Lexical Category of the Base
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adjective, adverb, noun, and verb. As stated by Cartair- McCarthy 2002: 45 “the
terms for lexical categories are „adjective‟, „noun‟, and „verb‟. Traditionally, the term of word class is derived from a traditional
terminology which is part of speech. Many contemporary linguists also define word classes as lexical categories. Every base in the data do not have the same
lexical categories. They have their own lexical categories or part of speech. Plag 2003: 90 asserts that the suffix {-ful} is typically attached to the noun base. The
examples of the data are revealed as follows.
Table 1. The Bases of the Suffix {-ful} No
Bases Words
1 care
careful 2
cheer cheerful
3 resent
resentful 4
taste tasteful
5 use
useful 6
waste wasteful
The words on the left side are bases and the words on the right side are the results of receiving the suffix {-ful} to each base. The samples of the words above
are the bases of the suffix {-ful}. There is an alteration of the words after the suffixation process, which is the addition of the suffix {-ful}. The words careful,
cheerful, resentful, tasteful, and useful have the part of speech as an adjective. Related to the bases, each base has a different part of speech. For instance, the
bases care, cheer, taste, and use are categorized as nouns or verbs. In short, there are several words have two parts of speech as nouns and verbs. The original word
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of those bases is a noun word so that those words considered as a noun when they are attached to the suffix {-ful}.
Other examples are the words beauty and fright. The base beauty after receiving the suffix {-ful} becomes beautiful which is known as an adjective. It is
similar to the base beauty, the base fright is changed from a noun to an adjective. For the words beauty and fright, they are classified only as noun bases. In short,
these words only have one lexical category. Other examples are the adjective words resentful and forgetful. Those two
bases come from the verb bases resent and forget. The bases resent and forget undergo the change of lexical categories from a verb to an adjective after
suffixation of the suffix {-ful}. It means that the verb base is also receiving the suffix {-ful}.