Cover not available

Article published In: Corpus studies of language through time: Special issue of the International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 27:4 (2022)
Edited by Tony McEnery, Gavin Brookes and Isobelle Clarke
[International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 27:4] 2022
► pp. 506–528

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB

New methods for analysing diachronic suffix competition across registers

How -ity gained ground on -ness in Early Modern English

ORCiD logo with link | University of Oviedo
ORCiD logo with link | University of Helsinki
ORCiD logo with link | Aalto University
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 19 August 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.22014.rod
Abstract
This paper tracks stylistic variation in the use of two roughly synonymous suffixes, the Romance -ity and the native -ness, during the Early Modern English period. We seek to verify from a statistical viewpoint the claims of Rodríguez-Puente, P. (2020). Register variation in word-formation processes: The development of -ity and -ness in Early Modern English. International Journal of English Studies, 20(2), 147–169. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, who reports on a decrease of -ness in favour of -ity in registers representative of the speech-written and formal-informal continua at that time. To this end, we develop new methods of statistical and visual analysis that enable diachronic comparisons of competing processes across subcorpora, building upon an earlier method by Säily, T., & Suomela, J. (2009). Comparing type counts: The case of women, men and -ity in early English letters. In A. Renouff & A. Kehoe (Eds.), Corpus Linguistics: Refinements and Reassessments (pp. 87–109). Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar. Our results confirm that -ity gained ground first in written registers and then spread towards speech-related registers, and we are able to time this change more accurately thanks to a novel periodisation. We also provide strong statistical support indicating that the proportion of -ity was significantly higher in legal registers than in other registers.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.-Ity vs. -ness: The effect of register on their morphological productivity
    • 2.1Register variation
    • 2.2Morphological productivity
  • 3.Sources
  • 4.Methodology and analysis
    • 4.1Data collection and periodisation
    • 4.2Speech-related vs. writing-based and writing-purposed registers
    • 4.3Formal vs. informal registers and the role of legal texts
  • 5.Discussion and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (55)
References
ARCHER. (1990–1993/2002/2007/2010/2013). A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers. Originally compiled under the supervision of Douglas Biber and Edward Finegan (Northern Arizona University and University of Southern California). Modified and expanded by members of a consortium of universities. Current consortium members: Universities of Bamberg, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Helsinki, Lancaster, Leicester, Manchester, Michigan, Northern Arizona, Santiago de Compostela, Southern California, Trier, Uppsala, and Zurich. [URL]
Aronoff, M. (1976). Word Formation in Generative Grammar. The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aronoff, M., & Anshen, F. (1998). Morphology and the lexicon: Lexicalization and productivity. In A. Spencer & A. M. Zwicky (Eds.), The Handbook of Morphology (pp. 237–247). Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baayen, R. H. (1989). A Corpus-based Approach to Morphological Productivity. Statistical Analysis and Psycho-linguistic Interpretation [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Free University of Amsterdam.
(1992). Quantitative aspects of morphological productivity. In G. Booij & J. Van Marle (Eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1991 (pp. 109–149). Kluwer Academic Publishers. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1993). On frequency, transparency and productivity. In G. Booij & J. Van Marle (Eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1992 (pp. 181–208). Kluwer Academic Publishers. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2008). Analyzing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics Using R. Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baayen, R. H., & Renouf, A. (1996). Chronicling the Times: Productive lexical innovations in an English newspaper. Language, 72(1), 69–96. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baeskow, H. (2012). -Ness and -ity: Phonological exponents of n or meaningful nominalizers of different adjectival domains? Journal of English Linguistics, 40(1), 6–40. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berg, K. (2021). Productivity, vocabulary size, and new words. A response to Säily (2016). Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 17(1), 177–187. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, D. (2012). Register as a predictor of linguistic variation. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 8(1), 9–37. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, D., & Conrad, S. (2019). Register, Genre, and Style (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, D., & Egbert, J. (2016). Register variation on the searchable web: A multi-dimensional analysis. Journal of English Linguistics, 44(2), 95–137. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, D., & Finegan, E. (1997). Diachronic relations among speech-based and written registers in English. In T. Nevalainen & L. Kahlas-Tarkka (Eds.), To Explain the Present: Studies in the Changing English Language in Honour of Matti Rissanen (Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki LII, pp. 253–275). Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, D., & Gray, B. (2013). Being specific about historical change: The influence of sub-register. Journal of English Linguistics, 41(2), 104–134. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2016). Grammatical Complexity in Academic English: Linguistic Change in Writing. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Pearson Education.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bolinger, D. L. (1948). On defining the morpheme. Word, 41, 18–23. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cowie, C. (1998). Diachronic Word-formation: A Corpus-based Study of Derived Nominalizations in the History of English [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Cambridge.
