next up previous contents
Next: The meanings of affixes Up: 10 Derivation: meanings Previous: Preliminary notes on `Derivation:

The compositionality of derivational meaning

Derivations are at least partially compositional, whereby Level 1 derivations tend to be less semantically transparent than Level 2 derivations.

  1. Variables: A, B, C, where A ranges over stems (simple or complex), B ranges over affixes, C ranges over complex stems.
  2. Constants: a, b, c, where a, b, c are signs.
  3. Model variables: P, O, S are models in terms of which signs are interpreted phonologically, orthographically, semanticslly, where P is a phonetic structure, O is an orthographic structure, and S is a semantic structure.
  4. Composition and interpretation:
    1. Grammatical composition, tex2html_wrap_inline1483
    2. Phonological interpretation, tex2html_wrap_inline1529
    3. Orthographic interpretation, tex2html_wrap_inline1531
    4. Semantic interpretation, tex2html_wrap_inline1489
  5. All three kinds of interpretation are compositional, i.e. some property of the whole complex unit is a function of the same property holding for the parts of the complex unit:
    1. tex2html_wrap_inline1491
    2. tex2html_wrap_inline1493
    3. tex2html_wrap_inline1495


Dafydd Gibbon
Wed Jun 19 23:14:45 MET DST 1996