Published : 2023-10-20

Building New Words, e.g. with Lego: zij legoot – sie spielt mit lego – sy speel lego’s: Contrastive Conversion in Dutch, German and Afrikaans

Abstract

Alongside composition and derivation, conversion constitutes a highly productive word-formation process in the West Germanic language family. In addition to nominalised infinitives (essenVdas EssenN), there are expressions such as die FlöteNflötenV or laufenVder LaufN. In Dutch, conversion appears to be even more productive than in German, e.g. Dutch allows for hij voetbaltV or zij legootV which in German cannot be rendered with *er fußballtV, *sie legotV, but rather with periphrastic constructions: er spieltV FußballN, sie spieltV mit LegoN. Similarly, Afrikaans also requires periphrases in these cases: hy speelV sokkerN and sy speelV lego’sN. Combining empirical corpus research with a survey of language user attitudes, this research project aims to explore which forms of conversion occur in the three languages, which words can serve as the basis for such a conversion, and which converted words might come into everyday use.

Keywords:

word formation, conversion, Dutch, German, Afrikaans



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Roczniki Humanistyczne · ISSN 0035-7707 | eISSN 2544-5200 | DOI: 10.18290/rh
© The Learned Society of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin & The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Humanities


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