Affixation
It is the most widely used of all the word formation processes in the English language. This is
evidence in the fact that we can use this process to form new words from existing ones.
Instances of affixation as a word formation process are found in the formation of nouns,
tenses, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
Affixation is the process by which new words are formed through the additions of bound
morphemes to words. Through this process a variety of lexical items can be created. For
instance the word ‘encouragement’ is formed from the root word ‘courage’ by the prefix ‘en’
and the suffix ‘ment’.
Morphemes such as ‘en’ and ‘ment’ which are parts of words are called affixes. Affixes are
therefore not words. They are subsidiary to the root or the base of words and may be added
directly to the root or base form or to the constructions consisting of a root plus one or more
other morphemes.
The base or root of a word constitutes the core part of a word. Roots or base form are
frequently longer than affixes and are more numerous in the vocabulary of the English
language. The vast majority of base elements in English are realised by one free morpheme.
The root or base of the word is different from the stem of the word in the sense that a stem is
any morpheme or combination of morphemes to which an affix can be added. For example,
the word ‘friends’ consists of a stem ‘friend’ which in this case happens to be also the root or
base of the word plus an affix [z] while the word ‘friendships’ contains an affix [z], a stem
‘friendship’ and a root or base ‘friend’.
Two types of affixes are identified in English. These are prefixes and suffixes. Both of them
are classified as bound morphemes.
The process of affixation also enables words to be formed by the addition of both prefix and
suffix to the base form as in the word uneducated, disestablishment, reorganisation.
It is important not to assume that any form of affix will always have a constant significance.
For example, the suffix ‘-less’ always suggests ‘the absence of the meaning of the base form’
as in ‘meaningless’ or ‘useless’ but in the word ‘priceless’ such a suggestion is not true as
‘priceless’ does not mean ‘without price or value’ but in contrast, denote ‘a thing of great
value.’
Prefixation
It is a process by which a bound morpheme is added BEFORE a root morpheme. In other
words, it is a process by which the main word is preceeded by a minimally indivisible but
significantly important unit of a lexeme as in the following examples:


Mis-represent
Dis-loyal
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



Mis-behave
Ir-regular
Ex-president
Vice-chairperson
Prefixes do not function to change the word class of the base to which they are attached. Thus
the words ‘wise’ and ‘unwise’ are both adjectives just as ‘locate’ and ‘dislocate’ are both
verbs. However there are a few exceptions in which the addition of prefixes can result in the
change of the grammatical word class of the root morphemes to which they are attached.
Such exceptions include:
Weight
(Noun) and
Precedent (Noun) and
Overweight
Unprecedent
(Adjective)
(Verb)
Plant
(Noun) and
Transplant
(Verb)
Place
(Noun) and
Misplace
(Verb).
Suffixation
 Suffixes almost always alter the word class of the base.
 Suffixation takes place when bound morphemes are attached to the root or base of a
word in the final position.
 Suffixes are recursive in nature. That is they can occur repeatedly in the formation of
words. For example child+less+ness,
boy+ish+ness,
friend+li+ness, home+less+ness
 In spite of the general statement made about
suffixation, there are some suffixes which do not
cause a change in grammatical class. Such suffixes
include –age as in vicarage and –ian as in musician.
 The English language has two categories of suffixation namely derivational suffix and
inflectional suffix.
Derivational Suffixes
 A derivational suffix is a morpheme which alters the word class of the root to which it
is affixed. For instance, the additional of the suffix ‘-ly’ in the word ‘notoriously’ has
caused a change in the root of the word ‘notorious’ from being an adjective to an
adverb.
 It is possible to have a multiplicity or succession of
derivational suffixes in a word. When this is the
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case, sequences are formed as in the word
‘academically.’ The root this word is ‘academy.’
It is this root word that three derivational
suffixes-ic, -al and –ly have been added
respectively to form first the word ‘academic’,
then academical and finally academically.
 A reversal of this sequence of occurrence would have yielded nonsensical words such
as *academlyalic, *academalicly or *academiclyal.
