Affixation in modern english 
b>2.4.3 The origin of suffixesAs to the origin of suffixes, there are two ways in which a suffix may come into existence: 1) the suffix was once an independent word but is no longer one; 2) the suffix has originated as such, usually as a result of secretion. Case 1) applies to a few native suffixes only. The suffixes - dem and hood are independent words still in OE, so the process where by a second-word becomes a suffix can be observed historically. An instance of case 2) is the suffix - ling which is simply the extended form of suffix - ing in words whose stem ended in - l.Hall-way between second-words and suffixes are certain second elements which are still felt to be words though they are no longer used in isolation: - monger, wright and-wise exist only as second parts of suffixs. I have treated them as semi suffixes. The fact that a word is frequently used as the second element of a suffix gives us no right to call it a suffix. Thus the following are not suffixes: - caster (as in broadcaster, gamecaster, newscaster), fiend (as in the AE words cigarette fiend, opium-fiend, absinthe-fiend, cocaine - fiend etc…), craft (as in witchcraft, leechcrajt, prestaraft, statecraft, smith raft, mother craft), or - proof (as in bomb-, fire-, rain-, sound-, water-, hole kiss-, humor-etc. proof) which Jazzperson wrongly terms one.The contact of English with various foreign languages has led to the adoption of countless foreign words. In the process, many derivative morphemes have also been introduced, suffixes as well as prefixes. As a consequence, we have many hybrid types of composites. We have to distinguish between two basing groups. A foreign word is combined with a native affix, as in dear-ness, un-button. Just as the in production of a foreign word is an essentially uncomplicated matter, so is its combination with a native derivative element. As no structural problem is involved in the use of a foreign lexical unit, it can be treated like native words. This is the reason why native prefixes and suffixes were added to French words almost immediately after the words had been introduced. Suffixes such as - ful, - less, ness were early used with French words so we find faithful, faithless, clearness and others recorded by 1300. The case is different with foreign affixes added to native words. Here, the assimilation of a structural pattern is involved, not merely the adoption of a lexical unit. Before the foreign affix can be used, a foreign syntagma must have come to be familiar with speakers so that the pattern of analysis may be imitated and the dependent morpheme be used with native words. This is much more complicated. When it does happen, such formations are found much later than those of the first type. This is to be regarded as a general linguistic phenomenon. It explains why combinations of the types break-age, hindr-ance, yeoman-ry crop up much later and the less numerous. The early assimilation of - able is exceptional. Some foreign affixes, as - ance, - al (type arrival), ity have never become productive with native words.The majority of foreign suffixes owe their existance to the reinterpretation of loons. When a foreign word comes to be analyzed as a composite, a syntagma, it may acquire derivative force. The syntagmatic character of a word there fore is a precondition for the development of a derivative morpheme.From landscape (which is Du landsdap) resulted scrape which is almost entirely used as the second element of suffixs, as in seascape 1799 and later earths cape, cloudscape, sands cape, mountains cape, moonscape, parks cape, skyscape, waterscape, house-scape, roads-cape, mindscape. Bottlegger attracted booklegger one trading in obscene books, foodlegger «illicit food-seller, meatlegger, tirelegger» (used at a time when things were rationed in US).The word hierarchy attracted squir(e) archy 1804, which does not, however, mean that there is a suffix - arohy. The attraction is prob due to the rime only, and other coinages have not been made.Another AE suffix is-eteria with meaning «shop, store, establishment». The starting-point is prob. Mexican Spanish cafeteria which passed into American English (first used about 1898). As it was immediately analyzable in American English, with the first element interpreted as an allomorph of [kafi] it attected a good number of words (chiefly since 1930). Mencken has about 50 words, such as basketeria, caketeria, candyteria, cleaneteria, luncheteria, drygoodsteria, drugteria, fruiteria, shoeteria, chccolateria, furnitureteria. The original implication was «place where articles are sold on the self-service plant» (so in the recent coinage gas-a-teria, Life International). The only common word, however, is cafeteria, stressed as indicated.The process of secretion requires some more comment. The basic principle is that of re-interpretation: but there are several ways in which re-interpretation occurs.1). A suffix may be analyzed by the general speaker as having two contituent elements, the basis as an independent morpheme and the suffix as a derivative element. This is the case of the preceding types lemonade and land-scape. This process of direct re-interpretation is the form secretion commonly assumes.2). A suffix is not made up of two constituent elements as far as the general speaker is concerned. If aristocracy, democracy, plutocracy yield more or less jocular words such as landocracy, mobocracy, cottoncracy, this is due to a meeting and blending of two heterogeneous structural systems: a certain structural element of one linguistic system is isolated and introduced into another