Talk:Productivity (linguistics)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of WikiProject Theoretical Linguistics, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to theoretical linguistics and theories of language on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.

retitle to productivity? — ishwar  (SPEAK) 04:51, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

definitely. --Angr/_comhrá 19:23, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Inherited", "loans", "closed classes" and productivity

Angr had put in the following:

Non-productive grammatical processes represent a closed class; the forms that exist in a closed class are usually inherited forms, though exceptions exist (pronouns are generally considered a closed class, yet the English pronouns they, them, and their are loanwords).

This is mixed up, I think. Productive processes must by definition relate to open classes, but the identification of closed classes with non-productive processes is certainly not a complete thing. In any case, "inherited" w.r.t closed classes does not mean (I am sure) that a form is not a loan word, but (I expect) that speakers "inherit" it from their own past learning or learn it from hearing others' already-formed structures rather than from applying the grammatical process. (I don't know whose term "inherited" is in this context.) Whether or not "they", "them" and "their" are loanwords or not is irrelevant to the question of whether English pronouns form a closed class. (There is other evidence that it is not a completely closed class, from innovations like "y'all all" or "sumpn-r-other" which have become quite standard for some speakers.)

So, anyway, I changed it to what seems to me to be more accurate/helpful.

--Lavintzin 03:09, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I answered on your talk page before noticing you had discussed on this talk page. Angr/talk 06:02, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

And I answered you there before seeing this comment here. Ring around the rosie. --Lavintzin 23:46, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is {en} productive?

I don't speak the hacker sociolect, but I have a hunch that even within that these {en} plurals start off as, and remain, merely jocular. Do people use them unselfconsciously? -- Hoary 10:02, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Is unselfconsciousness a necessary part of productivity? --Lavintzin 15:20, 6 March 2007 (UTC) (I suspect you are right that they don't, at least at first.)

[edit] References

The references look good, but how are they related to the article? (What comes from which?) -- Hoary 10:02, 6 March 2007 (UTC)