Дипломная работа: Affixation in modern english

Functional affixes serve to convey grammatical meaning. They build different forms of one and the same word. A word-form, or the form of a word, is defined as one of the different aspects a word may take as a result of inflection. Complete sets of all the various forms of a word when considered as inflectional patterns, such as declensions or conjugations, are termed paradigms. A paradigm is therefore defined as the system of grammatical forms characteristic of a word, e.g. near, nearer, nearest; son, son's, sons, sons'.

Derivational affixes serve to supply the stem with components of lexical and lexico-grammatical meaning, and thus form different words. One and the same lexico-grammatical meaning of the affix is sometimes accompanied by different combinations of various lexical meanings. Thus, the lexico-grammatical meaning supplied by the suffix – y consists in the ability to express the, qualitative idea peculiar to adjectives and creates adjectives from noun stems. The lexical meanings of the same suffix are somewhat variegated: 'full of, as in bushy or cloudy, 'composed of, as in stony, 'having the quality of, as in slangy, 'resembling', as in baggy and some more. This suffix sometimes conveys emotional components of meaning. E.g. My school reports used to say: «Not amenable to discipline; too fond of organizing» which was only a kind way of saying: «Bossy?» (M. DICKENS) Bossy not only means 'having the quality of a boss' or 'behaving like a boss'; it is also an unkind derogatory word.

This fundamental difference in meaning and function of the two groups of affixes results in an interesting relationship: the presence of a derivational affix does not prevent a word from being equivalent to another word, in which this suffix is absent, so that they can be substituted for one another in context. The presence of a functional affix changes the distributional properties of a word so much that it can never be substituted for a simple word without violating grammatical standard. To see this point consider the following familiar quotation from Shakespeare:

Cowards die many times before their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Here no one-morpheme word can be substituted for the words cowards, times or deaths because the absence of a plural mark will make the sentence ungrammatical. The words containing derivational affixes can be substituted by morphologically different words, so that the derivative valiant can be substituted by a root word like brave.

2.2 Semi-Affixes and Boundary cases between derivation and inflection

There are cases, however, where it is very difficult to drawer hard and fast line between roots and affixes on the one hand, and derivational affixes and in flexional formatives on the other. The distinction between these has caused much discussion and is no easy matter altogether.

There are a few roots in English which have developed great combining ability in the position of the second element of a word and a very general meaning similar to that of an affix. They receive this name because semantically, functionally, structurally and statistically they behave more like affixes than like roots. Their meaning is as general. They determine the lexicon-grammatical class the word belongs to. Cf sailor : seaman , where – man is a semi-affix.

Another specific group is farmed by the adverb-forming suffix – ly , following adjective stems, and the noun-forming suffixes: – ing , – ness , – er and by – ed added to a combination of two stems: fainthearted , long legged . By their almost unlimited combining possibilities (high valiancy) and the almost complete fusion of lexical and lexicon-grammatical meaning they resemble inflectional formatives. The derivation with these suffixes is so regular and the meaning and function of the derivatives so obvious that such derivatives are very often considered not worth an entry in the dictionary and therefore omitted as self-evident. Almost every adjective stem can produce an adverb with the help of – ly and an abstract noun by taking up the suffix – ness . Every verbal stem can produce the name of the doer by adding – er and the name of the process or its result by adding – ing . A suffix approaching those in productivity is – ish denoting a moderate degree of the quality named in the stem. Therefore these words are explained in dictionaries by referring the reader to the underlying stem. For example, in Concise Oxford dictionary we read: «womanliness –the quality of being womanly; womanized in senses of the verb; womanishly -in a womanish manner; womanly adv-in a womanly manner, womanishness -the quality or state of being womanish.»

These affixes are remarkable for their high valence also in the formation of compound derivatives corresponding to free phrases. Examples are: every day: everydayness.

2.3 Allomorphs

The combining from allo-from Greek allo «other» is used in linguistic terminology to denote elements of a group whose members together constitute a structural unit of the language (allophones, allomorphs). Thus, for example, – ion / – tion / – sion / – ation are the positional variants of the same suffix. To show this they are taken together and separated by the sign/. They do not differ in meaning or function but shav a slight difference in sound from depending on the final phoneme of the preceding stem. They are considered as variants of one and the same morpheme and called its allomorphs. Descriptive linguistics deals with the regularities in the distributional relations among the features and elements of speech, i. e. their occurrence restively to each other within utterances. The approach to the problem is consequently based on the principles of distributional analysis.

