which havecurrency in the community may not have been noticed by individual speakers, andso may not function as actual words (4), (7). At the very least, the status of theindividual speaker and the community need some clarification if a coherent view ofthis aspect of linguistic structure is to be properly understood.

(4) She. . . pulled on another pair of disposable gloves. Gemma wondered if therewas a proper name for a glovophiliac. (Lord, Gabrielle 2002. Baby did a badbad thing. Sydney: Hodder, p. 272.)

(5) Theyre moist and cinnamony and . . . is that a word?Is what a word?Cinnamony.Hannah laughed. If its not, it ought to be. (Fluke, Joanne 2003. Meringuepie murder. New York: Kensington.)

(6) He knew he wasnt going to get a penny out of Bairn, so he sent his chiefcrucifixionist to make an example.Loudermilk wiped the legs of his glasses I dont think thats a word. (Estel-man, Loren D. 2007. American detective. New York: Doherty, p. 125.)

(7) Id need an enforcement arm. For my benignity, I mean. If thats a word.It should be, Tamara said. (Lescroart, John 2012. The hunter. New York:Dutton, p. 139.)

(8) She had always been one of the popular kidsnot the leader, not the trendset-ter just . . . a belonger, she thought, knowing that wasnt a real word. It shouldhave been. (Hoag, Tami 2013. The 9th girl. New York: Dutton, p. 151.)


3 Possible words and productivity

If the output of a WFR is a potential word, we see why productivity is important forrule-based systems. There are plenty of actual words of any natural language whichare not potential words. Mice, an actual plural of mouse, is a potential phonologicalword of English, but not a potential plural of mouse, in the sense that there is no WFRin current English which could produce mice with this meaning. Length, an actualnominalization from long is not a potential nominalization (we will need to comeback to this claim). Thus actual words are not a subset of possible words (perhapsmore strictly, are not a subset of the words which could be formed by current WFRsfor the expression of the relevant morphological categories). Terminology in this areahas varied (Bauer 1983:48), but is generally now carried on in terms of certain formsbeing lexicalized, while some rules are productive. Productive rulesthe only onesthat a generative linguist of Aronoffs persuasion is presumably concerned witharethose rules which can produce possible words. The implications of such a view are notalways welcome: some linguists such as Jackendoff (1975) maintain non-productiverules in their descriptions, naming them redundancy rules; there may or may not be afirm distinction made between redundancy rules and productive morphological rules.

But if the existence of a (non-redundancy) rule shows that there is productivity(sensu availability), it says nothing about productivity (sensu profitability) (Corbin1987; translation of the terms from Carstairs-McCarthy 1992:37). Availability saysmerely that the rule can be used; profitability says something about how likely it isthat the rule will be used. There is quite a lot of debate in the literature as to howmuch profitability is a matter of linguistics and how much it is a matter of pragmaticneed for the word-formation process in question (for different reasons why it mightnot be linguistic, see Harris 1951:255 and Koefoed 1992:16 and discussion in Bauer2001:28). Only if it is linguistic can it be built into a rule notation like the generativeone.

There is much in the descriptions of morphological processes to suggest that somedegree of profitability is caused by linguistic factors. Domains are often specified inlinguistic terms. For example, the English de-adjectival -en]V (as in blacken) is oftensaid to attach to bases ending in an obstruent; the de-verbal -al]N (as in arrival) re-quires bases ending with a stressed syllable; -able]A (as in extendable) applies freelyto transitive verbs; and so on. In other approaches to productivity, it is claimed thatproductive affixes are more parsable than non-productive ones, with the base beingmore frequent than the derivative, the semantics of the whole being transparent, andthe phonology indicating clearly the presence of a boundary between base and affix(Hay 2003). While frequency is not strictly a linguistic notion, relating to use ratherthan to structure, the other factors here are linguistic.

But even where there are linguistic constraints on the application of WFRs, itseems undeniable that there is still a certain haphazardness to their application. Thereare, for instance, many final-stressed verbs in English for which there is no corre-sponding -al]N nominalization current in the relevant speech communities. Verbssuch as conduct, contrive (contrast arrive), demand, imply, impose (contrast pro-pose), maintain (contrast retain according to the OED3), prefer (contrast refer), rely

3OED. The Oxford English dictionary on-line. www.oed.com.

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(contrast deny) are among those for which the OED lists no current -al]N nominal-ization. That being the case, either there must be some other constraint on the suffix-al]N, or else the set of verbs which take the suffix is fundamentally unpredictable,despite the formal restrictions which can be stated to modify the application of therules. That is, the formal constraints do not delimit a set of acceptable words, but amuch larger set, some of which may be unacceptable or ungrammatical. Similar com-ments can be made in regard to -able adjectivalizations. Here, though, the process israther more profitable in current English, and the unattested or new forms with -ableseem rather less outlandish. Forms with transitive verb bases not listed in the OEDinclude disgustable (listed as obsolete), Googleable, grillable (boilable and roastableare listed), inculcatable, parkable, pedestrianizable, roquetable, spyable. Even if itisin principlepredictable that something should be possible, it is not predictablefrom general principles which items will have become actual words. At this level atleast, the profitability of WFRs is variable. This affects acceptability for many speak-ers, for whom an acceptable word may be defined as being somewhere in the set ofitem-familiar words and those created by extremely productive processes.

