Everything about Infix totally explained
» This article is about infixes in natural languages. For the mathematical notation, see Infix notation.
An
infix is an
affix inserted inside a stem (an existing word). It contrasts with
adfix, a rare term for an affix attached to the outside of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix.
Infixes in English
English has very few true infixes (as opposed to tmesis, see below), and those it does have are marginal. A few are heard in colloquial speech, and a couple more are found in technical terminology.
- The infix or is characteristic of hip-hop slang, for example hizouse for house and shiznit for shit. Infixes also occur in some language games. The infix, whose distribution was documented by linguist Alan C. L. Yu, gives a word an ironic pseudo-sophistication, as in sophistimacated, saxomaphone, and edumacation.
- Chemical nomenclature includes the infixes , signifying complete hydrogenation (from piperidine), and (from ethyl), signifying the ethyl radical C2H5. Thus from the existing word picoline is derived pipecoline, and from lutidine is derived lupetidine; from phenidine and xanthoxylin are derived phenetidine and xanthoxyletin.
Infixes in other languages
While unusual in English, infixes are common in
Austronesian and
Austroasiatic languages. For example, in
Tagalog, a grammatical form similar to the
active voice is formed by adding the infix
near the beginning of a verb. Tagalog has borrowed the English word
graduate as a verb; to say "I graduated" a speaker uses the derived form
grumaduate.
Arabic uses a common infix, <ت>
for
Form VIII verbs, usually a
reflexive of Form I. It is placed after the first
consonant of the
root; an
epenthetic i- prefix is also added since words can't begin with a consonant cluster. An example is اجتهد
ijtahada "he worked hard", from جهد
jahada "he strove". (The words "
ijtihad" and "
jihad" are nouns derived from these two verbs.)
In
Seri some verbs form the plural stem with infixation of
after the first vowel of the root; compare the singular stem
ic 'plant (verb)' with the plural stem
itóoc. Examples:
itíc 'did s/he plant it?' and
ititóoc 'did they sow it?'.
Other processes called infixation
Tmesis is sometimes considered a type of infixation. It is found in English
profanity, such as
fanfuckingtastic and
absobloodylutely. However, it's often disqualified since the inserted element is a
lexical word rather than an affix. See the article
expletive infixation.
Note that sequences of adfixes (
prefixes or
suffixes) don't result in infixes: An infix must be internal to a
word stem. Thus the word
originally, formed by adding the suffix
-ly to
original, doesn't turn the suffix
-al into an infix. There is simply a sequence of two suffixes,
origin-al-ly. In order for
-al- to be considered an infix, it would have to be inserted in the non-existent word
*originly. The "infixes" in the tradition of
Bantu linguistics are often sequences of prefixes of this type, though there may be debate over specific cases.
The
Semitic languages have a form of
ablaut (changing the vowels within words, as in English
sing, sang, sung, song) which is sometimes called infixation, as the vowels are placed within the consonants of the root. However, this interdigitation of a discontinuous root with a discontinuous affix is more often called
transfixation.
See also
interfix.
Glossing infixes
When
glossing, it's conventional to set off infixes with
, rather than the hyphens used to set off prefixes and suffixes: shit, saxophone, picoline.Further Information
Get more info on 'Infix'.
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