Affixation in modern english

Introduction

Theme actually. Word – building is one of the main ways of enriching vocabulary. Affixation is one of the most productive ways of word building throughout the history of English. The main function of affixation in Modern English is to form one part of speech from another; the secondary function is to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech. As we are future teacher must know the rules of word – formation. It will help us to teach our students. Besides if we know affixes we can easily form new words while we are writing or speaking,

The aims and purposes of the work. The goal of the work is based on detailed study of affixation, which play important role in word – formation. According to this general aim the following particular tasks are put forward:

to classify affixes.

to classify the affixes according to its structure and semantics.

to show productive ways of word – building process of the English language.

The scientific novelty of the work. Novelty of the qualification work is determined by the necessity o the study of affixation which form a large layer of word – building process. And studying the productive ways of affixes in Modern English.

The practical value. The practical value of the research is that material and the results of the given qualification work can serve the material for theoretical course of lexicology, stylistics, typology as well as can be used for practical lessons in translation, home reading, conversational practice and current events.

Literature overview. While writing present qualification work I used the books written by great scholars such as: The English Word by Arnold I.V, A Course of Lexicology by Ginzburg R.S, A Course of lexicology by Buronov J.B. Besides above mentioned literatures I took information from Internet, Work Book Encyclopedia.

The structure of the work. Present qualification work consists of Introduction, main part, conclusion and the list of used literatures.

1. Main part

1.1 Morphemes, free and bound forms

If we describe a word as an autonomous unit of language in which a particular meaning is associated with a particular sound complex and which is capable of a particular grammatical employment and able to form a sentence by itself we have the possibility to distinguish it from the other fundamental language unit, namely, the morpheme.

A morpheme is also an association of a given meaning with a given sound pattern. But unlike a word it is not autonomous. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of a single morpheme. Nor are they divisible into smaller meaningful units. That is why the morpheme may be defined as the minimum meaningful language unit.

The term morpheme is derived from Gr morphe 'form'+ eme. Linguists to denote the smallest unit or the minimum distinctive feature have adopted the Greek suffix – eme. (Cf. phoneme, sememe). The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of form. A form in these cases is a recurring discrete unit of speech.

A form is said to be free if it may stand alone without changing its meaning; if not, it is a bound form, so called because it is always bound to something else. For example, if we compare the words sportive and elegant and their parts, we see that sport, sportive, elegant may occur alone as utterances, whereas eleg – – ive, – ant are bound forms because they never occur alone. A word is, by L. Bloomfield's definition, a minimum free form. A morpheme is said to be either bound or free. This statement' should be taken with caution. It means that some morphemes are capable of forming words without adding other morphemes: that is, they are homonymous to free forms.

According to the role they play in constructing words, morphemes are subdivided into roots and affixes. The latter are further subdivided, according to their position, into prefixes, suffixes and infixes, and according to their function and meaning, into derivational and functional affixes, the latter also called endings or outer formatives.

When a derivational or functional affix is stripped from the word, what remains is a stem (or a stem base). The stem expresses the lexical and the part of speech meaning.1 For the word hearty and for the paradigm heart (Sing.) – hearts (Pl.)2 the stem may be represented as heart– This stem is a single morpheme, it contains nothing but the root, so it is a simple stem. It is also a free stem because it is homonymous to the word heart.

A stem may also be defined as the part of the word that remains unchanged throughout its paradigm. The stem of the paradigm hearty – heartier – (the) heartiest is hearty– It is a free stem, but as it consists of a root morpheme and an affix, it is not simple but derived. Thus, a stem containing one or more affixes is a derived stem. If after deducing the affix the remaining stem is not homonymous to a separate word of the same root, we call it a bound stem. Thus, in the word cordial 'proceeding as if from the heart', the adjective-forming suffix can be separated on the analogy with such words as bronchia/, radial, social. The remaining stem, however, cannot form a separate' word by itself: it is bound. In cordially and cordiality, on the other hand, the stems are free.

Bound stems are especially characteristic of loan words. The point may be illustrated by the following French borrowings: arrogance, charity, courage, coward, distort, involve, notion, legible and tolerable, to give but a few.3 After the suffixes of these words are taken away the remaining elements are: arrog-, char-, cour-, cow-, – tort, – voIve, nat-, leg-, toler-, which do not coincide with any semantically related independent words.

Roots-are main morphemic vehicles of a given idea in a given language at a given stage of its development. A root may be also regarded as the ultimate constituent element which remains after the removal of all functional and derivational affixes and does not admit any further analysis. It is the common element of words within a word-family. Thus, – heart – is the common root of the following series of words: heart, hearten, dishearten, heartily, heartless, hearty, heartiness, sweetheart, heart-broken, kind-hearted, whole-heartedly, etc. In some of these, as, for example, in hearten, there is only one root; in others the root – heart is combined with some other root, thus forming a compound like sweetheart.

It will at once be noticed that the root in English is very often homonymous with the word. This fact is of fundamental importance as it is one of the most specific features of the English language arising from its general grammatical system on the one hand, and from its phonemic system on the other. The influence of the analytical structure of the language is obvious. The second point, however, calls for some explanation. Actually the usual phonemic shape most favoured in English is one single stressed syllable: bear, find, jump, land, man, sing, etc. This does not give much space for a second morpheme to add classifying Lexico-grammatical meaning to the lexical meaning already present in the root-stem, so the Lexico-grammatical meaning must be signaled by distribution. In the phrases a morning's drive, a morning's ride, a morning's walk the words drive, ride and walk receive the Lexico-grammatical meaning of. a noun not due to the structure of their stems, but because they are preceded by a noun in the Possessive case.

