L Bauer
Biographic Data
| ID | 70510 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L Bauer |
| GIVEN NAMES | L |
| FAMILY NAME | Bauer |
| SIGNATURE | BAUER L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Victoria University of Wellington |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7632-0073 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 65 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 156 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 65 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Response to Körtvélyessy (2025)
In this response to Körtvélyessy (2025. Word-formation at the crossroads of productivity, creativity, and structural complexity. Linguistics 64(1). 137–163), I raise various points concerning the study of morphological productivity and approaches to that topic, inspired by her paper and attempting to raise matters which might help us move beyond the current positions established in the literature, both in terms of nomenclature and in terms of con…
China vs Chinese, Belgium vs Belgian
In reply to a recent article in English Today by David Li, it is pointed out that the use of a noun as a premodifier rather than an adjective appears to be increasing in English, perhaps particularly in the area of sports. The Australia team seems to be gaining ground at the expense of the Australian team, for example. Just why this should be happening is obscure, but multiple factors appear to be involved in the change. There are also instances …
The paradox of stress in English
Despite comments in the ELT literature on the importance of word-stress for comprehensibility in English, there are many places where native speakers of English appear to pay it little attention, showing systematic variation as well as errors. At the very least, there is a paradox here, in that learners are told to get a feature right that native speakers feel free to ignore. More detailed consideration, though, shows that matters are not as simp…
Thinking about back-formation
Some of the major questions about back-formation are considered, using data mainly from English, with many examples taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, though some are new. The discussion, therefore, is not necessarily generalizable to other languages. The evidence is not always unequivocal, and one of the most fundamental questions remains unanswered: How is normal formation possible in cases where the base has no independent existence
A terminological problem
The term “Humboldt’s Universal”, introduced to linguistics in the 1970s, appears to be synonymous with a number of other expressions, some of which are also used to denote different phenomena (e.g. isomorphism). In this paper, the extent of the terminological problem is highlighted, and a plea is made for explanation of how the term is to be understood in the work of individual authors
The Birth and Death of Affixes and Other Morphological Processes in English Derivation
Linguistic change in morphology is usually discussed mainly in relation to change in inflectional morphology. In this paper, the focus is shifted to derivational morphology, where the issues are not entirely the same. In particular, the origins (or birth) of affixes and the loss (death) of affixes are central to the present discussion, with formal, semantic and pragmatic factors all having a role to play. The question is also raised as to whether…
Thank You to Reviewers
Blackbirds and blue whales
In this article various constructions of English with the form A + N are considered, with particular reference to stress patterns. It is shown that there are several such patterns, and that stress patterns do not correlate with fixed effects. It is also argued that a simple division between compound and phrase does not seem to provide a motivation for the patterns found. The patterns seem to be determined partly by factors which are known to infl…
What Is the Plural of Mouse?' and Other Unhelpful Questions for Morphologists
In this paper a number of questions about the morphology of English are posed, and it is shown that each of them carries presuppositions which may be theoretically unsupportable, because there is data which suggests that they are wrong. If we do not make theoretical assumptions, but let ourselves be guided by the data, our theoretical statements may have to be modified, sometimes in crucial ways. While this paper is, to the extent that it asks mo…
Maori English
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Recalibrating Productivity
This paper approaches productivity by considering three case studies: compounds, blends and phrasal verbs. The aim of the paper is to encourage a discussion about the factors involved in the notion of productivity, and to show why so many of the established measures are not completely satisfactory or are interpreted in a way that is not. Dieser Beitrag ist ursprünglich im Peter-Lang-Verlag erschienen (https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/plg…
Expletive Insertion
Discussion| February 01 2015 Expletive Insertion Laurie Bauer Laurie Bauer Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Speech (2015) 90 (1): 122–127. https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-2914736 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Laurie Bauer; Expletive Insertion. American Speech 1 February 2015; 90 (1): 122–127. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-2914736 Downlo…