An allomorph is defined as a positional variant of a morpheme occurring in a specific environment and so characterized bycomplementary distribution. Complementary distribution is said to take place hen two linguistic variants cannot appear in the same environment. Thus, stems ending in consonants take as a rule – ation (liberation ); stems ending in pt , however, take – tion (corruption ) and the final t becomes fused with the suffix.

Different morphemes are characterized by, contrastive distribution , i.e. if they occur in the same environment they signal different meanings. The suffixes – able and – ed , for instance are different morphemes, not allomorphs, because adjectives in – able mean «capable of being»: measurable «capable of being measured», whereas – ed as a suffix of adjectives has a resultant force: measured «marked by due proportion», as the measured beauty of classical Greek art; hence also «rhythmical» and «regular in movement», as in the measured from of verse, the measured tread.

In same cases the difference is not very clear-cut – ic and – ical , for example, are two different affixes, the first a simple one, the second a group affix; they are characterized by contrastive, distribution. That is, many adjectives have both the – ic and – ical form, often without a distinction in meaning COD points out, that the suffix – ical shows a vaguer connection with what is indicated by the stem: comic paper but comical story . However, the distinction between them is not very sharp.

Allomorphs will also occur among prefixes. Their form then depends on the initials of the stem with which the will assimilate. A prefix such as im -occurs before bilabials (impossible ), its allomorph ir -before r (irregular ), il-before l (illegal ). It is in – before all other consonants and vowels (indirect , inability ).

Two or more sound forms of a stem existing under conditions of complementary distribution may also be regarded as allomorphs, as, for instance, in long a : length n , excite y : excitation , n.

In American descriptive linguistics allomorphs are treated on a purely semantic basis, so that not only [iz] in dishes , [z] in dreams and [s] in dreams and [s] in books , which are allomorphs in the sense given above, but also formally unrelated [in] in oxen , the vowed modification in tooth : teeth and zero suffix in many sheep , are considered to be allomorphs of the same morpheme on the strength of the sameness of their grammatical meaning.This surely needs some serious re-thinking, as within that kind of approach morphemes cease to be linguistic units combining the two fundamental aspects of form and meaning and become pure abstractions. The very term morpheme (from the 6 reek morphe «form») turns in to a misnomer because all connection with form is lost. Allomorphs there sore are phonetically conditioned positional variants of the same derivational or functional morpheme (suffix, root or suffix) identical in meaning and function and differing in sound only insomuch, as their complementary distribution produces various phonetic assimilation effects.

2.4 Suffixation

2.4.1 Classification of suffixes

Depending on purpose of research, various classifications of suffixes have been used and suggested. Suffixes have been classified according to their origin, parts of speech they served to form, their frequency, productivity and other characteristics.

Within the parts of speech suffixes have been classified semantically according to lexico-grammatical groups, and last but not least, according to the types of stems they are added to.

In conformity with our primarily synchronic approach it seems convenient to begin with the classification according to the part of speech in which the most frequent suffixes of present-day English occur. They will be listed accordingly together with words illustrating their possible semantic force.

It shall be, noted that diachronic approach would view the problem of morphological analysis differently, for example, in the word complete they would look for the traces of the Latin complet-us .

Noun-forming suffixes:

– age (bondage, breakage, mileage, vicarage); – ance/ – ence (assistance, reference); – ant/ – ent (disinfectant, student); – dom (kingdom, freedom, officialdom); – ee (employee); – eer (profiteer); – er (writer, type-writer); – ess (actress, lioness); – hood (manhood); – ing (building, meaning, washing); – ion, – sion, – tion, ation (rebellion, creation, tension, explanation); – ism/ – icism (heroism, criticism); – ist (novelist, communist); – ment (government, nourishment); – nees (tenderness); – ship (friendship); – (i) ty (sonority).

Adjective-forming suffixes:

– able/ – ible/ – uble (unbearable, audible, soluble); – al (formal); – ic (poetic); – ical (ethical); – ant/ – ent (repentant, dependent); – ary (revolutionary); – ate/ – ete (accurate, complete); – ed/ – d (wooded); – ful (delightful); – ian (African, Australian); – ish (Irish, reddish, childish); – ive (active); – less (useless); – like (lifelike); – ly (manly); – ous/ ious (tremendous, curious); – some (tiresome); – y (cloudy, dressy).