The parallel from syntax would suggest that this is irrelevant: most sentences donot occur and the job of a generative grammar is to say whether a string is a sen-tence or not, rather than whether a sentence occurs or not. In morphology it is lessclear to what extent this is true, unless by fiat. First, there is a lay prejudice in favor ofwords existing rather than being created on-line (but see also Di Sciullo and Williams1987:14: Most of the words are listed.). We might dismiss this as lay ignorance.But there is a fair amount of evidence that derivational productivity is rather difficultfor speakers (at least in some language types and some formation-types), and maybe avoided (see e.g. Bauer 1996). Secondly, sentences are maximally productive be-cause they are indefinitely extendable.4 In purely practical terms, words cannot beindefinitely extended: their function is to name entities, actions and states, etc. and aninfinite name (or even a name which took several minutes to say) would not functionappropriately in the language system. Even in languages which allow apparently freerecursion in compounds (like German, for instance), it appears that compounds overfour elements long are very rare (Fleischer and Barz 2007:98). It is not that com-pounds cannot be longerthey can; it is that in general terms they are not. One of thethings we learn from Fabb (1988) is that far fewer sequences of affixes in English arefound than appear theoretically possible. If we look at the number of concatenatedaffixes attested in any given word, it is typically (at least in an Indo-European lan-guage like English) relatively small (Ljung 1970 gives figures of three prefixes andfour suffixes for English, which seems slightly short in the light of words such assensationalization (OED), but which makes the point; it may also be more realisticwhere the base is not lexicalized). While there are places where affixes are added tophrasal or sentential bases, and there is no reason to presume that such bases can-

4Referees for Morphology rightly query the use of the term infinite in this context, yet Chomsky(1975:78) talks of an infinite set of grammatical utterances, Fromkin et al. (1999:9) of an infinite set ofnew sentences and Carnie (2007:16) says Language is a productive (probably infinite) system, includ-ing in his reasoning that sentences can always be extended by the addition of an extra sub-part. Perhapswords cannot always be so extended. I find Matthews (1979:24) helpful: A generativist says that thespeakers mind controls an infinite set of sentences. But this is not a statement of observed fact. It is partof a theory.


not contain syntactic recursion (Cat-in-the-hattish seems perfectly possible5), this isnot clearly morphological recursion. Repetition of the same morph in a single wordcan be found in morphological systems, as illustrated below from Labrador Eskimo(Miller 1993:47) in (9), from Japanese (Miyagawa 1999:257) in (10) and from En-glish in (11). It is, however, always the exceptional pattern in morphology, never therule, and is usually tightly constrained.6

(9) Taku-jau-tit-tau-gasigi-jau-juksee-PASS-CAUS-PASS-believe-PASS-3sSS/he was believed to have been made to be seen

(10) Taroo-ga Hanoko-ni Ziroo-o Mitiko-ni aw-ase-sase-ruTaro-NOM Hanoko-DAT Jiro-ACC Michiko-DAT meet-CAUS-CAUS-PRESTaro will cause (make/let) Hanoko to cause Jiro to meet Michiko

(11) Meta-meta-rules, pre-preseason (both COCA)To some extent the same is true of syntactic rules: no living person has the time to

utter or write a sentence of more than very limited length. It must be acknowledged,though, that the extent of recursion is greater in syntax, the length of sentences is(almost by definition) greater than the length of words, and the extent to which oneextra constituent may be freely added to sentences is greater than the extent to whichthat can be done to words. So the productivity of morphological rules is far more con-strained than that of syntactic rules. It is further constrained by the fact that affixesare (on the whole) grammatical elements, and stringing grammatical elements is notnecessarily any easier in morphology than it is in syntax. Despite the possibility ofsentences such as What did you bring the book that I didnt want to be read to outof down for? (at least as a joke showing the necessity for preposition stranding), se-quences of prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions and the like are severely limited, andsequences of affixes arein most language typesalso severely limited, presumablyfor similar reasons, namely that it makes little sense to specify a number of functionsunless the things to which those functions apply are also specified.

The question is whether words with longer affixal strings are unacceptable or un-grammatical (or neither of those two options). I suspect that such a question is noteasily answerableif at all: it is not clear what would count as evidence. But the factthat the question is worth asking suggests that morphological productivity is not justthe same as syntactic productivity.

So we must conclude that the division between grammaticality and acceptability,which was very important in the development of the notion of linguistic rules, is notas easily made in morphology as it is in syntax, and that while availability might beaccounted for in terms of such rules, profitability remains unaccounted for.

If it is hard to distinguish between grammaticality and acceptability in word-formation, and we cannot necessarily trust notions of acceptability, then we mightneed some alternative way to get at the same underlying notion. Accordingly, at thispoint, I turn to consider the contribution of large corpora to morphological research.

5And can be attested at http://qahatesyou.com/wordpress/category/philosophy/ (accessed 9 Jan 2013).6Indeed, even the Japanese example below may not stand up to close scrutiny, since Miyagawa notes aslightly different function for the two causative markers, despite their shared form and shared meaning.

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4 Large corpora

There are places where large corpora can be extremely useful for the morphologist,and places where large corpora raise practical problems for the morphologist. In thissection, I shall consider each of these cases in turn, before returning to the implica-tions of what corpora have to tell us for productivity and possible words.

