Towards a morphosyntactic analysis of -ish

Abstract

This article deals with the morphosyntactic and semantic properties of the adjectives derived with the English morpheme -ish. The main goal of the paper is to outline a morphosyntactic analysis of -ish that: (i) accounts for its cross-categorial nature, (ii) derives its surface polysemy, and (iii) is compatible with Bochnak & Csipak's (2014) recent semantic analysis of deadjectival -ish (for example, reddish) and free-standing propositional -ish (for example, I liked the movie …ish) as a metalinguistic degree operator. Focusing on the analysis of the various subtypes of bounded -ish forms, this paper develops a unified morphosyntactic approach to -ish with a single shared semantics, and suggests that the cross-categorial and polysemous nature of -ish derives from three main closely interrelated factors: (i) the source of the degree variable that -ish targets, whether syntactic, lexical, or metalinguistic; (ii) the syntactic realization site of -ish; and (iii) the late insertion of the underspecified morpheme -ish.

From engl-isc to whatever-ish: a corpus-based investigation of -ish derivation in the history of English

“…Under her analysis, the strings in (41) are ruled out since the phase head that affixal - ish is inserted into is quantificational and categorizes ish as a degree operator on a par with degree expressions, such as comparative and superlative markers or very , too and how in (41) which Oltra-Massuet (2017: 63) takes to spell out the same head.…”

“…In her ‘descriptive typology of - ish ’, Oltra-Massuet (2017: 57) lumps together - ish derivatives from adjectival bases with - ish derivatives from adverbial, numeral and phrasal bases, all incarnating ish 3 and all claimed to be non-gradable adjectives. Unfortunately, she does not provide any data in support of this claim.…”

“…Oltra-Massuet (2016, 2017) aims at developing a unified morphosyntactic approach to both the affixal variants of ish and free lexical ish . Her analysis does not take into consideration the diachronic trajectory of ish , but rather presents synchronic (morpho-)syntactic snapshots of ish 2 and ish 3 .…”

“…By and large, her analysis is compatible with our empirical findings. Not tenable empirically, however, is Oltra-Massuet's (2017) claim that - ish derivatives from adjectives, adverbs, numerals and phrasal bases are non-gradable adjectives and thus incompatible with degree modifiers.…”

“… 24 Note that Oltra-Massuet (2017) classifies ish 2 and ish 3 deriving adjectives from phrasal bases as in (30) and (31) above as an affix, not as a clitic as Kuzmack (2007) does.…”