¿ Are word families a by-product of morphology or is morphology a by-product of word families?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show that the semantic elements traditionally called «roots» decisively control the structure of word families and therefore represent more than a simple container of idiosyncratic information. Based on a semantic-categorical analysis (Dowty / Wall / Peters 1981; Carpenter 1997; Steedman 2000, in preparation; Jacobson 2014; Lambek 2014; Baldridge / Frederick Hoyt 2015 and others) of diathetically alternating families, we will try to show that (a) this and other related issues can be reduced to the problem of defining the logical type of roots and (b) that the latter regulates the family size and controls the semiproductivity traditionally attributed to morphology.