linguistic system. The speaker with a knowledge of Greek isolates - ocracy «rule» in a series of 6 reek-coined words and introduces it as a derivative element into the structural system of English. But dependent structural elements are tied up with certain morphologic conditions of the linguistic system to which they belong and cannot there fore be naturally transplanted, unlike words, which are independent lexical elements, not subject to any specific morphological conditions. Such coinages are felt to be hybrids by the word-coiner himself, so the process is not used for serious purposes as a rule. Admittance of such foreign derivative elements is also impeded by the fact that they bear no resemblance to any morpheme with which the hearer of the hybrid suffix is familiar. The linguistic situation is different with foreign-coined words of which one element is immediately associated with a morpheme of the hearers language. Words like barometer, thermometer are automatically connected with the independent word mater whose unstressed allomorph the words contain. This explains the rise and currency of speedometer, cream ometer and quite recent drunkometer.But otherwise, hybrid coinages of this derivative pattern will always have a limited range of currency or the tinge of faketiousness, as bumpology, bumposopher (both jocular from hump «protuberance on the cranium as the sign of special mental faculies»), storiology, weather logy, dollolaty a. o. Parallel to the above words in - ocracy are such in - ocrat, as mobocrat bancrat bankocrat. Very similar to the case of barometer / speed omoter is that of the American suffix - fest. Fom the German words Sincerest and Turn fest, which were first used in the early 50 s in U.S. a series of other words were derived, such as smoke fest, walkfest, eatfest, stuntfest, bookfest, gabfest. The element - fest was obviously interpreted as the allomorph of feast. The word cavalcade was re-interpreted as containing the element caval-» horse» and the suffix-cade «parade» and attracted such coining as aerocade, aquacade (on a Latin basis of coining), autocade, camelcade, motorcade (on a native basis of coining), recent words which may not stand the test of time. From the word panorama the characteristic ending-rama was secreted with the meaning «pageant, show» and has recently led to such words as cinerama, motorama, autorama.Sometimes ignorant but pretentious people take to coining words, re-interpreting foreign word in their own way. They vaguely feel that there is some characteristic termination in a 6 reek or Latin word which they then attach to some English basis to give the c.b.a «learned» tinge. As a result, we get barbarisms in-athon, coined after Marathon, such as danceathon, swimathon etg, in-thorium, such as corsetorium, lubritorium etc.Thus, the rise of suffix illustrated by types aristocracy/ landocracy, barometer/ speedometer and others treated in the preceding passage can stay out pf accounted for suffixal derivation.There is yet a third way in which suffixes may arise. Words of apparently only one constituent element may develop derivative morphemes. If we take such a word as hamburger, we observe that it has attracted other coining like cheeseburger, bufburger, fishburger. The analysis of the word cannot be, as one may feel tempted to assume, that of ham and burger as there is no ham in the humburger. So the word cheeseburger has not arisen from re-interpretation. What has taken place is a shortening of the morpheme hamburger into a fore-clipped - burger, this part being taken as representative of the semantic elements contained in hamburger. The suffix cheeseburger there fore is a clipped word for non-existent cheese hamburger. Parallel to - burger words are such in - furture, as shrimpfurder, krautfurter, chicenfurter. In election campaign words such as Hoovercrat, Willkiecrat, - crat was short for democrat. The word telegram 1852 gave rise to cablegram, radiogram, pidgeongram, lettergram where - gram is short for telegram/ Tnr diminutive suffix - ling prginated in the same way. Wolfling «young wolf» is a blend pf wol fand, young-ling «young animal»2.4.4 Nominal and verbal suffixesIn ME there are nominal and verbal suffixes. The suffixs - fold, - most and - ward form words which are used both as adjectives and adverbs.The meaning of a suffix is conditioned by the particular semantic character of the basis to which the suffix is attached, also by the linguistic circumstances in which the coinage is made. In general parlance, a fiver is a bill of five (dollars or pounds), in crikret, jargon it is a hit for five, in school life it may denote a boy who always scrapes through with a five. A greening is a green variety of apple or pear, but a whiting is a white variety of fish. For other possibilities see - er and - ing, for instance. Some concepts are apt to be represented by suffixes in many languages as those of condition (state, quality etc), appurtenance, collectivity, endearment agent a.o, but theoretically there is no telling what concept may not develop to find expression in a suffix. French has a suffix - ier (type pommier) to denote fruit trees, there I - ile for the idea of stable for demos tic animals, 0.6 has a suffix - it is (type nephritis) meaning disease. These have no parallels in English, or in German either. But no intrinsic linguistic principle is involved in the absence of such morphemes. The rise of new suffix in English goes to corroborate this.A new words are needed with regard to adverbal derivatives. Adeverbal derivative is not fundamentally different from a cpd whose first member is a verb stem, so