Infix

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An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem (an existing word or the core of a family of words). It contrasts with adfix, a rare term for an affix attached to the outside of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix. [note 1]

Contents

When marking text for interlinear glossing, most affixes are separated with a hyphen, but infixes are separated with angle brackets.

English

English has almost no true infixes and those it does have are marginal. Most are heard in colloquial speech; [1] although there are other examples, such as in technical terminology, these examples are often more accurately described as tmesis. [2]

Colloquialisms

None of the following are recognized in standard English.

Indo-European nasal infix

The present tense of some Proto-Indo-European verbs, in the case of a certain number of roots, adds a nasal infix (m, n) to the basic root. The stems of the other tenses have the root without the infix, and thus these verbs are called nasal-presents. This phenomenon is inherited, and preserved to varying degrees, by some early daughter languages such as Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Latin language, etc. [4]

Spanish

In Nicaraguan, Costa Rican, and Honduran Spanish, the Spanish diminutive affix becomes an infix it in names: Óscar[ˈoskar]Osquítar[osˈkitar] (cf. standard Oscarito); EdgarEdguítar; VictorVictítor. [10]

Arabic

Arabic uses a common infix, tت for Form VIII verbs, usually a reflexive of Form I. It is placed after the first consonant of the root; an epenthetic i- prefix is also added, since words cannot begin with a consonant cluster. An example is اجتهدijtahada "he worked hard", from جهدjahada "he strove". (The words ijtihad and jihad are nouns derived from these two verbs.)

Austronesian and Austroasiatic languages

Infixes are common in Austronesian and Austroasiatic languages. For example, in Tagalog, a grammatical form similar to the active voice is formed by adding the infix um near the beginning of a verb. The most common infix is in used to make an intentional verb, as in 'giniba', meaning ‘ruined’ (from ‘giba’, an adjective meaning ‘worn-out’); 'binato’, meaning ‘stoned’ (from ‘bato’, ‘stone’); and 'ginamit’, meaning ‘used’. Tagalog has borrowed the English word graduate as a verb; to say "I graduated" a speaker uses the derived form grumaduate.

Khmer, an Austroasiatic language, has seven different infixes. They include the nominalizing infix b, which derives lbɨən 'speed' from lɨən 'fast' and lbɑɑng ' trial' from lɔɔng 'to test, to haunt', or the agentive m deriving cmam 'watchman' from cam 'to watch'. These elements are no longer productive, and occur crystallized in words inherited from Old Khmer.

In Malay and Indonesian, there are three infixes (sisipan), el, em, and er. All infixes are no longer productive and cannot be used to derive new words. Examples include:

Seri

In Seri, some verbs form the plural stem with infixation of tóo after the first vowel of the root; compare the singular stem ic 'plant (verb)' with the plural stem itóoc. Examples: itíc 'did s/he plant it?' and ititóoc 'did they sow it?'.

Similar processes

Tmesis, the use of a lexical word rather than an affix, is sometimes considered a type of infixation. These are the so-called "expletive infixes", as in abso-bloody-lutely. Since these are not affixes[ citation needed ], they are commonly disqualified from being considered infixes.

Sequences of adfixes (prefixes or suffixes) do not result in infixes: an infix must be internal to a word stem. Thus, the word originally, formed by adding the suffix -ly to original, does not turn the suffix -al into an infix. There is simply a sequence of two suffixes, origin-al-ly. In order for -al- to be considered an infix, it would have to have been inserted in the non-existent word *originly. The "infixes" in the tradition of Bantu linguistics are often sequences of prefixes of this type, though there may be debate over specific cases.

The Semitic languages have a form of ablaut (changing the vowels within words, as in English sing, sang, sung, song) that is sometimes called infixation, as the vowels are placed between the consonants of the root. However, this interdigitation of a discontinuous root with a discontinuous affix is more often called transfixation .

An interfix joins a compound word, as in speed-o-meter.

Glossing

When glossing, it is conventional to set off infixes with angle brackets, rather than the hyphens used to set off prefixes and suffixes:

shiznit, saxomaphone, pipecoline

Compare:

origin-al-ly

which contains the suffix -ly added to the word original, which is itself formed by adding the suffix -al to the root origin.

See also

Notes

  1. In mathematics, the terms prefix ("Polish Notation") and postfix are used.

Related Research Articles

In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are derivational and inflectional affixes. The first ones, such as -un, -ation, anti-, pre- etc, introduce a semantic change to the word they are attached to. The latter ones introduce a syntactic change, such as singular into plural, or present simple tense into present continuous or past tense by adding -ing, -ed to a word. All of them are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes.

Morphological derivation, in linguistics, is the process of forming a new word from an existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as un- or -ness. For example, unhappy and happiness derive from the root word happy.

A root is the core of a word that is irreducible into more meaningful elements. In morphology, a root is a morphologically simple unit which can be left bare or to which a prefix or a suffix can attach. The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family, which carries aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. Content words in nearly all languages contain, and may consist only of, root morphemes. However, sometimes the term "root" is also used to describe the word without its inflectional endings, but with its lexical endings in place. For example, chatters has the inflectional root or lemma chatter, but the lexical root chat. Inflectional roots are often called stems, and a root in the stricter sense, a root morpheme, may be thought of as a monomorphemic stem.

In its strictest sense, tmesis is a word compound that is divided into two parts, with another word infixed between the parts, thus constituting a separate word compound. Example: "un-freaking-believable". In a broader sense, tmesis is a recognizable phrase or word that is divided into two parts, with one or more words interpolated between the parts, thus creating a separate phrase.

Expletive infixation is a process by which an expletive or profanity is inserted into a word, usually for intensification. It is similar to tmesis, but not all instances are covered by the usual definition of tmesis because the words are not necessarily compounds.

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References

  1. Luu, Chi (2015-04-28). "Fanf-kingtastic and Edumacational: The Case of English Infixation". JSTOR Daily. Retrieved 2023-02-17.
  2. McMillan, James B. (1980). "Infixing and Interposing in English". American Speech. 55 (3): 163–183. doi:10.2307/455082. ISSN   0003-1283.
  3. Yu 2004
  4. Fortson 2010 , §5.25
  5. Szemerényi 1996 , §9.4.1.3
  6. Burrow 2001 , p. 289
  7. Burrow 2001 , §7.8
  8. vinco . Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary on Perseus Project .
  9. λαμβάνω . Liddell, Henry George ; Scott, Robert ; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project
  10. Akmajian, Adrian; Farmer, Ann K.; Bickmore, Lee; Demers, Richard A.; Harnish, Robert M. (2017). Linguistics : An Introduction to Language and Communication (7th ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ISBN   9780262533263.

Bibliography

Further reading