GENERATIVE SEMANTIC MECHANISMS WITHIN MORPHOLOGICALLY COMPLEX WORDS

This paper seeks to introduce an alternative perspective on the treatment of derivation within a functional framework like Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). By taking a functional perspective, we assume that word formation is a two-dimensional phenomenon involving both onomasiological and grammatical components. Furthermore, grammatical processes are considered to be semantically motivated. In order to properly account for the internal mechanisms involved in word formation, we formulate affixal lexical representations by using Lexical Templates as devised within the LCM (see Mairal Usón & Faber 2007; Mairal Usón & Ruíz de Mendoza 2008a,b; Ruiz de Mendoza & Mairal Usón 2008; Butler 2009; Cortés Rodríguez 2009, among others).