Classification and comparative analysis of English negative affixes

International University of Nature, Society and Man “Dubna”

Course paper

«Classification and comparative analysis of English negative affixes»

Made by: A.A. Yakovleva, 3042

Supervised by: S.V. Verbitskaya

Dubna 2009

Content

The introduction

1. Word-formation. Affixation

2.  The semantics of the negative affixes and their comparative analysis

3.  The place of affixes in the classification of morphemes and classifications of negative affixes

4.  The functions of negative affixes

The conclusion

The introduction

The aim of our work is to single out, describe, compare and find the possible ways of classification of English negative affixes.

The scientific interest of this work can be the following: we will familiarize ourselves with English negative affixes, learn how they differ semantically from each other, which affixes are used with stems of different parts of speech and what parts of speech they form (there we can also see if these affixes are able to transform words of one part of speech into another), what their functions and peculiarities of usage are, and which affixes are more productive and widely used nowadays. It is very important to know as more affixes, as possible, because many English words are formed by combining prefixes and suffixes to base words. The more prefixes and suffixes we know, the easier it will be for us to figure out the meanings of these words [1, 287].

According to this the tasks of the work will be the following:

1)  to find out which affixes may be considered as negative;

2)  to look for their meanings in different dictionaries and add them with examples;

3)  to find out how affixes can be divided into classes and the place of negative affixes in these classifications;

4)  to see how these affixes are realized in different contexts, what functions they perform;

5)  to find out which affixes are used with stems of different parts of speech and what parts of speech they form together.

1. Word-formation. Affixation

The system of English language is an open system. That means that it is constantly added by new words. According to the Oxford Dictionary, only 7,5% words in the vocabulary of English are borrowings [7]. The vast majority of words appear through changings in the lexical units preserved in the language system, trough the word-formation. Word-formation is the process of building up new words from words of the same root, and as a result of this there is a formal-semantic correspondence between derivative and derived words [4, 56].

It should be mentioned, that there are certain patterns of word-formation in English. It is the circuit, sample, analogue, model, all that fix a rule of construction of derivative words, rule, which takes into account a type of derivative bases and word-building means and general semantics, formed as a result of their interaction, of the same words. One model can also correspond to different changes of meaning and be a source of confusion and misunderstanding for foreign learners. These patterns may be productive or not in different languages. It was noticed by many scholars long ago, that one derivative pattern can give almost infinite or, at least, significant number of derivatives, others are characterized by inability to free word-building.

There are several kinds of word-formation and different kinds of them are productive in different languages. The major ways of word-formation are compounding, affixation and conversion (also called zero-affixation). Affixation remains a very productive type of word-formation in English language. Affixation is the derivation of new words by adding affixes to them, which are suffixes and prefixes.

We can study a particular word from the point of morphological and derivational analyses. Dealing with morphological analysis we simply divide the word into constitute parts. When the word is divided into its ultimate constituencies the morphological analysis is completed. While doing derivational analysis we find how the word was constructed, which is its derivative and what means have been used to build up the word [4, 59]. So, the process of affixation should be explored within derivational analysis, not morphological. But speaking of affixes in general we are interested in both morphological and derivational analyses.

There is a certain division of morphemes within the morphemic analysis. English grammarians usually point out two criteria, which are the bases of the morphemic structure. They are the positional criterion - the location of the morphemes with regard to each other, and the semantic (or functional) criterion - the contribution of the morphemes to the general meaning of the word. So according to the first there are root-morphemes and affixal morphemes, roots and affixes. The semantic difference between them is obvious: root morphemes have the concrete, “material” meaning, while affixes just specify the main meaning, or transform the meaning of the root [4, 59].

Finally, we can see that there are several types of word-building in English pointed out by many scholars and affixation is one of the most productive. There are certain patterns of word-formation and several types of morphemes. The latter can be studied from the point of view of two complementary analyses.