Professional Documents
Culture Documents
” AFFIXES”
Group
Zelia Vitalina P. Sarmento (1601542029)
Andi Yashinta (1601542032)
Gita Maharani (1601542036)
Juita Heretrenggi (1601542041)
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
NON-REGULAR
FACULTY OF ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF UDAYANA
2018 – 2019
I. INTRODUCTION
Morpheme is the smallest unit of a language that have meaning or grammatical function
and form a word or part of words. Morpheme can be divided into two categories; free and
bound morphemes. Free morpheme is a morpheme that occur alone as a word and have a
meaning or fulfill grammatical function, for example: man, run, cut, down. On the other hand,
bound morpheme is a morpheme that never occur alone as a word but as part of words. They
must be attached in order to have distinct meaning. For example: -er in worker, teacher, dryer,
etc. free and bound morpheme then can be divided again; free morpheme is divided into lexical
and function; while bound morpheme can be divided into bound roots and affixes. From this
introduction, our group will explain in detail about bound morpheme, especially the affixes.
II. CONTENT
An affix is a morpheme which only occurs when attached to some other morpheme or
morpheme such as a root or stem or base. It can also be said that affix is a bound morpheme
which are usually marginally attached to words and which change the meaning or functions of
those words. Affixes can be divided based on the position of the affix and on the function.
According to the position affix can be classified into prefixes, infixes, and suffix; while
according to the function, it can be classified into derivational and inflectional.
c) Pejorative prefixes
(mainly
human)
e) Prefixes of attitude
f) Locative prefixes
h) Number prefixes
i) Other prefixes
j) Conversion Prefixes
Verbs
Transitive
(b) Adjs (b) Bedazzle
verbs
Noun Becaim
s Bewitch
En- Nouns Verbs Enslave
B. Infix
One of the characteristics of English words is that any modifications to them occur at
the beginning or the end. Mix can have something added at the beginning re-mix or at the end,
mixes, mixer, but never in the middle, it’s called infixes. This distinguishes English from many
other languages. However, there is one group of exceptions to this rule seen in ‘fan-blooming-
tastic’ where the word blooming has apparently been put in the middle of fantastic. The only
words that can be inserted in this way are those which show extra emotion, hence often they
are swearwords used within exclamations. They are not grammatical ‘morphemes’ as would
be found in other languages. An infix is a word element (a type of affix) that can be inserted
within the base form of a word—rather than at its beginning or end—to create a new word or
intensify meaning. The process of inserting an infix is called infixation. The most common
type of infix in English grammar is the expletive, as in "fan-blooming-tastic.”
What is expletive in English grammar?
And author Ruth Wajnryb has further examples—from literature, no less. "This
linguistic phenomenon is also known as the integrated adjective. In fact, a poem of that name
by John O'Grady (aka Nino Culotta) was published in the eponymously titled A Book About
Australia, in which numerous examples of the integrated adjective appear: me-bloody-self,
kanga-bloody-roos, forty-bloody-seven, good e-bloody-nough." ("Expletive Deleted: A Good
Look at Bad Language." Free Press, 2005)
In English, additions normally attach to the end or start of a word, with prefixes and
suffixes, such as pre- or -ed. There are even circumfixes, which attach to the front and the back,
as in enlighten. In Austroasiatic languages in Southeast Asia and eastern India, the use of the
infix is more common and not used just to create expletives, as in English. In fact, "English has
no true infixes, but the plural suffix -s behaves something like an infix in unusual plurals like
passers-by and mothers-in-law" (R.L. Trask, "The Penguin Dictionary of English Grammar,"
2000).
Creating an Infix
Authors Kristin Denham and Anne Lobeck give a detailed explanation of where the
infixes are inserted into a word:
"Native speakers of English have intuitions about where in a word the infix is inserted.
Consider where your favorite expletive infix goes in these words: fantastic, education,
Massachusetts, Philadelphia, Stillaguamish, emancipation, absolutely, hydrangea. Most
speakers agree on these patterns, though there are some dialectal variations. You likely found
that the infix is inserted at the following points:
fan-***-tastic, edu-***-cation, Massa-***-chusetts, Phila-***-delphia, Stilla-***-guamish,
emanci-***-pation, abso-***-lutely, hy-***-drangea
The infix gets inserted before the syllable that receives the most stress. And it cannot
be inserted anywhere else in the word." ("Linguistics for Everyone: An Introduction."
