Affix

“ A prefix is a significant syllable or word placed before and joined with a word to modify its meaning: as, unsafe = not safe; remove = move back; circumnavigate = sail around.
17. A suffix is a significant syllable or syllables placed after and joined with a word to modify its meaning: as, safely = in a safe manner; movable = that may be moved; navigation = act of sailing.
The word affix signifies either a prefix or a suffix; and the verb to affix means to join a prefix or a suffix to a root-word. ”

“ Rule.—In reduplicating a word, remember (1) that the prefix is never altered; (2) that the primary root alone is reduplicated; and (2) that when the accent advances one syllable, owing to the addition of an affix, the first part of the word (i.e. prefix and primary root) is never altered, all changes occurring in the last part of the word. ”

“ How distinguish between an affix and a part of a compound word?
If all the parts retain their literal signification they form a compound; if not, the part which loses its signification becomes an affix in a derivative.
72. Is the word outside compound or derivative?
It is compound.
73. Is the word outrun compound or derivative?
It is derivative.
74. What is Derivation?
That branch of etymology which treats of the sources of the words of a language. ”

“ Future.—This tense is formed by doubling the first syllable of the root and appending to it the affix on. As
Imperative.—The single form of this mode, consists in the root appended by the affix “á.” It must be observed that this affix “á” in the imperative bears the idea that the order or command is always directed to the second person or first plural, If such order or command is directed to some other person, not to the second, or first (quitá) plural then the subjunctive is used. ”

“ Plural numbers, signs of tense, and other grammatical elements, are evolved by means of the juxtaposition of similar but not identical elements, e. g. one plural may be formed by the affix signifying many; another, by the affix signifying with or conjointly; one preterite may be the root plus a word meaning then; another the root plus a word meaning there. Futures, too, may be equally evolved by the [Pg 232] incorporation or juxtaposition of the word meaning after, or the word meaning to-morrow. ”

“ The observations made on the conjugation of the progressive direct passive are applied to the above conjugation except in that the present, and gerund take the affix an, and that the past participle, the present, and past indicative, and the subjunctive, plural, take the prefix i, and in that the imperative has the affix an, and the subjunctive singular the affix on, and the future, imperative, and subjunctive have a g after the prefix i. ”

“ N. B. The assertive affixes of tense, ဆဲ, ပြီ, အံ့, မည်, and လတံ့, occasionally lose their assertive power, and become auxiliary to a continuative, participial, or simply assertive affix, in which case ပြီ becomes ပြီး. ”

“ The noun affixes may be distributed into nine classes, viz, the Nominative, the Objective, the Possessive, the Dative, the Causative, the Instrumentive, the Connective, the Locative, and the Ablative.
nominative.
§59. သည် is the most common nominative affix, denoting the agent or subject of the verb; as ထို​လူ​သည်​ကောင်း​၏, that man is good; but in simple sentences, it is most commonly omitted; as သူ​ကောင်း​သည်, he is good; also in participial clauses, ဆ​ရာ​ပြော​သော​စ​ကား the words which the teacher speaks. ”

“ The noun affix ကား is sometimes used emphatically after another noun affix, as အ​ရိုက်​ကို​ကား​ခံ​​နှိုင်​ပါ​သ​လော, can you indeed bear the beating? also repeated after successive clauses, intended to be set adversatively, as မြေ​အ​ပြင်​၌​ကား​မြင်​သာ​သည်။ ရေ​ထဲ​၌​ကား​မ​မြင်​​နှိုင်, on the land, it is easy to see; in the water, we cannot see. ”

“ The negative is made by prefixing မ to the verb, which, beside its negative power, has the privilege of occasionally dispensing with the assertive affixes, or of conveying an assertive power to the root, or to the qualifying and euphonic affixes of number, and the auxiliary affixes of tense, all of which, in affirmative sentences, require an assertive affix, thus သွား​သည်, he goes, မ​သွား, or မ​သွား​ဘူး, he goes not ”

