Word-formation at the crossroads of productivity, creativity, and structural complexity

1 General

If one maps the modern history of research into word-formation, it is evident that productivity has been one of its central topics in all theoretical frameworks. This aspect of word-formation came to be foregrounded partly as a response to Chomsky’s (1970) treatment of derivational morphology as a field of linguistics fraught with irregularities and idiosyncrasies. Based on this assumption, Chomsky maintains that derivation – unlike syntax – cannot be accounted for by productive transformational rules. In a similar vein, Fabb (1984: 38) claims that “productive and regular word-formation processes are generally syntactic processes, while derivations whose output must be listed take place in the lexicon”. He emphasizes the lexicon’s status as a list – unlike productive rules of syntax. In other words, a criterial difference between syntax and morphology consists in the ‘productivity’ of syntax and the ‘unproductivity’ of morphology.

Aronoff’s (1976) relativized approach to productivity, including his proposal of productivity computation based on the proportion of actual to potential words, and a series of papers by Baayen and colleagues (starting with Baayen 1989) represented a major impetus for focusing on productivity in word-formation as a quantifiable concept in the sense of Corbin’s (1987) concept of profitability. Baayen’s probabilistic approach to productivity computation relies on the frequency-based notion of hapax legomena, and Hay’s (2001) relative frequency model takes into consideration the frequency of both affixed words and their bases.^[1]

Morphologists, however, realized that new complex words do not come into existence exclusively in a regular way by productive rules: there are numerous cases of ‘creative’ rule-violating ‘extragrammatical’ or ‘extravagant’ formations (e.g., Dressler 2005; Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi 1994; Eitelmann and Haumann 2022; Mattiello 2013, 2018; Munat 2007b). In this context, van Marle (1986) suggests that morphological productivity is a subset of morphological creativity.

Unlike purely linguistic approaches to productivity that emphasize products of word-formation (i.e., new complex words), Körtvélyessy et al. (2022) take the psychological concept of creativity as the point of departure and assume that each act of word-formation is a creative act, no matter whether a new word comes into existence by a productive word-formation rule or through a violation of the system of rules.

It is obvious that the only word-formation processes and rules that can be employed productively or less productively in the creative act of forming a new complex word are those available in a given language system out of the total number of theoretically possible, cross-linguistically identified word-formation means. The capacity of a particular word-formation system to make use of a variety of word-formation options is captured by the term ‘saturation value’. In other words, saturation value, which is a quantitative expression of the structural richness of a word-formation system, predetermines any considerations of productivity.

All in all, productivity, creativity, and saturation are three factors that precondition the formation of new complex words in a given language. This paper presents an account of an onomasiological approach to word-formation productivity (Section 2), an onomasiological account of creativity in word-formation (Section 3), and an account of the structural richness of a word-formation system (Section 4). Section 5 then integrates these three different factors into a unified theory and manifests that these factors should not be treated separately but in mutual interrelation. Section 6 presents conclusions.

2 Word-formation productivity

It is generally recognized that productivity is one of the fundamental features of language (e.g., Hockett 1960; Lyons 1981). It used to be primarily connected to syntax; as formulated by Hockett, “[o]ne of the most important design features is productivity: that is, the capacity to say things that have never been said or heard before and yet to be understood by other speakers of the language” (1960: 6). This idea was later taken over by Chomsky (1970), who emphasized the capacity of language users to generate an infinite number of sentences out of a finite number of morphemes. In his view, derivational processes are restricted in their productivity and are semantically irregular and idiosyncratic. Consequently, they cannot be accounted for by transformational rules. For this reason, he prefers a ‘lexicalist’ account of derivation in contrast to the transformational account of sentence generation.

The development in the years to come demonstrated that Chomsky was not right in this respect (see, for example, Anderson 1982; Di Sciullo and Williams 1987; Štekauer 1998) and that, paraphrasing his definition of productivity, word-formation rules are as regular and productive as syntactic rules because they enable language users to generate an infinite number of new complex words from a finite inventory of morphemes. This means that word-formation as a system is fully productive because it enables language users to generate a new word whenever such a need occurs.

Productivity has become one of the central topics of research into word-formation in various theoretical frameworks; it has been studied from synchronic as well as diachronic perspectives and with quantitative as well as qualitative methods. What characterizes most of these works is an almost exclusive attention to specific affixes/affixation rules (Aronoff 1976; Baayen 1989; Baayen and Lieber 1991; Bauer 2001; Fernández-Domínguez 2013; Halle 1973; Nagano 2023; Palmer 2015; Plag 2000; Pustylnikov and Schneider-Wiejowski 2009; Santana-Lario and Valera-Hernández 2017; Zimmer 1964, etc.). While such an affix-oriented – and therefore necessarily restricted – approach makes it possible to evaluate the respective productivity of competing affixes, it does not provide us with a comprehensive picture of the situation in word-formation competition as a whole.