4.1 Benefits of large corpora

Payne and Huddleston (2002:449) make the claim that although it is perfectly ac-ceptable to have various London schools and colleges (presumably derived from anunderlying or implicit various London schools and London colleges), it is not possibleto have *ice-lollies and creams corresponding to ice-lollies and ice-creams (the aster-isk is theirs). This, they claim, is because we are dealing with two different types ofconstruction here: ice-cream is a compound, and does not allow coordination withinit, while London college is a phrasal construction, and does allow coordination withinit. I have elsewhere (Bauer 1998) queried the logic of such an approach to the dis-tinction between phrases and compounds, and shall not repeat that here. What I wantto say here is that the intuitions which tell them that ice-lollies and creams cannot bepart of English are clearly faulty, because when we look at large enough corpora (inthis case, when we look at what we can find via Google) we find examples like thoserepeated below.

(12) Living on the broken dreams of ice lollies and creamshttp://www.melodramatic.com/node/70347?page=1 (accessed 12 Jan 2011)Far too many ice-lollies and creams had been consumed but we were all happylittle campershttp://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=33253.120 (accessed 16 Jan 2011)These nine months were filled with dripping ice lollies and creams, spilt softdrinks and lost maltesershttp://keeptrackkyle.blogspot.com/2006/07/tidying-up.html (accessed 16 Jan2011)to play with their buckets and spades, to paddle in the water, and to suck lotsof ice lollies and creamshttp://www.governessx.com/Introduction/IntroductionLibrary/GovernessXLibraryABSissCDictionaryS.htm (accessed 16 Jan 2011)Wooden Toy Ice Creams And Lollies With Cratehttp://www.jlrtoysandleisure.co.uk/wooden-creams-lollies-with-crate-p-293.html (accessed 16 Jan 2011)Ice Creams and Lollieshttp://blog.annabelkarmel.com/recipes/ice-creams-and-lollies.html (accessed16 Jan 2011)

It is true that some of the examples in (12) (and the same is true in other examplescited later) are headlines, and the grammar of headlines may not be exactly the same


as the grammar of other structures; nevertheless, there are sufficient examples here toshow that the type that is predicted not to occur does actually occur in a large enoughcorpus.

If it is the case that, presented with sufficient data, we can find examples of pre-cisely the type that are predicted not to occur, then the theoretical position supportedby the predictions loses credibility. In this case, the firm distinction between com-pounds and phrases has to be less secure than is claimed.

To take another example, Jensen (1990:119) cites a claim from Zwicky (1969) thatgenitive forms of ablaut plurals that end in /s/ are impossible: *geeses, *mices. Suchforms are certainly rare (there are no hits in COCA, for instance), but that does notmean that they are impossible. The examples in (13) are also found via Google.(13) Newborn Mices Hearts Can Heal Themselves

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/science/01obmice.html?_r=0 (Accessed19 Oct 2012)Without B-Raf and C-Raf proteins mices fur turns whitehttp://www.news-medical.net/news/20121006/Without-B-Raf-and-C-Raf-proteins-mices-fur-turns-white.aspx (accessed 19 Oct 2012)Male Birth Control Possible? JQ1 Compound Decreases Mices Sperm Count,Qualityhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/16/male-birth-control-jq1-sperm-count_n_1784361.html (accessed 19 Oct 2012)Researchers Plant Short-Term Memories into Mices Brains. Read more athttp://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/12018/20120910/researchers-plant-short-term-memories-mices-brains.htm#s5d6fwt4hEfE1uW4.99 (accessed 19Oct 2012)Forget me not: scientists trigger mices memories with lighthttp://www.smartplanet.com/blog/science-scope/forget-me-not-scientists-trigger-mices-memories-with-light/12518 (accessed 19 Oct 2012)What can I use for my mices bedding?http://www.guineapigcages.com/forum/others/43989-mice-bedding-alternative-what-can-i-use-my-mices-bedding.html (Accessed 19 Oct 2012)FLYING WITH GEESES EYES ON NEW YORK CITYhttp://www.feeldesain.com/earthflight-flying-with-geeses-eyes-on-new-york-city.html (Accessed 19 Oct 2012)I saw that my geeses wings are tinged brown at the edges and turned inhttp://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120623005124AA04aSv(accessed 19 Oct 2012)

As a third and final example, consider the affixation of the prefix un- to certainimplicitly negative adjectives. The original claim lies at least as far back as Jespersen(1917), but is connected in particular with the work of Zimmer (1964). In the fortyyears since that work appeared, any number of linguists have repeated the example,apparently convinced that it represents a real constraint on un- prefixation (despite

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what Zimmer himself says). However, Bauer et al. (2013) cite the examples in (14)from large corpora. Clearly the intuitions of many linguists have been unreliable, andthere is no such absolute restriction on un- prefixation.

(14) unafraid, unangry, unanxious, un-bald, unbare, unbitter, unbogus, uncoy, un-crazy, uncruel, undead, unevil, unfake, unfraught, unhostile, unhumid, unjeal-ous, unlame, unlazy, unmad, unpoor, unsick, unsordid, unsurly, untimid, un-ugly, unvulgar, unweary

One tactic available to linguists who make claims about the impossibility of allthese forms is to assert that the examples in (12), (13) and (14) are ungrammaticaland errors. I have personally been given such a response by a referee for an articlesubmitted for publication to a well-known journal. The trouble with such claims inthe face of evidence like that cited here is that it hard to see how it can be justifiedexcept circularly. It may be that there are different dialects of English, some of whichallow and others of which do not allow the constructions illustrated, but a simplerexplanation is just that we do not need to discuss things which several geese own allthat often, and that such usages are correspondingly rare. As a result, we can findsuch examples only when we look at very large corpora, and that the relatively lownumber of hits even in such corpora does not indicate ungrammaticality, but simplyrarity.

