Inflections

• encode grammatical meaning;

• are syntactically relevant;

• occur outside all derivation;

• do not change part of speech;

• are rarely semantically opaque;

• are fully productive;

• are always suffixational (in English).

A lexicalised grammatical affix is an inflection which developed into a derivational suffix.

For example:

• –s in customs ‘import duties’, colours ‘a flag / flags of a ship’ does not express plurality;

• ‘s in at the dentist’s, at my friend’s no longer indicates possession.

Types of affixes

Synchronic vs diachronic differentiation of affixes:

• living affixes are easily separated from the stem, e.g. re-, -ful, -ly, un-, -ion, de- etc.;

• dead affixes have become fully merged with the stem and can be singled out by a diachronic analysis of the development of the word, e.g. admit < Lat. ad+mittere;

Productive vs non-productive affixes:

• productive affixes take part in word-formation in modern English, e.g. -er, -ing, -ness, -ism, -ance, un-, re-, dis-, -y, -ish, -able, -ise, -ate;

• non-productive affixes are not active in word-formation in modern English, e.g. –th, -hood, -some, -en;

non-productive affix == dead affix

Origin of Affixes

Affix	Native	Foreign
Prefix	a- (awake, arise) be- (befriend, bewitch) fore- (forecast, foresee) in- (insight, income) mis- (mishear, mislead) un- (undo, unwise)	a- (amoral, atheist) bi- (bicycle, bilingual) pre- (preschool, pre-war) in- (incomplete, indecisive) mal- (maltreat, malfunction) uni- (Unicode, unicolour)
Suffix	-dom (boredom) -hood (motherhood) -ship (friendship) -ish (bluish) -ness (fairness) -ly (womanly)	-able (curable) -al (maternal) -age (courage) -ment (development) -ion (opinion) -ess (tigress)

16.A combining form (a completive) is a bound form, but not an affix.

Features of combining forms:

• are always borrowed from another language (Greek or Latin), in which they existed as free forms or also as combining forms;

• occur in compounds and derivatives which did not exist in their original language but were formed only in Modern English;

• are mostly international;

• may occur in preposition and postposition to the root.

Examples of combining forms:

astro- (Gr. astron ‘star’) – astronomy, astrology;

bio- (Gr. bios ‘life’) – biology, biography;

dendro- (Gr. dendron ‘tree’) – dendrology, dendriform;

tele- (Gr. tele ‘far’) – telescope, telephone, etc.

Morphemic Analysis vs Derivational Analysis

What do words consist of?

Morphemic analysis is the analysis limited to stating the number and types of morphemes that make up a word regardless of their role in the formation of this word, viz. it only defines the morphemes comprising a word, but does not reveal their hierarchy.

How are words formed?

Derivational analysis explores the derivative types of words, their construction and their interrelation.

interchange, n interview, v