CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
A. Background of Study
In English, as in other language, a speaker can coin new words on the basis of other words or word-forming elements. For example, English speakers
turn adjectives such as happy into nouns by adding the suffix -ness, yielding happiness, or form compounds by joining existing words, as in flash disk, and
some of these words may eventually make it into the common vocabulary of the speakers. It means English speakers can enrich the vocabulary by adding affixes
into root or stem to construct a new word. It is because there are affixes that are derivational morphemes that can change class of word that they are added to.
Moreover this process affixation can be an effective way to learn English vocabularies especially for people who use English as second language such as
Indonesian because they don’t need to remember all of English vocabularies, which is impossible to do. What they need only remembering some affixes and
adding them into root or stem, and then they can coin some words from a word. For example, from a noun {beauty} they can form simply an adjective beautiful
{beauty} + {ful}, a verb beautify {beauty} + {fy}, and an adverb beautifully {beauty} + {ful} + {ly}.
The process of word-formation above is called affixation. Affixation is a process that involves the addition of affixes into a base or a stem. An affix is a
bound morpheme that occurs before or after a base, and in English, there are two
kinds of affixes that are prefixes and suffixes. In addition, according to Abdul Chaer, this process involves three elements that are base, affixes, and grammatical
meaning resulted by the affixation process, and affixes in English can be derivative and inflective
1
. Furthermore, in daily speech there are some affixation processes, which
are related to a large extent rulegoverned, quite often used to coin new words, whereas others are less often used or not used at all for this purpose. For example,
as explained in
Ensyclopedia of Language and Linguistics 2
nd
Edition
, it seems that no new noun can be formed in Modern English with the help of the suffix -th as in
depth or length, whereas the nominal suffix -ness, which is similar in function, is found very often in new formationscf. eco-friendliness, first attested in
1989,Oxford English dictionary OED. In this sense, some morphological rules are called productive and other rules unproductive or less productive
2
. Besides there is the existence of productivity or less productivity in
affixation process above, there is also a certain rule for this affixation process, for example English speakers can form a noun from a verb by adding suffix –ance,
but especially for words such as signify signification, beautify beautification, personify personification, classify classification, etc, that process is not
applicable in turning a noun from a verb. In addition, they have to add suffix -en if they want to make a verb from such adjective as black blacken, red redden,
wide widen, short shorten etc.
1
Abdul Chair, Linguistik Umum, Jakarta: Rineka Cipta, 2003, p. 177
2
Keith Brown and Anne Anderson, Ensyclopedia of Language and Linguistics 2
nd
Edition, Boston: Elsevier, 2006, p. 121
However, in reality, there are some words that violate the rule above. It means that there are some words that, although, follow the morphological rule in
their affixation process, the result of their affixation is not applicable in daily speech. It occurs because there are some restrictions for their affixation process.
Moreover, it is important to know this restriction because if this restriction is ignored, it is possible to form a strange word instead of coining a new word by
affixation process. For example, English speakers want to construct a subject form for {steal}, and then they add a suffix {er}, which is an agent noun, to {steal}
because if they want to make a subject form for {read}, they can just add suffix {er} to {read}. However, the result of the affixation process for {steal} above is
strange because there is no stealer in English vocabularies. Therefore, knowledge of this restriction in affixation blocking is an important knowledge for us,
especially to avoid making mistake in combining morphemes in affixation process.
The reason why there are some restrictions for some affixations process in English words is because of the existence of blocking that is the factors which
frustrate the application of a word-formation process
3
. Furthermore, this existence of blocking in English words and its urgency that is explained above are the main
reason why the writer is interested in conducting this research that tries to explain why this blocking process occurs in affixation of English words.
3
Francis Katamba, Modern Linguistics Morphology, London: the Macmillan Press LTD, 1994, p. 73
B. Focus of Research
Kategori