Drawing on a wide array of historical and contemporary corpora, this article provides one of the first empirical analyses of the intricately related functional changes that -ish underwent in the course of English language history. By investigating the distribution of -ish formations, the analysis sheds light on the productivity of the suffix, which does not only become evident in the numerous hapax legomena, but also in the trajectory of change itself in which -ish occurs with ever new base categories and new functions. Moreover, the article revisits theoretical claims made in the literature about the diachronic development and synchronic properties of -ish and reassesses them in the light of the corpus-based observations.

中文翻译：

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从 engl-isc 到 what-ish：基于语料库的英语历史上 -ish 派生的调查

本文借鉴了广泛的历史和当代语料库，提供了对错综复杂的功能变化的第一个实证分析，-ish经历了英语语言史的课程。通过调查 -是的形成，分析揭示了后缀的生产力，这不仅在众多的hapax legomena中变得明显，而且在变化的轨迹中也很明显，其中-ish随着新的基础类别和新功能的出现。此外，本文重新审视了文献中关于历时发展和共时特性的理论主张。-ish并根据基于语料库的观察重新评估它们。