Latviešu valodas lietvārdu darināšanas piedēkļu daudznozīmība teorētiskā skatījumā
The polysemy of Latvian nominal suffixes from a theoretical perspective

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to identify the theoretical concepts best suited for analysing and explaining the polysemy and multi-functionality of Latvian derivational affixes, esp. suffixes. The majority of Latvian nominal derivational suffixes are polysemous, many of them are also multi-functional (i.e. are used for deriving new words from base words of various word classes). This phenomenon and its underlying causes need to be explained and understood both from the point of view of language production and perception. In addition, an efficient classification of the various meanings of such affixes, with adequate explanatory power, needs to be established for practical (e.g., semantic annotation of derivatives in digital resources), as well as theoretical purposes. Furthermore, since affix polysemy and the associated semantic groups (esp. among derived nouns) are observed cross-linguistically, there must be general cognitive and psycholinguistic mechanisms rooted in the ways we perceive and think about extralinguistic reality that account for such affix behaviour. The study provides a brief overview of the treatment of affix polysemy in several theoretical frameworks and applies the relevant theoretical input to the analysis of the semantics of Latvian derivatives with the suffix -ul- extracted from the Balanced Corpus of Modern Latvian LVK2018 and LVK2022.

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