“ When a title or professional designation precedes the name of the person addressed, the former has the final article; as, Docenten Almqvist. The article is omitted when the noun is preceded and governed by a genitive; as, iqvnnans pligt är att älska sina barn, 'a woman's duty (the duty of a woman) is to love her children.'
The affix-article is not used when the noun is preceded by a relative or interrogative pronoun ”

“ Adjectives are of three kinds, pronominal, verbal, and numeral.
Adjectives of either kind are prefixed to their nouns, by means of the connective သည် or သော, if singular, and the same, or ကုန်​သည် or ကုန်​သော, if plural, or directly affixed. But to this general rule; there are several exceptions, particularly in the pronominals.
An adjective and noun, united in either way, form a compound word, which admits the plural affix, and the affixes of case, the same as a simple noun. ”

“ The plural donnerons, donnerez, can no longer be thus taken to pieces, for the remains of the auxiliary verb have passed into meaningless grammatical affixes ons, ez. There is reason to suppose that many of the affixes of Greek and Latin grammar arose in this way by distinct words combining together and then shrinking. Not that it would be safe to assert that all affixes came into existence in this particular way. As was pointed out in the last chapter, men wanting to utter a thought are clever enough to catch up in very far-fetched ways a sound to express it. ”

“ Suffixes, sometimes called affixes or postfixes, are even more numerously employed in English than are prefixes, and, indeed, have a greater modifying power over the words to which they are attached. They consist of a letter or letters, syllable or syllables appended to the end of words or roots, and, like prefixes, are borrowed mainly from old English, Latin (French) and Greek. ”

“ Latin and Greek are mainly affixing in their method, with the emphasis heavily on suffixing. The agglutinative languages are just as typically affixing as they, some among them favoring prefixes, others running to the use of suffixes. Affixing alone does not define inflection. Possibly everything depends on just what kind of affixing we have to deal with. If we compare our English words farmer and goodness with such words as height and depth, we cannot fail to be struck by a notable difference in the affixing technique of the two sets. ”

“ Everything that is now formal, not only derivative suffixes, but everything that constitutes the grammatical 96 framework and articulation of language, was originally material. What we now call the terminations of cases were mostly local adverbs; what we call the personal endings of verbs were personal pronouns. Suffixes and affixes were mostly independent words, nominal, verbal, or pronominal; there is, in fact, nothing in language that is now empty, or dead, or formal, that was not originally full, and alive, and material. ”

“ Over one thousand.
52. What is a Prefix?
That part of a derivative word placed before the root.
53. What is a Postfix?
That part of a derivative word placed after the root.
54. What is a Suffix?
Same as a postfix.
55. What are Affixes?
Prefixes and postfixes together are called affixes.
56. How many kinds of Derivatives are there?
Two.
57. What are they?
Regular and irregular.
58. What is a Regular derivative?
One that is formed by the addition of affixes without changing the letters in the primitive part (except final e silent) . ”

“ When words are combined by compounding, the formative elements cannot so readily be distinguished from the theme; nor for the purposes under immediate consideration can compounding be well separated from agglutination.
When words are combined by agglutination, theme and formative part usually appear. The formative parts are affixes; and affixes may be divided into three classes, prefixes, suffixes, and infixes. These affixes are often called incorporated particles. ”

“ It is not always, however, that we can clearly set off the suffixes of a language as a group against its prefixes. In probably the majority of languages that use both types of affixes each group has both delimiting and formal or relational functions. The most that we can say is that a language tends to express similar functions in either the one or the other manner. If a certain verb expresses a certain tense by suffixing, the probability is strong that it expresses its other tenses in an analogous fashion and that, indeed, all verbs have suffixed tense elements. ”

“ Each of these infinitives (to hope, to flatter, etc.) is a noun, for each is the simple subject of a sentence. Besides, an ordinary noun may be substituted for each infinitive with no change in meaning; as,—“Hope is our only resource”; “Flattery is not my custom”; “Sleep was an impossibility.”
But each of these infinitives is also a verb,—for (1) it expresses action; (2) it may be modified by an adverb, as in No. 5; (3) it takes an object if it is transitive, as in No. 6.
An infinitive (as the examples show) has regularly no subject and therefore lacks both number and person. ”