 In the derivational process, only the grammatical
statue of a morpheme is changed but not its lexical
meaning as the following examples illustrate:
Merry (Adjective) – Merrily (Adverb)
Stupid (Adjective) – Stupidity (Noun)
Obscene (Adjective) –Obscenity (Noun)
As we can see there is a change in the word class of the root words-merry, stupid and
obscene from being adjectives to adverb and nouns respectively by the addition of the
derivational suffixes-ly and –ity. However, we also see that the lexical meanings of
the three words are still essentially reflected in the derived words-merrily, stupidity
and obscenity.
 Derivational suffixes are also not fully accounted for in the
grammar of the English language because they function on
the border of grammar and lexis.
 Finally a suffix which is derivational in nature must come before an inflectional
suffix in a word where you have both occurring as in teach + er + s.
Inflectional Suffixes
 They are bound morphemes which are for the most part purely
grammatical markers representing such concepts as:
Tense (present, past, participle)-s, ed, ing, en
Number (singular, plural) –s;
apostrophe ‘s’ for the possessive) as well as
the comparative and the superlative ‘er’ and ‘est’.
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 Inflectional suffixes do not alter the syntactic category or class (parts of speech) of the
words or morphemes to which they are attached. For examples, in the words“wanted, coming, goats and baskets” the inflectional suffixes-ed and ing, are added to the verbs ‘want’ and ‘come’ while the inflectional suffix
–s is added to the nouns ‘goat’ and ‘basket’ to show past tense in
‘wanted’, progressive tense in ‘coming’ and the plural number in ‘goats’
and ‘baskets’. As we can see, the grammatical categories of the words did
not change even though they have been inflected. This means that
inflections are additive.
 Inflectional suffixes also enable us to predict, for example, that
whenever the plural morpheme ‘s’ is added to a noun, the noun
will depict the sense of ‘more than one’. In the same vein, when
the regular past tense morpheme’ –ed’ is added to a verb, we
know that the action of the verb has taken place.
 In addition, Inflectional suffixes display arbitrariness. For instance, the
comparative inflection ‘-er’ in the word ‘fatter’ does not function to generate another
word in the same manner that the word ‘dependable’(adjective) is generated from the
word ‘depend’(verb); rather, the inflection ‘-er’ functions to show a different form of
the same word ‘fat’.
 Another example that shows the arbitrariness of inflections can be demonstrated using
the following sentences:
Charles played the piano last Sunday.
She likes singing
In the sentences above, the inflectional process has been used to construct grammatically
acceptable sentences. The choice of the past tense form ‘-ed’ for the verb ‘play’ as opposed to
the present tense form as in ‘plays’ or the progressive form ‘playing’, is dictated by the fact
that the action being described has already taken place sometimes in the past by the presence
of the adverb ‘last Sunday’. In the second sentence, the choice of the present tense form of
the verb ‘like’ by the addition of the agreement marker inflection ‘s’ is appropriate because it
is the form which relates grammatically and correctly with the third person singular form –
‘she’ as opposed to the progressive form ‘liking’ or past form ‘liked’. These examples,
therefore, show a change in the form of a word to make it agree grammatically with other
words in the sentence.
 Usually, inflections allow for morphological paradigms or sets such as :
Eat
eats
ate
eating
eaten
Struggle
struggles
struggled
struggling
struggled
boy
boy’s
boys’
green
greener
greenest
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 Unlike derivational suffixes, inflectional suffixes are not recursive. This means only
one inflectional suffix can occur in the structure of any one word.
 Inflectional suffixes occur in word final position. So for instance, if we have a
derivational and an inflectional suffixes occurring in the structure of a word, the
derivational suffix must precede the inflectional one as in act + or + s.
 The following are the kinds of inflectional suffixes in the English Language:
i.
Plurality of count nouns (number)
e.g singular
plural
dog
dogs
ii.
Noun/ pronoun possessive
Cat
cat’s
Girl’s
girls’
It
its
iii. Agreement Marker ‘s’
When the subject of the verb is third person, is singular and the verb is in the
present tense as in our example before ‘she likes singing’.
iv.
Forms of the verb as in the following example for the verb ‘earn’
a. present
earns
b. past
earned
c. present participle
earning
d. past participle (or passive ) earned
v.
Adjective
a. Comparative sweet
sweeter
b. Superlative sweet
sweetest
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