Classification and comparative analysis of English negative affixes — страница 8

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] This sentence is another example of the negation expressed by the negative particle not. 6) How could she possibly have predicted that the seemingly innocuous upstairs neighbor was a dedicated wearer of massive wooden orthopedic clogs? [8, 3] In the given example only the second function is performed (the neighbor did not seem a person intending to do harm), because there is no such a word as “nocuous” [8], so antonymic function is irrelevant here. 7) Before she had spotted her neighbor wearing the offending shoes, Leigh had created an elaborate explanation for the relentless upstairs racket. [8, 4] Here we see the adjective built with the suffix –less. As we remember it is the only

negative affix which transports a word from one part of speech to another. So it can not perform the antonymic function, because antonyms must refer to one part of speech (relent is a verb, relentless is an adjective [7]). The conclusion can be made that only the second function is expressed by the affix (the upstairs racket which never stopped moving). 8) Leigh’s throat constricted and her pulse inexplicably quickened. [8, 5] In the sentence above inexplicably is derived from explicable, but not “explicably”, so it does not perform the antonymic function. But the affix expresses the function of negation in the sentence (it was not easy to explain, why her pulse quickened). 9) Leigh did not think she was a likely candidate for a coronary: It was a panic attack, plain and

simple. [8, 5] 10) I am not falling for this, she thought as she stealthily dialed her doorman. [8, 5] In the last two examples we can observe the expression of the negation in the sentence with the participle not. 11) In an ineffective attempt to dispel the panic, Leigh pressed her fingertips into her temples and stretched her neck from side to side. [8, 5] Here ineffective is an antonym of effective, and the second function is also expressed by the affix (the attempt is not effective). 12) Never mind that in eighty years of city living she did not personally known anyone who had been so much as pickpocketed, or that the chances of a psychopathic murderer choosing her apartment from more than two hundred other units in her building was unlikely… 8, 6] In the example given in

the first case the negation is expressed by the particle not, and in the second case unlikely, which affix un- is also one way of expressing the negation in the sentence, is also an antonym for likely. From the examples above it can be seen that the most popular way of negation is particle not, as it is used in five examples from twelve. The most active of the negative affixes are un-and in- (they are used in three examples each). The least active of the present ones is the suffix less-, it is used only once. What is also important for the classificational analysis of the negative affixes is to apply different classification to concrete examples of affixes. Thus, when we deal with certain examples, we can see, how the classifications given work. So let us take the examples 1, 6

and 7: unexpectedly, innocuous and relentless. Unexpectedly: negative affix un-. Morphemic analysis: un-expect-ed-ly. Derivational analysis: expected – unexpectedly. As all the affixes un- is bound, overt, full, segmental, additive, continuous morpheme (the same will be common for other classified affixes). It is a prefix, since it is in preposition to the root. It is a native affix. As it is an adjectival according to the pert of speech it is attached to. We can not speak of the classification based on the criteria of the part of speech of the built word, because it is not only the affix which transfers the word from one part of speech to another. It is an affix of nominative function, because it is not an interfix, and it is regular, as long as it has certain models of