Language Productivity
Language productivity is somewhat of a misleading term. Every language is productive; if a language weren’t, it wouldn’t exist. Language has to be relevant to the current point in time, but it also has to change as the world does. Phrases like social media or take a selfie didn’t exist twenty years ago, but they are now commonplace. In addition, a verb like venmo (to send money via the Venmo app) is quite popular too. These words/phrases grow out of necessity as we realize that one doesn’t quite exist to descriptively or effectively describe a part of our lives. Of course, “I will send you money via the Venmo app,” works just as well as “I will venmo you.” But, the latter is faster and shorter and as humans, simplicity speaks to us. In fact, the verb venmo has expanded over the years in itself; it could be used in referring to sending money on any app at all. “I’ll venmo you,” might be said when someone is in reality using Apple Pay or CashApp. New words can evolve rather quickly and adopt extra environments for usage.
All languages have to adapt to the world around them, but they do not choose to do this in the same way. Wikipedia defines language productivity as “the degree to which native speakers use a particular grammatical process.” That is, likely intentionally, one of the vaguest definitions I have ever heard. This is partly due to the fact that linguists have not come to a definitive conclusion about how to describe this process. The definition that I would give: productivity is the innate ability that a native speaker has to change or morph words in order to align with the grammatical environment in which they are being used. Still too vague? Well, I tried. Some languages are more productive than others in the sense that their speakers are able to generate new words and understand their meaning by using certain processes. English is one of these languages! Let’s try an example.
Gumple. This is a word that I just came up with in this moment. A gumple is the central support of a bridge, tent, overpass, or any other structure that is suspended above the ground. There are other words that aim to describe a gumple: pile, pier, bent, pole, column. But, none of these refer specifically to the central support. Whether or not you would ever use this word, you already have the ability to change this word and use it grammatically in a way that other speakers of English would likely understand. Don’t believe me?
gumple, n. - a central support of a bridge, tent, or suspended structure
gumple, v. - to support something at its center
gumply, adj. - gumple-like, reminiscent of a gumple
gumplify, v. - to turn something into a gumple
gumpler, n. - one who gumples, one who installs or creates gumples
gumplification, n. - the process of turning something into a gumple
gumplable, adj. - fit to be used as a gumple
degumple, v. - to remove a structure’s gumple
gumpleless, adj. - lacking a gumple
regumple, v. - to install a new gumple below a structure that previously had one
All of these are possible words and they all stem from the same root: gumple. Even if you didn’t know the definition of gumple, you probably could’ve created all or some of these words on your own. We use these processes all the time, adding suffixes and prefixes to words, in order to fit them into the message we are trying to convey. Sometimes, we don’t even have to change them at all. Almost every noun in English can be turned into a verb by simply using it as such. It is the reason why many verbs match their noun counterparts.
The road forks in a half-mile.
I chaired the board at my daughter’s school.
Let’s table this for now.
They’ll pool into the stadium once it opens.
She’s booking it at the moment.
Frame the situation in whatever way you see fit.
Speaking a language is not just about studying all of the words or structures that are part of a language. If this was the case, how would language have arisen in the first place? Speaking a language is about learning how to manipulate it, understanding what its limits are, what you can and can’t use it for, how you can bend it and still be understood. If language-learning was as simple as memorizing the dictionary, we’d probably all be polyglots.
With this being said, nonsense is a universal concept. For example, take the meme from recent years: boneless pizza. No pizza (hopefully) has ever included bones because pizza doesn’t utilize any ingredients that have bones. Sure, chicken or meatballs could be put on a pizza, but it is assumed in every case that these would have any bones removed beforehand. This meme is hilarious because it is complete nonsense, and this humor would probably translate into any language that is familiar with pizza. Just as this phrase is somewhat useless, there are many possible words that we could make that would never actually become words. The word soup, meaning a liquid dish, is a useful one, but the adjective soupable probably never would be. Because of its status as a deadly substance, mercury is not particularly soupable. This sentence is strange and unnecessary. The ability that we have to make a seemingly endless amount of possible words does not mean that all of those words are acceptable. In fact, most aren’t, including many of the gumple words above. Only the ones that we have use for stick around. Hence, the existence of verbs like venmo or tweet.
Since productivity is a relatively controversial topic in the sense that it hasn’t been fully fleshed out yet by linguists, it is hard to find information on other languages. Russian, which I am somewhat proficient in, seems to be very productive in the sense that there are many ways to create new words in different grammatical forms from existing ones. German seems to be this way as well. This might be one reason why these languages seem to be among those with the most words. Though it is impossible to say what a word consists of (is swim the same word as swims or are they two words?), the English dictionary has many of them, and productivity, as well as history, probably plays into this reality. Of course, dialects, the number of speakers, actual usage, and what is considered a word are just as important, so a solid consensus on the wordiest language is yet to made. Is it Korean, English, Finnish, Chinese, Arabic? The world may never know for certain.
Other languages might use the same process as English and use affixes for new words. Some might go through a process of reduplication in which they repeat sounds to change a word’s meaning. Others might not have a set of processes; they have to more consciously create new words by smashing existing words together or crafting completely unique ones. These languages could be seen as less “productive,” though this is not a label of judgment. Every language has its benefits and drawbacks. While English speakers don’t have to think so much about word creation, they have to think a good deal about what the sentence “We drank whiskey on the rocks by the beach” really means. Are they drinking whiskey on ice while next to the beach, or are they drinking whiskey while sitting on rocks next to the beach? Ambiguity runs rampant in English while other languages might have little of it or none at all. English is more productive, but it is also less specific. No language is perfect. Languages are simply filters with which we see the world and try to understand, a world that we still have a lot to learn about.
Language productivity is one of those things that is hard to define, but you likely know it when you see it. Sometimes we are too productive in our language usage or hyperproductive. The word conversate is used by many as the verbal form of conversation and many accept it as a word, when in fact, conversation is the noun form of the already existence verb, converse. Ironically, sometimes productivity is so preferred that it makes us gloss over the fact that we already have the word we are looking for. Everyday we make words that might never make it into the dictionary (such as the word earlier in this paragraph hyperproductive) and we might forget about them before we lay down to sleep at night. It’s a testament to how useful language can be in both the long and short term, and how easily the human brain can adapt when it, either correctly or not, senses the need for it.
