Affixation is the morphological process in by which bound morphemes are attached to a roots or stems to mark changes in meaning, part of speech, or grammatical relationships.  Affixes take on several forms and serve different functions.  In this tutorial, we will be looking specifically at affixation in Standard English. Affixes An affix is a bound morpheme that attaches to a root or stem to … [Read more...]

Grammar or Meaning Morphological processes serve different functions. Some occur to alter meaning and/or part of speech (derivational), others show grammatical relationships between words (inflectional). In English, the attachment of ‘-ness’ to an adjective such as ‘faithful’ derives the noun ‘faithfulness’. Likewise, when ‘un-‘ is attached to ‘happy’, meaning is reversed (unhappy).   In French, … [Read more...]

Words are units of sound, meaning, and grammar that human beings use to communicate everything from basic needs to intricate explanations about the solar system.  Babies start using them around nine months of age.  Most adults know tens of thousands of them.  We keep our words neatly classified and organized in our lexicon (mental dictionary) for easy access (word retrieval).   Words can be … [Read more...]