Grammaticality, acceptability, possible words and large corpora
The Oxford Reference Guide to English Morphology
This volume presents a data-rich description of English inflection and word-formation. Based on large corpora including the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus, it provides a comprehensive treatment of contemporary English morphology that includes both inflection and word-formation. It covers not only well-studied topics such as compounding, conversion, and the inflection and derivation of nouns and verbs, but …
The Morphology of English Dialects
Co-Compounds in Germanic
Co-compounds (sometimes termed “copulative compounds”) are com-pounds whose elements are of equivalent status and which can be glossed as having coordinated meaning (usually linked by and , but occasionally, in some languages, by or ). There are several distin-guishable kinds of co-compounds, including dvandvas, appositional compounds, co-participant compounds, and so on (Wälchli 2005, Bauer 2008a). These were not available in early Germanic. Acc…
A question of identity
I shall begin this brief contribution with a small amount of self-justification, since I appear to have become picked out as one of the “bad guys” in Trudgill's thesis. I shall then go on to agree with some of Trudgill's points, but not with all. In particular, I shall conduct a small thought experiment on the link between accommodation and the development of new dialects
Lenition revisited
The definition of lenition remains problematic, with several competing and at times incompatible definitions being current. What is more, some of these definitions seem to lead to paradoxes. In this paper, some of these paradoxes are considered, and a revised definition of lenition is suggested which, while being compatible with the spirit of earlier definitions, arguably avoids the problems to which those other definitions give rise. The relatio…
Exocentric compounds
Derivational Morphology
As a general introduction to derivational morphology, this paper first places derivational morphology within the framework of word-formation, and then deals with the formal and semantic aspects of derivational morphology. Alternative analyses are indicated, as relevant. Productivity is briefly discussed
Playing with Tradition
In this article we consider some of the fundamental linguistic forces affecting the maintenance and loss of traditions in New Zealand playgrounds. We look at the effects of five pairs of opposing factors, as reflected in data collected in response to a questionnaire completed by classes at 150 schools throughout New Zealand. Children play a dual role as both conservators and innovators in ways that tend to follow fundamental patterns, but are bas…
Phoneme inventory size and population size
This short report investigates the relationship between population size and phoneme inventory size, and finds a surprisingly robust correlation between the two. The more speakers a language has, the bigger its phoneme inventory is likely to be. We show that this holds for both vowel inventories and consonant inventories. It is not an artifact of language family
New Zealand English
In this illustration, we present a transcription and discussion of the variety of English spoken by people of European descent in New Zealand. Locally, such people are referred to as being Pākehā, using the Māori word. Pākehā speech is illustrated here in the speech of three educated women. Thus some of the features which might be expected from New Zealanders do not occur in these recordings, although the speakers are all clearly New Zealanders
Things Ain’t What They Used to Be
Bernhard Wälchli, Co-compounds and natural coordination . Oxford
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Word Families
The idea of a word family is important for a systematic approach to vocabulary teaching and for deciding the vocabulary load of texts. Inclusion of a related form of a word within a word family depends on criteria involving frequency, regularity, productivity and predictability. These criteria are applied to English affixes so that the inflectional affixes and the most useful derivational affixes are arranged into a graded set of seven levels. Th…
Introducing Linguistic Morphology
An expanded and updated new edition of this best-selling introduction to linguistic morphology. The text guides the reader from the very first principles of the internal structure of words through to advanced issues of current controversy. The first part of the book introduces basic concepts, with the help of examples from a range of familiar and exotic languages. The second section highlights particularly important topics, and discusses them in …
Notes on New Zealand English Phonetics and Phonology
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Tracing phonetic change in the received pronunciation of British English
Lenition revisited
The definition of lenition remains problematic, with several competing and at times incompatible definitions being current. What is more, some of these definitions seem to lead to paradoxes. In this paper, some of these paradoxes are considered, and a revised definition of lenition is suggested which, while being compatible with the spirit of earlier definitions, arguably avoids the problems to which those other definitions give rise. The relatio…
