{"id":878,"date":"2013-11-11T22:28:21","date_gmt":"2013-11-11T11:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/?p=878"},"modified":"2014-02-20T07:04:18","modified_gmt":"2014-02-19T20:04:18","slug":"affixes-front-back-inside-or-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/affixes-front-back-inside-or-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Affixes: Front, Back, Inside or Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nYou might have noticed when you read something or hear something, all the small additions to words that totally change their meaning, I\u2019m talking about things like \u201cun<\/b>expected<\/b> out<\/b>comes <\/b>are very un<\/b>favorable.<\/b>\u201d These are known as affixes, <\/b>they are morphemes, or the smallest grammatical unit of a language, and serve a purpose in almost all languages, so let\u2019s explore.<\/p>\n

There are several types of affixes, English predominantly uses prefixes <\/b>and suffixes, <\/b>those are morphemes that go before the word and after it, just as I displayed above. Some of the more common are:<\/p>\n

\u201cAnti-\u201d <\/b>Against, opposite <\/i>(Antivirus)<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/i>Co-\u201d <\/b>Joint, accompanying <\/i>(Cooperation)<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/i>De-\u201d <\/b>Reverse action (Deemphasize)<\/p>\n

\u201cUn-\u201d <\/b>Not, against (Unequal)<\/p>\n

\u201c-ed\u201d <\/b>Past tense (Closed)<\/p>\n

\u201c-ing\u201d <\/b>Progressive, continuous (Racing)<\/p>\n

There are many, many others of this type, but now is not the time to go into too much detail regarding them all; instead, let\u2019s look at the less familiar, and those of different languages.<\/p>\n

An infix <\/b>is an affix that rests inside the word, English does not have any true infixes, they exist more in languages such as Arabic, some Spanish countries, Latin, Greek, and the Austroasiatic languages such as Indonesian, which I\u2019ll use as the example: \u201cKerja\u201d means work <\/i>while <\/i>\u201ckin<\/b>erja\u201d means performance; <\/i>\u201cGembung\u201d means bloated, <\/i>and \u201cgel<\/b>embung\u201d translates to bubble.<\/i><\/p>\n

A circumfix <\/b>is a morpheme surrounded by two others on either side, for example the English en<\/b>lighten. <\/b>This is common in German in regard to the past participle, in which there is often a morpheme encased between ge- <\/b>and -t<\/b>, such as \u201cspielen\u201d meaning play, <\/i>and \u201cge<\/b>spielt<\/b>\u201d which is played.<\/i><\/p>\n

A duplifix <\/b>is a word that doubles itself, English has them in uses such as \u201chokey-pokey,\u201d \u201csuper-duper,\u201d \u201cwalkie-talkie,\u201d and \u201cboogie-woogie.\u201d In different languages this can have a different meaning, such as in Malay, in which \u201crumah\u201d means house, <\/i>and \u201crumah-rumah\u201d means houses; <\/i>or Finnish, where it is used to indicate originality and completeness, such as \u201cruoka\u201d meaning food, <\/i>and \u201cruokaruoka\u201d meaning proper food, <\/i>or the opposite of snacks.<\/p>\n

A Simulfix <\/b>is an affix that modifies phonemes that already exist in the word, in English this can be represented by \u201cmouse\u201d and \u201cmice,\u201d or \u201cfoot\u201d and \u201cfeet.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Transfix <\/b>is an affix that has several parts spread among a word, examples exist in Maltese in \u201cktb\u201d meaning write, <\/i>and \u201cki<\/b>te<\/b>b\u201d meaning he wrote.<\/i><\/p>\n

A suprafix <\/b>is the changing of the stress on a section of a word, \u201cOn an orchard I produce <\/b>a large amount of pro<\/b>duce.\u201d<\/p>\n

An interfix <\/b>links two stems together, most commonly in English this is an -o- such as in speedo<\/b>meter; this differs from an infix <\/b>as it attached to two different morphemes, rather than placed inside a one.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a>Lastly we have the disfix, <\/b>which is the removal of a segment from the root word, a rather uncommon affix, but present in French and especially the Muskogean languages, such as \u201cbalaa<\/b>ka\u201d — lies down, <\/i>and \u201cbalka\u201d — lie down.<\/i><\/p>\n

What other languages do you know that use affixes in a different way than English? Are you aware of the existence of any others?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You might have noticed when you read something or hear something, all the small additions to words…","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,19,13,92,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arabic","category-english","category-german","category-greek","category-spanish"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":890,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878\/revisions\/890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}