SELECTIONAL RESTRICTIONS IN ENGLISH SUFFIXATION REVISITED - A REPLY TO FABB (1988)

This paper is an attempt to shed some new light on one of the most int ricate problems in English morphology, the combinatorial properties of derivational suffixes. In an influential article, Fabb (1988) showed the inadequacy of stratificational models of English suffixation and c laimed that ''English suffixation is constrained only by selectional r estrictions.'' The present paper shows that Fabb's account, though con vincing with respect to the rejection of a stratified lexicon, is itse lf both empirically and theoretically flawed On the basis of the analy sis of a large amount of data from Lehnert (1971) and the OED2 on CD, an alternative account is proposed, which explains the patterning of t he data as a result of base-driven (and not affix-driven, as with Fabb ) selectional restrictions, paradigmatic morphological processes, and independent principles and constraints of English derivational morphol ogy.