Affixation
It is themost widely used of all the word formation processes in the English language. This is evidence in the fact that we can use this process to form new words from existing ones. Instances of affixation as a word formation process are found in the formation of nouns, tenses, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
Affixation is the process by which new words are formed through the additions of bound morphemes to words. Through this process a variety of lexical items can be created. For instance the word ‘encouragement’ is formed from the root word ‘courage’ by the prefix ‘en’ and the suffix ‘ment’.
Morphemes such as ‘en’ and ‘ment’ which are parts of words are called affixes. Affixes are therefore not words. They are subsidiary to the root or the base of words and may be added directly to the root or base form or to the constructions consisting of a root plus one or more other morphemes.
The base or root of a word constitutes the core part of a word. Roots or base form are frequently longer than affixes and are more numerous in the vocabulary of the English language. The vast majority of base elements in English are realised by one free morpheme.
The root or base of the word is different from the stem of the word in the sense that a stem is any morpheme or combination of morphemes to which an affix can be added. For example, the word ‘friends’ consists of a stem ‘friend’ which in this case happens to be also the root or base of the word plus an affix [z] while the word ‘friendships’ contains an affix [z], a stem ‘friendship’ and a root or base ‘friend’.
Two types of affixes are identified in English. These are prefixes and suffixes. Both of them are classified as bound morphemes.
The process of affixation also enables words to be formed by the addition of both prefix and suffix to the base form as in the word uneducated, disestablishment, reorganisation.
It is important not to assume that any form of affix will always have a constant significance. For example, the suffix ‘-less’ always suggests ‘the absence of the meaning of the base form’ as in ‘meaningless’ or ‘useless’ but in the word ‘priceless’ such a suggestion is not true as ‘priceless’ does not mean ‘without price or value’ but in contrast, denote ‘a thing of great value.’
Prefixation
It is a process by which a bound morpheme is added BEFOREa root morpheme. In other words, it is a process by which the main word is preceeded by a minimally indivisible but significantly important unit of a lexeme as in the following examples:
- Mis-represent
- Dis-loyal
- Mis-behave
- Ir-regular
- Ex-president
- Vice-chairperson
Prefixes do not function to change the word class of the base to which they are attached. Thus the words ‘wise’ and ‘unwise’ are both adjectives just as ‘locate’ and ‘dislocate’ are both verbs. However there are a few exceptions in which the addition of prefixes can result in the change of the grammatical word class of the root morphemes to which they are attached. Such exceptions include:
Weight (Noun) and Overweight (Adjective)
Precedent (Noun) and Unprecedent (Verb)
Plant (Noun) and Transplant (Verb)
Place (Noun) and Misplace (Verb).
Suffixation
Suffixes almost always alter the word class of the base.
Suffixation takes place when bound morphemes are attached to the root or base of a word in the final position.
Suffixes are recursive in nature. That is they can occur repeatedly in the formation of words. For example child+less+ness, boy+ish+ness, friend+li+ness, home+less+ness
In spite of the general statement made about suffixation, there are some suffixes which do not cause a change in grammatical class. Such suffixes include –age as in vicarage and –ian as in musician.
The English language has two categories of suffixation namely derivational suffix and inflectional suffix.
Derivational Suffixes
A derivational suffix is a morpheme which alters the word class of the root to which it is affixed. For instance, the additional of the suffix ‘-ly’ in the word ‘notoriously’ has caused a change in the root of the word ‘notorious’ from being an adjective to an adverb.
It is possible to have a multiplicity or succession of derivational suffixes in a word.When this is the case, sequences are formed as in the word ‘academically.’ The root this word is ‘academy.’ It is this root word that three derivational suffixes-ic, -al and –ly have been added respectively to form first the word ‘academic’, then academical and finally academically.
A reversal of this sequence of occurrence would have yielded nonsensical words such as *academlyalic, *academalicly or *academiclyal.
