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notion that couid not possibly have existed at some previous stage has a name
formed with the help of some affix the affix is considered productive)). (Arnold I.
V.)
Another point of view is given by Ch. Hockett «The productivity of any
pattern-derivational, inflectional or syntactical — is the relative freedom with
which speakers coin new grammatical forms by it. Thus the formation of English
noun-plurals with
z, s, iz is highly productive. The addition of
-ly to produce an
adverbial is fairly productive.
(Ch. Hockett.)
Productive affixes are those which are characterized by their ability to make
new words.
For example. -er (baker, lander ) -ist (leftist) -ism, -ish (baldish) -ing, -
ness, -ation, -ee. -ry, -or -ance, ic are productive suffixes re-, un-non-, anti- etc are
productive prefixes.
Non-productive affixes are those which are not used to form new words in Modern
English.
For example. -ard, -cy, -ive, -en, -dom, -ship, -en, -ify etc are not
productive suffixes; in
(il) ir-
(im-), are non-productive prefixes. These affixes may
occur in a great number of words but if they are not used to form new words in
Modem English they are not productive.
But recent investigations prove that there are no productive and non-
productive affixes because each affix plays a certain role in wordformation. There
are only affixes with different degrees of productivity, besides that productivity of
affixes should not be mixed up with their frequency of occurence in speech.
Frequency of affixes is characterised by the occurence of an affix in a great
number of words. But productivity is the ability of a given suffix or prefix to make
new words. An affix may be frequent but not productive,
For example. the suffix
«-ive» is very frequent but non-productive.
Note. The native noun-forming suffixes
~dom and
-ship ceased to
>
be productive
centuries ago. Yet, Professor I. V. Arnold in
The English Word gives some
examples of comparatively new formations with the suffix
-dom: boredom,
serfdom, slavedom. The same is true about
-ship (e. g.
salesmanship). The
adjective-forming
-ish, which leaves no doubt as to its productivity nowadays, has
comparatively recently regained it, after having been non-productive for many
centuries.
Some linguists
1
distinguish between two types of prefixes:
1) those which are like functional words (such as prepositions or adverbs)
(For
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