Prefix

7 Key excerpts on "Prefix"

• 

  eBook - PDF

  Language

  Its Structure and Use

  • Edward Finegan, , , (Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Generally, inflectional morphemes are added to the outermost parts of words. The term affix is used to cover both Prefixes and suffixes. Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 44 Chapter 2 Words and Their Parts: Lexicon and Morphology Infixes Besides affixes, some languages have infixes. An infix is a morpheme inserted within another morpheme. In Tagalog (a language spoken in the Philippines), you can see infixing by comparing the word gulay , meaning ‘greenish vegetables,’ with the word ginulay , meaning ‘greenish blue,’ which contains the infix -in-. Morphemes Can Be Discontinuous Not all morphological processes can be viewed as joining or concatenating mor-phemes to one another by adding a continuous sequence of sounds (or letters) to a stem. In other words, not all morphological processes involve Prefixes, suffixes, or infixes. The technical term for discontinuous morphology is nonconcatenative . Circumf ixes Some languages combine a Prefix and a suffix into a circumfix —a morpheme that occurs in two parts, one on each side of a stem. Samoan has a morpheme fe-/-aʔi, meaning ‘reciprocal’: the verb ‘to quarrel’ is finau , and the verb ‘to quarrel with each other’ is fefinaua ʔ i —fe 1 finau 1 aʔi.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Linguistic Fundamentals for Natural Language Processing

  100 Essentials from Morphology and Syntax

  • Emily M. Bender(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Springer

    (Publisher)

  In particular, it is important to anticipate morphological systems with multiple affixes on either side of the root (where English rarely has more than one, at least if we restrict our attention to inflectional morphology). #21 Languages vary in whether they are primarily Prefixing or suffixing in their morphology. In addition to varying in terms of how many possible affixes a word can have and how many a typical word has, languages also vary in the position of the affixes within the word. In particular, with very few exceptions, affixes have a slot that they belong to within a word. Any given affix will be a Prefix (appearing in the string of affix slots before the root), a suffix (appearing the string of affix slots after the root), or more rarely an infix (appearing within the root itself, see #8) or a circumfix (consisting of two parts, one before and one after the root). Languages differ in terms of how many of each type of affix they have. Dryer [2011£] surveyed 971 languages, looking for the position of 10 specific different kinds of affixes (including case affixes on nouns, tense and aspect affixes on verbs, and others, all on nouns or verbs) . 19 He then developed an index (giving more weight to certain types of affixes) 18 As Walchli points out, artifacts of orthography and translation introduce some noise into this measurement. 1 "1his specifically concerns inflectional morphology, and not derivational morphology, in contrast to Wiilchli's work cited in #20 above. 26 2. MORPHOLOGY: INTRODUCTION to calculate both how much affixation there is in general and what percentage of it is suffixes v. Prefixes. The results are shown in Table 2.4. Table 2.4: Prefixing vs.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Introduction to English Linguistics

  • Ingo Plag, Maria Braun, Sabine Lappe, Mareile Schramm(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  88 The structure of words: morphology made for any of the inflectional suffixes listed in (30) above. The derivational suffix -er , however, behaves in a different way in this respect. It has the capac-ity to change the word-class of its bases from verb to noun. This is also the case with many other derivational affixes, as for instance, with the derivational suf-fix -less , which changes nouns into adjectives, as in joy (N) – joyless (A), or the derivational suffix -en which changes adjectives into verbs, as in black (A) – blacken (V), etc. Note, however, that very few English Prefixes change the word-class of the base. They are nevertheless considered derivational be-cause they create new lexemes, and not word-forms of the same lexeme, as, for instance, semi-transparent , impossible , replay . We can conclude that when-ever an affix changes the word-class of the base, it is a derivational affix. To summarise, we have seen in this section that affixes can be grouped into two different types according to their function: derivational affixes, that are used to create new lexemes, and inflectional affixes, that are used to express differ-ent word-forms of the same lexeme. The two types of affixes differ in a number of properties. We will summarise these properties in the following table: Using derivational affixes is only one of many possible ways of creating new lexemes. In the next section we will take a closer look at different processes by which new lexemes can be created. 3.7. Word-formation 3.7.1. What is word-formation? It has already been mentioned above that, among other things, morphology deals with the ways of creating new lexemes. We have also seen in the pre-vious section that one such way is adding derivational affixes to existing bases. However, there are many other ways by which speakers can create new lexemes and thus give names to new things, abstract notions, etc.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  For the Love of Language

