Consequences of the "los"-suffixation in German: corpus frequency, emotional-affective effects and a Construction Grammar perspective

Abstract

Based on the privative derivational suffix -los, we test statements found in the literature on word formation using a – at least in this field – novel empirical basis: a list of affective-emotional ratings of base nouns and associated -los derivations. In addition to a frequency analysis based on the German Reference Corpus, we show that, in general, emotional polarity (so-called valence, positive vs. negative emotions) is reversed by suffixation with -los. This change is stronger for more polarized base nouns. The perceived intensity of emotion (so-called arousal) is generally lower for -los derivations than for base nouns. Finally, to capture the results theoretically, we propose a prototypical -los construction in the framework of Construction Morphology.

This contribution was originally published by Peter Lang Publishing (https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/plg/jwf/2022/00000006/00000002/art00003)