In onomasiological theory (Körtvélyessy 2010; Štekauer 1998, 2005), productivity stands on two fundamental principles: the principle of competition and the principle of a cluster of types. The concept of competition is certainly not new. It has already been discussed on a general linguistic level as well as from the point of view of word-formation (see, for example, Arndt-Lappe 2014; Aronoff 2016; Lindsay 2012; Lindsay and Aronoff 2013; Huyghe and Varvara 2023; Rainer et al. 2019; van Marle 1986, etc.; and numerous papers in the edited volumes by MacWhinney et al. 2014; Santana-Lario and Valera-Hernández 2017). As emphasized by MacWhinney (2014: 386), “nothing in language makes sense except in the light of competition … because we use language as the basic glue for our social lives, these competing motivations are as diverse as the many facets of human life and thought”.

As indicated above, the problem with the majority of the former approaches to productivity in word-formation is that they are mostly restricted to specific instances of rivalry between affixes. This kind of competition, however, does not cover the whole range of competing means that can be used in a specific act of naming. Competition in word-formation namely means the struggle between all processes, rules, and strategies that can be used for the same purpose, i.e., for fulfilling the same cognitive-semantic function. Word-formation competition cannot thus be restricted to the possibilities of a single word-formation process, for example, suffixation.

A truly objective picture of word-formation competition can only be obtained if all these competing options are taken into consideration. Therefore, Štekauer (1998, 2005) introduced the notion of a cluster of types, all of which can satisfy the naming needs of a specific conceptual-semantic field of a language. Since the cluster of types guarantees the formation of a new linguistic sign whenever such a need arises, it is 100 % productive. Crucially, the proposed method of productivity computation is limited to direct outcomes of word-formation; it excludes the metaphorical/metonymical extension of meaning within polysemous lexical units. The model considers all actual complex words within a specific conceptual-semantic field, for example, the field of Agents, and calculates the proportion of these words produced by individual word-formation processes/rules relative to the total number of actual complex words in that conceptual-semantic field.

How does the idea of competition within a cluster of processes/types fit the onomasiological model of word-formation? As a cognitive model, it views productivity in terms of the triangle of relations, in particular, the relations between an object (better, a class of objects) of extra-linguistic reality to be captured by a new word; the naming needs of a speech community that are implemented by the coiner of a new word; and the means offered by the word-formation system of a language (Figure 1):

Figure 1:

Triangle of relations underlying the naming act.

The achievement of the naming needs of a speech community in relation to the object of extra-linguistic reality is captured by the onomasiological model. The conceptualization of an object to be named is represented by logical predicates. Selected logical predicates captured by semantic categories constitute the semantic naming basis in the form of an onomasiological structure. The Morpheme-to-Seme-Assignment principle is employed to assign selected morphemes to the semantic categories, thus constituting an onomatological structure, which subsequently undergoes the necessary phonological modification.

Figure 2 provides an example of forming a new word that denotes ‘a person catching birds with a fishing rod’ (Körtvélyessy et al. 2022):

Figure 2:

Onomasiological representation of a specific naming act.

In terms of productivity, the central part of the model is represented by two ‘naming’ levels: onomasiological and onomatological. These make it possible to evaluate productivity from various perspectives (Körtvélyessy 2010; Štekauer 2005):

1. productivity at the level of onomasiological types

2. productivity at the level of word-formation types

3. productivity at the level of morphological types

4. productivity at the level of word-formation rules

At each of these levels, the productivity of a particular type/rule is calculated as its percent proportion in the formation of all complex words belonging to the specific conceptual-semantic field based on which the productivity is calculated. Any cluster of types/rules as a whole represents 100 % productivity.^[2]

2.1 Productivity at the level of onomasiological types

All onomasiological types (OTs) available to word-formation in a language represent a cluster of onomasiological types. An onomasiological type results from the interaction between the usually ternary onomasiological structure and its complete or partial representation at the onomatological level by means of the Morpheme-to-Seme-Assignment principle. For illustration, in the onomasiological type in (1), all three semantic constituents of the onomasiological structure are represented by a morpheme:

(1)

	Determining constituent	Determined constituent	Onomasiological
	of the mark	of the mark	base
	Object	Action	Agent
Example:	bird	catch	er

In the onomasiological type in (2), the determined constituent of the mark is not represented:

(2)

	Determining constituent	Determined constituent	Onomasiological
	of the mark	of the mark	base
	Object	Action	Agent
Example:	bird	Ø	man

In example (3), a single morpheme represents both the base and the determined constituent of the mark.

