“Affixoidhungrig? Skitbra!” Comparing affixoids in German and Swedish
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Kristin Ascoop
Abstract
In this article we offer a comparative survey of word-forming elements in German and Swedish known as “affixoids”. A highly controversial topic in German linguistics, the notion of affixoid does remain useful given the position of the elements in question midway along the cline between compounding and derivation – so useful in fact that we feel it ought to be adopted into Swedish linguistics, where it is as yet unknown. After an overview of the main positions and issues in the debate over affixoids in German, we survey the corresponding elements in Swedish, point out some convergent and divergent tendencies in the two languages, and then compare a few selected affixoids in more detail. We end with some wider issues, focusing mainly on the advantages of the crosslinguistic perspective and on the idea that the relationship of affixoids with their respective “parent morphs” can be described in terms of grammaticalization.
© Akademie Verlag
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Gender assignment and the structure of the lexicon
- “Affixoidhungrig? Skitbra!” Comparing affixoids in German and Swedish
- ”Some like it hot”: On the semantics of temperature adjectives in Russian and Swedish
- On the borderline between lexicon and grammar: confixes in Modern Greek and Italian
- Source-Goal (in)difference and the typology of motion events in the clause
- Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Classifiers. A typology of noun categorization devices, (Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000
- Geert Booij, The grammar of words. An introduction to linguistic morphology (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005
- Reinhold Kontzi, Sprachkontakt im Mittelmeer. Gesammelte Aufsätze zum Maltesischen, Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2005
- Silvia Kouwenberg (ed.), Twice as meaningful. Reduplication in Pidgins, Creoles and other contact languages (Westminster Creolistics Series 8), London: Battlebridge, 2003
- Roderick Bovingdon, The Maltese language of Australia: Maltraljan. A lexical compilation with linguistic notations and a social, political and historical background (Languages of the World 16), München/Newcastle: LINCOM Europa, 2001
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Gender assignment and the structure of the lexicon
- “Affixoidhungrig? Skitbra!” Comparing affixoids in German and Swedish
- ”Some like it hot”: On the semantics of temperature adjectives in Russian and Swedish
- On the borderline between lexicon and grammar: confixes in Modern Greek and Italian
- Source-Goal (in)difference and the typology of motion events in the clause
- Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Classifiers. A typology of noun categorization devices, (Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000
- Geert Booij, The grammar of words. An introduction to linguistic morphology (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005
- Reinhold Kontzi, Sprachkontakt im Mittelmeer. Gesammelte Aufsätze zum Maltesischen, Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2005
- Silvia Kouwenberg (ed.), Twice as meaningful. Reduplication in Pidgins, Creoles and other contact languages (Westminster Creolistics Series 8), London: Battlebridge, 2003
- Roderick Bovingdon, The Maltese language of Australia: Maltraljan. A lexical compilation with linguistic notations and a social, political and historical background (Languages of the World 16), München/Newcastle: LINCOM Europa, 2001
