Nouns derived from nouns

Not all derivational processes change word class. English has derivational processes that yield nouns with meanings such as ‘small X’, ‘female X’, ‘inhabitant of X’, ‘state of being an X’ and ‘devotee of or expert on X’. Here are some examples – though by no means a complete list, either of the affixes or of their possible meanings:

(5) ‘small X’: -let, -ette, -ie

e.g. droplet, booklet, cigarette, doggie

(6) ‘female X’: -ess, -ine

e.g. waitress, princess, heroine

(7) ‘inhabitant of X’: -er, -(i)an

e.g. Londoner, New Yorker, Texan, Glaswegian

(8) ‘state of being an X’: -ship, -hood

kingship, ladyship, motherhood, priesthood

(9) ‘devotee of or expert on X’: -ist, -ian

e.g. contortionist,, Marxist, logician, historian

If you think about these, you should come to agree that all or nearly all of them must count as lexical items. Many of them have unpredictable meanings (a cigarette is not merely a small cigar, and a booklet is not merely a small book; BROTHERHOOD means not ‘the state of being a brother’ but rather ‘secret or semi-secret society’). Also, the very existence of some of these words seems arbitrary. Why is there a word ACTRESS (albeit less used now than formerly), but there has never been a word ‘WRITRESS’ to designate a woman writer? (I use quotation marks here to identify non-existent but plausible lexemes.) Why do we have DROPLET but not ‘GRAINLET’ or ‘LUMPLET’? It is merely an accident that some of these words have come into general use while others have not, so those that do exist must be lexically listed. This ‘gappiness’ also helps to confirm (should confirmation be needed) that these affixes are derivational rather than inflectional, even though they do not change word class.

The examples GLASWEGIAN, LOGICIAN and HISTORIAN illustrate, at least superficially, the possibility that the base for a derivational process may be bound rather than free, where bound roots were discussed. Glaswegian contains an idiosyncratic bound allomorph Glasweg- of the free morpheme Glasgow, which is also the only word form belonging to the lexeme GLASGOW. In logician and historian, the base allomorphs differ superficially from the free word forms logic and history in the position of main stressed syllable. However, this stress difference has many parallels (compare Canada and Canadian, mathematics and mathematician), and many linguists would argue that it is due to a phonological process. If so, then the base to which -ian is attached in historian (for example) can be regarded as the same as the free allomorph history.