41 test.
Even so, related to the meaning of the suffix –ify, the word testify cannot be
paraphrased as ‘make test’. Szymanek 1989 emphasises the rare analysable suffixed verbs with his
statement that “only a small fraction of English verbs of the form Xify are synchronically analysable into an independent base plus a suffix
”. He also adds that
“among the items that can be so analysed, not all have de-adjectival motivation
”. As a result, the number of verbs which can be decomposed into adjectives by removing the suffix
–ify is not impressive pp. 284-285. The fact that borrowings occurred in the suffixed verbs explained the phemomena.
6. Suffix –ise
Ignoring the inflectional affixation, there were nine different verbs containing the suffix-ize in The Jakarta Post editorials. The verbs in the category
occurred 14 times out of the whole 32 editorials. In other words, around 43.75 editorials used the verbs. The verb realize occurred four times, while other verbs
occurred only once or twice. The bases constructing the verbs were adjective bases and noun bases.
no verb
base word class morphological process freq
1 characterize character n
- 1
2 criticize
critic n morphophonology
1 3
delegitimize legitimate adj -
1 4
jeopardize jeopardy n
- 2
5 materialize
material adj -
2 6
minimize mini adj
morphophonology 1
7 mobilize
mobile adj -
1 8
realize real adj
- 4
9 traumatize
trauma n morphophonology
1
Table 4.6 Verbs containing suffix -ise
42 The research findings showed that the suffix
–ise changed the bases which were nouns and adjectives into verbs. The phenomenon occurring in the data was
that there were some letters occurring within the suffixation. Unlike the words characterize
, materialize, and realize, which can be decomposed into bases plus the suffix
–ise, some words involved another morphological change affecting the word formation. The word jeopardy dropped the i ending and then replaced it
with the suffix –ize so that it yielded jeopardize. The base of mobilize is mobile.
The morphological process omitted the e ending since the base mobile phonologically ended in consonant sound.
A morphophonological change called assimilation was also found in some verbs as seen in minimize and traumatize. The m in minimize and the t in
traumatize are products of assimilation. The assimilation also occurred in criticize
since critic ended in k and it changed into s in criticize. However, there was not any change in the spelling. It meets the theory stated in
Plag 2003 that “k is realised as [s] before the suffixes
–ify, -ity, -ism, and –ize” p. 210. There were two words looking like products of
–ize suffixation, i.e. capsize
and recognize. In fact, capsize comes from Spanish word capuzar, which means it is a product of borrowing. Meanwhile, the verb recognize is formed by
backformation from the noun recognizance. Another fact revealed from the research was that The Jakarta Post used
–ize spelling instead of –ise. This fact reflects that The Jakarta Post was influenced by American English.
Morphophonology is the only morphological process identified in this group of affixed verbs. Besides the process, there were other morphological
43 processes constructing the verbs in the whole editorials, i.e. borrowing and
backformation. However, they were not involved in the affixation. The processes formed verbs looking like the products of -ise suffixation, which hinder the
researcher in determining the verbs in the category.
B. Summary Remarks
