The purpose of the current study was to examine into which groups of meaning the derivational morpheme – skap can be grouped in Swedish. 340 Swedish words formed with – skap were collected from SAOL and grouped into different groups of meaning based on 1) their meaning, and 2) their part(s) of speech. For example, words that express a state of being, such as galenskap (madness) and havandeskap (pregnancy) were placed into one group. Words that refer to a work or a title, such as ridderskap (knighthood), presidentskap (presidency), and författarskap (authorship), were grouped together in another group. Using this method, the results show that the gathered 340 words could be divided into 11 different groups expressing 1) state of being, 2) environment, 3) belonging, 4) kinship, 5) work, title, office, 6) tools, 7) sport events, 8) economy and finances, 9) information and forms of knowing, 10) mischief, and 11) remaining words. This study also aimed at examining to what extent an intervention focusing on word formation, and derivational morphemes in particular, affect Swedish upper-secondary school students’ metamorphological awareness. The intervention was a quasi-experimental study in which 58 students participated. The participants were first given a pre-test to determine whether they had a high or low metamorphological awareness. This was determined by their ability to define five different Swedish derivational morphemes. Afterwards, they participated in an intervention in the form of a lesson where they were taught basic word formation with the focus on derivational morphemes, which was succeeded by a post-test, which examined the effect the intervention had had on the participants’ metamorphological awareness. The post-test was identical to the pre-test, with the exception of five additional words formed with – skap, with the purpose to compare the students’ definitions to the groups of meaning presented in the first part of this study. The results show that the intervention had a great effect on the participants’ metamorphological awareness. For example, in the pre-test, most of the participants had either one or two correct definitions, but in the post-test, the majority of the participants had either four or five correct definitions, which indicate an increase of metamorphological awareness.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the semantic and syntactic properties of the -­ee suffix in English. The -­ee suffix was borrowed from the French ‑­é suffix during the late Middle Ages, when French started to exert its linguistic influence on English. Previous research suggests that the -­ee suffix in English exhibits the semantic properties of sentience, episodicity and passivity. Syntactically, the function of the ­-ee suffix in English may suggest ergativity. Furthermore, it has been suggested that contextual anchoring is involved in the use of the -­ee suffix. I explored these characteristics of the ­-ee suffix by testing non‑­standardised ­-ee suffixed nouns with the mentioned semantic and syntactic properties. The process of differentiating non‑­standardised from standardised -­ee suffixed nouns was done with the help of a well­-established dictionary and the Internet. The results showed that sentience and episodicity applied to most -­ee suffixed nouns. In addition, passivity was an important feature in the -­ee nominalisation of transitive stem verbs. When the meaning of ­-ee suffixed nouns was complex, contextual anchoring served to facilitate the understanding of the meaning of the noun. Syntactically, the relationship between the ‑ee suffix and ergativity was weak. Thus, it can be concluded that the use of the ‑ee suffix is controlled by several semantic properties simultaneously, whereas the syntactic properties are relatively unimportant. / Den här uppsatsen undersöker -ee-suffixets semantiska och syntaktiska egenskaper i engelska. Suffixet lånades från det franska suffixet -é under senmedeltiden, när det franska språket började påverka engelska. Tidigare forskning hävdar att det engelska -ee-suffixet påvisar semantiska egenskaper såsom animacitet, episodicitet och passivitet. Syntaktiskt sett kan suffixet även tyda på ergativitet. Användning av suffixet är i viss mån förknippad med förankringen i kontexten. Ickestandardiserade -ee -avledda substantiv identifierades och deras semantiska och syntaktiska egenskaper undersöktes. Urvalet av icke-standardiserade och standiserade substantiv utfördes med hjälp av ett väletablerat lexikon och Internet. Resultatet visade att de flesta -ee-avledda substantiven uppvisar episodicitet och majoriteten även animacitet. Passivitet är ett viktigt kännetecken av suffixet när det gäller substantiveringen av transitiva verb. Betydelserna av vissa mer svårtydda eeavledda substantiv förankras ibland i kontexten med exempelvis förekomsten av er-/-or-avledda motsvarigheter. Syntaktiskt sett är ergativitet inte ett tydligt särdrag av -ee-suffixet. Sammanfattningsvis kan det hävdas att -ee-suffixets användning styrs framför allt av samverkan mellan flera olika semantiska aspekter, medan den syntaktiska egenskapen, ergativitet, är relativt oväsentlig.