(3)

While Štekauer (1998) identifies five basic types, Körtvélyessy et al. (2022) are more detailed and recognize nine onomasiological types.

2.4 Productivity at the level of word-formation rules

Word-formation rules (WFRs) result from the interrelation of the concrete onomasiological structure and the concrete onomatological structure; in other words, from the combination of the word-formation type and the morphological type – obviously, bound to one particular semantic category. Thus, the semantic category Agent can be exemplified, among others, by the following word-formation rules:

(6)

a.

Action – Agent
Verb	-er	catcher

b.

Instrument – Agent
Noun	(s)	man	birdsman

c.

Object – Action – Agent
Noun	Verb	-er	bird-catcher

These four different levels of productivity evaluation are represented in Figure 3.

Figure 3:

Various levels of productivity evaluation.

Another perspective on word-formation productivity offered by the onomasiological model concerns the productivity of word-formation strategies, that is, how coiners of complex words approach the naming act from the point of view of competition between semantic transparency and economy of expression. Körtvélyessy et al. (2015, 2022) outlined fundamental principles of competition between these two tendencies (omnipresent in natural languages) in word-formation and supported them by large-scale experiments. The basic idea is that the competition between semantically transparent and formally economical onomasiological types reflects opposing needs of listeners and speakers. While the former logically prefer semantically more transparent complex words, the latter prefer shorter words that enable them to say more within a given period of time. Let us recall the terms used by von der Gabelentz (1901: 181–185): Bequemlichkeit (convenience), preferred by the speaker, and Deutlichkeit (clarity), preferred by the listener.

Körtvélyessy et al. (2022) distinguish various degrees of semantic transparency and economy of expression among the nine onomasiological types. The most transparent is the onomasiological type represented in (1), and the least transparent is the type represented in (7):

(7)

	Determining constituent of the mark	Determined constituent of the mark	Onomasiological base
	morpheme	Ø	Ø
Example	bird	-	-

This only constituent of the ternary onomasiological structure that is expressed at the onomatological level is the determining constituent of the mark. If it results from the act of naming, which aims to denote an Agent catching birds, and the resulting new word is bird, which is restricted to the representation of the Object of the Agent’s Action, this complex word is least semantically transparent because the relation between the expressed Object of Action, on the one hand, and the Action itself and the Agent performing the Action, on the other, is obscure and can hardly be predicted.

This onomasiological type is, at the same time, most economical together with the onomasiological type represented in (3) because only one constituent of the ternary onomasiological structure is represented by a morpheme. The least economical is the most transparent type because all three constituents are expressed by a morpheme. The different shades representing different degrees of semantic transparency and economy of expression in Figure 4 suggest that these two variables are indirectly proportional.

Figure 4:

Semantic transparency versus economy of expression.

The relevance of this aspect of word-formation for the examination of productivity consists in the fact that the two competing naming strategies are the essence of word-formation productivity.

What is the advantage of the proposed approach to productivity that lays emphasis on a comprehensive view of competition?

1. The account based on the onomasiological model enables us to evaluate productivity from different points of view and different levels of generalization/specificity.

2. The introduction of the notion of a cluster enables us to evaluate productivity on the basis of competition between individual cluster types and to identify their respective shares of the formation of complex words unambiguously.

3. It takes the onomasiological perspective as a basis, which makes it possible to bind the computation of productivity to one particular conceptual-semantic category.

Section 3 demonstrates that productivity should not be viewed as an isolated feature of word-formation, detached from the language users who coin new complex words. Instead, it is shaped by the creative potential and creative performance of language users, inherently present in every naming act. Consequently, the productivity of a word-formation process or rule should be understood as the cumulative result of all creative naming acts employing that particular process or rule to form new complex words within a specific conceptual-semantic category.

3 Creativity

A discussion of the relation between productivity and creativity can hardly be started without reference to Chomsky. He distinguishes between true human creativity and creativity in linguistic behavior (Chomsky 1966: 27), or “rule-changing creativity” and “rule-governed creativity” (Chomsky 1964: 22). Chomsky (1974: 152) identifies linguistic creativity (also labeled as ‘normal’ or ‘Cartesian’ creativity in reference to Descartes’ emphasis on logical analysis and mathematical methods) with productivity, i.e., the ability of language speakers to generate and interpret an infinite number of sentences based on regular transformational rules.^[3] This approach faced extensive criticism, mainly due to its reduction of creativity to a mechanical linguistic activity (e.g., Bergs 1982, 2019; Sampson 2016) and restriction of linguistic creativity to a single level – syntax (e.g., Benczes 2005, 2006; Cook 2000; Kecskes 2016, 2019; Maybin and Swan 2007). According to Lamb (1999: 197), the formation of new sentences is not more than “just exercising existing structures”. In addition, Lamb maintains that “[i]t is essentially just taking a sequence of categories and for each category selecting one of its members. This type of operation is not much different from that involved in any sequential activity in which a choice is available at each point in the sequence” (1999: 205). As pointed out by Hoffmann (2018: 262), “[m]ost of the time, when linguists speak about the ‘creative potential of language’, they only mean original use of the established possibilities of the language rather than going beyond these possibilities”, but “verbal creativity cannot entirely be reduced to productivity” Hoffmann (2022: 267). This requirement is addressed in numerous works discussing creativity both at a general linguistic level as well as at a more specific word-formation or lexical level.

