Creativity, paradigms and morphological constructions: evidence from Dutch pseudoparticiples

Abstract Pseudoparticiples follow phonotactic, morphological, and syntactic rules for regular participles, but they are special in that they lack corresponding verbal forms. This article offers a constructionist account of two types of pseudoparticiples in Dutch, i.e., those with a nominal base and the prefix ont- or be- , e.g., ontkoeid ‘de-cowed’ or bedauwd ‘bedewed’. Their properties raise interesting questions regarding the nature of morphological creativity, back-formation, and the establishment of new schemas or paradigms. Using data from the nlTenTen14 corpus, we consider constraints on the formation of verbal paradigms from such pseudoparticiples, and what this tells us about the nature of morphological creativity. Our corpus data suggest substantial differences between be - and ont -pseudoparticiples in terms of frequency distributions, productivity, and syntactic behavior. Drawing on concepts from cognitive linguistics generally and Construction Morphology in particular, this article addresses the usefulness of the distinction between full and partial sanction as a means to explain the variation (i) within the pseudoparticiple sets and (ii) between regular and pseudoparticiples. We also suggest some revisions to the notions of E- and F-creativity to account for differences between the be - and ont - sets.