An English word does not necessarily contain formatives indicating to what part of speech it belongs. This holds true even with respect to inflexible parts of speech, i.e. nouns, verbs, adjectives. Not all roots are free forms, but productive roots, i.e. roots capable of producing new words, usually are. The semantic realization of an English word is therefore very specific. Its dependence on distribution is further enhanced by the widespread occurrence of homonymy both among root morphemes and affixes. Note how many words in the following statement might be ambiguous if taken in isolation: A change of work is as good as a rest.

The above treatment of the root is purely synchronic, as we have taken into consideration only the facts of present-day English. But the same problem of the morpheme serving as the main signal of a given lexical meaning is studied in etymology, i.e. in that branch of linguistics which deals with the origin and development of words tracing them back to their earliest determinable source. When approached thus historically or diachronically the word heart will be classified as Common Germanic. One will look for cognates, i.e. words descended from a common ancestor. The cognates of heart are the Latin cor, whence cordial 'hearty', 'sincere', and so cordially and cordiality; also the Greek kardia, whence English cardiac condition. The cognates outside the English vocabulary are the Russian сердце, the German Herzt the Spanish corazon and somе other words.

To emphasize the difference between the synchronic and the diachronic treatment, we shall call the common element of cognate words in different languages not their root but their radical element. An interesting example of historical treatment may be found in Potter's book.1 Potter shows that the same radical element s-d is to be recognized in the English monosyllables sit, seat, soot and nest. The radical element is s-d, the vowels may be different. Potter distinguishes five grades: (1) – sed – as in Latin sedere, whence the English sedentary 'requiring much sitting', 'physically inactive' (sedentary work, sedentary person) and sediment 'the part that settles to the bottom of a liquid'. From sedare, sedat (the causative of sedere) the English vocabulary has sedate 'quiet', 'calm' and its derivatives: sedately, sedateness, sedative; supersede is 'to sit above', hence 'to replace'. This meaning developed, as Potter explains, at the time when seats at schools were assigned by quality of work, so if a pupil surpassed another he superseded him. The verb sit belongs to this group also, being developed from Common Germanic setjan. (2) The variant – – sod – is represented by the Past Tense sat, (3) [-se:d] – is observed in Mode seat<old Norse sǽti<; Common Germanic sǽt. (4) [-so:d-l as in English soot with its Northern pronunciation [su:t]<OE and ON sot 'that which sits or settles in the chimney’. (5) From the vanishing grade E-sad 1 combined with the adverb ni-'down' which is cognate with the German nieder, the Indo-European noun ni-sd-os 'place where the bird sits down' is formed, whence both the English nest and the Russian гнездо. The Latin cognate is nidus, which is used in English as a scientific term 'place in which insects deposit eggs'; nidiflcation means 'nest building’.

These two types of approach, synchronic and diachronic, give rise to two different principles of arranging morphologically related words into groups. In the first case series of words with a common root morpheme in which derivatives are opposable to their unsuffixed and unprefixed bases, are combined cf. heart, hearty, etc..The second grouping results in families of historically cognate words, cf. heart, cor (Lat), etc.

Unlike roots, affixes are always bound forms. The difference between suffixes and prefixes, it will be remembered, is not confined to their respective position, suffixes being «fixed after» and prefixes «fixed before» the stem. It also concerns their function and meaning.

A suffix is a derivational morpheme following the stem and forming a new derivative in a different part of speech or a different word class, cf. – en, – y, – less in hearten, hearty, heartless. When both the underlying and the resultant forms belong to the same part of speech, the suffix serves to differentiate between Lexico-grammatical classes by rendering some very general lexico-grammatical meaning. For instance, both – ify and – er are verb suffixes, but the first characterizes causative verbs, such as horrify, purify, whereas the second is mostly typical of frequentative verbs: flicker, shimmer, twitter and the like.

If we realize that suffixes render the most general semantic component of the word's lexical meaning by marking the general class of phenomena to which the referent of the word belongs, the reason why suffixes are as a rule semantically fused with the stem stands explained.

A prefix is a derivational morpheme standing before the root and modifying meaning, cf. to hearten – to dishearten. It is only with verbs and statives that a prefix may serve to distinguish one part of speech from another, like in earth n–unearth v, sleep n – asleep (stative).

Preceding a verb stem, some prefixes express the difference between a transitive and an intransitive verb: stay v and outstay (smb) v t. With a few exceptions prefixes modify the stem for time (pre-t post-), place (in-, ad-), negation (un-, dis-) and remain semantically rather independent of the stem.

An infix is an affix placed with in the word, like – n – in stand. The type is not productive.

An affix should not be confused with a combining form. A combining form is also a bound form but it can be distinguished from an affix historically by the fact that it is always borrowed from another language, namely, from Latin or Greek, in which it existed as a free form, i.e. a separate word, or also as a combining form. Thus, the combining form cyclo – and its variant cycl – are derived from the Greek word kuklos 'circle', giving the English word cyclic. The French adjective mat 'bad' gives the English combining form mat-, as in malnutrition. The same mean ing we observe in the Greek combining form kako – derived homkakos 'bad' (cacophony 'ill sound', cacoepy 'bad pronunciation’). They differ from all other borrowings in that they occur in compounds and derivatives that did not exist in their original language but were formed only in modern times in English, Russian, French, etc. Cf. polyclinic, polymer; stereophonic, stereoscopic, telemechanics, television. Combining forms are mostly international. Descriptively a combining form differs from an affix because it can occur as one constituent of a form whose only other constituent is an affix, as in cyclic1.

1.2 Aims and principles of morphemic and word-formation analysis

A synchronic description of the English vocabulary deals with its present-day system and its patterns of word-formation by comparing words simultaneously existing in it.

If the analysis is limited to stating the number and type of morphemes that make up the word, it is