In the derivational process, only the grammatical statue of a morpheme is changed but not its lexical meaning as the following examples illustrate:
Merry (Adjective) – Merrily (Adverb)
Stupid (Adjective) – Stupidity (Noun)
Obscene (Adjective) –Obscenity (Noun)
As we can see there is a change in the word class of the root words-merry, stupid and obscene from being adjectives to adverb and nouns respectively by the addition of the derivational suffixes-ly and –ity. However, we also see that the lexical meanings of the three words are still essentially reflected in the derived words-merrily, stupidity and obscenity.
Derivational suffixes are also not fully accounted for in the grammar of the English language because they function on the border of grammar and lexis.
Finally a suffix which is derivational in nature mustcome before an inflectional suffix in a word where you have both occurring as in teach + er + s.
Inflectional Suffixes
They are bound morphemes which are for the most part purely grammatical markers representing such concepts as:
Tense (present, past, participle)-s, ed, ing, en
Number (singular, plural) –s;
apostrophe ‘s’ for the possessive) as well as
the comparative and the superlative ‘er’ and ‘est’.
Inflectional suffixes do not alter the syntactic category or class(parts of speech) of the words or morphemes to which they are attached. For examples, in the words-“wanted, coming, goats and baskets” the inflectional suffixes-ed and -ing, are added to the verbs ‘want’ and ‘come’ while the inflectional suffix –s is added to the nouns ‘goat’ and ‘basket’ to show past tense in ‘wanted’, progressive tense in ‘coming’ and the plural number in ‘goats’ and ‘baskets’. As we can see, the grammatical categories of the words did not change even though they have been inflected. This means that inflections are additive.
Inflectional suffixes also enable us to predict, for example, that whenever the plural morpheme ‘s’ is added to a noun, the noun will depict the sense of ‘more than one’. In the same vein, when the regular past tense morpheme’ –ed’ is added to a verb, we know that the action of the verb has taken place.
In addition, Inflectional suffixes display arbitrariness. For instance, the comparative inflection ‘-er’ in the word ‘fatter’ does not function to generate another word in the same manner that the word ‘dependable’(adjective)is generated from the word ‘depend’(verb); rather, the inflection ‘-er’ functions to show a different form of the same word ‘fat’.
Another example that shows the arbitrariness of inflections can be demonstrated using the following sentences:
Charles played the piano last Sunday.
She likes singing
In the sentences above, the inflectional process has been used to construct grammatically acceptable sentences. The choice of the past tense form ‘-ed’ for the verb ‘play’ as opposed to the present tense form as in ‘plays’ or the progressive form ‘playing’, is dictated by the fact that the action being described has already taken place sometimes in the past by the presence of the adverb ‘last Sunday’.In the second sentence, the choice of the present tense form of the verb ‘like’ by the addition of the agreement marker inflection ‘s’ is appropriate because it is the form which relates grammatically and correctly with the third person singular form –‘she’ as opposed to the progressive form ‘liking’ or past form ‘liked’. These examples, therefore, show a change in the form of a word to make it agree grammatically with other words in the sentence.
Usually, inflections allow for morphological paradigms or sets such as :
Eat eats ate eating eaten
Struggle struggles struggled struggling struggled
boy boy’s boys’
green greener greenest
Unlike derivational suffixes, inflectional suffixes are not recursive. This means only one inflectional suffix can occur in the structure of any one word.
Inflectional suffixes occur in word final position. So for instance, if we have a derivational and an inflectional suffixes occurring in the structure of a word, the derivational suffix must precede the inflectional one as in act + or + s.
The following are the kinds of inflectional suffixes in the English Language:
- Plurality of count nouns (number)
e.g singular plural
dog dogs
- Noun/ pronoun possessive
Cat cat’s
Girl’s girls’
It its
- Agreement Marker ‘s’
When the subject of the verb is third person, is singular and the verb is in the present tense as in our example before ‘she likes singing’.
- Forms of the verb as in the following example for the verb ‘earn’
- present earns
- past earned
- present participle earning
- past participle (or passive ) earned
- Adjective
- Comparative sweet sweeter
- Superlative sweet sweetest
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