Morphological metaphysics: virtual, potential, and actual words Franz Rainer Abstract The idea that words come in two ‘modes of existence’, actual and potential, is a commonplace of modern morphology. The main purpose of the present paper is to argue that, instead of this dichotomy, a trichotomy of actual, potential and virtual words is needed. The necessity of distinguishing two ‘modes of existence’ among non- actual words stems from their different behaviour with respect to ‘blocking by word’: 1 while potential words (in my terminology) are possible bases of word-formation rules, it is shown that this is not the case for what I call VIRTUAL WORDS (that is, blocked words). Since blocking by word is central for my argumentation, recent theories of blocking by word are reviewed and critically assessed. 1 The potential/actual dichotomy There seems to be a general consensus among students of word formation about the fact that morphologically complex words occur in two ‘modes of existence’, potential and actual. All textbooks and glossaries contain passages which explain that, besides the words actually attested in dictionaries or corpora, the word-formation rules of a language usually also define an even greater number of potential complex words which have not yet been attested but could come into being at any moment if they should be deemed useful. The former are usually called ACTUAL WORDS, the latter POTENTIAL or POSSIBLE WORDS. Haspelmath (2002: 273) defines a potential/possible word as ‘a lexeme that could be formed according to the word-formation rules’, Bauer (2004: 86) as one which ‘[...] is expected to be possible given the state of the language system’. This latter author furthermore adds that ‘[a] potential word is well formed and grammatical but not attested’. Word Structure 5.2 (2012): 165–182 DOI: 10.3366/word.2012.0025 # Edinburgh University Press www.euppublishing.com/word