-Ness and -ity

Abstract

Representatives of a relatively new theoretical direction—Distributed Morphology—claim that morphological building blocks traditionally referred to as derivational suffixes constitute phonological exponents (or allomorphs) of some abstract syntactic nodes n, a, or v. Following the principles of inflection, the distribution of these allomorphs is determined by competition. This view is in sharp contrast to the long-standing assumption that derivational suffixes convey not only morpho-syntactic, but also semantic information. In this article, a detailed analysis of two functionally similar English suffixes, -ness and -ity, will show that the distributionalist view is too vague as it stands because it misses subtle but significant semantic differences between these suffixes, which result from their historical development. On the basis of doublets such as ethnicness versus ethnicity, or sincereness versus sincerity it will be argued that -ness and -ity are not in complementary distribution, but select different domains of their adjectival bases. Evidence for this hypothesis is drawn from various morphological phenomena and a variety of data.