Abstract
The semantics of verb-deriving processes in English and, specifically, of conversion/zero-derivation and affixation has been extensively described in the literature from various theoretical and empirical approaches. In particular, some studies have proposed a methodology consisting in the manual semantic annotation of corpus concordances in order to assess the distribution of semantic categories across word-formation processes.
This paper tests this methodology on a sample of 246 verbal hapaxes from the British National Corpus which were manually classified into the various semantic categories traditionally used in the literature. The results obtained are consistent with previous studies regarding the semantics of denominal verbs.
Methodologically, this study shows the suitability of the method used, but also points at some of its limitations to be addressed in future research.