polite-ly
(‘in a polite manner’). An affix that is appended after the base (e.g.
-ness and
-ly) is called a
SUFFIX while an affix
that goes before the base, as
im- does in
im-polite, is called a PREFIX.
In some languages affixes are not just placed before or after the base. Some are inserted inside it. Such
affixes are called INFIXES. Thus, in the Ulwa language of Nicaragua, the portmanteau morph
-ka
representing ‘third person, singular, possessive’ is placed after the first metrical foot of the word (this
roughly means it goes after the second vowel). So
-ka is a suffix where the base has just two vowels as in [4.
3a] and [4.3b]. But it is an infix where the base is longer and contains more than two vowels, as in [4.3c]
and [4.3d]:
[4.3]
Base
Possessed
a. kii
‘stone’
kii-ka
‘his/her stone’
b. sana
‘deer’
sana-
ka
‘his/her deer’
c. suulu
‘dog’
suu
-ka-lu
‘his/her dog’
d. siwanak
‘root’
siwi-
ka-nak
‘his/her root’
(based on McCarthy and Prince 1990)
English has no bound infix morphemes. But this does not mean that it has no infixing whatsoever. In
expressive
language, whole words can be inserted into other words as infixes as in:
[4.4]
My
ex-husband now lives in Minnebloodysota.
Several more colourful four-letter words could fill the position occupied by
bloody. Can you think of some?
Furthermore, there is a class of bound morphemes which are attached at the margins of words but which
are not affixes. Such morphemes are called CLITICS. They co-habit with a word without getting into a deep
relationship with it: clitics retain a degree of independence. For instance, they can easily move from one
word to another within a phrase if the syntactic conditions are right. A good example of a clitic in English is
the GENITIVE
’s as in
the professor’s car. It can be attached to whatever noun precedes the last noun of a
genitive noun phrase. So we can say
the professor’s car and
the professor of ancient history’s car. Of
course, in both cases it is the professor who owns the car but the genitive
’s is not necessarily attached to
professor
. (See (
8.3
) for further discussion.)
Up to now all the word-building elements we have encountered have been morphs that represent a
morpheme; they have all been entities associated with some meaning. This is not always the case.
Sometimes, morphological forms that do not represent any meaning are used in word-building in the same
way that blank fillers are put in by a joiner to occupy space when cupboards or doors do not quite fill the
entire space available. We will call such ‘blanks’ FORMATIVES. For instance, the adjective-forming suffix
-al
is attached directly to
region to form
region-al and to
politic to form
political. However, when
-al is
suffixed to some other bases a bridging formative is needed. Thus, in the case of
contract we get
contractual.
The meaningless formative
-u- must intervene between the base
contract and the suffix
-al. We cannot just
say
*contractal. Similarly, in
maternal and
paternal the meaningless formative
-n- is interposed between
the suffix
-al and the bases
pater and
mater. An even better example of a formative is the form
u in
rivulet.
This
u is inserted after
river (and the final
-er (/e/ is dropped) before the suffix
-let, meaning ‘small’.
Elsewhere, as
in-piglet, the
suffix -let attaches directly to the root.
ENGLISH WORDS 39