ll used frequently in English, such as the ending-ness discussed in the book. By the way, it is also helpful to know that rules such as the-ness rule for creating new words are called productive because we can produce new linguistic forms with them.very common way to form words is affixation. Affixation means that a bound morpheme is attached to a free morpheme, or stem. There are three places where the bound morpheme can go: before, after, or in the middle of the stem. The affixes that go before the stem are called prefixes (from Latin pre-= before). The ones that go after the stem are referred to as suffixes (from Latin sub-= under). And the affixes that go in the middle are labeled infixes. Examples for pre-and suffixes are plentiful in English. The book gives you several, such as unhappy, unlock, preexist and doubtful, lockable, or lovely for pre-and suffixes respectively. I also want to stress that the combination of several affixes in a row does not make the affixes closer to the stem infixes. For example, the ending-ist in realistic is not an infix but a suffix. 'S practice this point and affixation in general a bit. I would like to challenge you in the following way. Who can find the word with the most number of affixes successively attached to it? I'll give you an example of what I mean. In the complex morpheme realistic there are two suffixes added in the stages: real, realist, realistic. See what you can come up with and list the stages like I did. Then go to the folder Formation Contest in FirstClass and compare your findings. I am curious to see who can come up with the word with the highest number of affixes. I also want to add to what the book says about infixes in English. They are rare but actually do exist, mostly in swear words. The one example that I feel confident about passing along is fan-damn-tastic. The other one I have heard I can't share because it is not appropriate for the web.is another common word formation process. It is probably the most common one in today's English because it is so productively used in technical languages. Compounding is a process whereby two or more individual words are combined as one word. There are several examples in the book, and they are easy to find in real life as well. Out of curiosity I just pulled out a glossary from one of my previous jobs as a translator, when I was working for an engineering software company (this is a compound noun itself!). Here are a few examples of what I found: beginning intersect point, exit light fixture symbol, column centerline grid, default Project Architect support directory, and delete project menu. The last example even has a verb (delete) in it. Again, I want to challenge you to see who can find the longest or grammatically most "exotic" compound word. Collect examples over the next few days. Then go to the folder Formation Contest in FirstClass and post and compare your findings; there is only one folder...