4.2 Difficulties presented by large corpora

Not only do we find really useful examples like those cited above to help us formulatetrue generalizations about the way in which morphological structure is used, we alsofind unhelpful examples. To begin with an isolated example, consider the text in (15).(15) Could that polish have been tainted with cyanide? Could Susan have been the

tainterer? Was there such a word as tainterer? Maybe she was a tainteress?(Sarah Strohmeyer, 2004. Bubbles: a broad. New York: Dutton, p. 73.)

The book (as is clear from its title) is intended to be humorous, and this passagecould be intended to be non-serious; on the face of it, however, we have an unfamiliarderivative, tainterer, formed with double affixation of -er, and then another derivative,tainteress, formed without any resyllabification of the final that is we do notfind taintress (contrast actress). There is an argument to be made that either of theseleads to an ungrammatical form.7

So how are examples like those in (15) to be interpreted? Do we take them as beingindicators of a new pattern in English? Do we take them to be the continuation of anold pattern (tainterer can be found in Google with reference to nineteenth-centuryprofessions, presumably denoting a dyer)? Do we take them to be ungrammatical

7There is some variability as to the resyllabification of the final in English: manageress shows noresyllabification, and this is not simply a matter of whether we are dealing with -er or -or, since we finddoctoress, mayoress and waitress. The -erer sequence can be found in forms like adulterer (where onlyone of the -er sequences is an independent morph) or in fruiterer, which is unusual in its structure, and notobviously productive.


and unacceptableerrors, perhaps? If they are isolated (as this example is), do wejust ignore them?

A more complex, and more worrying example, is provided by adjectives with in-to be found in COCA (Davies 2008) and the BNC (British National Corpus 2007).Among the thousands of tokens of words beginning with the letters , , , in COCA and the BNC, there are several hundred types which represent negativeadjectives, and appear to have the affix to be seen in inconclusive, indirect, inordinate,etc. Among these instances of the negative prefix, we find a handful of forms whichappear to indicate the productivity of the prefix, in that these words do not appear tobe in general usage in the community and are not, for instance, in the OED. Examplesare given in (16).(16) immedical, inactual, inadult, inattentional, incompoundable, inconservative,

indescriptible, indominable, inexorcizable, inexplicatable, inextractable, inju-venile, intesticular

This is interesting in its own right, since we might expect to find that un- is the pro-ductive negative prefix in English, and that in- is not productive or at best marginallyso (as suggested by Marchand 1969:170; Bauer 1983:219; though contrast Baayenand Lieber 1991). Perhaps rather more interesting, however, are those forms wherethe in- prefix is found where some other prefix is established in the community. Someexamples are given in (17).(17) inadapted, inapparent (O), inappeasable (O), inarguable (O), inartful (O),

inartistic (O), inassimilable (O), incivil (O), indemonstrable (O), inequal (O),infathomable, infavorable, ingenerous, inimaginable, inintelligent, ininterest-ing, instable (O), intenable

Those words marked with (O) in (17) are listed in the OED, even though otherforms seem to be more usual today. There are, for instance, 20k hits for inappeasableon Google, but over 150k for unappeasable. Not all the cases are that clear-cut, butthe examples in (17) appear to provide evidence that in- is productive enough totake over items which are well-established with some other, apparently synonymous,affix.

This is interesting on two fronts. First, it suggests that in- is more productive thaneven words like those in (16) would indicate: it is not only found in new words, it hasthe power to oust old (presumably item-familiar) words. In general terms, this is thebehavior associated with productive processes: plural -s and past tense -ed spread tonew bases much more easily than ablaut or the pattern seen in catch-caught.

The second point is that data such as that illustrated in (17) appears to contra-dict everything we are told about blocking. Blocking (Aronoff 1976; Rainer 1988) issupposed to prevent the coining (or possibly only the establishment) of new wordswhich have the same meaning as actual listed words (or possibly only actual listedwords which use the same bases). Negative prefixes in English provide considerableevidence that this is not the case (see Bauer et al. 2013 for more discussion). Even inthe OED we find sets such as those in (18).

L. Bauer

(18) ahistorical unhistoricalanhistoricalalogical illogical unlogicalapolitical impolitical unpolitical

impolite unpoliteimproper unproperirredeemable unredeemable

atypical untypical

Even though blocking is not the main focus of this paper, it is noteworthy thatlarge corpora will often give apparent evidence of the failure of blocking, and againit can be hard to interpret such evidence as is provided. In the case of the negativeprefixes, my own opinion is that the evidence is overwhelmingly against there beingany general principle of blocking, though I do not know why negative adjectivesshould be so open to multiple, synonymous affixation patterns (if, indeed, this is notmerely a misleading impression).

