affixes

[sechidin]

i am a student from indonesia. i have a work to make an article about affixes.it linguistics term. i realy do not understand in this term. i ask you some question bellow:
1. what are types of affixes?
2. what are the function in a word?
3. can you give me definition of affix based on experts (at least 5 expert)?
i realy appreciate for answering those question

[Noego]

I would strongly recommend checking out the glossary. You will find a lot of a lot of information there.Click on the first one, grammar glossary.



Here's a definition for the word affix. You'll see, it's actually a very easy term to understand. I find a lot of grammatical terms are pretty scary sounding words, but pretty simple once you read their definitions.

This definition comes from this website:

" An Affix is a Morpheme added to a word to change its function or meaning. There are three basic ways to do this: Prefix - by adding a morpheme to the beginning of a word:
Possible can be made negative in meaning by adding im-: impossible
Suffix - by adding -ly to the end of many adjectives, the adverb can be formed: cheerful- cheerfully
Infix - some languages add morphemes to the middle of the word, but this system is rarely used in English, except in expressions such as 'Fan-bloody-tastic', known as tmesis ."



Here's another definition from "Collins CoBuild" dictionary:
"An affix is a letter or group of letters, for example `un-' or `-y', which is added to either the beginning or the end of a word to form a different word with a different meaning. For example, `un-' is added to `kind' to form `unkind'. Compare prefix and suffix."


Here's another one, this time from Cambridge Advanced Learner dictionary (not the best definition however):


"An affix is a letter or group of letters, for example `un-' or `-y', which is added to either the beginning or the end of a word to form a different word with a different meaning. For example, `un-' is added to `kind' to form `unkind'. Compare prefix and suffix."



Houghton Mifflin eReference:


"A word element, such as a prefix or suffix, that can only occur attached to a base, stem, or root."


Concise Oxford English Dictionary:



"Grammar an addition to the base form or stem of a word that modifies its meaning or creates a new word."


This should be enough definitions to give you a good idea as to what affix means.

Prefix:

Empower (em)

Suffix:

Powerful (ful)

You see, a few letters are added the root of a word to give it a different meaning.

Do you understand?

EDIT: corrected the typo.

[BobK]

Very full answer. Noego made a slip, but I suspect it was just a typo - the em in 'empower' is a prefix. This points towards an answer to Q1 - there are 3 main types of affix; and not all languages use all three:

• prefixes (added at the beginning)
• suffixes (added at the end)
• infixes (added in the middle)

Wikipedia says 'English has very few infixes, and those it does have are marginal.' The article at Affix - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia lists several more types.

b