Лексикология английского языка

Affixation (or Derivation)

The process of affixation consists in containing a new word by adding an affix or several affixes to some root morpheme. The role of the affix in this procedure is very important and therefore it is necessary to consider certain facts about the main types of affixes.

From the etymological point of view affixes are classified into the same two large groups as words: native and borrowed.

Some frequent native suffixes

Noun-forming: -er: worker, miner, teacher, etc.

-ness: coldness, loneliness, etc.

-ing: feeling, singing, reading, etc.

-dom: freedom, wisdom, kingdom, etc.

Adjective-forming: -ful: careful, joyful, wonderful, etc.

-less: careless, sleepless, senseless, etc.

-y: tidy, cozy, merry, snowy

-ish: English, reddish, childish

-ly: lonely, lovely, ugly

-en: wooden, silken, golden

Verb-forming: -en widen, darken, redden

Adverb-forming: -ly warmly, hardly, simply, carefully
Borrowed suffixes, especially of Roman origin are numerous in the English vocabulary. It would be wrong to suppose that affixes are borrowed in the same way and for the same reasons as words. An affix of foreign origin can be regarded as borrowed only after it has begun an independent and active life in the recipient language, that is, is taking part in the word-making processes of that language.
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Affixes can also be classified into productive and non-productive types. By productive affixes we mean the ones, which take part in deriving new words in this particular period of language development. The best way to identify productive affixes is to look for them among neologisms and so-called nonce-words, i.e. words coined and used only for this particular occasion. The latter are usually formed on the level of living speech and reflect the most productive and progressive patterns in word-building. The adjectives thinnish and baldish are examples of nonce-words coined on the current pattern of Modern English. They bring in mind dozens of other adjectives made with the same suffix: oldish, youngish, yellowish, etc. proving that the suffix –ish is a live and active one.

One should not confuse the productivity of affixes with their frequency of occurrence. There are quite a number of high-frequency affixes which are no longer used in word-derivation (e.g. the adjective-forming native suffixes –ful, -ly; the adjective-forming suffixes of Latin origin –ant,-ent, -al which are quite frequent).