Morphological structure and lexicographic definitions: The case of -ful and -like

By November 17, 2016,
Page 545-554
Author Victoria Alsina, Janet DeCesaris
Title Morphological structure and lexicographic definitions: The case of -ful and -like
Abstract The relationship between the morphological structure of a word and its lexicographic representation touches upon two of the thorniest points in lexicography: defining styles and type of entry. Dictionaries of English have traditionally afforded derivational affixes and other combinatory elements main entry status, though they differ greatly as to what precise information they actually provide. This paper examines the lexicographic treatment of words containing two suffixes deriving from two independent words: -ful and -like. Examination of the dictionary entries in MW10 for words containing -ful and -like confirmed our expectation about the correlation between degree of lexicalization and type of entry. It also confirmed our intuitions that -ful and -like differ from each other with respect to productivity in present-day English.
Session PART 8 - Dictionary Use
Keywords definitions, morphology, suffixes, English lexicography
BibTex 
@InProceedings{ELX98_2-031,
	   author = {Victoria Alsina, Janet DeCesaris},
	   title = {Morphological structure and lexicographic definitions: The case of -ful and -like},
	   pages = {545-554},
	   booktitle = {Proceedings of the 8th EURALEX International Congress},
	   year = {1998},
	   month = {aug},
	   date = {4-8},
	   address = {Liège, Belgium},
	   editor = {Thierry Fontenelle, Philippe Hiligsmann, Archibald Michiels, André Moulin, Siegfried Theissen},
	   publisher = {Euralex},
	   isbn = {2-87233-091-7},
	}
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