Parasynthesis

Abstract

Parasynthesis is usually defined as the word formation process that requires the simultaneous presence of two affixes (a prefix and a suffix) for a categorial change to be possible. However, this phenomenon has often been understood in practice as involving a simultaneous addition of a prefix and a theme vowel, with or without an additional suffix. Three main descriptive proposals concerning parasynthetic verbs have been put forward in the Romance literature in order to account for the apparently simultaneous attachment of a prefix and a suffix that is involved in their formation: circumfixation; prefixation as transcategorization/verbalization; and first suffixation and then prefixation. The adoption of a diachronic perspective is shown to be needed when addressing some important issues, which purely synchronic treatments of parasynthesis cannot account for. Accordingly, special attention is paid here to the origin of verbal parasynthesis in Latin and its evolution into Romance languages. Next, the entry offers a formal synchronic analysis of parasynthetic verbs by assuming a strong connection between syntactic word formation and syntactic argument structure. Finally, other types of parasynthetic forms (e.g. parasynthetic adjectives and parasynthetic compounds) are analysed from this syntactic perspective.