Morphology: affixation

SESI Emília Massanti

Morphology: Affixation

Discipline: English
Teacher: Togashi
Group: Alan, Larissa, Pedro, Thaís and Thiago

Belo Horizonte,
July 2, 2011

Introduction

Affixation is a grammatical element that is combined with a word, stem, or phrase to produce derived and inflected forms. There are three types of affixes: prefixes, infixes, and suffixes. A prefix occurs at the beginning of a word or stem (sub-mit, pre-determine, un-willing); a suffix at the end (wonder-ful, depend-ent, act-ion); and an infix occurs in the middle. English has no infixes, but they are found in American Indian languages, Greek, Tagalog, and elsewhere. Examples of English inflectional suffixes are illustrated by the -s of "cats," the -er of "longer," and the -ed of "asked."

Prefix MID

Origin: Middle English, from mid, middle; see mid 1.

Usage Note: Many compounds other than those entered here may be formed with mid-. In forming compounds, mid- is normally joined to the following word or element without a space or hyphen: midpoint. However, if the second element begins with a capital letter, it is always separated with a hyphen: mid-May. It is always acceptable to separate the elements with a hyphen to prevent possible confusion with another form, as, for example, to distinguish mid-den (the middle of a den) from the word midden. Note that the adjective mid is a separate word, though, as is the case with any adjective, it may be joined to another word with a hyphen when used as a unit modifier: in the mid Pacific but a mid-Pacific island.

Added to: Nouns denoting points or periods of time.

Ex.: mid-afternoon, midwinter, midnight, midbrain, mid-June.

Suffixes ABLE and IBLE

Lesson Generalization: The suffix able means “able to be.” It is commonly added to complete words to form adjectives. When able is added to words that end in ce or