as in the case of denominal suffixes, a great number of meanings are possible. In practice, however, the possibilities are much restricted. Deverbal suffixes express grammatical functions than semantic concepts, and the usual implications are «act, fact, instance of…» (arrival, quidanse, warning), sometimes «state of…» (starvation, bewilderment), «agent» (personal or impersonal: baker, eraser, disinfectant), «personal object» (direct or indirect, only with - ee, transferee, draftee), «object of result» (breakade, savings), «plase» (settlement, brewery, lodgings). Similar considerations apply to derivation by a zero morpheme (pickpocket, blackaut, look).2.5 The valency of affixes and stemsAnother essential feature of affixes that should not be overlooked is their combining power or valency, i.e. the types of types of the stems with which they they occur.We have already seen that not all combinations of existing morphemes are actually used. This, unhappy, untrue and unattractive are quite regular combinations, while seemingly analogous unsad, unfalse, un-pretty seems unusual. The possibility of particular stem taking a particular affix depends on phonomor-phological, morphological and semantic factors. The suffix ance - ence, for instance, occurs onli after b, t, d, dz, v, l, r, m, n,: disturbance, insistence, indepence, but not after s or z: condensation, organization.It is of course impossible to describe the whole system. To make our point clear we shall take adjectives as an example. The adjective-forming suffixes are mostly attached to noun stems. They are: - ed (barbed), - en (golden), - ful (careful), - less (careless), - ly (soldierly), - like (childlike), - y (hearty) and some others. The highly productive suffix-able can be combined with noun stems and verbal stems alike (clubbable). It is especially frequent in the pattern in the pattern un - + verbal stem + able (unbearable). Sometimes it is even attached to phrases producing compound derivatives (unbrushoffable, ungetatable). These characteristics are of great importance both structurally and semantically.Their structural significance is clear if we realize that to describe the system of a given vocabulary one must know the typical patterns on which its words are coined. To achieve this it is necessary not only to know the morphemes of which they consist but also to reveal their recurrent+ regular combinations and the relationship existing between them. This approach ensures a rigorously linguistic basis for the identification of lexico-grammatical classes within each part of speech. In the English language these classes are so far little studied, although inquiry info this problem seems very promising and begins to affect attention.It is also worthy of note that from the viewpoint of the information theory the fact that not every affix is capable of combining with any given stem makes the code more reliable, protects it from noise. Noise as a term of the theory of information is used to denote any kind of interference with the process of communication, mistakes, and misunderstanding.The valiancy of stems is not therefore unlimited. Noun stems can be followed by the noun-forming suffixes: - age (bondage), - dom (serfdom), - eer, - ier (profitter, collier), ess (waitress), - ful (spoonful), - hood (childhood), - ian (physician), ics (linguistics), - ie / - y (daddy), - ing (flooring), - ism (heroism), - ist (violinist), - let (cloudlet), - ship (friendship); by the adjective-forming suffixes: - a/ - ial (doctoral), - an (African), - ary (revolutionary), - ed (wooded), - ful (hopeful), - ic, - ical (historic, historical), - ish (childish), - like (businesslike), - ly (friendly)/ - ous/ - ious/ - eous (spacious), - some (handsome), - y (cloudy); verb - forming suffixes: - ate (aerate), - en (hearten), - fy/, - ify (speechify), - ize (sympathize).Verbal stems are almost equal to noun stems in valiancy. They combine with the following noun-forming suffixes: - age (breakage), - al (betrayal), - ance/ - ense (guidance, reference), - ant/ - ent (assistant, student), - ee (evacuee), - er/ - or (painter, editor), - ing (uprising), - ion/ - tion/ ation (action, information), - ment (government). The adjective - forming suffixes used with verbal stems are: - able/ - ible (agreeable, comprehensible), - ive/ - sive/ - tive (talkative), - some (meddlesome).Adjective stems furnish a shorter list: - dom (freedom), - ism (realism), - ity/ - ty (reality, cruelty), - ness (brightness), ish (reddish), - ly (firmly), - ate (differentiate), - en (sharpen), - fy/ - ify (solidify).The combining possibilities (or valiancy) are very important semantically because the meaning of the derivative depends not only on the morphemes of Wichita's composed but also on combinations of stave and affix that can be contrasted with it. Contrast is to be local for in the use of the same morpheme in different environment and also in the use of different morphemes in environments otherwise the same.The difference between the suffixes - ity and - ism, for instance, will become clear if we compare them as combined with identical stems in the following oppositions: formality: formalism: humanity: humanist: reality: realism. Roughly, the words in - ity mean the quality of being what the corresponding adjective describes, or an instance of this quality. The resulting nouns are countable. The suffix - ism forms nouns, naming a disposition to what the adjective describes or a corresponding type of ideology. Beng uncountable they belong to a different lexico-grammatical class.
Страницы: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
|
|
