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This paper offers a detailed analysis of the English suffix-ee (employee, escapee, refugee, etc.) based on 1500 naturally-occurring tokens of some 500 word types. The data suggest that formation of nouns in-ee is moderately but genuinely productive, and that analyses based on the syntactic argument structure of the stem verb are unsatisfactory. Instead, formation of-ee nouns systematically adheres to three essentially semantic constraints: first, the referent of an-ee noun must be sentient; second, the denotation of an-ee noun must be episodically linked (as defined below) to the denotation of its stem; and third, a use of an-ee noun entails a relative lack of volitional control on the part of its referent. I argue that these semantic constraints taken together amount to a special-purpose thematic role that actively constrains productive use of derivational morphology.* *I gratefully acknowledge comments and suggestions and help from

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