New Zealand English
In this illustration, we present a transcription and discussion of the variety of English spoken by people of European descent in New Zealand. Locally, such people are referred to as being Pākehā, using the Māori word. Pākehā speech is illustrated here in the speech of three educated women. Thus some of the features which might be expected from New Zealanders do not occur in these recordings, although the speakers are all clearly New Zealanders
Is there a class of neoclassical compounds, and if so is it productive
Discussions of English word formation include a category of neoclassical compounds to deal with formations such as geology and telephone. This type is claimed to show behavior that makes it clearly distinct from both affixation and compounding. A close examination of actual words suggests that this picture is oversimplified. Rather than there being a discrete class of neoclassical compounds, there is a range of types of lexical enrichment, and ev…
What is lenition
Most phonological textbooks and treatises do not define lenition or weakening, as it is also called. Instead they provide a list of examples of processes which they wish to term 'lenitions' or 'weakenings'. It is then hoped that the reader will deduce a correct definition. This is what is done in, for example, Lass & Anderson (1975: 150) and Sommerstein (1977: 228). One of the few available definitions of lenition is to be derived from Vennemann'…
An Acoustic Study of the Vowels of New Zealand English
This paper presents the result of an acoustic analysis of the more monophthongal of the New Zealand English vowels read in word lists for the Wellington Social Dialect Survey (carried out in 1989). Speakers are cross-classified by sex, social class, ethnicity and age, and a total of 75 speakers were recorded. In addition, comparisons are made with other (earlier and later) acoustic analyses of New Zealand English vowels, with a view to discoverin…
The second Great Vowel Shift
In this paper it will be claimed that English is currently undergoing a vowel shift similar in effect to the fifteenth century Great Vowel Shift. A comment to this effect is made by Hawkins (1973), but the idea is not developed there. Evidence will be taken from twentieth-century descriptions of English, and from descriptions of varieties of English
A question of identity
I shall begin this brief contribution with a small amount of self-justification, since I appear to have become picked out as one of the “bad guys” in Trudgill's thesis. I shall then go on to agree with some of Trudgill's points, but not with all. In particular, I shall conduct a small thought experiment on the link between accommodation and the development of new dialects
Be-heading the word
Notions of ‘head’ and ‘modifier’ have a long and respectable history in syntax, although they have changed considerably in recent years. But the application of similar notions to morphology is relatively new. The extension of these notions to morphology has been prompted by two developments: (i) Intimations from dependency grammarians that their approach to language ought to be generalizable to morphology (Andersen, 1980); and, far more important…
Phoneme inventory size and population size
This short report investigates the relationship between population size and phoneme inventory size, and finds a surprisingly robust correlation between the two. The more speakers a language has, the bigger its phoneme inventory is likely to be. We show that this holds for both vowel inventories and consonant inventories. It is not an artifact of language family
Getting into a flap!/t/ in New Zealand English
This paper examines the constraints on the realizations of /t/ in New Zealand English. On the basis of a detailed examination of the speech of two similar speakers from the New Zealand ICE corpus, a series of allophonic rules is provided. It is then shown that the distribution of allophones for these speakers is not the same as for other speakers who have been previously analyzed. Part of the difference appears to be that different speakers assig…
Linking /r/ in RP
This paper is an account of facts gleaned from the auditory analysis of thirty-seven recordings made in the Department of Phonetics, University of Edinburgh, between 1949 and 1966. Every student and staff member in the Department (which was merged with the Department of Linguistics in 1967) was recorded reading a standard passage, 'The Story of Arthur the Rat'. There were actually two versions of the story used. The earlier one, used until 1957, …
The Birth and Death of Affixes and Other Morphological Processes in English Derivation
Linguistic change in morphology is usually discussed mainly in relation to change in inflectional morphology. In this paper, the focus is shifted to derivational morphology, where the issues are not entirely the same. In particular, the origins (or birth) of affixes and the loss (death) of affixes are central to the present discussion, with formal, semantic and pragmatic factors all having a role to play. The question is also raised as to whether…
Exocentric compounds
Can we watch regional dialects developing in colonial English
