Handout 14
Affixes: Creating Words
with Meaning
In
English, words are usually created by combining independent units of meaning
together to produce a meaningful relationship that represents an idea.
This sounds complicated, but it really isn’t.
Let’s look at a simple comparison that we can all relate to.
We have all watched someone prepare a nice meal – perhaps a birthday
dinner for a family member. When
you serve yourself at the table, you see many different dishes – pork humba,
curried chicken, pancit, vegetable stir fry, garlic rice, fruit salad and leche
flan, all arranged nicely. If it is
a buffet, you will probably see the food arranged on the table in a predictable
order. First will be the rice and pancit. Once you have served yourself rice and pancit, you will
probably move on to the pork humba and curried chicken, and perhaps you will put the gravy from the meat on your rice and
pancit. Then you will stop by the
vegetable stir fry before going on
to the leche flan and fruit salad for dessert.
I want you to think of each dish as a separate word and of all the dishes
on the table as a sentence. Each
dish is unique and different, and when you combine all the dishes together, you
get a lovely and satisfying meal. When
we speak, we use the same process. We
combine several different and unique words in order to produce a sentence which
expresses a complete thought. Think
of it this way:
rice
+ pancit + pork odobo + curried chicken + stir fry + flan + fruit salad = supper
.
Or
.word 1 + word 2 + word 3 + word
4 + word 5
+ word 6 + word 7
= sentence
.
Or
. . (phrase 1, starch)
(phrase 2, meat) (phrase)
(phrase 4, dessert) =
supper
.
Or
(----------independent clause ---------- )
( ----- dependent clause -----) = sentence
We
all know that each dish, however, is not usually one single thing.
For example, the pancit is actually made up of several different items
– perhaps bihon, shrimp, grated
carrot and salt. The humba is
actually made up of adobo, soya sauce, sugar, a few slices of saba banana and
water for the sauce.
Remember in our example above, each dish represents a word, and all the
dishes together represent a sentence. In
addition, each dish is made up of several ingredients which make it complete.
Words work exactly the same way. A
word is usually made up of several different units of meaning, just like a stir
fry is made up of several different kinds of vegetables.
For our purposes, we will think of these different units of meaning as
affixes – the ingredients that, when combined, gives words their meaning.
