What’s extravagant about be-sandal-ed feet ?
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Luise Kempf
Abstract
Extravagance can be conceived of as a (more or less) deliberate deviation from established norms that evokes surprise or attention. In this paper, we present an empirical case study of a rare but quite remarkable morphological pattern, namely German pseudo-participles – forms that look like past participles but lack a verbal counterpart, e.g., be-brill-t ‘be-glassed’ (derived from the noun Brille ‘glasses’).
In our study, we investigate the extravagance of the pattern using data from the webcorpus DECOW16A. We combine a detailed qualitative analysis of singleton coinages with various explorative quantitative approaches, taking into account the complexity of the formations and their anchoring in the context. In addition, we examine metalinguistic indicators of extravagance such as double quotes and meta-comments. We argue that German pseudo-participles are a prime example of an “extravagant” phenomenon at the interface of morphology and pragmatics, and as such can be instructive for our understanding of extravagant morphology on a general level, especially with regard to the role of surprise in generating extravagant effects.
Abstract
Extravagance can be conceived of as a (more or less) deliberate deviation from established norms that evokes surprise or attention. In this paper, we present an empirical case study of a rare but quite remarkable morphological pattern, namely German pseudo-participles – forms that look like past participles but lack a verbal counterpart, e.g., be-brill-t ‘be-glassed’ (derived from the noun Brille ‘glasses’).
In our study, we investigate the extravagance of the pattern using data from the webcorpus DECOW16A. We combine a detailed qualitative analysis of singleton coinages with various explorative quantitative approaches, taking into account the complexity of the formations and their anchoring in the context. In addition, we examine metalinguistic indicators of extravagance such as double quotes and meta-comments. We argue that German pseudo-participles are a prime example of an “extravagant” phenomenon at the interface of morphology and pragmatics, and as such can be instructive for our understanding of extravagant morphology on a general level, especially with regard to the role of surprise in generating extravagant effects.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Extravagance in morphology 1
- What’s extravagant about be-sandal-ed feet ? 19
- Extravagance, productivity and the development of - ingly adverbs 51
- Diggers-out, leaf clearer-uppers and stayer-onner-for-nowers 73
- The extravagant dutch suffix -ke and its meandering through the interfaces 101
- Linguistic extravagance in compounds and idioms – an analysis of morphological marking 131
- Extravagant expressions denoting quite normal entities 155
- do not repeat 181
- They’re proing it up hardcore 207
- Wild words 233
- Index 255
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Extravagance in morphology 1
- What’s extravagant about be-sandal-ed feet ? 19
- Extravagance, productivity and the development of - ingly adverbs 51
- Diggers-out, leaf clearer-uppers and stayer-onner-for-nowers 73
- The extravagant dutch suffix -ke and its meandering through the interfaces 101
- Linguistic extravagance in compounds and idioms – an analysis of morphological marking 131
- Extravagant expressions denoting quite normal entities 155
- do not repeat 181
- They’re proing it up hardcore 207
- Wild words 233
- Index 255