The regional homogeneity of New Zealand English is frequently commented on. Similar observations on varieties such as Australian English were simply precursors to the discovery of regional dialects. In this paper a report is given of a survey of New Zealand primary school children, which showed that in the vocabulary they use in the playground there is considerable regional variation. This might be taken as evidence of the inception of regional v…
The Second Great Vowel Shift Revisited
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Thinking about back-formation
Some of the major questions about back-formation are considered, using data mainly from English, with many examples taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, though some are new. The discussion, therefore, is not necessarily generalizable to other languages. The evidence is not always unequivocal, and one of the most fundamental questions remains unanswered: How is normal formation possible in cases where the base has no independent existence
Derivational Morphology
As a general introduction to derivational morphology, this paper first places derivational morphology within the framework of word-formation, and then deals with the formal and semantic aspects of derivational morphology. Alternative analyses are indicated, as relevant. Productivity is briefly discussed
Playing with Tradition
In this article we consider some of the fundamental linguistic forces affecting the maintenance and loss of traditions in New Zealand playgrounds. We look at the effects of five pairs of opposing factors, as reflected in data collected in response to a questionnaire completed by classes at 150 schools throughout New Zealand. Children play a dual role as both conservators and innovators in ways that tend to follow fundamental patterns, but are bas…
A note regarding ‘On the power-law distribution of language family sizes’
Wichmann (2005) discusses the power-law distribution n = ar − b as a description of the relationship between the number of languages n in a language family, and the rank r of that family in a list ordered by decreasing n . Two datasets are used by Wichmann, one from Ethnologue (Grimes 2000), which lists 130 language families, and one from Ruhlen (1987), listing 21 families. We have reanalysed these data and find that the method of fitting a power…
Contextual Clues to Word-Meaning
The Verb Have in New Zealand English
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Some thoughts on dependency grammar
On the need for pragmatics in the study of nominal compounding
The second Great Vowel Shift
In this paper it will be claimed that English is currently undergoing a vowel shift similar in effect to the fifteenth century Great Vowel Shift. A comment to this effect is made by Hawkins (1973), but the idea is not developed there. Evidence will be taken from twentieth-century descriptions of English, and from descriptions of varieties of English
That vowel shift again
Matthews (1981) offers several criticisms of an earlier article of mine, ‘The second Great Vowel Shift?’ (Bauer, 1979). Some of these criticisms appear to arise from a misunderstanding of my original article that is entirely due to my own imprecise formulations. I should therefore like to set the record straight, and also to raise a methodological problem implicit in Matthews's criticisms
English Word-Formation
Interest in word-formation is probably as old as interest in language itself. As Dr Bauer points out in his Introduction, many of the questions that scholars are asking now were also being asked in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, there is still little agreement on methodology in the study of word-formation or theoretical approaches to it; even the kind of data relevant to its study is open to debate. Dr Bauer here p…
Consonant Strength Hierarchies and Danish
This article uses evidence from Danish to test the hierarchies of consonant strength set up in Foley (1977). It is argued that Danish provides evidence to show that the α hierarchy (the hierarchy based on place of articulation) cannot be universal, and may not have any predictive power. There is also some evidence to suggest that some of Foley's other hierarchies may require some minor changes
Linking /r/ in RP
This paper is an account of facts gleaned from the auditory analysis of thirty-seven recordings made in the Department of Phonetics, University of Edinburgh, between 1949 and 1966. Every student and staff member in the Department (which was merged with the Department of Linguistics in 1967) was recorded reading a standard passage, 'The Story of Arthur the Rat'. There were actually two versions of the story used. The earlier one, used until 1957, …
Tracing phonetic change in the received pronunciation of British English
Notes on New Zealand English Phonetics and Phonology
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Number agreement with collective nouns in New Zealand English
What is lenition
Most phonological textbooks and treatises do not define lenition or weakening, as it is also called. Instead they provide a list of examples of processes which they wish to term 'lenitions' or 'weakenings'. It is then hoped that the reader will deduce a correct definition. This is what is done in, for example, Lass & Anderson (1975: 150) and Sommerstein (1977: 228). One of the few available definitions of lenition is to be derived from Vennemann'…
The Verb Have in New Zealand English
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Be-heading the word
