A corpus study of derivational morphology: Prefixes UN and non in the BNC

Abstract

Corpora as a tool for studying morphology has been mainly used to examine morphological productivity, since English is rich in derivational morphology. Corpora can also be used to study the relationship between collocations and affixes which constitute them. The aim of this research is to establish the similarities and differences between nouns which follow adjectives with prefixes UN and non in collocations with unmarried and non-married in the British National Corpus (BNC). The emphasis is on the occurrence of nouns which denote human beings. The aim is to learn what characterises the prefixes and their distribution. By focusing on the prefixes in unmarried and non-married, we also examine how an electronic corpus can help bring semantic and morphological analysis closer together, and whether it can yield significant findings about culture and society.