earticle

영어

This paper surveys 6,490 words selected from WordNavigator.com to see what research issues can be found in the data. The survey shows that the actual data do not conform to the theoretical predictions. They are the absence of theoretically possible combinations such as *{-ish}{-ity} and *{-ate}{-ity}, the restricted distribution of {-ous} after {-ity} and the peculiarities of {-ness} in that it can be added not only to adjectives but also to other parts of speech as in such words as keyness and aboutness. These observations defy an easy explanation in the frameworks of Lexical Morphology. However, this paper shows that the affix theories introduced by Fabb(1988), Hay and Plag(2004), and others along with the adoption of the optimality theory approach can give proper explanations to these apparent problems and can present a consistent and comprehensive analysis of the issues.