Sprachprofi wrote:...
I think textbooks do students a great disservice in not pointing out logical affix systems as soon as they are encountered, making it unnecessarily difficult to memorise vocabulary that differs only by a couple letters and completely preventing the early acquisition of dozens of words that use the same affix.
When I read the article linked to by the OP, things got off to a rocky start. First of all, after stating the many people struggle to grow their vocabulary in their target language, the author states that the usual advice is to use mnemonics and a spaced-recognition system such as Anki.
I strongly doubt that this is the usual advice for growing vocabulary. The only way to grow your vocabulary is to be exposed to new material and then study the new words as they come up, usually with the help of a dictionary. Mnemonics and SRS are useful tools, among others, for committing the new words to memory.
Then speaking about a hidden and universal system for growing vocabulary the author writes :
You will discover this system in German and Chinese, in Hebrew, Russian and Indonesian, in Greek and Swahili, and I'm sure in most other languages. Why am I so confident? Because humans are lazy.
We are too lazy to invent completely new word roots for each new concept.
I imagine this was probably tongue-in-cheek but to me it sounded rather trite and frankly off-putting. Derivational structures in language have evolved not because of human laziness but rather because of a combination of human creativity and internal forces of languages evolution.
For example, one factor of change, especially in vocabulary, is contact with other languages. Speakers take words from other languages simply because the words are already there. Why reinvent the wheel when you can simply adapt the so-called borrowings into your native system ? And voilà, you expand the expressive possibilities of your language.
After that rocky start, the article goes on to discuss the multiplier effect of using the derivational structures based on some universal categories such as opposites, people, places, abstract concepts, adverbs, actions, ability.
For example, in French the ending –erie is often, but not always, associated with the place where things are made or sold. So we have possonnerie (fish monger), boulangerie (bakery), pâtisserie (pastry stop), friperie (used clothing shop), épicerie (grocery store), etc. So knowing how the –erie ending works here helps to quickly expand one’s vocabulary.
I think this idea is basically sound. Yes, there is a pattern here that we can see throughout the language. But, there are some complications. Not all the words that end in –erie refer to places (e.g. niaiserie (a little thing), poterie (pottery), ânerie (stupidity)). And then there are many places that have names that do not end in –erie ( e.g. pharmacie (pharmacy), magasin (shop), école (school), atelier (workshop), etc.).
The big problem in all this is that despite the existence of structural patterns that give useful cues, one has to actually learn how to use and not use the individual words in real contexts. For example, in English we can say well and unwell are opposites but good and •ungood are not (at least in my dialect).
I should point out that to this day former US president Donald Trump is mocked for his use of the adverb
bigly derived very correctly I should point out from the adjective
big.
Finally, to take an example that is not some universal category, I would like to look at phrasal verbs in English. As everybody here knows, English has this really interesting way of creating new verbs by adding one, two or even three prepositions to an existing verb. So you can instantly expand your vocabulary by simply adding a small list of prepositions to whatever verbs. For example, take the verb come and you can make come on, come in, come across, come over, come down, come down with, come up, come up with, come by, come for, etc.
Does this mean that instead of one verb come, you now have expanded your vocabulary to 10 new verbs ? Yes and no. Yes, It’s true they are all variants of come but, no, because many of the meanings are totally different and you therefore have to learn how to use each verb individually. In fact you have to be a rather advanced speaker of English to be able to use all these derived verbs accurately.
There are a few other points I could make but I’ll stop here by saying that derivational patterns are of course important for simplifying the learning of vocabulary but it’s not as simple as it looks.