ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the development of the lexicalist hypothesis and the various specific claims and assumptions made in regard to word formation processes. It looks at deverbal nominals and compounds in English and Japanese, and describes their similarities and differences. The book deals with nominalization and verbalization of adjectives in the two languages and also discusses in particular the important role argument structure plays in morphological derivations. It aims to take up one specific consequence of the framework, namely the possibility of phrasal suffixation, and apply it to the analysis of the derived stative predicate constructions in Japanese. The book examines other suffixes with phrasal scope, and also aims to compare some of them to the English affixes with similar functions.
