Affixation
Affixation is a process in linguistics where affixes, such as prefixes, suffixes, and infixes, are added to a base or root word to create a new word or modify its meaning or grammatical category. This process is common in many languages and is used to form new words, change verb tense, indicate plurality, and more.
7 Key excerpts on "Affixation"
eBook - ePubSyntactic Analysis
The Basics
- Nicholas Sobin(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...Roots are the core morphemes that a word is built on. Suffixes are endings that follow a root. Roots may be free or bound. A free root can appear as a word on its own (e.g. book or walk). A bound root cannot. Most English roots are free, but this is often not true of other languages. In Spanish, verb roots are bound – they always appear with an ending of some sort. For instance, the Spanish verb jugar ‘(to) play’ in its various forms always minimally involves (a form of) the root jug and some suffix – the root can never be said by itself. The morphemes that attach to roots to form complex words (words of more than one morpheme) are called affixes. They include suffixes, prefixes, infixes, and circumfixes. Prefixes such as un- in the word untangle precede the root. Infixes actually intrude into the root – English has no examples of this, so we won't worry about them here. English used to have circumfixes, a simultaneous prefix–suffix combination, and modern German still does. For instance, one form of the German verb machen ‘(to) make’ (root: mach ; infinitive suffix: -en) is the word gemacht ‘made’ (past participle form), containing the root and the past participle circumfix ge - - t. Affixes are bound – they do not occur as words by themselves. Now if the lexicon is a list of roots and affixes, how do these get together to form complex (multi-morphemic) words? A partial answer may lie in considering affixes in more detail. 2.5 Affix Types Two prominent types of affix exist in the lexicon: inflectional affixes and derivational affixes. Inflectional affixes simply give you all of the different forms that a word of a given lexical category can appear in. For example, a verb has five possible forms, as illustrated in (6)...
eBook - ePubLinguistics for Language Teachers
Lessons for Classroom Practice
- Sunny Park-Johnson, Sarah J. Shin(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Remember that a morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit with a meaning or a grammatical function. Complex words typically consist of a root morpheme and one or more affixes. The root is the primary lexical unit of a word that carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller parts. Roots typically belong to a lexical category such as noun (man, nation, color, tree), verb (teach, form, make, think), adjective (honest, small, kind, quick), or preposition (about, in, to, from). Unlike roots, however, affixes do not belong to a lexical category. An affix that is attached to the front of the root is called a prefix (dis- in dishonest, un- in uncertain), whereas an affix that is attached to the end of the root is called a suffix (- ful in beautiful, - ly in quickly). Some words have multiple affixes attached to them. For example, the word internationalizing has a prefix (inter-) and three suffixes (-al, -ize, and -ing) attached to the root (nation). Although many languages use prefixes and suffixes, a fewer number of languages also have infixes, affixes that are inserted into existing morphemes. For example, in Indonesian, the infix -em- is inserted after the first consonant in the root to create new words. Thus, c em erlang (“brilliant”) is derived from cerlang (“luminous”), and g em etar (“to tremble”) is derived from getar (“to vibrate”). Some languages also have circumfixes, morphemes that are attached to the front and the end of the root to form new words. In Malay, the circumfix ke—an is attached to adjectives to form nouns meaning “the state of (the adjective)”. Thus, ke barat an (“the state of being west”), ke timur an (“the state of being east”), and ke besar an (“the state of being big”) are derived from barat (“west”), timur (“east”), and besar (“big”)...