  An Introduction to Linguistics

  • Kate Burridge, Tonya N. Stebbins(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Similarly, in Ma¯ori, the Prefix kai- is available with a range of stems to make a new word that refers to a person who does the action encoded in the stem. PART 2: Words, word structure and meaning 122 The inflected form in example 5.13a cannot be replaced by a monomorphemic word like sprint, so we’ve used an asterisk to indicate that the sentence is unacceptable. Because sprint can’t replace runs, we can conclude that the suffix -s is inflectional. tlhIngan Hol (Klingon) morphology We saw in Chapter 2 that trained linguists are sometimes called upon to construct lan- guages (‘fantasy conlangs’) for humanoids and other alien types (the Na’vi language in Avatar; Klingon in Star Trek) and a range of mythical creatures (the Elvish language in the Lord of the Rings trilogy; Parseltongue in the Harry Potter series). Many of these languages have since been expanded by their creators, or perhaps fans, to become learnable languages. Grammars have been published and for some of these fantasy languages, such as Na’vi and Klingon, tutorials are available on the internet. There is even a Klingon version of Hamlet. Klingon morphology is notable for its complex system of noun and verb affixes. New nouns take a range of derivational affixes to which different inflectional suffixes may then be added. Something we haven’t mentioned yet is ordering of affixes – like words, these are always stacked in a definite ordering relationship (as speakers of English, you would not accept *preunmeditated or *judges-ment!). In Klingon grammar, noun affixes are numbered for convenience. The noun stem 1-2-3-4-5 indicates the five types of affixes: • type 1: augmentative/diminutive (indicating relative importance or power of a noun) • type 2: number (an optional suffix indicating plural) • type 3: qualification (indicating the speaker’s attitude) • type 4: possession (indicating possessor) • type 5: grammatical relations (indicating the function of a noun in the sentence).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Introducing Morphology

  • Rochelle Lieber(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  to ‘alive’ to ‘life’ b. va-bobe ‘fill’ vabobe ‘filled object’ c. ta-poni ‘be given’ taponi ‘gift’ d. asa ‘grate’ asa ‘pudding of grated cassava’ e. edo ‘happy’ edo ‘happiness’ 5.3 Affixes: Beyond Prefixes and Suffixes 93 5.3.2 Circumfixation and Parasynthesis Another type of affix that occurs in languages is the circumfix. A cir- cumfix consists of two parts – a Prefix and a suffix that together create a new lexeme from a base. We don’t consider the Prefix and suffix to be separate, because neither by itself creates that type of lexeme, or per- haps anything at all. This kind of affixation is a form of parasynthesis, a phenomenon in which a particular morphological category is signaled by the simultaneous presence of two morphemes. One example of a circumfix can be found in Dutch, although Booij (2002: 119) says that it’s no longer productive. In Dutch, to form a col- lective noun from a count noun, the morpheme ge- is affixed before the base and -te after the base: (8) Neither geberg nor bergte alone forms a word – it’s only the presence of both parts that signals the collective meaning. Another example can be found in Tagalog, where adding ka- before and -an after a noun base X makes a noun meaning ‘group of X’: referred to by morphologists as ‘fuckin’ infixation’. In colloquial spoken English, we will often take our favorite taboo word or ex- pletive – in American English fucking, goddam, or frigging, in British English bloody – and insert it into a base word: abso-fuckin-lutely fan-bloody-tastic Ala-friggin’-bama This kind of infixation is used to emphasize a word, to make it stronger. What’s particularly interesting is that we can’t insert fuckin’ just anywhere in a word. Indeed, there are rather strict phonological restrictions on the insertion of expletives.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Word-Formation in the World's Languages