In this line of research, creativity has never been viewed as a homogeneous phenomenon. For example, Uhrig (2018) distinguishes four levels of creativity: the least creative are constructions formed from an existing material based on well-established patterns. The next level refers to cases in which the existing material is combined on the basis of an established pattern in an unconventional way, such as the verb misunderestimate. The third level concerns constructions from existing material without being based on an established pattern or constructions which, within an established pattern, combine a non-established lexical material. The highest creativity level means total aberration from the existing patterns and established lexical material and is represented by instances of dadaism, experimental poetry, etc.

Sampson (2016), focusing on syntax, distinguishes between F(ixed)-creativity and E(nlarging/extending) types of creativity, with the Chomskian position falling within F-creativity. In Leech’s words (1969: 24), this type of creativity concerns “original use of the established possibilities of the language”. This is in contrast to E-creativity which is based on breaking the rules; constructions that arise through E-creativity are innovative and unpredictable.^[4]

The distinction of these two types of creativity raises important questions addressed by Bergs (2018: 279), such as: Is the relation between the two types of creativity disjunctive or scalar? If the latter, does scalarity apply to both types, or is it merely a feature of F-creativity? Can natural languages produce instances of E-creativity?

Bergs (2018) argues that there is a cline between F-creativity and E-creativity. In particular, he identifies three mechanisms of creative innovations: (i) snowcloning (filling an established formal template with a new material); (ii) mismatch/coercion (a syntagmatic combination of actually incompatible elements); and (iii) aberration defined as an “unpredictable creation of linguistic forms, which do not fit into any pre-existing patterns” (Bergs 2018: 286). Two examples of aberration are illustrated in (8):

The aberration in (8a) consists in the fact that because is complemented by a noun phrase instead of an expected prepositional phrase or a clause. Example (8b), taken from James Joyce’s Finegan’s Wake, illustrates aberration with the description of the fall as well as the totally unpredictable coinages wallstrait, oldparr, and retaled.

Bergs’ main concern is whether creative innovations truly break the rules of the system or merely stretch their boundaries. To answer this question, let us consider a potential case of aberration in word-formation. The -en-suffixation of adjectives resulting in causative verbs. The rule is that the suffix -en can only be attached to monosyllabic adjectives ending in an obstruent. If a language user ‘creatively’ attaches the -en suffix to a polysyllabic adjective, e.g., beautiful, or to an adjective ending in a vowel, e.g. blue, to produce the verbs beautifulen and bluen, they evidently break the rule, and perhaps establish a condition for a new rule. This example of aberration evidently illustrates creativity; an aberration in which the coiner manifests originality (because the coinage is unique), flexibility (by qualitatively changing the existing rule), and elaboration (by changing the details of the existing rule).

Nevertheless, while in Bergs’ (2018) view, “aberration can provide examples of E-creativity as they can potentially break the rules of a given language” (2018: 290), this question is answered differently in Bergs and Kompa (2020) who assume that “[a]ll use of natural human language ultimately is F-creative” (2020: 18) because true E-creativity would have to break the rules of the system, it would have to step outside the system, outside any form of conventionality (2020: 2, 18). This is not, in their view, a possible case of linguistic creativity.

This assumption seems to be problematic and appears to contradict Sampson’s (2016: 17) comprehension of E-creativity as “activities which characteristically produce examples that enlarge our understanding of the range of possible products of the activity”. If, by aberration, a language user deviates from / violates / breaks the rule of the -en suffixation (as in the above-mentioned example), this act evidently enlarges the range of language products in a highly creative way and, therefore, should be viewed as E-creative.

Bergs and Kompa’s position concerning E-creativity as ‘stepping outside the system’ begs the question of what is actually meant by the notion of ‘system’ in general and ‘language system’ in particular, and what is meant by its violation. From a general point of view, a system is defined as “a set of elements and [the] set of relations existing between these elements” (Klaus 1969: 634). A similar formulation is provided by von Bertalanffy (1968), Banathy (1996–1997), and others. When applied to a natural language, such a comprehension of the notion of the system means a system of linguistic units and rules by means of which the units are related. If the units are phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences, the relevant rules determine their combination and the construction of larger units from smaller ones. In this context, the idea of ‘stepping outside the system’ by breaking a rule of the language appears to be highly problematic, because one can hardly imagine a situation in which a natural language abandons the use of any of these units among which there are systematic relationships.

