Re: confession: roots

On Mon, 7 May 2001, Raymond Brown wrote:

> What does one call such an affix?  I have seen the terms 'circumfix' or
> 'ambifix'; but as understand it, this refers to an affix which combines
> prefix and suffix, like English em/n.......en in _em-bold-en_,
> _en-light-en_ - if indeed this is a single affix and not simply two
> affixes.  But I think surer examples do exist in some natlangs.
Chickasaw also has such affixes. Negation is expressed by prefixing a
"hypothetical" marker (I don't think that is the correct term, but I
can't think of what it is right now), infixing a glottal stop immediately
before the last consonant of the word, and changing the final vowel to
/o/. (That are lots of phonological things that can happen in such
situations, which I'm going to ignore).

pisa 'see' -> ikpi'so 'not see'
hilha 'dance' -> ikhi'lho 'not dance'
yopi 'swim' -> ikyo'po 'not swim'

Note that this ik- is a distinct prefix. As for the '-o combination, I
believe that it is a suffix -'o which has to get separated to fit the
phonotactics of the language. Glottals never follow a consonant, so the
sequence C'o -> 'Co (where C is any single consonant). Could this
possiblly be what is happening in Greek?

> In theory one could have an affix which is partly prefixed & partly
> infixed.  Indeed, I'd be surprised if it never occurred in any natlang.
As would I, but I haven't seen such a thing yet.

Marcus