Categorywise, some Compound-Type Morphemes Seem to Be Rather Suffix-Like: On the Status of -ful, -type, and -wise in Present Day English

Abstract

The elements -ful, -type, and -wise are productive formatives in present-day English usage as reflected in the 100 million word British National Corpus. They are, however, not satisfactorily documented in the literature on English word-formation. This paper discusses the occurrence and structural properties of the three formatives on the basis of data from the British National Corpus. This descriptive task raises questions about the grammatical status of these elements, and concerns in particular the delimitation between suffixation and compounding. It is concluded that labels such as `semi-suffix' are theoretically undesirable as they do not provide additional insight into the nature of complex words and that the formations with -ful, -type, and -wise should be treated as either compounds (in the case of --type) or suffixations ( in the cases of --ful and -wise).

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