The morphology of rival -ion, -age and -ment selected verbal bases

Abstract

French -ion, -age and -ment suffixations have been extensively studied as rivals in the construction of event nouns from verbs. In order to shed light on some of the constraints that allow them to coexist, we focus on the morphology of the bases they select. Our results show that -ion, -age and ‑ment, the most productive deverbal nominalization schemas in French, occupy distinct morphological niches in that they display strong preferences that generally do not overlap when they select denominal and deadjectival verbs (suffixed bases for -ion, converted bases for -age and prefixed bases for -ment).