Notions of ‘head’ and ‘modifier’ have a long and respectable history in syntax, although they have changed considerably in recent years. But the application of similar notions to morphology is relatively new. The extension of these notions to morphology has been prompted by two developments: (i) Intimations from dependency grammarians that their approach to language ought to be generalizable to morphology (Andersen, 1980); and, far more important…
Introducing linguistic morphology
Markedness, markedness inversion, and dependency phonology
One of the basic assumptions of dependency phonology is that the notation should encode the markedness values of segments, systems, and processes. Both the marking conventions and V and ‘m’ values are dispensed with, and markedness values are reflected in the complexity of representation assigned to a segment, system or process. For example, more frequent, and therefore less marked, segments should have less complex representations, and vice vers…
Shorter notices
Baldauf, Richard Jr & Allan Luke (eds). Language planning and education in Australasia and the South Pacific. Clevedon and Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters. 1990. Pp.x + 365. Baldwin, John & French, Peter. Forensic Phonetics. London & New York: Pinter. 1990. Pp.iv + 141. £39.50
The Second Great Vowel Shift Revisited
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Word Families
The idea of a word family is important for a systematic approach to vocabulary teaching and for deciding the vocabulary load of texts. Inclusion of a related form of a word within a word family depends on criteria involving frequency, regularity, productivity and predictability. These criteria are applied to English affixes so that the inflectional affixes and the most useful derivational affixes are arranged into a graded set of seven levels. Th…
Structural Analogy
In a number of publications, John Anderson and his colleagues have developed the notion of Structural Analogy — the assumption that structural principles generalise across levels of language — as a meta-theoretical principle of linguistics. In this paper some recent works which appear to criticise the notion are considered, and it is concluded that they fail to invalidate it. It is suggested, however, that some work by Anderson and his colleagues…
Getting into a flap!/t/ in New Zealand English
This paper examines the constraints on the realizations of /t/ in New Zealand English. On the basis of a detailed examination of the speech of two similar speakers from the New Zealand ICE corpus, a series of allophonic rules is provided. It is then shown that the distribution of allophones for these speakers is not the same as for other speakers who have been previously analyzed. Part of the difference appears to be that different speakers assig…
Evaluative Morphology
Various claims from the previous literature about the way in which evaluative morphology (particularly diminutives and augmentatives) operates are tested on a large sample of languages. Evaluative morphology is seen as being less morphologically marginal than has been implied in some of the recent literature, but nevertheless as showing some interesting cross-linguistic tendencies
Is there a class of neoclassical compounds, and if so is it productive
Discussions of English word formation include a category of neoclassical compounds to deal with formations such as geology and telephone. This type is claimed to show behavior that makes it clearly distinct from both affixation and compounding. A close examination of actual words suggests that this picture is oversimplified. Rather than there being a discrete class of neoclassical compounds, there is a range of types of lexical enrichment, and ev…
The Fat Owl of the Remove meets the Ness Peril
Reflections on some changes this century in what is taken to be worthwhile reading, looking in particular at how a trick of word-forming style was once used to highlight the brokenfulness of broken English. — ‘The allrightfulness will be terrific’ (BBMSA, 52: see panel)
The needle in the haystack
Experimental psychology and anatomy have shown that the recognition of a gestalt is a cerebral process. The appearance of a gestalt is not limited to the visual channel – the auditory and tactile channels allow the gestalt effect as well. The gestalt phenomenon can and should be extended to more subtle mental processes, such as pattern recognition and recognition by Fourier transformation. Whereas cryptoanalysis involving a search for a probable …
On the Origins of the New Zealand English Accent
In this paper it is argued that the New Zealand English accent is a mixed accent in origin, showing input from many areas in England south of a line from Cheshire to the Wash. It is argued that attributing the accent to more specific areas in England is possible only if some of the phonetic evidence is ignored. Accordingly, the notion of swamping (Lass 1990) is not specifically required to explain most of the features of the New Zealand accent: s…
Linguistics (48 works) · Philosophy (46 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (37 works) · Computer Science (36 works) · History (26 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (21 works) · Philosophy (19 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (19 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Lexicography and Language Studies (14 works)