The Study of the Productivity of Compound Noun Maker Patterns in Persian Language

The present research investigates the productivity of compound noun maker patterns in Persian language based on the theoretical framework of Plag (2003). For this purpose, the authors have extracted 1300 compound nouns from a corpus taken from Persian language database (PLDB). The method of the present research is descriptive-analytic and data collecting is corpus based. After the study of collected data of research, the authors have concluded that the only quantitative method for measuring the productivity of word formation processes introduced by Plag (2003) is to count the outputs of a word formation process. Also, the most productive compound noun maker pattern among compound noun maker patterns is (noun+noun). Moreover, different methods of measuring the productivity rate of compound noun maker patterns offer different results. Analysis of the extracted data from the research corpus shows that among the compound noun maker patterns in Persian, (noun + noun) pattern has the highest productivity and these patterns ( pronoun + noun / pronoun + stem of present verb / noun + imperative verb / number + number) have the lowest productivity.



1. Introduction

One of the most important word formation processes in the Persian language, which is also highly productive, is the process of composition, which is used in the construction of new words, especially compound nouns, and plays an important role in the formation and enrichment of Persian language words. Words play an essential role in the formation of human language, so knowing the productive word-forming processes and, above all, the productive noun-forming processes, can be one of the most practical methods of creating new words in any language, especially the Persian language.

Languages have benefited from the process of composition, which is one of the most important processes of word formation and is considered one of the generative processes of word formation. Therefore, this research, based on the theoretical framework of the generation of Plug (2003) as well as the analysis of the data obtained from the corpus, investigated the quantitative methods of measuring the generation of patterns of compound nouns in Persian language, and the patterns of the formation of compound nouns which can help Persian language in naming and choosing words for new domestic or imported products and inventions.

Despite many studies that Iranian and non-Iranian researchers have done on nouns, only a few studies have been conducted in relation to the issue of the reproduction of noun formation processes, and so far no researcher has exclusively investigated the reproduction of compound noun formation patterns in the Persian language. Based on this, the authors intend to study the rate of reproduction of compound noun formation patterns in Persian based on the theoretical framework of reproduction of Plug (2003).



Research Question(s)

In this regard, the following questions have been raised:

1. What are the quantitative methods of measuring the productivity of compound noun formation patterns in Persian language?

2. Among the patterns of compound nouns, which one is more productive?

For the above two questions, two hypotheses have been proposed. For the first question, it is assumed that the quantitative methods of measuring the generation of compound noun formation patterns in Persian include counting the outputs of a noun formation process, using possible words, using monofrequency words, and counting new words. For the second question, it has been assumed that the pattern (noun + noun) has the highest rate of reproduction among the patterns that make up compound nouns.



2. Literature Review

Shaghaghi (2011) defines productivity as follows: if a process can be used for phonetic changes or making new words or sentences, that process is considered productive, like the adjective-forming suffix (-y) in Persian language, which has a high productivity.

Amir Arjamendi (2009) in her doctoral thesis entitled "Productivity in the process of composition of the Persian language" based on the theoretical framework of Borer and Borer (1988) and by studying and researching the linguistic databases of the Persian language, provided a general picture of productivit.

Amir Arjamandi (2009) believes that it is possible to quantitatively measure the productivity in the composition of the Persian language by measuring the productivity by counting the outputs of the composition process using possible words and using single frequency words and by counting new words, but the reason for the limitations in the Persian language database was that it was only able to examine the productivity of the composition process using two methods of counting the outputs of the composition process and using single frequency words.

Badakhshan (2011) in his doctoral dissertation investigated the rate of reproduction of the composition process in Persian based on the theoretical framework of Plague (2003). According to Badakhshan (2011), fertility is not absolute, but rather continuous. He deals with productivity as a quantitative and qualitative concept and then introduced the methods of measuring productivity and because of the limitations he faced such as the impossibility of choosing compound words separately in the linguistic body and also the lack of software that can separate compound words from other words. He is satisfied with only one method and by counting the outputs of a derivational process, he measures the fertility of non-current compound words in Persian language.



3. Methodology

The method of conducting the present descriptive-analytical research and the method of collecting the research data is to use the language corpus available in the Persian language database in the Research Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies (PLDB). The data collected from the 8 linguistic corpora of the research included 1300 compound nouns selected from 63 sources.



4. Results

In this article, the fertility patterns of compound nouns in Persian were investigated based on the opinions of Plag (2003). In this research, by extracting 1300 compound nouns from 63 sources in the Persian language database (PLDB), researchers tried to answer the two questions raised in this research and prove the hypotheses raised for each question.

In order to find the most productive pattern of compound nouns and after examining all the patterns of compound nouns, the authors came to the following conclusion: the pattern of compound nouns (noun + noun) with a frequency of 623 compound nouns and a sample frequency of 6740 compound nouns is one of the highest fertility among the compound noun patterns. Therefore, the hypothesis related to the second question of this research is confirmed. The authors, in examining and comparing different methods of measuring the productivity of the patterns of compound nouns, obtained different results of these patterns.

For example, in the first method of measuring the productivity rate of the data extracted from the body of the current research through counting the outputs of noun formation processes, which is a quantitative method, the compound noun pattern (noun + noun) had the highest fertility rate, while in the second method of measuring, the fertility rate of the data extracted from the body of this research, that is, by using single frequency words, which is based on the model of Plague (2003), is not a quantitative method and in this research is only used to compare and verify different productivity measurement methods. The compound noun formation pattern (pronoun + current stem (present)) which had very low productivity in the first method, in the second method has the highest rate of productivity among the compound noun formative patterns and the most productive noun pattern, called compounder.