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In:Null or Nothing: Zero elements in Romance syntax and morphology
Edited by Peter Herbeck and Natascha Pomino
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 291] 2026
► pp. 111–139

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Zero affixes in verbal derivation

Transcategorial prefixation or parasynthetic verb formation?

ORCiD logo with link | Universität Wien
ORCiD logo with link | Universität Wien
Published online: 27 February 2026
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.291.05fal
Abstract
In formal morpho-syntactic theory applied to verbal derivation, null elements have been used to avoid non-binary branching and functional redundancies. The derivation of a verb like French geler from gel through conversion could be analysed as the addition of a suffix, which is both inflectional and derivational, but also by postulating a derivational null affix. The availability of morpho-phonologically visible derivational suffixes for the corresponding null elements would support this segmentation. A null suffix could also be assumed when a noun is “simultaneously” verbalized and prefixed (parasynthesis), like in French décourager. We discuss the necessity or redundancy of null elements within a coherent grammar theoretical model (DM) and additionally sketch a possible psycholinguistic experiment, the implementation of which would serve as an empirical test for our analysis. The expected outcomes of the experiment are that the order in the ease of processing is suffixation = conversion < prefixation < parasynthesis. However, if the results were to diverge from this predicted order, an alternative analysis would have to be investigated. Both results reconfirm the importance of psycholinguistic experiments for grammar theoretical assumptions (and their potential falsification).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Null elements in Generative Syntax and Distributed Morphology
  • 3.Prefix and parasynthetic verbs in Generative Syntax and DM
    • 3.1Parasynthetic verbs
    • 3.2Verbalization by prefixation
    • 3.3Syntactic input structures and Vocabulary Items
    • 3.4Interim summary
  • 4.Designing an experiment
    • 4.1Experimental approaches: Word recognition
    • 4.2Experimental approaches: Primed lexical decision
    • 4.3Proposal for an experimental protocol
      • 4.3.1Experimental design
      • 4.3.2Expected outcomes
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (59)
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