PRODUCTIVITY IN CONTEXT - A CASE-STUDY OF A DUTCH SUFFIX

The Dutch suffix-held, like -ness in English, forms abstract nouns fro m adjectives. In this peeper, we explore the hypothesis that -heid giv es rise to two kinds of abstract nouns. on the one hand, nouns referri ng to concepts, and on the other hand, nouns referring to states of af fairs. An examination of a corpus of newspaper Dutch reveals that the referential function of -heid is typical for the lowest-frequency word s, most of which are neologisms. Conversely, its conceptual function i s found predominantly among the highest-frequency words. Detailed inve stigations of the use of these two sorts of words in context showed th at the high-frequency, words tend to be less well anchored in their co ntext than the low-frequency words, and that they pattern more as inde pendent units. Our data argue against the view that productive word fo rmation goes hand in hand with the absence of any storage of full form s in the mental lexicon. Instead, we claim that high-frequency, format ions with the productive suffix -heid are available in the mental lexi con, whereas low-frequency words and neologisms are produced and under stood by rule.