“ The infinitive has no tenses and takes only the personal suffixes, which express number at the same time. Without suffixes it is known by its termination -ni; as írni, to write.
Infinitives, being the crude expression of the action itself, are equal in meaning to substantives in the nominative case, and may be used as such. For instance: (1) lopni bűn, to steal is a sin; or lopás bűn, stealing is a sin; (2) élni jobb mint meghalni, to live is better than to die; or élet jobb mint halál, life is better than death.
Of the Tenses of the Verb. ”

“ In inflectional languages the root is attended by prefixes or suffixes which form inseparable modifiers. At times phonetic changes occur which render the complex unlike the simple joining of its component parts.
As Mr. Sweet says: “If we define inflection as ‘agglutination run mad’ we may regard incorporation as inflection run madder still, for it is the result of attempting to develop a verb into a complete sentence.” In some languages, such as the incorporating, a verb is sufficiently distinct in its meaning not to require an independent pronoun. ”

“ When, however, the prefix and the verb have become so intimately united as to express one single notion, the verb takes the accent and the prefix is treated as proclitic, and there is a third class of these compounds which are used indifferently with accent on the prefix or on the verb.
Some of the commonest prefixes used in alliteration are [57] : and, æfter, eft, ed, fore, forð, from, hider, in, hin, mid, mis, niðer, ongēan, or, up, ūt, efne, as in compounds like ándswarian, íngong, ǽfterweard, &c.:
on ándswáre and on élne stróng. ”

“ Many errors arise from not knowing how to use the infinitive mood. Perhaps the most common fault is to interpose an adverb between the preposition to and the infinitive verb; as, “It is not necessary to accurately relate all that he said.” “You must not expect to always find people agreeable.” Whether we shall place the adverb before the verb or after it must often be determined by considerations of emphasis and smoothness as well as of clearness and correctness. In the foregoing sentences it is better to place accurately after the verb, and always before the preposition to. ”

“ The preposition ohne cannot govern the infinitive mit zu (see page 12, note 4) , when there is a change of subject, but must then be followed by a clause beginning with daß.
Page 46.—
1. sich (dat. pl. of reflex. pronoun) , for possess. pronoun ihren Weg, cf. page 1, note 8.
2. sie, refers to Länder.
3. As with the preposition ohne (cf. page 12, note 4) , the infinitive with zu is used with the preposition anstatt (or statt) when the subject of the infinitive is the same as that of the leading verb. It corresponds to English instead of with the verb-noun in -ing. ”

“ Unemphatic words must, as a rule, be kept from the end of the sentence.* It is a common fault to break this rule by placing a short and unemphatic predicate at the end of a long sentence.
"To know some Latin, even if it be nothing but a few Latin roots, is useful." Write, "It is useful, &c."
So "the evidence proves how kind to his inferiors he is."
Often, where an adjective or auxiliary verb comes at the end, the addition of an emphatic adverb justifies the position, e.g. above, "is very useful," "he has invariably been."
A short "chippy" ending, even though emphatic, is to be avoided. ”

“ As a verb, it signifies to do the action; and as object of the preposition TO, it stands in the place of a noun for the doing of it. The infinitive verb and its prefix to are used much like a preposition and its noun object."--Felch's Comprehensive Gram., p. 62.
(2.) "The action or other signification of a verb may be expressed in its widest and most general sense, without any limitation by a person or agent, but merely as the end or purpose of some other action, state of being, quality, or thing; it is, from this want of limitation, said to be in the Infinitive mode ”

“ As an adjective it is declined and agrees with the word it modifies in gender, number, and case.
204. The perfect passive participle is declined like bonus, bona, bonum, and in the compound tenses (§ 202) it agrees as a predicate adjective with the subject of the verb.
1. Inflect the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect indicative passive of amō, moneō, regō, capiō, and audiō (§§ 488-492) .
205. The perfect passive infinitive is formed by adding esse, the present infinitive of sum, to the perfect passive participle; as, amā ́t-us (-a, -um) esse, to have been loved ”