Form and meaning in morphology: the case of Dutch ‘agent nouns’

Abstract

Some morphologists have proposed the separation of form and meaning in morphology because of the lack of a one-to-one correspondence between them.In this paper it is shown that this position is ill-advised since it impedes a deeper insight into the systematics of the interpretation of complex words.This is demonstrated by a detailed study of one affix, the dverbal suffix -er in Dutch, which creates subject names.The apparent polysemy of this suffix appears to follow from independent, nonlinguistic principles.