The evolution of human languages provides ample evidence of the emergence of both new units (e.g., new unpredictable complex words) as well as the emergence of new rules. This evolution thus, in many cases, breaks the existing rules without violating the system, without ‘stepping outside the system’. Consequently, E-creativity should not be bound to ‘stepping outside the system’; instead, it should be connected with creatively breaking the rules. In the field of word-formation, this concerns the formation of new complex words outside the established frameworks. When English speakers started to analyze the word hamburger as ham + burger, this brought into existence a new suffix and a new rule of suffixation. The first coinage produced in this way was outside any established framework, and was therefore an act of E-creativity. However, when established, this rule became the source of numerous F-creative coinages. This example illustrates the interconnection between E- and F-creativity: a rule that is E-creative at one point may later become F-creative.

This is, in fact, the prevailing understanding of creativity by morphologists, who relate creativity to intentional and conscious formations in contrast to ‘automatic’, unintentional formations based on productive rules that can produce an unlimited number of new words (e.g., Lieber 2010; Schultink 1961). It usually postulates deviation from the rules of language, i.e., the opposite to what is claimed by Chomsky or Berg and Kompa (from their different perspectives). While this might indicate the acceptance of E-creativity, Bauer (1983: 63) maintains that creativity is a “native speaker’s ability to extend (not violate!) the language system in a motivated, but unpredictable (non-rule-governed way)”. Similarly, in his (2001) work, Bauer maintains that

[r]ule-governed innovation may change the experience of the individual speaker, may have an effect on the norm, but has no effect on the language system; rule-changing innovation changes the system. Rule-governed innovation is always based on an already existing pattern which is found across at least two items; rule-changing innovation is based on a pattern which is perceived for the first time at the point of innovation, and which may exist in only one model. (2001: 93)

Therefore, rule-changing innovation is always creativity. This idea is also reflected in Bauer (2005) where he uses the term ‘creativity’ to refer to “the less automatic creations, those which are clearly deliberate and independent of the system. These may be the words of poetry and headline-ese …, or they may be cases which have the power to begin new paradigms” (2005: 329). Arnaud (2003: 97) maintains that the term creativity “frequently occurs in contexts where it is opposed to productivity, and this opposition is more or less identical with that between word-creation and word-formation, non-governed and rule-governed lexicogenesis, and also extra-grammatical and grammatical morphology”. Cetnarowska (2020: 315) connects creativity with “ephemeral and ad-hoc formations, referred to as occasionalisms or nonce-formations”. Borgwaldt and Benczes (2011: 238) identify creative formations with “less conventional metonymical or metaphorical relationships and analogy to already existing words”. Similar views are common, and numerous examples can be found in the works of, for example, Arndt-Lappe et al. (2018), Dressler (2005), Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi (1994), Eitelmann and Haumann (2022), Mattiello (2013, 2018), Munat (2007a), and Ronneberger-Sibold (2008).

If the idea of the deviation of products of word-formation from the existing rules can be considered as a mainstream position in accounting for word-formation creativity, then the onomasiological approach is completely different. The fundamental difference concerns the object of creativity exploration. While the above-mentioned works dealing with word-formation creativity within the traditional framework, as well as those considering it within the broader scope of construction grammar, focus on the product of word-formation, the onomasiological theory presented here concentrates on the creative process, the naming act that results in a new complex word. Moreover, while the key to creativity in the above-mentioned works is either unconventional use of the existing lexical material within an established pattern or the breaking of system rules, the onomasiological approach to creativity encompasses all acts of word-formation – both regular and irregular, predictable and unpredictable.

As a point of departure, it takes Carter’s idea that “creativity is not the exclusive preserve of the individual genius” (2015: 11). Instead, “linguistic creativity is not simply a property of exceptional people, but an exceptional property of all people” (Carter 2015: 13). The psychological concept of creativity that lays emphasis on “the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.” (Zhu et al. 2009: 87). For our object of research it means that each language user has certain creative potential that can be manifested in creative performance in coining new complex words. If the fundamental principles of creativity include novelty, originality, difference, usefulness, appropriateness, and effectiveness (Abraham 2019; Kim et al. 2010; Simonton 2012; Sternberg and Kaufman 2010; van Dijk et al. 2018), the same characteristics can also be identified for all new coinages: each new word is different from the existing ones, and as such, it is an original linguistic unit. It is an appropriate, useful, and effective sign standing for a class of objects of extra-linguistic reality because it serves human communication.

