ds under processing. Productivity can be divided into weak productivity and strong productivity. Some productive elements can be processed repeatedly and form lots of new words while the others only form a few. Morphological productivity has been the focus of English word-formation in recent years and it will still be in the future. For the majority of the English learners, numerous affixes are also the focus and difficult points, so, a good comprehension of the English affixes for the English learners is especially important. However, the current issue is not very good. Affix and word-formation are still a difficult part for English learners. The method which the learners take is learned by rote.
The aims of this study are apply the probabilistic model to analyze the productivity of ante, ex, fore, pre. For these four prefixes, which one of them gets the strongest productivity in the past? Which one of them has the potential of being used most frequently in the future? What are the rules behind the productivity and why? The final purpose of this study is unfolding a direct analysis of the productivity of affixes for the English learners and helps them to get a good understanding of productivity and word-formation, then gives them a great favor in the English study.
1.3 Significance of the study
1.3.1 Theoretical significance of the study
Probabilistic model was drawn out by the linguists Baayyen on the base of statistical model which rose by Aronoff. Probabilistic model "measure the probability of encountering a new word by a given morphological process, involved a crucial factor-hapax legomema. Hapaxes are words that occur only once in a corpus" (Plag, 1999, p.61). Baayyen and Lieber did some statistical research about the English noun affixes and adjective affixes based on this model and proved the feasibility and objectivity of the model. Many linguists have largely applied probabilistic model into the study of productivity. It is already the mostly applied theoretical model in studying morphological productivity.
According to Baayyen, "the number of hapaxes of a given morphological category should correlate with the number of the neologisms of that category, so the number of hapaxes can be seen as an indicator of productivity" (Du, 2009, 13).
This
thesis adopts the probabilistic model to analyze four prefixes and test the hypothesis that the high frequency affixes are equal to strong productivity, on the basis of previous research of morphological productivity.
1.3.2 Practical significance
Most the English readers will find some new words when reading and then look them up in a dictionary. However, sometimes, a dictionary is not available or you need to comprehend the word immediately, certain word-formation rules will play great importance here. Dictionary is quite time-consuming especially in an exam. Different roots get variant meaning after being combined with different affixes. Thus, not only the English readers but the teachers will suffer a lot in trying to grasp certain affixes forming rules in identification the new words.
1.4 Layout of the study
This thesis is mainly composed of five chapters.
The first chapter is the introduction chapter. Objectives and significances are introduced in this chapter. The final part is the structure of the thesis.
The second chapter is the &
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