Among the negated adjectives which might have been listed in (17), I should liketo draw particular attention to a small set illustrated in (19).(19) inbearable, inbelievable, inmodest, inpracticable, inpenetrable, inprescribable

There are not very many instances like those in (19), and most of them are hapaxesin the corpora, but even in (19) we seem to have a recurring pattern. We have evidencehere of a number of instances of the prefix in- occurring in the default allomorph in-rather than the expected allomorph im- before a bilabial. The obvious, immediateconclusion is that the rules of allomorphy in English are not quite as automatic aslinguists tend to consider them to be, and that users are writing an unassimilatedform or perhaps a morphophonemic representation. Unfortunately, there are otherpossibilities, which mean that we have to be careful in rushing to that conclusion.On the standard QWERTY keyboard, and are adjacent keys: it is thereforepossible that all of these (a very small number in the thousands of tokens of wordswith initial or ) are simply typographical errors. It is also the case that and are adjacent keys, and so any of these might be a typographical error for aform with initial un-, and if that is the case, there is no *um- allomorph, and the would be expected. Given examples of the type shown in (17), alternation betweenin- and un- prefixed negatives cannot be unexpected, and thus even unmodest must beconsidered a possible form. So how are we supposed to interpret evidence like that in(19), and what would it take to convince us that we need to move to a new analysis?

It seems to me that we can go some way toward answering this question. At thevery least we would want to find a number of independent occurrences of the sameform in places where the text is clearly serious rather than ludic. I think the examplescited in (19) would be more convincing if it were not the case that there were twoalternative routes to them by simple error. Even though we find similar spellingsbefore labials in other parts of speech, the number of cases we have attested is not yetenough to indicate conclusively that the end of in- allomorphy is a linguistic changein progress; it is, however, enough to make us aware of the possibility that somethingis happening in this area of language.


However, the real point here is that a large corpus can provide us with data thatwe cannot interpret. If it is dangerous to assume that the examples are an accuratereflection of competence, it is equally dangerous to assume that they are not. Morewidely, such examples seem to require us to review the notion of a possible word for anew generation of researchers who standardly have this kind of data-source availableto them.

4.3 Grammar and corpora

All this raises questions about notions of grammaticality (and hence notions of whatis in the grammar) and what we find in a corpus. Matthews (1979) discusses suchmatters by using an analogy with a map. A valid motorists map of Paris might showan undifferentiated shaded area, surrounded by the boulevard priphrique; anothermap might show streets including Place Pigalle and Place du Tertre; yet another mightshow the difference in height above sea level between those two streets by means ofcontour lines; but maps do not usually differentiate between three-storey buildingsand ten-storey buildings lining the streets. At some level, the detail is deliberately leftoff the map without invalidating the map. Do we do the same with our grammars? Docorpora inevitably bring us face-to-face with the question of building heights, whenall we want to know is how to drive to Montmartre?

If that is the case, it seems to me, then uses of corpora like those in Sect. 4.1 arefully justified because they are meeting specific claims with data that is on the samedegree of abstraction as the question that was introduced by the original claimants.Uses like those in Sect. 4.2, on the other hand, may be irrelevant because they mayintroduce a whole new level of evidence and a different notion of relevance. But thatseems unhelpful for linguistics. Part of the value of a paper such as Hundt (2013)is that by searching corpora it discovers that a grammatical construction BE + PastParticiple as perfect is not an error, but a systematically used way of marking theperfect in much of the English-speaking world. (See also Britain 2000 for anothersurprising feature that is more general than might have been thought.) That is anexample like that in (20) from the BNC is in use (acceptable? grammatical?) from arange of English speakers.

(20) both Martin and Ian are been having a similar traumaSo part of the role of corpora is to expand our notion of what might be acceptable

or grammatical and challenge our preconceptions about errors. That means that wecannot rule out the uses of corpora in Sect. 4.2 after all, even if we are unsure aboutthe weight to give examples that we find. An alternative might be to say that thereis some kind of threshold which corpus studies must cross before their findings areaccepted as mainstream usage. The uses discussed by Hundt (2013) are above thatthreshold, while the negative prefixes in Sect. 4.2 are below it. That makes intuitivesense, but we have no way of operationalizing that threshold. How do we quantifythe number of hits required in a corpus of size n for the construction to be takenas part of what linguists should be accounting for? There does not seem to be anynon-controversial way of progressing.

L. Bauer

5 Back to possible words and productivity

5.1 Variable outputs

We now need to return to the notion of possible word, both in the light of the discus-sion above and in the light of some modern discussions of the ways in which WFRsneed to be formulated.

Krott (2001; Krott et al. 2002, 2007) argues in some detail that linking elementsin Dutch and German compounds are best predicted not by rules which give a sin-gle possible output for any input, but by a model in which the linking elements aredetermined in some analogical way, which can only be modeled with some statisti-cal process to determine the outcome. Such a solution is not at this stage universallyadopted (Dressler et al. 2001; Neef 2009) but raises the notion of the output form of aword being a probability rather than a well-defined unique form. Similar conclusionsare drawn within the kind of prosodic morphology discussed by Lappe (2007). Var-ious factors may play a role in constraining the output of morphological processes,and they do not always agree on what the output will be. In some instances, the outputwill, indeed, be variable. Lappe cites, for example, variable infixation in Tagalog loanwords (Orgun and Sprouse 1999, who provide the examples in (21)).(21) gradwet grumadwetgumradwet to graduate

plantsa plumantsapumlantsa to ironpreno pumrenoprumeno to break

Thornton (2012) shows for Italian that even in inflectional morphology, cell-mates(alternative forms representing the same grammatical word) may persist for centuries.In English, too, we find occasional alternative outputs to morphological problems,such as the co-existence of un-fucking-believable and unbe-fucking-lievable,8 orientand orientate as the verb corresponding to orientation, or deduce and deduct as theverb corresponding to deduction, and it may be fair to add at least some of the formsin (18).9 We can also add the verbs of English that have alternative past tense andpast participle forms (sometimes in different varieties, but not always), forms thatshow variable fricative-voicing before plural marking (path may have a plural /pa:Ts/or /pa:Dz/), and the many other places where there is variability in morphologicalrealization of the same slot in some lexical paradigm. In a world where such forms arenot uniquely specified, the notion of possible word becomes rather more awkwardto deal with, and corpus-use brings us face to face, in a way that has not previouslybeen the case, with the notion that such outputs are variable.

