(De)composing the Slavic Word

A language, if expressing morphological relations by suffixation, possesses a significant number of suffixes that, theoretically, should be able to combine with each other producing a large number of combinations. In practice, however, only a few of the possible combinations of suffixes are employed. For example in German, the suffix -in when added to derived nouns denoting male persons, such as Lehr-er `teacher` (derived from the verb lehr-en `to teach`), produces nouns for female persons (in our case Lehrer-in `female teacher`) to which no further suffixes can be added. Suffixes such as -in are called closing (Aronoff & Fuhrhop 2002). Thus the closing character of the suffix -in explains the non-existence of *Lehrerin-chen `little female teacher` in German. Lehrerin can participate in compounds but, if used as a first constituent, needs to be `opened up` by a linking element, i.e. Lehrerinn-en- zimmer `room for female teacher(s)` (with the linking element -en-) but Mutter-tag `mother`s day` (without a linking element). Why don`t all suffixes combine? If iconic rules (where addition of meaning is reflected by addition of form) are the most natural, why can`t verbs, nouns and adjectives be formed by addition of suffixes to every derived word? What stops the further attachment of suffixes? These are some of the questions the present project addresses. The project defines restrictions on suffix combinations in three Slavic languages, Bulgarian, Russian and Polish, in terms of closing suffixes and analyses the latter from a comparative perspective. The goal is to determine to what extent closing suffixation is language-specific (including language-family-specific) and to what extent it is typologically and universally specifiable. The second goal of the project is to contribute to understanding the organization of grammar and the lexicon: in particular, on the nature of the distinction between derivation and inflection and on their formal expression; as well as on the way morphological units and restrictions on their combinations are represented in the lexicon. Innovative aspects of the project include research on the relation between: (i) closing suffixes and morphological rules by which they are applied (affixation by addition vs. affixation by substitution/replacement); (ii) closing suffixes and the (mor)phonological changes they give rise to; (iii) closing suffixes and the types of bases to which they attach, as well as research on the relation between (iv) diminutivization and closing suffixation and (v) subtraction and closing suffixation. The analysis also is expected to reveal novel aspects of the role of prototypes, iconicity and transparency in morphology.