The creative potential of each language speaker can be advantageously ‘measured’ by, for example, the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT; Torrance 1974), which focuses on divergent thinking as a specific mode of thinking characterized as a “measure of ideation that fuels creative thinking” (Runco and Acar 2019: 244) and on the consequent creative performance. Importantly, divergent thinking ability is necessary for situations in which more than one correct answer exists (Runco and Acar 2012, 2019). This kind of situation is characteristic of the act of naming because the creative word-formation potential of language speakers consists precisely in “the ability to generate a large number of different novel constructs in a situation, all of which would be appropriate” (Hoffmann 2018: 4). Divergent thinking thus refers to the creative potential of each individual language speaker which is manifested in a specific creative performance in forming a new word.

The TTCT measures four basic scores to evaluate creative potential – originality, fluency, flexibility, and elaboration – and two additional subscores: creative strength and the composite score. These scores reflect the observation that creativity cannot be bound to a single criterion. On the contrary, it is manifested in a range of creative characteristics of a new word coiner. Certainly other methods of research into creativity are also available. For example, there are the ten broad categories of creativity assessment proposed by Hocevar (1981), an extensive integrative heuristic in the form of a three-dimensional conceptual model by Batey (2012), and the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) proposed by Plucker et al. (2019), among others. Numerous methods examine the relationship between creativity and intelligence (for a review see, e.g., Silvia 2015; Sternberg et al. 2019), others test language users for personality traits and intelligence (Feist 2019; Jauk 2019). Let us mention, for example, the Big-Five model of personality that examines the role of open-mindedness (Costa and McCrae 1992; Feher and Vernon 2021; John and Srivastava 1999; McCrae and John 1992).^[5]

The creative nature of word-formation per se is captured by the onomasiological model represented in Figure 2. As explained by Körtvélyessy et al. (2022: 49–50), this model represents the creative nature of the naming act in every step, i.e.,

1. in the conceptualization of the class of objects of extra-linguistic reality for which there is no corresponding sign in a language’s vocabulary;

2. in representing the concept with an appropriate combination of semantic categories as the semiotic basis at the onomasiological level; and

3. in the appropriate representation of the individual semantic categories of the onomasiological structure by selecting relevant morphemes.

Each of these steps in the naming act offers numerous options. The selection of one of them is in no way a mechanical process; it is a creative act affected by a coiner’s general knowledge and experiences, linguistic knowledge and experiences, cognitive abilities, worldview, beliefs, sociolinguistic factors (age, gender, occupation, education, etc.), specific circumstances of the naming act, fashionable trends in word-formation, and, obviously, the productivity of the individual word-formation processes/rules regarding the specific conceptual-semantic field. Kandler et al. (2016: 232) maintain that cognitive flexibility, fantasy, open-mindedness, and having broad interests in several issues (e.g., science, arts, and aesthetics) are more likely to produce creative constructs. The result – a new, original, appropriate, useful, and effective complex word – significantly depends on the creative potential of the coiner and on the extent and way this creative potential is manifested in the coiner’s creative performance. If Glăveanu’s 5A framework of creativity (2013) identifies five elements that interact during any creative act, i.e., the persons creating something (actors); the people with whom the actors interact or for whom they innovate (audiences); the products/output of the creative act (artifacts); the processes that lead to the creative product (actions); and the material objects and environment that are part of the creative process (affordances), then the onomasiological model of creativity in word-formation perfectly reflects these 5As. In particular, the person creating something is the coiner of a new word; the people for whom they innovate are all language users (speech community); the products/output of the creative act are new coinages, new complex words; the process that leads to the creative product is the act of naming represented by the onomasiological model of word-formation (Figure 2); and the environment as a part of the creative process is the naming needs of a particular part of language community. Obviously, this must be completed with the word-formation system of a language that makes it possible to produce new words in a creative way. All this is, in fact, incorporated in the triangle of creative word-formation (Figure 1).

The consequences for the productivity of individual cluster types is evident. The productivity of each type/rule depends on the creative decisions of the coiner taken at each level of the onomasiological model. From this, it follows that the account of productivity should not be restricted merely to the system of a language, to a purely linguistic account. An objective evaluation of productivity should also take into consideration the subjective phenomenon of creativity, more precisely, the creative potential and the creative performance of the coiners.

To sum it up, the onomasiological approach introduces a cognitively founded perspective of research into word-formation creativity. First, all the previous approaches to this issue, including those built on the usage-based construction grammar, concentrate on the product of (not only) word-formation.

The presented onomasiological approach concentrates on the process, i.e., on the act of forming a new word. As such, it assumes that each step in the naming act and each naming act as a whole are creative. The degree of creativity varies from person to person and can be evaluated by, inter alia, the TTCT scores.