Wadsworth, 2010)
More examples:
Here is a list of some of the words that were found by James McMillan.
awfully: beawfullyware
bally: absoballylutely
bleeding: absobleedinglutely
bleep: fivebleepmile
blessed: absoblessedlutely
bloody: absobloodylutely, railbloodyway, whatsobloodyever, kangabloodyroo
blooming: absobloominglutely
damn: abdamnsurd, Piccadamnlilly
fucking: somefuckingplace, selfdefuckingfence
goddamn: ingoddamconsistent, fanbloodytastic, guarangoddamntee
In Indonesian Language, there are some examples of Infixes that we can take a look at:
Based on the examples above, it’s clear that English barely has infixes within its words,
unlike any other languages, such as Indonesian. The infixes in English are not grammatical
‘morphemes’ as would be found in other languages.
C. Suffix
A suffix is a letter or a group of letters attached to the end of a word to form a new word
or to change the grammatical function (or part of speech) of the original word. For example,
the verb read is made into the noun reader by adding the suffix -er. Similarly, read is made into
the adjective readable by adding the suffix -able.
Understanding the meanings of the common suffixes can help you figure out the
meanings of new words you encounter. But as you work on building your vocabulary, you
should keep a few points in mind:
In some cases, the spelling of a root or base word changes when a suffix is added. For
example, in words ending in y preceded by a consonant (such as the noun beauty and the
adjective ugly), they may change to an i when a suffix is added (as in the adjective beautiful
and the noun ugliness). Also, in words ending in silent -e (such as use and adore), the final -e
may be dropped before a suffix that begins with a vowel (as in usable and adorable). As with
all spelling rules, there are exceptions of course.
Not all suffixes can be added to all roots. For example, the adjective beautiful is formed
by adding the suffix -ful to the noun beauty, and the noun ugliness is formed by adding the
suffix -ness to the adjective ugly. But you won't find *ugliful in your dictionary—or in standard
English. (Throughout this website, an asterisk in front of a construction shows that it's
considered nonstandard or ungrammatical.)
A suffix may have more than one meaning. With adjectives and adverbs, for instance,
the -er suffix usually conveys the comparative meaning of "more" (as in the adjectives kinder
and longer). But in some cases the -er ending can also refer to someone who performs a
particular action (such as a dancer or builder) or to someone who lives in a particular place
(such as a New Yorker or a Dubliner).
Below we can see some examples of common Suffixes in English.
Noun Suffixes
Verb Suffixes
Verbs can end with either -ize (the American spelling) or -ise (the British spelling). Examples
include finalize/finalise and realize/realise.
A. Derivational Morpheme
As what already been explained above, derivational morpheme is a morpheme that can
change the meaning of a base which is it attached to, also may change the word class where it
belongs to. Below are the examples of derivational morpheme:
B. Inflectional Morpheme
As what have been stated before, inflectional morpheme is a morpheme that modify a
word to indicate its grammatical components and function, it doesn’t change the meaning nor
the word class of the base. English has only eight inflectional affixes:
IV. CONCLUSION
In English grammar and morphology, affixation is the process of adding a morpheme
— or affix— to a word to create either a different form of that word or a new word with a
different meaning; affixation is the most common way of making new words in English. An
affix itself has a definition which is a morpheme which only occurs when attached to some
other morpheme or morpheme such as a root or stem or base. It can also be said that affix is a
bound morpheme which are usually marginally attached to words and which change the
meaning or functions of those words. According to the forms, there are three common types of
Affix, which are prefix, suffix, and infix. Prefix is a morphological process whereby a bound
morpheme is attached to the front of a root or stem, suffix is a morphological process whereby
a bound morpheme is attached in the end or the back of a rood or stem, meanwhile infix is
attached within the root or in the middle. On the other hand, according to the function, it can
be classified into derivational and inflectional. Derivational morphemes, when combined with
a root, change either the semantic meaning or part of speech of the affected word. As for
Inflectional morphemes, Inflectional morphemes modify a verb's tense, aspect, mood, person,
or number, or a noun's, pronoun's or adjective's number, gender or case, without affecting the
word's meaning or class (part of speech). Like it’s been explained, process of affixation is the
most common way of making or creating new words in English.
REFRENCES
Nordquist, R. (2018). Making New Words with Affixation [Internet] Available from:
<https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-affixation-words-1688976> [Accessed on 18 October
2018]
Artawa, K, Nengah Sudipa, et al. Morphosyntax 1. Udayana University, Denpasar.
Oz, H. (2014). Morphology and Implications for English Language Teaching [Internet]
Available from: <https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Inflectional-Morphemes-of-
English_tbl2_266731962> [Accessed on 19 October 2018]