Instantiating variables in schemas within Relational Morphology

Abstract

The article deals with the instantiation of variables in schemas within the Relational Morphology theory. On the basis of an approach to word-formation from concept to form, the article argues that for the question of what lexemes are retrieved from the lexicon to instantiate the variables in schemas in order to achieve the required meaning of the resulting word within the generative role of schemas, it is important to distinguish different functions of word-formation, namely those that provide mere variations on existing lexemes in contrast to the function of word-formation that provides names for concepts in the extra-linguistic world. In the first case, the variables in schemas are instantiated with lexemes on which we perform the variation, whereas, in the second case, the lexemes result from prior mental processing of the concept to be named. The paper thus also provides the description of the process of conceptualization within the naming function of word-formation and demonstrates the principles of conceptualization on various examples.