Second, while within the construction grammar framework the product of the naming act is examined in terms of its use in various contexts and the circumstances of usage of a new construction (including, for example, processing effort and frequency), my focus is restricted to semiosis, i.e., the level of language. It does not account for the subsequent fate of newly coined signs or the effects of the individual usage-events.^[6]

Third, as noted by Hoffmann (2018: 267), constructions are “mental constraints on well-formed structures”. This is crucial for individual approaches to F- and E-creativity in terms of identifying their respective nature in natural languages and determining the boundary between them. In contrast, the onomasiological model imposes no constraints on creativity; it assumes that each product of the naming act results from a creative process, regardless of whether it is viewed as F- or E-creative.

Given their different objectives and foci it may be stated that the onomasiological theory of word-formation and the usage-based constructional theory are complementary in their accounts.

4 Structural richness – saturation value

Saturation value is a quantitative parameter that makes it possible to ‘measure’ the structural richness of a word-formation system at the level of individual languages, language genera, language families, and linguistic areas, and can therefore be advantageously used for typological research. That its application is not restricted to word-formation has been demonstrated by Körtvélyessy (2015), who introduced the parameter of saturation value for a (quantitative) typological analysis of evaluative morphology, and by Körtvélyessy et al. (2020), who applied this parameter to the examination of derivational networks. Nevertheless, it can also be used to describe the structural richness of individual languages.

Structural richness indicates the degree to which a particular word-formation system makes use of all the available word-formation options, which means word-formation processes and rule types for the formation of new complex words without regard to the degree of their productivity. The method of computing the saturation value is based on the identification of all word-formation processes and, within them, all word-formation rule types. The saturation value is determined as a proportion between the total number of potential rule types for a given process and their actual utilization in a particular language (9):

where AC stands for the number of actually realized features of a given word-formation process and ∑ is the sum total of features available for a given word-formation process. Körtvélyessy et al. (2018) identified 100 word-formation features that represent 12 word-formation processes, including 17 features for suffixation, 17 for prefixation, 4 for prefixal-suffixal derivation, 4 for circumfixation, 1 for postfixation, 4 for root-and-pattern derivation, 4 for infixation, 27 for compounding, 5 for reduplication, 1 for blending, 8 for conversion, and 3 for internal modification. In addition to rule types, there are also a few other crucial characteristics, like the position of the head, recursiveness, etc.

The parameter of saturation value not only identifies processes and rule types that are synchronically used for the formation of new complex words in individual languages but also makes it possible to compare the distribution of these processes and rule types in individual languages, language genera, language families, and linguistic areas. In this respect, it enables us to identify and compare preferred word-formation strategies in selected languages.

It should be stressed that this parameter does not pursue the calculation of the productivity rate; in this approach, a word-formation process or rule is productive if it is synchronically used for the formation of new complex words, irrespective of its productivity rate, i.e., irrespective of the number of new complex words produced by the process or rule type. In other words, productivity is related to the synchronic capacity of a word-formation process/rule type to produce institutionalized words in Bauer’s sense (1983). The evidence for the synchronic productivity of a word-formation process and/or rule type comes from the occurrence of its products, i.e., complex words, in corpora and/or dictionaries.

The saturation value of word-formation systems as a whole may manifest very different internal structural richness: while some languages may heavily rely on, for example, (specific types of) suffixation, with a minimum use of other word-formation processes, other languages may make use of a much wider range of word-formation processes. Or, while some languages may make use of a number of different compounding types, others rely on their limited number.

A nice illustration of this aspect of structural richness follows from a comparison of languages whose structural richness is similar, for example, German (saturation value of 49 %) and Abkhaz (50 %). German features fairly high saturation values in four word-formation processes: compounding (77.78 %), suffixation (70.59 %), prefixation (41.18 %), and conversion (50.00 %). The role of the other word-formation processes is very low or zero. The situation in Abkhaz is different. Its word-formation system is dominated by suffixation (saturation value of 82.35 %), followed by compounding (66.67 %). The saturation value of conversion is 41.67 %, and that of prefixation is as low as 23.53 %. On the other hand, the saturation value of Abkhaz reduplication is 100 %. This example shows that two languages with roughly identical total structural richness may differ substantially in the internal structure of their respective word-formation systems. This means that these languages employ different word-formation processes and rule types. This is necessarily reflected in the productivity of the individual cluster types.

5 Relations between productivity, creativity, and structural richness

This paper has discussed three factors that co-shape the form of a new complex word, as represented in Figure 5. The point of departure should be sought in the availability of word-formation rule and types. The use of the term ‘availability’ in this paper corresponds with Corbin’s (1987) definition of ‘availability’, that is, it shows whether a particular process or rule exists in a given language and thus can be used to produce new complex words. As stressed by Bauer (2001: 205) and Fernández-Domínguez (2013: 423), availability is, therefore, a qualitative notion, an either/or question, meaning a process or rule is either available or unavailable, and is therefore different from profitability which is a quantitative concept. However, unlike availability, which is bound to individual word-formation processes/rules, the concept of structural richness refers to a word-formation system as a whole.

