Affix

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes. Affixation is, thus, the linguistic process speakers use to form different words by adding morphemes (affixes) at the beginning (prefixation), the middle (infixation) or the end (suffixation) of words.

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1 Positional categories of affixes 2 Lexical affixes 3 Orthographic affixes 4 See also 5 References 6 Bibliography 7 External links

[edit] Positional categories of affixes

Affixes are divided into several categories, depending on their position with reference to the stem. Prefix and suffix are extremely common terms. Infix and circumfix are less so, as they are not important in European languages. The other terms are uncommon. Categories of affixes Example Schema un-do look-ing cat-like prefix-stem stem-suffix stem-suffixoid

Affix Prefix Suffix/Postfix Suffixoid[1]/Semisuffix[2] Infix

Minneflippin'sota stinfixem

Description Appears at the front of a stem Appears at the back of a stem Appears at the back of a stem but is somewhere between a free and bound morpheme Appears within a stem common in BorneoPhilippines languages

Circumfix Interfix Duplifix

ascattered speed-o-meter teeny~weeny Maltese: kiteb "he wrote" (compare root ktb "write") mouse mice

One portion appears at the circumfixstemcircumfix front of a stem, and the other at the rear Links two stems together in stema-interfix-stemb a compound Incorporates a reduplicated portion of a stem stem~duplifix (may occur in front, at the rear, or within the stem) stransfixtetransfixm A discontinuous affix that interleaves within a discontinuous stem Changes a segment of a stem Changes a suprasegmental phoneme of a stem The elision of a portion of a stem

Transfix Simulfix Suprafix Disfix

produce (noun) produce (verb) Alabama: tipli "break up" stm (compare root tipasli "break")

Prefix and suffix may be subsumed under the term adfix in contrast to infix. In transcription, for example in the third column in the chart above, simple affixes such as prefixes and suffixes are shown connected to the stem with hyphens. Affixes which disrupt the stem, or which themselves are discontinuous, are often marked off with angle brackets. Reduplication is often shown with a tilde.

[edit] Lexical affixes

Lexical affixes (or semantic affixes) are bound elements that appear as affixes, but function as incorporated nouns within verbs and as elements of compound nouns. In other words, they are similar to word roots/stems in function but similar to affixes in form. Although similar to incorporated nouns, lexical affixes differ in that they never occur as freestanding nouns, i.e. they always appear as affixes. Lexical affixes are relatively rare. The Wakashan, Salishan, and Chimakuan languages all have lexical suffixes the presence of these is an areal feature of the Pacific Northwest of the North America. The lexical suffixes of these languages often show little to no resemblance to free nouns with similar meanings. Compare the lexical suffixes and free nouns of Northern Straits Saanich written in the Saanich orthography and in Americanist notation:

Lexical Suffix

Noun

-o, -nt -sen -wtw

-a -net -sn -ewtx

,etlew telx "person" "person" skil "day" siel "day" "foot, lower leg" sxene, sxn "foot, lower leg" el "building, house, campsite" ,,le "house"

Lexical suffixes when compared with free nouns often have a more generic or general meaning. For instance, one of these languages may have a lexical suffix that means water in a general sense, but it may not have any noun equivalent referring to water in general and instead have several nouns with a more specific meaning (such "saltwater", "whitewater", etc.). In other cases, the lexical suffixes have become grammaticalized to various degrees. Some linguists have claimed that these lexical suffixes provide only adverbial or adjectival notions to verbs. Other linguists disagree arguing that they may additionally be syntactic arguments just as free nouns are and thus equating lexical suffixes with incorporated nouns. Gerdts (2003) gives examples of lexical suffixes in the Halkomelem language (the word order here is verbsubjectobject):
VERB SUBJ OBJ

seni qeq (1) ni ak-t-s "the woman washed the baby"

VERB+LEX.SUFF SUBJ

seni (2) ni k-y "the woman baby-washed" In sentence (1), the verb "wash" is akts where ak- is the root and -t and -s are inflectional suffixes. The subject "the woman" is seni and the object "the baby" is qeq. In this sentence, "the baby" is a free noun. (The ni here is an auxiliary, which can be ignored for explanatory purposes.) In sentence (2), "baby" does not appear as a free noun. Instead it appears as the lexical suffix -y which is affixed to the verb root k- (which has changed slightly in pronunciation, but this can also be ignored here). Note how the lexical suffix is neither "the baby" (definite) nor "a baby" (indefinite); such referential changes are routine with incorporated nouns.

[edit] Orthographic affixes

In orthography, the terms for affixes may be used for the smaller elements of conjunct characters. For example, Maya glyphs are generally compounds of a main sign and smaller affixes joined at its margins. These are called prefixes, superfixes, postfixes, and subfixes according to their position to the left, on top, to the right, or at the bottom of the main glyph. A small glyph placed inside another is called an infix.[3] Similar terminology is found with the conjunct consonants of the Indic alphabets. For example, the Tibetan alphabet utilizes prefix, suffix, superfix, and subfix consonant letters.[4]

[edit] See also

Agglutination Augmentative Binary prefix Clitic Concatenation Derivation Diminutive English prefixes Family name affixes Internet-related prefixes Marker (linguistics) Separable affix SI prefix Stemming - affix removal using computer software Unpaired word Word formation

[edit] References
^ Kremer, Marion. 1997. Person reference and gender in translation: a contrastive investigation of English and German. Tbingen: Gunter Narr, p. 69, note 11. 2. ^ Marchand, Hans. 1969. The categories and types of present-day English wordformation: A synchronic-diachronic approach. Munich: Beck, pp. 356 ff. 3. ^ Robert Sharer & Loa Traxler, 2006, The Ancient Maya, Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-4817-9 4. ^ Andrew West, "Precomposed Tibetan Part 1 : BrdaRten" BabelStone, September 14, 2006
1.

[edit] Bibliography

Gerdts, Donna B. (2003). "The morphosyntax of Halkomelem lexical suffixes". International Journal of American Linguistics 69 (4): 345356. doi:10.1086/382736. Montler, Timothy. (1986). An outline of the morphology and phonology of Saanich, North Straits Salish. Occasional Papers in Linguistics (No. 4). Missoula, MT: University of Montana Linguistics Laboratory. Montler, Timothy. (1991). Saanich, North Straits Salish classified word list. Canadian Ethnology service paper (No. 119); Mercury series. Hull, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization. ISBN 0-660-12908-6