The Semantics of Derivational Morphology

This book presents a synchronic and diachronic

investigation of two derivational English affixes. The

suffixes -age and -ery are analysed on the basis of

dictionary and corpus data and an adapted semantic

map method is introduced as a new way of accounting

for the semantic structure of derivatives. This

study shows that the semantic structure of morphological

categories can change signi ficantly over time,

and that semantic maps can represent this change in

a straightforward manner. The semantic maps visualise

the relations and interdependencies of the readings

expressed by derivatives, which leads to a new

understanding of the semantic complexity of these

categories.