8Unfuckingremarkable is apparently (Google) less remarkable than unrefuckingmarkable, despite claimsin the literature that the placement of expletives in such words is largely prosodically determined.9The distinction between e.g. deduct and deduce as corresponding to deduction (in the Sherlock Holmessense of deduction, not the arithmetical one) is usually discussed as formation versus back-formation. Thisassumes a model where speakers always go from the morphologically simpler to the morphologically morecomplex when coining words. Speakers make a large number of what would normatively be called errorsin the stress patterns on verbs because they try to retain the stress pattern from a morphologically morecomplex derivative in the morphologically simpler verb. That is we hear forms like propagte rather thanthe expected prpagate, presumably influenced by propagtion. At the very least this calls into questionthe way in which real speakers operate.


There have, of course, been many ways of presenting variable material in gram-mars, and there seems little point in running through them or trying to evaluatethem against each other (see, for example, Labov 1972: Chap. 8; Skousen 1989;Bender 2006; Albright 2009); there are also a number of publications which havepointed to variable degrees of productivity in different (social or linguistic) environ-ments (see, for example, Plag et al. 1999; Baayen 2009). The point here is not reallyhow to model variable behavior, but how to conceptualize the underlying categorieswhen we have variable outputs.

At the very least we need a way of stating the variable outputs of rules. Now weface the problems that have always faced the notion of variable rule in sociolinguis-tics. If this is done simply by allowing two or more rules to specify different outcomesfrom the same input, we are leaving a lot to the interpretation of the rules. If it is donewith some kind of formula we cannot necessarily predict the outcome on any givenoccasion (in fact, given how little we know about the various factors influencing theoutcome, it might be safer to say that this is likely always to be true). Selecting formsfrom among stored exemplars does not require a rule of the same kind at all, butdoesnt explain the same phenomena. Using stored exemplars to predict new forms,possibly as opposed to actual words, begins with a denial that there is a single inputform. Rather multiple factors may be important (including the frequency of the basesinvolved, degrees of phonological similarity with other bases, semantic content, prag-matic value). Among these other factors may be degree of productivity of the affixesconcerned. That is, part of the reason that we do not (or, probably more accurately,rarely) find bluth as the nominalization from blue, is that -th is not productive (avail-able) in English. Part of the reason we are unlikely to find a new word in -ment is thatit is of low productivity, even though it is not necessarily of low frequency (intend-ment in the BNC is listed as obsolete in the OED, and provides a rare instance of anapparently innovative form using this suffix). If that is the case, productivity takes ona whole new importance as being part of what indicates the degree of possibility of aword.

The implication here is that the moment we move away from the standard notionof rule with a defined input and output, and instead consider something that has analeatoric component in the creation of the output, the notion of a possible word ischanged. How important that change is may remain unclear. But it is certainly thecase that we cannot predict a unique output for all inputs, and this must influence ournotion of blocking, since a rule may permit multiple possible outputs. This suggeststhat any view of blocking as pre-emption of a paradigm slot by a particular form mustbe made more nuanced if it is to continue to have any credibility.

Such a change also has an impact on our view of productivity. Productivity nolonger provides a single appropriate output for any given morphological problem, buta range of more or less likely outputs. To the extent that these outputs likelihood canbe influenced by local context (the words in the preceding environment, for instance,as seems to be the case with tainteress in (15)) productivity is probably undecidable.Tainterer may be an entirely appropriate output from the agent noun correspondingto the verb taint, it just so happens that it is one that comes relatively low on somehierarchy of probabilities for potential words. If this is the case, then arguing fromthe non-existence of particular morphological patterns becomes theoretically suspectin its own right.

L. Bauer

5.2 Two examples

It might be easier to think about the problem and how to resolve it if we considersome actual examples. Here I shall consider two, the example of nominal -th and theexample of negative prefixation which has already been introduced.

5.2.1 Nominal -th

It is one of the most accepted findings of studies of English word-formation thatsuffixation of -th (as we find in words like warmth, truth, depth, and so on, is nolonger productive, neither profitable not available; e.g. Plag 2003:44). On the otherhand, various sources point to the fact that coolth occurs from time to time, apparentlyin defiance of the lack of productivity of the affix.

For people brought up in the generative tradition, the answer is simple. Coolthis an established word, first noted in English in the sixteenth century (OED) andavailable to speakers ever since, and present in the linguistic community though rarelyused. Even if occurrences in corpora are extremely rare, the argument would run, theaverage speaker hears so much more than is present in any corpus, that most speakerswill have experience of the form and be aware of it. That is how it has survived.