Figure 5:

Interrelation of productivity, creativity, and structural richness.

The term productivity is used here precisely in the sense of Corbin’s (1987) quantifiable term ‘profitability’. In particular, it identifies the degree of utilization of a particular type/rule – compared to all the other types/rules that can be used for coining new complex words falling within a particular conceptual-semantic category.

Since structural richness concerns the word-formation system, and as such is the ‘property’ of the whole speech community, creativity concerns individual language users. The emphasis on the interconnection between structural richness and productivity in this article aims to overcome the weaknesses of some productivity computation methods which disregard the qualitative aspect of this phenomenon.

It might be expected that the lower the number of available word-formation types/rules in the word-formation system of a language, the higher the demands imposed on the available ones, which may thus become highly productive. On the other hand, a higher number of types/rules opens up much wider opportunities for a creative approach to the naming act. For example, the absence of prefixation and reduplication, along with a low saturation value of conversion (8.33 %) and compounding (33.33 %) in Hungarian, leads to a high saturation value of the suffixation process (70.59 %) in general, which establishes favorable conditions for high productivity of the individual types of suffixation. On the other hand, Basque features a very high saturation value for suffixation (88 %) as well as high values for compounding, conversion, and reduplication (67 %), thus establishing a wider range of options for individual naming acts. For example, out of 13 conversion types considered when evaluating the parameter of structural richness, Basque makes use of eight compared to, for example, only two types in Icelandic.

To take a different example, the availability of the suffixation from Verb to Noun is an important factor that potentially contributes to the formation of Agent and Instrument nouns, which, in turn, contributes to high productivity of Onomasiological Type 2.^[7] The absence of this option may be compensated by, for example, Noun + Noun compounding, which thus increases the productivity of Onomasiological Type 3.^[8] This is further strengthened by the absence of Verb > Noun conversion (as is the case in, for example, the Caucasian language Khinalug).

By implication, structural richness influences the word-formation strategy of a coiner not only by offering the range of means for a creative act of naming, but also by predetermining the choice of a more transparent or more economical complex word. This is projected onto the productivity of a specific onomasiological type/rule. The influence of the structural richness on the creative act of naming and the comprehension of productivity as the sum total of all creative acts of naming by language users within the specified conceptual-semantic category is represented in Figure 5.

6 Conclusions

The title of this paper refers to word-formation as a crossroads at which three crucial factors meet and influence each other in every single act of naming. While productivity has been the focus of modern word-formation theories from the inception of systematic research into this field, the other two factors have been neglected for a long time or treated separately. How, then, are they interrelated?

I consider the structural richness of the word-formation system as a starting point because it defines the extent of the available word-formation processes and rules in a given language. A high saturation value provides considerable space for creativity in every naming act, while a low value constrains the space for creative decision-making. However, this constraint increases the likelihood that the smaller set of word-formation processes/rules will achieve a high productivity rate. Importantly, as noted earlier, there is no direct proportionality between structural richness and productivity.

Creativity, as a subjective and psycholinguistic aspect of word-formation, is inherent in every act of naming. It co-determines the word-formation strategy and the use of specific onomasiological types, word-formation types, morphological types, and word-formation rules. In this way, it directly affects their respective productivity rates.

Focusing on the processual aspect of word-formation – the naming act performed by an individual language user – and recognizing that the majority of new coinages arise from productive word-formation processes and rules, productivity of a word-formation process/rule can be defined as the cumulative result of all individual creative naming acts employing a particular process/rule within a specific conceptual-semantic category. This approach underscores that productivity rates depend on individual language speakers whose decisions during creative naming acts reflect competition among all available means of word-formation. This is reflected in the notion of a cluster of types/rules that can be employed to form new words within a particular conceptual-semantic category. In sum, this competition, constrained by the structural richness of the word-formation system and resolved through the creative performance of language users in each naming act, directly impacts the productivity of these processes and rules, thereby influencing the system’s evolution.

In addition, as assumed by Schmid (2015: 9), “[e]ach individual usage event has the potential to affect the cognitive systems of those participating in it and the social systems they are part of” and, in this way, contribute indirectly to the productivity of a given type/rule. It goes without saying that this dynamic also influences individual language users and their creative approach to word-formation.

The proposed onomasiological account does not run against the traditional product-oriented approach to productivity. Instead, the two approaches are complementary in providing a comprehensive picture of word-formation in a particular language.