eBook - ePub- Philomena Ott(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...11 How Affixes Provide Signposts and Enhancement of Skills DOI: 10.4324/9780203966075-11 Why the study of the history of words is a key to a treasure trove of spelling knowledge and understanding Why root words are important basic building blocks for word study Checklists of useful root words Prefixes: an overview Checklist of prefixes Practical suggestions for teaching prefixes The role of grammar and its influence on suffixes Checklist of suffixes The ‘Seven Seriously Super Suffixing’ rules The ‘Seven Absolutely Fabulous’ rules for suffixes Practical suggestions for teaching suffixes Summary and conclusions KEYWORDS Affixes Analytic phonics Antonyms Borrowed words Comparative forms of adjectives Euphony Etymology Grapheme High-frequency word Morpheme Morphology Phoneme Prefixes Root words Spelling pronunciation Suffixes Synthetic phonics Word class Word webs Why the study of the history of words is a key to a treasure trove of spelling knowledge and understanding Awareness of the etymology of words, which includes the study of the origins and use of Greek and Latin prefixes, suffixes and root words, enhances skills,. promotes understanding of word meanings and generates many new words. Root words cycl (circle) Greek bicycle loc (place) Latin locate Suffixes ology (study of) Greek biology phobia (excessive fear of) Latin arachnophobia (fear of spiders) Prefixes anti (against) Greek antibiotic circa (around) Latin circulation Understanding of the derivation and meaning of affixes and root words makes them easier to learn to pronounce, to spell and to remember. Brown (1947) established that 60 per cent of words in printed texts were derived from Latin and Greek words. Otterman (1955) conducted an experiment on 12–13-year-olds which included learning about word origins. After thirty ten-minute lessons, the pupils were better at spelling and understanding the meanings of the words when they had been taught the meaning and the derivation of the words studied. Hanna et al...
eBook - ePub- Kristin Denham, Anne Lobeck(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Other languages have agentive morphemes too. American Sign Language, for example, has an agentive morpheme which turns verbs like TEACH into nouns like TEACHER. Inflectional affixes do not change the category of the word they attach to, nor do they create new dictionary entries. Instead, they express grammatical information, such as tense, gender, number, case, and other features. English has relatively little inflectional morphology, compared to other more highly inflected languages. In fact, in English there are only eight inflectional affixes, though three of them are the suffix -s, which displays three distinct functions. Nouns possessive -s plural - s Mo ’s book book s Adjectives comparative -er superlative -est Mo is tall er. Mo is tall est. Verbs 3rd person singular past tense present participle past participle Mo walk s Mo walk ed Mo is walk ing Mo has walk ed Mo has eat en In comparison, Old English (OE) was highly inflected. The following comparison of inflectional Affixation of the verb love provides an example. In Present Day English (PDE), the verb has no inflectional Affixation in the present tense except in the third person singular (loves), but in OE there are four distinct suffixes (note also the different forms of the personal pronouns): Table 4.1 Conjugation of the verb ‘love’ in PDE and OE Present Day English Old English I love ic luf ie you love þu luf ast he/she loves heo luf aþ we love we luf iaþ you love ge lufiaþ they love hie lufiaþ Although in English, derivational affixes are either prefixes or suffixes, and inflectional affixes are suffixes only, in other languages affixes can be infixes and circumfixes...
eBook - ePub- Philip Holmes, Ian Hinchliffe(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...affixes The introduction into the language of foreign affixes has often resulted in two word formation elements with the same meaning existing side by side in the lexicon. A major distinction can be made here between Germanic affixes (i.e. indigenous words + German loans) and Romance affixes (mostly Latin and French loans, some having been borrowed via English): PREFIXES Germanic Romance o– olaglig = in– ineffektiv ineffective sam– samarbete = ko– kooperation cooperation själv– självlärd = auto– autodidakt self-taught åter– återuppbygga = re– rekonstruera reconstruct Note – Själv – and åter – are not strictly speaking prefixes, see 11.2.2.2. SUFFIXES Verb – Germanic Noun (Person) Noun (Activity) granska granskare granskning inspect inspector inspection Verb – Romance Noun (Person) Noun (Activity) inspektera inspektör inspektion inspect inspector inspection Verb – Germanic Noun (Person) Adjective Noun. (Abstract) tillverka tillverkare – tillverkning, tillverkande produce producer production Verb – Romance Noun (Person) Adjective Noun (Activity) producera producent produktiv produktivitet produce producer productive productivity 11.2.2 Productivity 11.2.2.1 Productive affixes Theoretically it is possible to add a productive affix to any word of a particular grammatical or semantic type. A productive affix or word element has two features: 1 It is possible to describe grammatically and/or semantically the elements that can be included. 2 The affix produces a derivative whose meaning is easily discerned from the meaning of the basic word. For example, –bar is an adjective suffix meaning ‘ möjlig att X ’ where X is a verb. Thus –bar can potentially be added to all transitive verb stems. It is an adjective suffix but is also deverbal, see 11.2.5.1 (c)...
