In addition to the project on argument structure (see the last 4 posts), a second major summer project for me will be explaining why Dave Embick and I were wrong about “curiosity.” We claimed that the root of “curiosity” is “curious,” rather than “curi-” with adjective-forming -ous attached. We were addressing some issues about multiple affixation that were current around 1980 but fell out of mainstream morphological discussion in recent years. I believe I can now motivate an analysis that has “curiosity” as bi-morphemic, with two suffixes, -ous and -ity. To get there, however, we need to understand better how it might be that a single affix could attach either to roots or to categorized stems — and be the same affix in both uses.
The posts in this series will include remarks on Saussurean signs and serious dives into some recent MEG experiments.
(You’ll need to click on the “Derivation” link immediately below to view the file — I’m having some new issues with embedded .pdf’s)