И. В. Арнольд лексикология современного английского языка Издание

im-/ir-/il have already been discussed, so there is no necessity to dwell upon them. Non- is often used in abstract verbal nouns such as noninterference, nonsense or non-resistance, and participles or former participles like non-commissioned (about an officer in the army below the rank of a commissioned officer), non-combatant (about any one who is connected with the army but is there for some purpose other than fighting, as, for instance, an army surgeon.)
Non- used to be restricted to simple unemphatic negation. Beginning with the sixties non- indicates not so much the opposite of something but rather that something is not real or worthy of the name. E. g. non-book — is a book published to be purchased rather than to be read, non-thing — something insignificant and meaningless.
The most frequent by far is the prefix un-; it should be noted that it may convey two different meanings, namely:

1. 
   Simple negation, when attached to adjective stems or to participles: happy : : unhappy, kind : : unkind, even : : uneven. It is immaterial whether the stem is native or borrowed, as the suffix un- readily combines with both groups. For instance, uncommon, unimportant, etc. are hybrids.
   
2. 
   The meaning is reversative when un- is used with verbal stems. In that case it shows action contrary to that of the simple word: bind : : unbind, do : : undo, mask : : unmask, pack : : unpack.
   

A very frequent prefix with a great combining power is re- denoting repetition of the action expressed by the stem. It may be prefixed to almost any verb or verbal noun: rearrange v, recast v ‘put into new shape’, reinstate v ‘to place again in a former position’, refitment n ‘repairs and renewal’, remarriage n, etc. There are, it must be remembered, some constraints. Thus, while reassembled or revisited are usual, rereceived or reseen do not occur at all.
The meaning of a prefix is not so completely fused with the meaning of the primary stem as is the case with suffixes, but retains a certain degree of semantic independence.
It will be noted that among the above examples verbs predominate. This is accounted for by the fact that prefixation in English is chiefly characteristic of verbs and words with deverbal stems.
The majority of prefixes affect only the lexical meaning of words but there are three important cases where prefixes serve to form words belonging to different parts of speech as compared with the original word.
These are in the first place the verb-forming prefixes be- and en-, which combine functional meaning with a certain variety of lexical meanings.¹ Be- forms transitive verbs with adjective, verb and noun stems and changes intransitive verbs into transitive ones. Examples are: belittle v ‘to make little’, benumb v ‘to make numb’, befriend v ‘to treat
¹ Historically be- is a weakened form of the preposition and adverb by, the original meaning was ‘about’. The prefix en-/em-, originally Latin, is the doublet of the prefix in-/im-; it penetrated into English through French. Many English words in which this prefix is quite readily distinguished were formed not on English soil but borrowed as derivatives, as was the case with the verb enlarge
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like a friend’, becloud v (bedew v, befoam v) ‘to cover with clouds (with dew or with foam)’, bemadam v ‘to call madam’, besiege v ‘to lay siege on’. Sometimes the lexical meanings are very different; compare, for instance, bejewel v ‘to deck with jewels’ and behead v which has the meaning of ‘to cut the head from’. There are on the whole about six semantic verb-forming varieties and one that makes adjectives from noun stems following the pattern be- + noun stem + -ed, as in benighted, bespectacled, etc. The pattern is often connected with a contemptuous emotional colouring.
The prefix en-/em- is now used to form verbs from noun stems with the meaning ‘put (the object) into, or on, something’, as in embed, engulf, encamp, and also to form verbs with adjective and noun stems with the meaning ‘to bring into such condition or state’, as in enable v, enslave v, encash v. Sometimes the prefix en-/em- has an intensifying function, cf. enclasp.
The prefix a- is the characteristic feature of the words belonging to statives: aboard, afraid, asleep, awake, etc.
¹ As a prefix forming the words of the category of state a- represents: (1) OE preposition on, as abed, aboard, afoot; (2) OE preposition of, from, as in anew, (3) OE prefixes ge- and y- as in aware.
This prefix has several homonymous morphemes which modify only the lexical meaning of the stem, cf. arise v, amoral a.
The prefixes pre-, post-, non-, anti-, and some other Romanic and Greek prefixes very productive in present-day English serve to form adjectives retaining at the same time a very clear-cut lexical meaning, e. g. anti-war, pre-war, post-war, non-party, etc.
From the point of view of etymology affixes are subdivided into two main classes: the native affixes and the borrowed affixes. By native affixes we shall mean those that existed in English in the Old English period or were formed from Old English words. The latter category needs some explanation. The changes a morpheme undergoes in the course of language history may be of very different kinds. A bound form, for instance, may be developed from a free one. This is precisely the case with such English suffixes as -dom, -hood, -lock, -ful, -less, -like, -ship, e. g. ModE -dom < OE dom ‘fate’, ‘power’, cf. ModE doom. The suffix -hood that we see in childhood, boyhood is derived from OE had ‘state’. The OE lac was also a suffix denoting state. The process may be summarised as follows: first lac formed the second element of compound words, then it became a suffix and lastly was so fused with the stem as to become a dead suffix in wedlock. The nouns freedom, wisdom, etc. were originally compound words.
The most important native suffixes are: -d, -dom, -ed, -en, -fold, -ful, -hood, -ing, -ish, -less, -let, -like, -lock, -ly, -ness, -oc, -red, -ship, -some, -teen, -th, -ward, -wise, -y.
The suffixes of foreign origin are classified according to their source into Latin (-able/-ible, -ant/-ent), French (-age, -ance/-ence, -ancy/-ency, -ard, -ate, -sy), Greek (-ist, -ism, -ite), etc.


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The term borrowed affixes is not very exact as affixes are never borrowed as such, but only as parts of loan words. To enter the morphological system of the English language a borrowed affix has to satisfy certain conditions. The borrowing of the affixes is possible only if the number of words containing this affix is considerable, if its meaning and function are definite and clear enough, and also if its structural pattern corresponds to the structural patterns already existing in the language.
If these conditions are fulfilled, the foreign affix may even become productive and combine with native stems or borrowed stems within the system of English vocabulary like -able < Lat -abilis in such words as laughable or unforgettable and unforgivable. The English words balustrade, brigade, cascade are borrowed from French. On the analogy with these in the English language itself such words as blockade are coined.
It should be noted that many of the borrowed affixes are international and occur not only in English but in several other European languages as well.