Prefixation is a dynamic method of word formation in Bengali. Sometimes prefixes become derivational to create new words, which differ in part-of-speech and meaning from the words with which these are attached. Thus, ...Prefixation is a dynamic method of word formation in Bengali. Sometimes prefixes become derivational to create new words, which differ in part-of-speech and meaning from the words with which these are attached. Thus, prefixation acquires an identity of a morphodynamic process in the language through which new words take birth, while old words change their forms, functions, and meanings to increase lexical stock of Bengali. With reference to a large lexical database of prefixed words obtained from the Bengali corpus （Dash, 2009）, this paper tries to explore the nature and type of morphosemantic processes that occur at the time of prefixation to highlight the patterns of change in forms and meaning of prefixed words. Also, it aims at laying a theoretical foundation about the nature of lexical generativity of prefixes used in formation of words. The application relevance of this study may be attested in descriptive linguistics, applied linguistics, and language technology, since analysis of forms and functions of prefixes supplies necessary information for developing text materials for Bengali language teaching, compiling dictionaries, designing systems for machine learning, and developing databases for machine translation. Indirectly, it ventilates into the nature of complexities embedded in linguistic generativity of the Bengali speakers展开更多
文摘Prefixation is a dynamic method of word formation in Bengali. Sometimes prefixes become derivational to create new words, which differ in part-of-speech and meaning from the words with which these are attached. Thus, prefixation acquires an identity of a morphodynamic process in the language through which new words take birth, while old words change their forms, functions, and meanings to increase lexical stock of Bengali. With reference to a large lexical database of prefixed words obtained from the Bengali corpus （Dash, 2009）, this paper tries to explore the nature and type of morphosemantic processes that occur at the time of prefixation to highlight the patterns of change in forms and meaning of prefixed words. Also, it aims at laying a theoretical foundation about the nature of lexical generativity of prefixes used in formation of words. The application relevance of this study may be attested in descriptive linguistics, applied linguistics, and language technology, since analysis of forms and functions of prefixes supplies necessary information for developing text materials for Bengali language teaching, compiling dictionaries, designing systems for machine learning, and developing databases for machine translation. Indirectly, it ventilates into the nature of complexities embedded in linguistic generativity of the Bengali speakers