Others argue that even -th, the posterboy of unproductive morphology, remainsmarginally productive, and the occasional occurrences of coolth, like that from Eliz-abeth Peters in (22), cited from the OED, are instances of the productivity of theaffix.

(22) Hear it we did, in the coolth of the evening, as twilight spread her violet veilsacross the garden. [1991]

These two views are associated with rather different theoretical standpoints (orpotential theoretical standpoints). In the first view, we can talk of the production ofcoolth as being made possible by a once-only rule for the speech community, andcoolth having become a property of that community, to be exploited by later users.It is compatible with a process of affixation having become unavailable. The secondview is rather different (although what the real implications are may remain unclear).Each speaker has an individual lexicon, which overlaps in large part with the lexicaof other speakers in the community. When the speaker coins a word (or the listenerhears a new word) it becomes part of the individuals lexicon, and may be put thereon the basis of a once-only rule which applies only to the output of the individualspeaker. Thus, many speakers may individually coin the same word, which may ormay not then become shared with the speech community as a whole.

These two views have very different implications for blocking (Aronoff 1976,though see my earlier comments on this notion and Bauer et al. 2013). In the firstview, blocking may only affect the registration of a word as part of the establishedvocabulary of a community; in the second view, blocking succeeds or fails at thelevel of the individual, which may have implications for the community as a whole,depending on how much the community ignores individuals creations which are notitem-familiar.

Do we have any evidence on these two views? In this particular case, it seems tome, the evidence is in favor of the first view. This is because only coolth seems to


turn up as a new or innovative use of -th. Bluth is in the Urban Dictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com/) but as a verb and a contraction of BlueTooth. Greenthoccurs a number of times in Google, but is also found in the OED from the eigh-teenth century. Gloomth, used today mainly as a trade name, is also an eighteenthcentury creation. Bluth and Brownth and Lowth are found as proper names. Highth isa Middle English word that is largely replaced by height, but has a few remnants indictionaries. Smellth and spoilth get a number of hits on Google, of which many areintended as representations of third person singular verbs, and few are unambiguousnominalizations. Cheapth, usually a proper noun or the result of a typographical erroron Google, gets a few uninterpretable hits where it appears to be an adjective, not anoun. Given what I have said earlier, I cannot rule out the possibility that there is alarger pattern here of genuine neologisms using -th, but I see no evidence for it. Therepetition of a few words which are continually recoined does not seem to count assufficient evidence for marginal productivity.

5.2.2 Negative prefixation

I shall ignore here the problem posed by the orthography before a bilabial, whichwas covered earlier. The larger questions are the apparent productivity of in-, and thegeneral pattern of apparently synonymous prefixes.

The main difficulty with the productivity of in- at the expense of un- is that itcould easily be a typographical error, for which are adjacent keys. At somepoint, though, this excuse fails to hold. What we do not know is what that thresholdshould be for accepting that there is a visible trend here. Renouf (2013) gives ampleevidence that well-established words may have an occurrence of 0.5 in a millionwords of text. Here we would not necessarily expect the individual items to havecomparable frequency in texts if they are new (Renouf 2013), but we might want topostulate a level of something like one occurrence of the pattern in a million wordsof running text as a measure of productivity (though this will be reconsidered below).In Sect. 4.2 I cited thirty examples of the pattern, but may not have found all of therelevant examples. Thirty examples in a corpus which was, at the time the sample wastaken, 400m words of running text is well under one attestation per million words.I do not believe that this rules out this pattern as a productive one, but I would suggestthat if these figures are at all accurate (and they can be verified by other researchers)they are not yet sufficient to indicate a trend in English word-formation. They canbe no more than suggestive of trends to watch for.

The same cannot be claimed of the patterns with contrasting negative prefixes.That so many of these are established in the lexicographical tradition as well as in thecorpus-based evidence seems to imply some stability to a pattern of synonymy. Ofcourse, in individual cases there may be other factors at play. It may be that untypicalis gradually replacing atypical as the default negative of typical (better evidence is re-quired), and there has been a long normative attempt to distinguish between immoraland amoral on semantic grounds, that is they are claimed not to be synonymous at all(that is often difficult to confirm from the citations in the corpus). Nonetheless syn-onymy appears to be the rule, though we still lack good evidence on factors such asregister, age, ethnicity, etc. COCA examples of competing prefixes are given in (23).

L. Bauer

(23) works of the sort are generally viewed as inartistic, one-dimensional, tenden-tious, and, at the extreme, propagandistic.Well, thats an unartistic idea about dancing. Its a plebeian, low-class idea.My friends and I were the most unpolitical people in the worldNobody is apolitical, but Rick is about as apolitical as a guy you can find[sic]a perpetual damnation by some unappeasable figure of authorityinappeasable Society would have himand had got him.This is an ahistorical position that serves as a justification of a status quoBut a broader historical truthfulness mitigates such unhistorical contrivances.Networks may be dishistorical, but they have a schematic shapeWere very unsimilar in the family ties. She hates children, I want 10.girls and boys are deeply dissimilar creatures from day one.

Synonymy may or may not be a more general tendency across English, but atleast in this area it is more pervasive than one might expect, and there seems to besufficient evidence of coining in the face of synonymy that we cannot simply dismissit as some kind of peripheral phenomenon. This implies that contrasting affixes havesome degree of productivity in parallel contexts, which is to say that morphologicalprocesses compete for the same space and that there may be more than one answerfor a particular slot.

