Appreciative suffixation in Catalan: lexical innovations and morphological consequences

Abstract

Abstract: The position of the appreciative derivation within morphology is exceptional, because, although the limited information that grammars and dictionaries reveal as for its formation and use, speakers freely use appreciative forms in familiar and informal contexts and often create new words without the restraints traditionally imposed by grammatical norms. As we will see, although the shape of these forms presents some variation, it complies with some well-defined constraints. Th is paper presents new data in this fi eld collected through traditional corpora and internet, with a two-fold aim. The first purpose is to thoroughly examine the morphological characteristics of the appreciative suffixation in Catalan, with special reference to the categories usually ignored in the literature (i.e., appreciative forms derived from categories other than nouns, adjectives and verbs). The second purpose has to do with the distributional restrictions that traditional words and new creations show with respect to the endings they allow, in order to identify the true nominal inflectional marks of Catalan.

Key words: appreciative derivation, neologisms, nominal inflection, inflectional marks, gender, Catalan.