Page 9 - Acedemic_Comms_F5

Academic Communication for Advanced Secondary Schools Crafting meaning

Types of word formation processes

Affixation
Affixation is a morphological process in which affixes are added to a word to form a new
word or change the meaning of the existing one. There are two major types of affixes:
prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes are affixes attached to the beginning of a word, such as re- in
“rewrite”, neo- in “neonatal” or anti- in “anticorruption,” multi- in “multimedia”. Suffixes
are attached to the end of a word, such as -ing in “walking” or -ly in “mechanically”.

Affixation can be applied to:

1. Create new words (derivation), such as kindness from kind.
2. Change the meaning of an existing term, such as rewrite from write.
3. Change a word’s category (part of speech); for example, kind from adjective to
noun kindness. TeachREADING ONLY

Exercise 1�1
Complete the table below by using the given prefixes to form news English words.

Affixes Existing words New words
dis- satisfy
FOR ONLINE
-er
-s Book

-meter Thermo
-’s Juma

-eer market
-ly Beautiful

in- attentive
un- happy
ir- responsibility

-graph Photo
-ship Friend

be- friend

The activity you completed has given you new words through affixation. Some new
words have been formed by adding prefixes to the beginning of a word to change them
into other word categories. Some new words have been formed by adding suffixes to the

2 Student’s Book Form Five

30-Jun-24 11:02:01 AM
Academic Communication.indd 2
Academic Communication.indd 2 30-Jun-24 11:02:01 AM