On the Usage of the Lexemes Fathership, Fatherhood, Cousinship and Cousinhood

Abstract

This paper concerns the semantic relation between the lexemes „fathership“ and „fatherhood“, „cousinship“ and „cousinhood“ in terms of their lexical properties and usage, i.e., the type of predicate the nominal base belongs to. As each of these juxtaposed pairs has the same nominal base („father“ and „cousin“), which can attach to both -ship and -hood suffixes, it is the selection of the particular suffix that can determine not only the type of predicate of the nominal base – considering the temporal spectrum in which a predicate can occur - but also the specific semantic information these lexemes can convey.