Cowie, C., & Dalton-Puffer, C. (2002). Diachronic word-formation and studying changes in productivity over time: Theoretical and methodological considerations. In J. E. Díaz Vera (Ed.), A Changing World of Words: Studies in English Historical Lexicography, Lexicology and Semantics (pp. 410–437). Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Culpeper, J., & Kytö, M. (2010). Early Modern English Dialogues: Spoken Interaction as Writing. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dalton-Puffer, C. (1996). The French Influence on Middle English Morphology: A Corpus-based Study of Derivation. Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Degaetano-Ortlieb, S., & Teich, E. (2018). Using relative entropy for detection and analysis of periods of diachronic linguistic change. In B. Alex, S. Degaetano-Ortlieb, A. Feldman, A. Kazantseva, N. Reiter, & S. Szpakowicz (Eds.), Proceedings of the Second Joint SIGHUM Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, Humanities and Literature (LaTeCH-CLfL-2018) (ACL Anthology W18–45, pp. 22–33). Association for Computational Linguistics. [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gaeta, L., & Ricca, D. (2006). Productivity in Italian word formation: A variable-corpus approach. Linguistics, 44(1), 57–89. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gardner, A.-C. (2014). Derivation in Middle English: Regional and Text Type Variation (Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki XCII). Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gray, B., & Egbert, J. (2019). Register and register variation. Register Studies, 1(1), 1–9. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hundt, M., & Gardner, A.-C. (2017). Corpus-based approaches: Watching English change. In L. J. Brinton (Ed.), English Historical Linguistics: Approaches and Perspectives (pp. 96–130). Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kilgarriff, A. (2005). Language is never, ever, ever, random. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 1(2), 263–275. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kroch, A., Santorini, B., & Delfs, L. (2004). Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English (PPCEME; 1st ed., release 3). Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania. [URL]
Kytö, M. (2019). Register in historical linguistics. Register Studies, 1(1), 136–167. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kytö, M., & Culpeper, J. (2006). A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760. [URL]
Lindsay, M. (2012). Rival suffixes: Synonymy, competition, and the emergence of productivity. In A. Ralli, G. Booij, S. Scalise, & A. Karasimos (Eds.), Morphology and the Architecture of Grammar: On-line Proceedings of the 8th Mediterranean Morphology Meeting (MMM8) (pp. 192–203). University of Patras.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lindsay, M., & Aronoff, M. (2013). Natural selection in self-organizing morphological systems. In N. Hathout, F. Montermini, & J. Tseng (Eds.), Morphology in Toulouse: Selected Proceedings of Décembrettes 7 (pp. 133–153). Lincom.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marchand, H. (1969). The Categories and Types of Present-day English Word-formation (2nd ed.). C. H. Beck. (Original work published 1960)Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McIntosh, C. (1998). The Evolution of English Prose 1700–1900: Style, Politeness, and Print Culture. Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nevalainen, T. (1999). Early Modern English lexis and semantics. In R. Lass (Ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language, III: 1476–1776 (pp. 332–458). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. [URL]
Oxford English Dictionary. OED Online. Oxford University Press. [URL]
Palmer, C. C. (2009). Borrowings, Derivational Morphology, and Perceived Productivity in English, 1300–1600 [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. The University of Michigan.
(2015). Measuring productivity diachronically: Nominal suffixes in English letters, 1400–1600. English Language and Linguistics, 19(1), 107–129. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Plag, I. (2003). Word-formation in English. Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Plag, I., Dalton-Puffer, C., & Baayen, H. (1999). Morphological productivity across speech and writing. English Language and Linguistics, 3(2), 209–228. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Riddle, E. M. (1985). A historical perspective on the productivity of the suffixes -ness and -ity. In J. Fisiak (Ed.), Historical Semantics, Historical Word-formation (pp. 435–461). Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rodríguez-Puente, P. (2020). Register variation in word-formation processes: The development of -ity and -ness in Early Modern English. International Journal of English Studies, 20(2), 147–169. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rodríguez-Puente, P., Fanego, T., López-Couso, M. J., Méndez-Naya, B., Núñez-Pertejo, P., Blanco-García, C., & Tamaredo, I. (2018). Corpus of Historical English Law Reports 1535–1999 (CHELAR; version 2). Research Unit for Variation, Linguistic Change and Grammaticalization, University of Santiago de Compostela.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rodríguez-Puente, P., Säily, T., & Suomela, J. (2022). Data for the article “New methods for analysing historical suffix competition across registers” (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Romaine, S. (1985). Variability in word formation patterns and productivity in the history of English. In J. Fisiak (Ed.), Papers from the 6th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (pp. 451–465). John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Säily, T. (2011). Variation in morphological productivity in the BNC: Sociolinguistic and methodological considerations. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 7(1), 119–141. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2014). Sociolinguistic Variation in English Derivational Productivity: Studies and Methods in Diachronic Corpus Linguistics. Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2016). Sociolinguistic variation in morphological productivity in eighteenth-century English. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 12(1), 129–151. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2018). Change or variation? Productivity of the suffixes -ness and -ity. In T. Nevalainen, M. Palander-Collin, & T. Säily (Eds.), Patterns of Change in 18th-century English: A Sociolinguistic Approach (pp. 197–218). John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Säily, T., & Suomela, J. (2009). Comparing type counts: The case of women, men and -ity in early English letters. In A. Renouff & A. Kehoe (Eds.), Corpus Linguistics: Refinements and Reassessments (pp. 87–109). Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scott, M. (2012). WordSmith Tools (Version 6) [Computer software]. Lexical Analysis Software.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Suomela, J. (2022a). Code for the article “New methods for analysing diachronic suffix competition across registers” (Version 1.0.0). Zenodo. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2022b). TypeRatio: Comparing competing suffixes (Version 1.0.0) [Computer software]. Zenodo. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (8)