  A Typological Survey

  • Pavol Štekauer, Salvador Valera, Lívia Kőrtvélyessy(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  As usual, the picture is not completely clear in this respect. Thus, if transfixation (root-and-pattern) is viewed as a case of infixation, then infixation is productive in Arabic and Hebrew, where it would also cover inflectional processes. The importance of laying emphasis on the word-formation nature of the infix follows from its definitions. Thus, Krupa and Genzor (1996) define infix in their encyclopedic book on languages of the world as a grammatical or derivational morpheme inserted in a word root. Similarly, the morphematic dictionary of Slovak (Sokolová, Moško, Šimon and Benko 1999: 48) defines infixes as extending morphemes, either grammatical (i.e. thematic submor- phemes) or derivational (interfixed submorphemes) which can be attached in two different ways: they extend a grammatical or a derivational morpheme (Buzássyová, pers. comm.): (280) Slovak diev-č-at-á < dievča ‘girls.pl’ ‘girl’ (281) Slovak diev-č-at-k-o < dievča ‘little girl’ ‘girl’ (282) Slovak dv-aj-a < dva ‘two male persons’ ‘two’ An interesting borderline case is offered by Wichí. According to Nercesian (pers. comm.), there are no infixes in Wichí. However, a root can be inter- rupted by a suffix and behave like an infix. Such is the case when a suffix, gen- erally indicating direction, is co-lexicalized with root, but if any other suffix (e.g. plural) is added, then it occurs between the root and the co-lexicalized suffix: (283) Wichí a. ta-taypho 3sbj-sits.down ‘S/he sits down’ b. ta-ta...-che...pho 3sbj-sit down...-pl ‘They sit down’ An infix, like other affixes, is a bilateral unit with form and meaning. It must be distinguished from interfixes (empty morphs), as the latter ‘regu- larly intervene between stems and derivational suffixes or between two

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Linguistics for Everyone

  An Introduction

  • Kristin Denham, Anne Lobeck(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Bound morphemes, on the other hand, are morphemes that cannot stand alone and must be attached to another morpheme or word. Examples of bound morphemes include trans - and -mit in transmit , -ize in materialize , and un- in unhappy . Bound morphemes themselves come in different types: -ize is a suffix, and un- is a Prefix. Suffixes and Prefixes fall under the more general heading of affixes , morphemes that attach to other morphemes or words by a process called affixation . Affixes Let’s take a look at affixes in more detail before we go on to discuss other types of bound morphemes. Some common examples of English Prefixes and suffixes are the following: Prefixes : dis-, un-, for-, anti-, semi-, hyper-, in-, en-suffixes: -ment, -ion, -er, -ing, -s, -able, -ize, -ship, -ity Another type of affix is an infix , an affix that attaches within a word root. The Inuktitut language of Western Canada, a member of the Eskimo-Aleut language family, has an infix, -pallia -, which must be inserted into a verb root, resulting in a distinct form of the verb. The rough translation of this infix is gradually . nungup + pallia + jut = nunguppalliajut ‘They are gradually disappearing’ ilinniaq + pallia + jugut = ilinniaqpalliajugut ‘We are gradually learning’ Although infixes occur in many other languages, there is only one basic type in English, expletive infixation . This infix has the effect of adding emphasis. The infix may only be inserted into words with more than two syllables, and it can range from the relatively tame gosh darn to the more powerful so-called F-word. In My Fair Lady , Eliza Doolittle sings about how nice it would be to sit abso-bloomin’-lutely still, where the infix is bloomin’ .

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book