The combinability of derivational suffixes

This subject is an attempt to shed some new light on one of the most intricate problems in English morphology, the combinatorial properties of derivational suffixes.¹ As already briefly mentioned earlier, Fabb (1988) launches the most pronounced empirical attack on level ordering and claims in the title of his article that "English suffixation is constrained only by selectional restrictions". I will show that Fabb's account, though convincing with respect to the rejection of level ordering, is itself both empirically and theoretically flawed. On the basis of the analysis of a large amount of data from Lehnert (1971), and the OED on CD, an alternative account is proposed, which explains the patterning of the data as a result of base-driven (and not exclusively affix-driven, as with Fabb) selectional restrictions, paradigmatic morphological processes, and independent principles and constraints of English derivational morphology.

¹ An earlier version has appeared as Plag (1996). A number of points made in that article have been revised, while others, I hope, have been clarified. The most substantial changes concern my remarks on verbal suffixes.