Extravagant 'fake' morphemes in Dutch. Morphological productivity, semantic profiles and categorical flexibility

Dutch features several morphemes with “privative” semantics that occur as left-hand members in compounds (e.g. imitatieleer ‘imitation leather’, kunstgras ‘artificial grass’, nepjuwelen ‘fake jewels’). Additionally, the English loan fake can be used in Dutch compound-like sequences (e.g. fake-bericht ‘fake message’). Some of these “fake” morphemes display great categorical flexibility and innovative adjectival uses. Nep, for instance, is synchronically attested as an inflected adjective (1), and fake may be used in the Dutch comparative form (2). (1) Dat is geen echte cupcake maar ik vond dat... Mehr ...