A journalist coins the term 'ungoogleable' in a news article, and readers understand it immediately without any explanation. What does this tell us about the prefix 'un-'?
AIt shows 'un-' is unproductive because it was applied to a brand-new word
BIt shows 'un-' is productive — speakers can freely apply it to new adjectives and the result is immediately interpretable
CIt shows 'un-' is productive only for technology-related adjectives
DIt shows an error in the journalist's writing; 'un-' can only attach to words already in the dictionary
Productivity means a rule can generate new words that speakers will recognize and accept even on first encounter. 'Ungoogleable' was never listed in any dictionary before it was coined, yet readers understood it instantly because the 'un- + adjective' rule is active and generative. This is exactly what makes a rule productive: the capacity to extend to novel inputs. If 'un-' were unproductive, speakers would only recognize it in frozen, lexicalized forms like 'undo,' not in novel coinages.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
An English speaker tries to form 'boldth' (meaning 'the quality of being bold') using the suffix '-th' by analogy with 'warmth' and 'length.' The result sounds wrong to native speakers. Why?
A'-th' only attaches to verbs, not adjectives like 'bold'
B'Bold' is too phonologically short to accept the suffix
CThe '-th' suffix is unproductive — it has fossilized in a small set of existing words and cannot be extended to new bases, even though the underlying pattern is transparent
D'-th' requires the preceding vowel to be long, which 'bold' lacks
The '-th' suffix is a classic example of an unproductive rule. It applies to a small closed class of adjectives — 'warm→warmth,' 'long→length,' 'deep→depth,' 'wide→width' — but these are frozen lexical items, not the output of an actively generative rule. Native speakers can recognize the pattern but cannot extend it. Compare this to '-ness,' which productively converts any adjective: 'boldness,' 'googly-ness,' 'Trumpiness.' Productivity is not about whether you can perceive the pattern; it's about whether the rule can generate new outputs.
Question 3 True / False
An unproductive word formation rule is one that was incorrectly formulated — it rarely actually applied in the language and the words containing it are etymological accidents.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
Unproductive rules were historically productive and did generate the words that now exist — 'warmth,' 'length,' 'depth' all came from the '-th' suffixation rule. The rule became unproductive over time as it fossilized: the outputs were stored as individual lexical entries rather than being recomputed from the rule. 'Unproductive' means the rule no longer generates new words, not that it never worked. This is an important distinction for historical linguistics and for understanding how living languages evolve.
Question 4 True / False
Blocking occurs when an existing word preempts a potential new derivation — for example, 'fury' blocks '*furiousness' because it already fills the semantic slot for 'the state of being furious.'
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
Blocking is one of the most revealing phenomena in morphology because it shows that the mental lexicon is not just a rule-application engine — it caches existing forms, and a stored form can prevent a rule from firing. 'Fury' occupies the semantic niche for 'the quality/state of being furious,' so speakers don't coin 'furiousness' even though '-ness' is highly productive and 'furious' is an adjective. Similarly, 'stole' (irregular past tense of 'steal') blocks '*stealed' even though '-ed' is the regular productive past tense suffix. The blocking form need not be morphologically related — just semantically competitive.
Question 5 Short Answer
What is morphological productivity, and why do blocking effects suggest that the mental lexicon does more than simply apply word-formation rules?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: Morphological productivity is the capacity of a word-formation rule to generate new, acceptable words that speakers have never encountered before. A fully productive rule (like 'un- + adjective') applies freely to new inputs; a fossilized rule (like '-th' suffixation) does not generate new words even though the pattern is recognizable. Blocking effects reveal that speakers don't recompute words from scratch using rules every time — they also store the existing outputs of rules as lexical entries. When a stored word already occupies a semantic slot, it preempts the rule from generating a competing form: 'fury' blocks '*furiousness,' irregular past tenses block regular '-ed' forms. This means the mental lexicon is a hybrid system: it contains both generative rules (which handle novel cases) and stored forms (which compete with and can override those rules). A pure rule-applier would generate 'furiousness' and 'stealed'; the actual lexicon doesn't, because stored forms take priority.
This hybrid architecture explains why morphology is neither fully regular (all derivations from rules) nor fully irregular (all forms individually memorized). The balance between rules and storage is dynamic and varies by rule productivity — more productive rules generate more novel forms that get stored, potentially triggering more blocking.