eBook - ePubApplying Linguistics in the Classroom
A Sociocultural Approach
- Aria Razfar, Joseph C. Rumenapp(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In some more entertaining lessons we may have had to match two pictures together to form words, like butterfly. What is often left out of these lessons is “how” these words are formed. Here we will discuss two of the processes, namely inflection and derivation, of how the prefixes, suffixes, and roots are used to form words. Inflection The first process words undergo is inflection. Words are inflected to add, or mark, grammatical information. This does not result in changing the part of speech of a word, and does not result in changing the word’s meaning. An example, as we showed above, is that words in English are inflected to show plurality, or are inflected for number. The word “cat” is inflected by adding a suffix “-s” to make “cats.” We noted in Chapter 3 that because of phonological processes that also occur in language, sometimes the addition of a morpheme, or a suffix, will change the sound of the suffix. For example, the same morpheme that marks plurality for “cats” cannot simply be added to “bus.” “Buss” is not the form of the word acceptable in English. So, what happens, then, is that there is the suffixing of “-es” instead of just “-s.” This isn’t a change in the morphology, but rather the phonology. In reality all of these systems are related, but for analysis it is helpful to separate them. One of the assumptions in linguistics is that the word undergoes changes in morphology first, and then phonology, at least in theory. So, one could say lexical item “bus” is inflected for “number,” or bus + -s, and then changes to match the phonology of the language, thus resulting in the word “buses.” So, we can say that -s and -es are the same morpheme, or the plural marker. Inflection usually is seen, consistently, throughout a particular language. If the language inflects for person (i.e., first, second, third), then, usually, all of the verbs will be inflected...
eBook - ePubSlovene
A Comprehensive Grammar
- Peter Herrity(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 13 Word formation The most widely used means of word formation in Slovene are Affixation and various types of compounding. DeAffixation, where a word is truncated, is also encountered and mainly affects verbs. Abbreviation plays only a limited role in Slovene. 13.1 Affixation In Affixation a suffix or a prefix is added to a word’s root or base form to create a new word. In some cases more than one suffix or prefix may be added, e.g. nèprepoznáven ‘unrecognisable’, where the root zna- is preceded by three prefixes (ne-, pre-, po-) and followed by one suffix (-ven). 13.2 Suffixation Suffixes may be native suffixes (e.g. -ka, -arna, -ič etc.) or loan suffixes (e.g. -ist, -ant). In this description of Slovene suffixes only native suffixes will normally be discussed. Certain suffixes are very productive and widely used (e.g. -ar, -ica), while others are non-productive, i.e. rarely found or no longer used to derive new words (e.g. -aj, -nik). Suffixes may be simple (e.g. -ec, -ica) or compound, i.e. made up of two or more suffixal elements (e.g. -iček, -ljivost). The addition of a suffix may or may not change the category of a word. For example the addition of the suffix -ec to the noun bràt ‘brother’ merely creates another noun with a diminutive meaning, i.e. brátec ‘little brother’. However, the addition of the possessive suffix -ov creates an adjective, i.e. brátov ‘brother’s’. Suffixes may be relational or expressive. In the case of relational suffixes there is a logical link between the base word and the suffixed word, e.g. dèž ‘rain’ – dež ník ‘umbrella’ – dež níkar ‘umbrella maker’. Relational suffixes may also change the category of a word, e.g. dež níkast (adj.) ‘umbrella-like’, dež níkarski (adj.) ‘umbrella making’ (e.g. dežníkarska obŕt ‘umbrella making craft/trade’). Expressive suffixes indicate an attitude on the part of the speaker towards the designated noun, adjective or verb...
