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This chapter aims to make a thorough analysis of all the 36 suffix pairs combining eachsuffix’s selectional restrictions. There is no doubt that selectional restrictions play asignificant role in determining the order and arrangement of suffixes, so it is reasonable andnecessary to analyze the research results by taking them into account. Therefore, this chapterfirstly provides an overall introduction of the fifteen suffixes’ selectional restrictions.

4.1 The Selectional Restrictions of the Fifteen Suffixes

In this part, the morphological, phonological, semantic and syntactic features of thefifteen suffixes (namely -dom, -ee, -en, -er, -ess, -ful (adj), -ful (n), -hood, -ish, -less, -ling, -ly(adj), -ness, -ship, -th) involved in this thesis are briefly presented. According to all thesefeatures, the possible combinations of the suffixes can be predicted. In other words, somesuffix pairs can be eliminated based on their selectional restrictions in these four aspects (LiPingwu 2003).The nominal derived suffix -dom most frequently occurs in the words kindom andfreedom. It has its origin in the Old English -dom and has the same root as the noun doom (n.means fate or destiny). There are two ways for it to combine with bases. Firstly, -dom can beattached to a noun and the corresponding derivative means the rank or the realm of somethingor all people who are in a certain field. For example, earldom (n. the rank or the realm of anearl), officialdom (n. officials or the official class). Secondly, -dom can combine with anadjective to refer to being under certain conditions. For example, freedom (n. the state orcondition of being free), wisdom (n. the fact or act of being wise).The nominal suffix -ee which signifies person has its origin in French. As a derivedsuffix, -ee is often attached to a transitional verb, meaning the recipient of an action, a personwho is influenced by a certain action, a person to whom something is done. Sometimes, -eecan combine with intransitive verbs to refer to the doer of the action or a person who doessomething. In the derived nouns with suffix -ee, the stress is always on the last syllable. Forexample, employee (n. a person who works for some person or firm for pay), inductee (n. aperson who has been or soon will be inducted, especially into the armed forces).

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Conclusion

This chapter presents the conclusion of the whole study. It first summarizes the majorfindings of this thesis, and then it shows the innovations and implications embodied in thisstudy. Next, it illustrates the limitations of the current study. In the end, it puts forward somesuggestions for future studies.As has been pointed out before, this study mainly aims to find the answers for the fourquestions: the first question is concerned about the respective token frequencies of the fifteenEnglish suffixes; the second question pertains to which two suffixes among all the fifteenselected ones can combine in a word; the third question is related to if the token frequenciesof thirty six possible suffix pairs are different to a large extent. The final question aims tomake sure whether there are actual constraints of token frequency on the order of two suffixesin one word. In order to find out the answers, this study calculates the token frequencies of thefifteen suffixes studied, checks all the possible combinations of these suffixes and finallymakes an