INFIXES

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 402.

SUFFIXES

Asuffixis an affix attached aftera root (or stem base) like –ly, -er, ist, -s, -ing and –ed.

• Kind-ly wait-er book-s walk-ed jump-ed
• Quick-ly play-er mat-s jump-ed

Aninfix isan affix inserted into the root itself. Infixes are very common in Semitic language like Arabic and Hebrew. But infixing is somewhere rare in English. Sloat and Taylor (1978) suggest that the only infix that occurs in English morphology is /-n-/ which is inserted before the last consonant of the root in a few words of Latin origin, on what appears to be an arbitrary basis.

This infix undergoes place of articulation assimilation. Thus, the root –cub- meaning “lie in, on or upon” occurs without [m] before the [b] in some words containing that root, e.g. incubate, incubus, concubine and succubus. But [m] is infixed before that same root in some other words like incumbent, succumb, and decumbent. This infix is a frozen historical relic from Latin.

In fact, infixation of sorts still happens in contemporary English. Example.

a. Kalamazu (places name) → Kalama-goddam-zoo

Instantiate (verb) → in-fuckin-stantiate

b. Kangaroo → kanga-bloody-roo

Impossible → in-fuckin-possible

Guarantee → guaran-friggin-tee

(Recall that the arrow → means “becomes” or is “re-written as”.)

As you can see, in present-day English infixation, not of an affix morpheme but of an entire word (which may have more than one morpheme, blood-y, fuck-ing) is actively used to form words. Curiously, this infixation is virtually restricted to inserting expletives into words in expressive language that one would probably not use in polite company.