ExploringAffixationinEnglish.PDFVIP

Exploring Affixation in English Nneka Umera-Okeke Abstract: One of the keys to mastering English spellings is mastering the processes of word formation. The mode of word formation can influence the spelling. The study of the meaningful parts of a word is known as morphology. Linguists have identified many ways in which English form its words which include borrowing from Latin and Greeks, clipping, suppletion, affixation, conversion, acronym, blends, compounding and so on. The scope of this study is to look into affixation as a process of word formation; see the meanings of some of those few letters added at the beginning or end of words, look into the changes words undergo when affixes are added to them. Apart from mastering of spellings, readers of this paper will learn to identify grammatical categories of words by mere looking at the words and identifying the affixes added to them. Introduction: Most English words are made up of the base word known as root which contains the heart of the meaning of the word. To expand such words, appendages (affixes) are added at either the beginning or at the end of the word. It is the process of attaching these affixes that is referred to as affixation. The affix added at the beginning of the root is known as prefix while that at the end of a word is suffix. The root is central to the building of new words. For instance, advantage, help, forgive, measure are the core words (roots) 9 in disadvantageous, unhelpful, unforgivable and immeasurable respectively. They can be analysed as: Prefix Root Word Suffix New Word Dis- advantage ous disadvantageous Un- help ful