What does the term "productivity" mean in linguistics morphology?

In linguistics morphology, productivity refers to the ability of a morphological process or rule to create new words or forms that are not already established in the language. A productive process is one that can be applied to a wide range of words or forms to create new ones, while an unproductive process is limited in its application. Productivity is an important concept in understanding how new words are formed in a language and how morphological rules operate.

In linguistics morphology, productivity refers to the ability of a morphological process to create new words or forms from existing ones. A productive process is one that can be applied to a wide range of words and is not limited to a specific set of forms. For example, the process of adding the suffix -tion to a verb to create a noun is a productive process in English. This process can be applied to a wide range of verbs, such as create (creation), educate (education), and observe (observation). In contrast, the process of creating a past tense form of a verb by adding -ed is a less productive process. It can be applied to regular verbs, but it cannot be applied to all verbs. For example, the verb put does not form its past tense by adding -ed, but rather by changing its vowel to u (put, put).