Using Baayens measure of productivity, Baayen and Lieber (1991) report thatthere is little difference between the productivity of un- and in-, giving valuesof 0.0005 and 0.0004 respectively, compared with a figure of 0.0001 for simplexadjectivesthis compares with 0.005 for -ish, for instance). Intuitively, this is anunexpected result, which they have some difficulty in explaining.

A small experiment indicates the problem. Relevant adjectives in in- and un- whichoccur just once in the BNC (100,000 words of running text) were extracted, andthose in which the last level of word-formation did not involve the negative prefixwere deleted. The remaining words were checked in the COD (Pearsall 2002), andthose listed in the dictionary were excluded. The remaining words act as a proxy forrelevant neologisms in the BNC. (In fact, some of the items not in the COD wereitem-familiar; but there will have been some words which were genuine neologismswith more than one occurrence in the corpus.) The list of words in in- has 35 mem-bers (with an extra eight if all the other allomorphs or in- are included), while the listof words in un- contains 1019 members. This represents a huge difference in usagein potentially neologistic environments. The experimental method is, of course, notwithout its problems (Would a larger corpus have found a more equal distributionthough the BNC is larger than the corpus used by Baayen and Lieber? Is it true thatneologisms are likely to appear once only? How far can any corpus represent whatthe native speaker is exposed to? Was the COD the best dictionary to choose forthis purpose?), but it suggests genuine differences in profitability, with in- not evenshowing up as productive according to the one per million test I proposed above (seealso note 10 below). But if in- is to be counted as productive at all, it is much lessso than un- (on the figures here). My suggestion is that the reason it is less used inneologisms is that there is a more frequent pattern of new or rare forms with un-,which is thus more conceptually available to speakers. That is, the profitability of un-


is one of the factors in explaining that un- is more profitable than in-. Phrased lesscircularly, the speakers experience of the profitability of affix in the immediate pastis one of the factors that a speaker uses in determining the outcome of competitionbetween morphological processes. That being the case, profitability is an input crite-rion in judging matters of productiveness, not just an output. The precise nature of themechanism whereby this worksassuming that it does holdought to be availableto experimental observation.

Beyond that, however, the examples discussed above seem to indicate that evenmarginal cases of profitability can be important in providing viable alternative pos-sible words. However the example of -th is interpreted, some of the prefixes whichshow up in negatives seem to be of very low profitability (the one per million levelsuggested above as a working indicator of productivity now seems far too high tobe reasonable) and yet are available when the conditions demand them. I have comevery little closer to determining what those conditions might be, but have, I think,indicated how difficult it is to determine what might be and what is not a potentialword.

5.2.3 Outcomes

We can summarize some of this and say that forms which could be typographical er-rors need a higher level of support than others; that with any new pattern, we need toset a moderate threshold below which we will not consider a pattern (here the figureof one occurrence of the pattern per million word of running text has been proposed,but other figures could beand have beensuggested10); that ideally any discussionof the reality of productivity of patterns would have to take into consideration ques-tions such as register, variety and diachronic development. Other factors are alreadycanvassed in the literature, e.g. words that occur only in headlines or in poetic dic-tion should probably be discounted (Bauer 2001:57), or at least counted as being in aregister of their own. Words in overtly humorous contexts should probably be treatedcircumspectly (see also above with reference to tainterer). Schultink (1961) wantsto exclude all words which are consciously formed, but not only does this seem toorestrictive, it is not operationalizable (Plag 1999:14; Bauer 2001:68).

6 Conclusion

The notion of actual word is a highly fraught one, although it seems absolutely basicto any study of morphological productivity. When the evidence that is provided bylarge corpora is brought to bear on the problem, the issues with the notion seem toget worse rather than better. Attested may not imply acceptable; acceptable may notimply grammatical; attested may or may not imply actual.

When we are considering word-formation, arguments from asterisks may be in-advisable from a practical point of view, but there is also evidence from variability

10Baayen and Lieber have the frequency of new morphologically simplex words as the baseline, abovewhich things count as productive, which is a much better justified level and rather more inclusive than thisproposal, which is really just included to allow for the argument.

L. Bauer

of morphological outcomes that they are likely to be theoretically inadequate. Thisconclusion arises if we take a point of view that there is some statistical elementinvolved in determining the potentiality of an unfamiliar word. In other words, weassumealong with a growing number of scholarsthat word-formation rules donot necessarily have a single possible output but may have several. Such a notionraises questions about our traditional views of productivity, since we may no longerbe able to decide definitely in any given set of circumstances what is or is not apossible word. Our view of productivity is also changed if we see the degree of pro-ductivity of any particular morphological process as being part of the input (one ofthe conditioning factors) in a word-formation rule, and not simply the result of theuse of that word-formation rule. Apparently, even very low productivity levels havean effect.

Clearly, conclusions like this should be controversial: they have many implicationsfor the form of the morphological component and the nature of morphology. Thus thispaper is intended to open up discussion in this area, and provoke responses about thenature of productivity, the form of word-formation rules, and the nature of possiblewords.

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Grammaticality, acceptability, possible words and large corporaAbstractIntroductionGrammaticality and acceptabilityPossible words and productivityLarge corporaBenets of large corporaDifculties presented by large corporaGrammar and corpora

Back to possible words and productivityVariable outputsTwo examplesNominal -thNegative prexationOutcomes

ConclusionReferences

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