Cited by eight other publications

Huang, Jinhong & Yongwei Gao
2025. A corpus-based study into new combining forms in American English. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics DOI logo
SCHÄFER, MARTIN
2025. The role of meaning in the rivalry of -ity and -ness: evidence from distributional semantics. English Language and Linguistics ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Säily, Tanja, Florent Perek & Jukka Suomela
2025. Variation and change in the productivity of begoing to V in the Corpus of Historical American English, 1810–2009. English Language and Linguistics 29:2 ► pp. 362 ff. DOI logo
Dukic, Zachary & Chris C. Palmer
2024. The History of -eer in English: Suffix Competition or Symbiosis?. Languages 9:3 ► pp. 102 ff. DOI logo
Rodríguez-Puente, Paula
2024. Is legal discourse really “outside the ravages of time”?. In Unlocking the History of English [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 364], ► pp. 101 ff. DOI logo
Säily, Tanja, Martin Hilpert & Jukka Suomela
2024. New approaches to investigating change in derivational productivity. In Crossing Boundaries through Corpora [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 119], ► pp. 8 ff. DOI logo
Fernández-Domínguez, Jesús
2023. The Suffix ‑ment between the Available and the Unavailable. Anglia 141:2 ► pp. 171 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2023. A Constructional Account of Verb-Forming Suffixation [Constructional Approaches to Language, 36], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue