Analyzing the meanings given by both dictionaries we can make a conclusion that they just slightly differ in meanings in different dictionaries (for example, contra- in Longman Dictionary means “opposite”, while Oxford Dictionary gives a wider definition – “against; opposite”, and like), and according to the examples the meanings given there reflect the additional meaning, which they bring to the derivative word. All the negative affixes posses the meaning of either opposition or lack of something that also carries the idea of negation. The Oxford dictionary marks the word class of the word the affix belongs to, what is not always done in Longman dictionary. It is very useful for our further classificatrional analysis.
But it is known that some words can acquire several negative affixes and new words can seem semantically similar to language learners. It is a rude mistake to misuse the affixes. So on this stage of analysis appears a question, why some words are attached with a certain negative affix and others are attached with others. And it is also very important to find out how not to mix up some affixes with very similar meanings. The Longman dictionary contains an article comparing prefixes un-, in- and non-, which look very much alike at the first sight. “The difference between them is the degree to which they suggest the idea of the opposite rather than negative. Non- is usually just negative (for example, nonalcoholic drinks contain no alcohol), but un- is often used to suggest an opposite quality. Compare: He is applied for a nonscientific job (=not connected with science) in the Civil Service. | It was very unscientific (=showing too little attention to scientific principles) not to measure your results. Of the three prefixes (un-, in-, non-), in- tends most often to suggest opposite qualities. Compare: their inhuman (=very cruel) treatment of political prisoners | The archeologists discovered both human and non-human bones”. This explanation is a great help for language learners and also for the practical purposes of our work. [6]
3. The place of affixes in classifications of morphemes. The classifications of negative affixes
It has already been said that English grammarians usually point out two main criteria for the general classification of morphemes: the positional criterion and the semantic (or functional) criterion. And according to them there are root-morphemes and affixal morphemes, roots and affixes [4, 58]. For example, in the word miscast “cast” is a root and “mis-” is an affix. The semantic difference between them is obvious: root morphemes have the concrete, “material” meaning, while affixes just specify the main meaning, or transform the meaning of the root. In the given example “cast” means “to to choose actors to plat the different parts in the film/movie, play etc.”, while “mis-” means “badly or wrongly” [7]. So the complete meaning of the word is compound from these two meaning, but the first is the main, as it is independent, and the second is additive.
There is also another division of morphemes in Descriptive Linguistics. Morphemes can be free or bound. Free morphemes can build up words by themselves, for example, home. Bound morphemes are used only as parts of words, like dis- in disregard [4, 58]. So, as all the affixes are attached to some root (as affixes do), they are all can be referred to the class of bound morphemes.
Morphemes also can be divided into overt and covert. The latter shows the meaningful absence of a morpheme distinguished in the opposition of grammatical forms in paradigms [4, 59]. For example in the paradigm of noun in the word hand –s is a covert morpheme. As suffixes can be either present or absent in the word structure they can be of both kinds in different contexts.
Full or meaningful morphemes are opposed to empty morphemes. The later ones have no meaning like the full ones, for example, in the word ‘children’ child- is the root of the word, bearing the core of the meaning, -en is the suffix of the plural, while -r- is an empty morpheme. In this case it is clear that suffixes can also be of both kinds, but usually, as it was already mentioned, they have a certain meaning [4, 59].
Segmental morphemes consist of phonemes, while supra-segmental leave the phonemic content of the word unchanged, but the meaning of the word is specified with the help of various supra-segmental lingual units, like in`convert (a noun) - con`vert (a verb). As suffixes refer to the segmental level, they are all segmental morphemes [4, 60].
Additive morphemes, which are freely combined in a word, e.g.: look+ed, small+er, are opposed to replacive morphemes, or root morphemes, which replace each other in paradigms, e.g.: sing -sang – sung [4, 60]. Within this classification affixes are sure to refer to additive morphemes.
And one more division is to continuous and discontinuous morphemes. Continuous ones are combined with each other in the same word, like in worked, while discontinuous consist of two components, used to form analytical forms, for example, is running [4, 60]. As affixes can not consist of several parts, so they are continuous.
The specification of affixes themselves can be of two kinds: lexical and grammatical. And according to this criterion there are lexical, or word-building, or derivational affixes and grammatical, or word changing affixes. The latest group expresses different morphological categories, such as number, case, tense and others. Grammar study is primarily concerned with grammatical affixes, because they change the word according to its grammatical categories and serve to insert the word into an utterance.Lexical affixes serve to build new words, grammatical – to change the form of the word, for example, go – goes [4, 56]. Regarding this classification we can come to a conclusion that negative affixes, which we are interested in, refer to the group of lexical affixes, as they change the lexical meaning of the word, not its form. For example, smoker – a person who smokes; non-smoker – a person who does not smokes. Prefixes in English are only lexical, they do not transform a word into another part of speech (understand-misunderstand). Suffixes can be both lexical and grammatical. For example, home-homeless, but go-goes. Grammatical suffixes are also called inflexions (inflections, inflectional endings) [4, 56].
Grammatical suffixes form word-changing, or morphological paradigms of words, which is typical for inflexional languages, but they can be observed in English too (boy-boys). Lexical affixes are the subject of lexicology, because they change the meaning of the word. In grammar they are regarded as formal indicators of belonging of the word to one or another part of speech. They form lexical (word-building, or derivational) paradigms of words united by a common root, for example, to decide - decision - decisive – decisively [4, 56].
Affixes can also be divided according to their position. They are divided into prefixes (before the root) and suffixes (after the root) [5, 136]. There are other types of affixes in different languages, but prefixes and suffixes are the most typical for English. As we have seen, the negative affixes tend to come mostly from prefixes.
One more meaningful parameter in classification of affixes is their semantic impact, due to which they are united in semantic groups of a type:
-affixes with meaning of similarity (-al, -ial, -ed, -esque, -ful, -ic, -ical, -ish, -like, -ly, -ous, -some, -y, crypto-, neo- etc.);
-affixes with meaning of denying (a-, dis-, in-, non-, un-, -less), and it is the group of our particular interest, as they also can de called negative;
-diminutive affixes (-ette, -ie/-y, -ikin, -let, -ling);
-affixes with meaningof the person (-an, -ian, -arian, -ant, -ard, -by, her(it), -een, -eer, -er, -ess, -ette, -ician, -ie, -ing, -ist, -ister, -kin, -ing, -ster, -ton);
-affixes with meaning of number (bi-, demi-, di-, mono-, multi-, pan-, poly-, semi-, tri-, twi-, uni-);
and many others. It is impossible to speak about one complete classification of this type, because many affixes are polysemantic and different lexicologist refer them to different groups [5, 148].
Prefixes and suffixes form various subgroups depending on what from all variety of properties, that they inherit, is selected as classification parameter. That can become, for example their origin, on the basis of which there is a division into native affixes and borrowed [5, 145]. As an example of borrowed affix we can take anti-, as in anticyclone, and as native – less, as in motionless.
There is also one more very important classification of affixes. It is known that affixes are attached to stems of different parts of speech. And according to this they are called:
-substantive (like anti-, non-, dis-, -less);
-adjectival (like dis-, un-, in-)
-verbal (like dis-, de-, mis-);
-adverbial (like un-, anti-, re-, non-) [5, 146].
For example, if we take a noun ability, it can be attached with a prefix dis-: disability. A verbal stem code can be transformed with the verbal prefix de: decode. An adverbial stem, like easily, can be attached with the adverbial prefix un-: uneasily.
It is also noteworthy to mention, that the basis of the classification can be the part of speech, into which the given affix transforms a word. This classification is referred to suffixes, as their role in definition of the characteristics of derivatives’ parts of speech is more obvious, than that of prefixes. It is interesting that the names of the groups are the same as in the previous classification. So while classification the criteria for it must always be mentioned. The groups are:
-substantive (-dom, -ness);
-verbal (-en, -ize);
-adverbial (-ly);
-adjectival (-less) [5, 146].
As it is seen, there is only one negative affix in this classification – suffix -less, so this classification is not of much importance in our analysis. Due to the suffix –less we can transform a noun colour to the adjective colourless. Prefixes are not included into this classification as they usually do not change the part of speech of the word, but touch only its meaning.
Several more classifications are given in one of the Russian Dictionaries. According to their function affixes are of two kinds:
-of nominative function (serving to denote some objects, phenomena etc.);
-of structural (connecting) function.
To the first group belong word-building affixes and flexions. The first serve to build new words and the second – to refer a word to this or that grammatical form. Affixes of structural function are called interfixes. They are used for connection of two joined morphemes, like in паровоз [2, 153]. They are not typical for English language and all the negative affixes must be referred to the first group.
According to the peculiarities of combinability there is the following opposition:
-regular (multivalent) affixes;
-irregular (univalent) affixes.
Regular affixes are combined within the word with the different kinds of affixal or root morphemes, for example, un- (unable, unacceptable). Irregular affixes posses restricted combinability and are called unifixes (like –ух in двух). It is quite obvious that all the negative affixes are included into the first group too, because all they posses a certain word-building pattern and their degree of combinability is very high. [2, 153-154]
Summing up, having consulted some sources, we have found out, that there is a number of classifications of morphemes, and affixes in particular, according to different criteria.
4. The functions of negative affixes
As it was said above, negative affixes are lexical, because they are used to build new words. And they also always bring some negative additional meaning to the derivative word, changing its meaning to opposite. From this it can be made a conclusion that one of the functions of English negative affixes is:
1) To create antonyms of the derivatives.
This function is performed only if the part if speech is not changed (and only the suffix less does changes it).
And if we look at them more generally, as a part of the discourse one more function appears:
2) Bringing the negation to the sentence.
Speaking about the second function it is important to mention that there are 6 ways of negation on the sentence: negative affixes, negative particles, negative pronounsand adverbs, negative conjunctions and negative prepositions. Affixation is a morphological way of negation (while others are sintactical). The most popular negative affixes are un-, dis-, de-. To the verbs such prefixes likeun-, dis-, de- give the meaning of opposite action. So, such affixes like dis-, mis-, in-, un-, less- and such bring to the sentence the idea of absence,deprivation and oppositeness. It is important to mention that there are certain rules of combinability of affixes. For example, the prefix un-, Germanic in its origin, is not usually combined with the stem of the word. Such words like unlike are not typical for English.More oftenthe particle not is used instead. The prefix un- should be used with care, as when is attached to the verbs, it tends to bring the meaning of the opposite action, as well as mis-, dis-, de- (tie - untie). There are only several verbs in English with these affixes, possessing the meaning “not”. They are to dislike, disbelieve, mistrust. [3, 14-15]
Nouns and adjectives are usually attached with such affixes likeun-, non-, in- (im-, il-, ir-) dis-, mis-. The closest to each other in meaning are non- and un- (but it was spoken earlier about their difference). The suffix less- is also usually added to nouns and adjectives. The prefix un- is the closest in meaning to this suffix less- (endless - unending, profitless - unprofitable) [3, 16].
So, we can come to the conclusion that the most widely used are the affixes de-, un-, dis; and negative affixes tend to come with nouns and adjectives. The stems of verbs are not combined with them and the negation is expressed in the sentence by the analytical negative verb-form. So, the function of creating antonyms can hardly find its application in verbs, but typical for nouns and adjectives.
Let us take the novel of Lauren Weisberger “Chasing Harry Winston” for different examples of these two functions. We will take not only sentences containing words with negative affixes, but also sentences where negation is expressed in other ways, for example participle not. It will help to prove (or not to prove the statement that the negation of actions are more likely to be expressed by the particle not).
1) When Leigh’s doorbell rang unexpectedly at nine on Monday night, she did not think, Gee, I wonder who that could be. [8, 1]
Here we see that the function of negation is performed here: it is stressed that Leigh did not expect the doorbell. Unexpectedly is derived from the word expect (because there is no such word in English as ”expectedly” [7]), so the first function is not performed here.
2) Where there people who actually welcomed unannounced visitors when they just stopped to “say hello” or “check in”? [8, 1]
In this example both functions are realized: there is a negation in the sentence (there are few people who welcome visitors who are not announced), and the word unannounced comes from the word announced, being its antonym.
3) The apartment might have been the most perfect she’d seen in a year and a half of looking, but she had not wanted to take any chance. [8, 2]
Here the negation in the sentence is expressed by the negative particle not. It is used to change the meaning of the verb to the opposite, what is very frequent, as it was said above.
4) Before her, removing a QVC catalog from an unlocked mailbox, stood an overweight woman in a polka-dot housedress. [8, 3]
In the example above both functions are performed: unlocked is an antonym for locked and there is an idea of negation on the sentence (from the mailbox which was not locked).
5) Not a day younger than eighty, thought Leigh, and she breathed a sigh of relief. [8, 3]