Denominal Adjective Suffixoid: Constructionalization And Constructional Change

The study of language change is a crucial aspect in linguistic research. Morphological change is an integral part of the overall change of English. The process of morphological change is not an aggregation of discrete stages, but, rather, a gradual process, which gives rise to language interfaces. Affixoids, as an interface, are compound constituents with an affix-like behavior. The study of denominal adjective suffixoids is intended to probe into factors underlying the rising of denominal adjective suffixoids as an interface in morphological system against the backdrop of language change.The present endeavour, in light of the theory of Construction Grammar, attempts to first describe the rising of denominal adjective suffixoids with the aid of collected data from the corpora and, then, to explain the rising of denominal adjective suffixoid from a constructional view of change - constructionalization and constructional change. The large scale of diachronic information of Corpus of Historical America is useful for a quantitative survey while, at the same time, essential concepts from Construction Grammar including construction, construction schema, constructionalization, coercion etc. are applied as the theoretical basis for a qualitative analysis.The model of the rising denominal adjective suffixoids is proposed from a constructional view. Based on the data retrieved from COHA, two case studies are conducted under the framework. The case study of N-proof addresses denominal suffixoid constructions’formal and semantic features in the process of constructionalization and constructional change in terms of schematicity, productivity and semantic change. Another case study on N-free and free from N sheds light on the influence of constructional interaction in the process of constructionalization and constructional change of denominal adjective suffixoid constructions. Main findings of this thesis are:(1) The rising denominal adjective suffixoids is the process of constructionalization and constructional change. The model of the rising denominal adjective suffixoids captures factors of cognition, language use as well as inner-linguistic dimension, which are conducive to the constructionalization and constructional change of denominal adjective suffixoid constructions. (2) The constructionalization and constructional change of denominal adjective suffixoid construction results in degrees of schematicity accompanied by incremental changes in form and meaning. In the process of constructionalization and constructional change, denominal adjective suffixoids, characterized by a high potential productivity and a moderate realized productivity, are increasingly entrenched as a construction in language users’ mind with the increase in frequency. As for semantic change, semantic extension facilitates collocational change. Moreover, semantic incompatibility between the construction and its lexical items can be resolved through construction coercion. Two kinds of coercion are noticed in the corpus data, namely, the coercion of semantic prosody and the coercion of word class. (3) In constructional interactions, denominal adjective suffixoid construction and alternative phrasal construction are found to exhibit different constructional preferences. Further, synonymous phrasal constructions "feed" the constructionalization and constructional change of denominal adjective suffixoid constructions.Discoveries from the case studies further testify the feasibility of denominal adjective suffixoids study under the framework of Construction Grammar. Cognitive-corpus approach proves to be beneficial to uncovering the constructionalization and constructional change of denominal adjective suffixoid constructions as a multilayered phenomenon. Furthermore, statistical tool R and googleVis are used to create Motion Chart, which presents the visualization of denominal adjective suffixoids’diachronic change as well as constructional interactions.