39 From the analysis, it can be concluded that the bases in this category were
visible since all of the verbs could be decomposed into bases plus suffix -en. In other words, the affixation occurring in each verb was not combined with another
morphological process. There are some exceptional words included in this category, which hindered the researcher in determining whether they are products
of -en suffixation or not.
5. Suffix –ify
There are some empty spaces in column base of table 4.5. The researcher could only reveal the bases of the verbs beautify and justify. However, the
researcher listed that the verbs containing the suffix -ify and those which were suspected as ending in the suffix -ify in The Jakarta Post editorials occurred 14
times. From the result, some verbs occurred more than once, with identify occurred the most often, 35.71 of all verbs in this category. The table also
shows that there were seven different verbs containing the suffix –ify.
no verb base word class
morphological process freq
1 beautify
beauty noun -
1 2
clarify borrowing
1 3
diversify borrowing
1 4
identify borrowing
5 5
justify just adj
- 1
6 specify
borrowing 2
7 testify
borrowing 3
Table 4.5 Verbs containing suffix -ify
As seen on the table above, there were only two verbs which were decomposable into the form of the base plus the suffix
–ify, i.e. beautify and justify
. The analysis also accorded to the rule that when the bases end in i, drop
40 the stem-final i and attach the suffix
–ify after that Szymanek, 1989, p. 285. The base beauty ends in i and it should be dropped. As the result, the rest is
pronounced bju:t. Then, the suffix –ify is added to yield beautify. Justify is
another verb of which base is revealed. The suffix –ify can be dropped directly to
reveal the base, i.e. just. The other verbs found in the editorials were affixed in the donor language. Some of them may be related to other English words, though. For
example, the verb clarify is related to the adjective clear and the noun clarity, which can be considered as close in term of meaning since those words are related
to clear. Based on the analysis the researcher conducted, the verb clarify comes from French clarifier or Latin clarificare and so does clear, which comes from
French cler or Latin clarus. Referring to the theories of borrowing in the earlier chapter, the suffix -ify is from Anglo-French
–ifier. If the word clarifier was analysed into the base cler plus the suffix -ifier, the word clarify, as translated into
English, can be decomposed into the base clear plus the suffix -ify. This fact indicates that borrowing happened in almost verbs in the category.
As the verb clarify, most of other verbs ending in –ify found in the
editorials are products of borrowing coming from French and Latin words. The verb diversify is from Old French diversifier whic
h means ‘to make diverse’ or Latin word diversificare; identify is from French identifier, derived from identite,
which means ‘identity’; specify is from French specifier, which is from Latin
specificare , which is derived from specifus
, which means ‘specific’; and testify is borrowed from Latin testificari. The word testify seems like having a noun base
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
