论构词规则的有限能产性

On the Limited Productivity of Word-formation Rules

相对于句法规则而言,构词规则的能产性显得十分有限。但这并不表明两者有质的差别,因为构词规则和句法规则一样,有生成无限集合的可能,有递归性,理论上没有长度上的限制。构词规则的能产性之所以弱于造句规则,主要有两个方面的原因,其一是由于语言构造的原因,词和句子有不同的材料来源,其二是由于接口因素的影响,构词规则在实际运用中经常受到限制,不能充分发挥效率。

This paper aims to account for the limited productivity that is associated with word-formation rules, especially as compared with syntactic rules. It is proposed that no qualitative difference can be established between word-formation rules and syntactic rules, since both types are capable of generating infinite sets of linguistic forms, both are recursive, and neither is subject to limitations on the length of the derivatives. The limited productivity of word-formation rules arise from two sources: one is from the duality of the language structure, in that words are composed from phonemes and their arrangements, which is itself limited in repertoire; the other source is that word-formation rules are subject to a variety of interface conditions, both inside and outside the language proper.