What do affixes mean?

 When we made the distinction between affixes

and bound bases above, we did so on the basis
of a rather vague notion of semantic robustness;
bound bases in some sense had more meat to
them than affixes did.

 Let us now attempt to make that idea a bit more

precise by looking at typical meanings of affixes.
 In some cases, affixes seem to have not much
meaning at all. Consider the suffixes in the
following examples:

 Affixes like these are sometimes called transpositional

affixes, meaning that their primary function is to
change the category of their base without adding any
extra meaning.
 Contrast transpositional affixes with affixes like
those in the following words:

 These affixes seem to have more semantic meat

on their bones, so to speak: -ee on a verb
indicates a person who undergoes an action;
-less means something like ‘without’; and re-
means something like ‘again’.
 Semantic categories of affixes
 Languages frequently have affixes that fall into
common semantic categories. Among those
categories are:
1) personal affixes

2) negative and privative affixes

3) prepositional and relational affixes

4) quantitative affixes

5) evaluative affixes
1) Personal Affixes:

 These are affixes that create ‘people nouns’

either from verbs or from nouns.

 Among the personal affixes in English are the

suffix -er which forms agent nouns (the ‘doer’ of
the action) like writer or runner and the suffix
-ee which forms patient nouns (the person the
action is done to).
2) Negative and privative affixes

 Negative affixes add the meaning ‘not’ to their

base;
 Examples in English are the prefixes un-, in-,
and non- (unhappy, inattentive, non-functional).
 Privative affixes mean something like ‘without X’;
in English, the suffix -less (shoeless, hopeless) is
a privative suffix, and the prefix de- has a
privative flavor as well (for example, words like
debug or debone mean something like ‘cause to
be without bugs/bones’).
3) Prepositional and Relational affixes:

 Prepositional and relational affixes often

convey notions of space and/or time.

 Examples in English might be prefixes like

over- and out- (overfill, overcoat, outrun,
outhouse).
4) Quantitative affixes:

 These are affixes that have something to do

with amount.

 In English we have affixes like -ful (handful,

helpful) and multi- (multifaceted).

 Another example might be the prefix re- that

means ‘repeated’ action (reread), which we can
consider quantitative if we conceive of a
repeated action as being done more than once.
5) Evaluative affixes:

 Evaluative affixes consist of diminutives,

affixes that signal a smaller version of the base
(for example in English -let as in booklet or
droplet).

 Augmentatives, affixes that signal a bigger

version of the base. The closest we come to
augmentative affixes in English are prefixes like
mega- (megastore, megabite).
 Diminutives and augmentatives
frequently bear other nuances of meaning.

 For example, diminutives often convey

affection, or endearment. Augmentatives
sometimes have pejorative overtones.
 Some notes related to the meaning of affixes
 Some semantically contentful affixes change syntactic
category as well; for example, the suffixes -er and -ee
change verbs to nouns, and the prefix de- changes
nouns to verbs.

 But semantically contentful affixes need not change

syntactic category (part of speech). The suffixes -hood
and -dom, for example, do not (childhood, kingdom)

 Most of the time, prefixes in English do not change

syntactic category.
The meaning of -er in English

agent nouns

things that do an action

things that undergo the action

rather than doing the action

denotes a location
 All of the forms derived with -er denote
concrete nouns, either persons or things,
related to their base verbs by participating
in the action denoted by the verb,
although sometimes in different ways.
 This cluster of related meanings is called
affixal polysemy.