35 For example, to ensure
means to ‘make sure’ and to encourage is to ‘put in courage’. However, the meaning of the prefix when it is attached to a verb, e.g.
enact or enforce, is not mentioned by Katamba. The researcher
’s analysis is that the bases of the verbs enact and enforce are not verbs but nouns. Therefore, how
to paraphrase the verbs are to ‘put in act’ and ‘put in force.’ However, there are several verbs looking like products of the prefixation
which cannot be decomposed or do not have English bases. These words are usually borrowed from a foreign language and already modified by the prefix in
the donor language. These already prefixed words then are borrowed to English. The example is the word encounter. This verb looks like a product of a prefix en-
plus a base counter because the word counter exists in English and has various parts of speech. Checking on Online Etymology Dictionary, the researcher
revealed that encounter is a borrowing word from Old French encontrer. There was not another morphological process found within the affixation.
The bases are visible enough because every verb found can be decomposed into the form prefix en- plus the base of each verb. The changing of the word class was
merely caused by the nature of the prefix, which always changes the bases it modifies into verbs.
3. Prefix re-
The affix occurring the most of all affixes analysed in the verbs is the prefix re-. It occurred 34 times in The Jakarta Post editorials. In average, more
than one editorial used the verbs in this group. Considering the bases used in all
36 prefixed verbs, there were 18 different bases found in the editorials, with resolve
was the most frequently used verb. There is only one verb of which base was an adjective, i.e. refresh.
no verb base word class morphological process
freq
1 react
act v -
1 2
recommend commend v -
2 3
recount count v
- 1
4 redefine
define v -
1 5
refresh freshadj
conversion 1
6 release
lease v -
1 7
remind mind v
- 1
8 reopen
open v -
1 9
replace place v
- 3
10 represent present v
- 1
11 reserve serve v
- 1
12 reshuffle shuffle v
- 2
13 resign signv
- 2
14 resolve solve v
- 6
15 resort sort v
- 1
16 restore store v
- 3
17 return turn v
- 5
18 revamp vamp v
- 1
Table 4.3 Verbs containing prefix re-
As stated in the chapter two, Szymanek 1989 states that both native and Latinate verbs may be combined with re-. In the table above, it was shown that
almost all the bases were verbs. There was only one base which was an adjective, i.e. fresh. The meaning of refresh, which is a verb,
is to ‘make fresh again’. However, t
he common form of ‘make fresh’ is to freshen instead of to fresh. There must be a conversion process within the suffixation. Otherwise, refresh is
an adjective. Besides conversion, there was not any morphological process found. In other words, all of them could be decomposed into the form of the prefix re-
plus the base.
37 The researcher found more verbs of which initial sounds are ri:.
However, the researcher consulted a previous research conducted by Saragih 2008 which states that there are only 301 verbs prefixed by re- in English. The
researcher found the verb reevaluate in the editorial published on September 21
st
, 2011. Since referring to
the Saragih’s list of re-prefixed verbs in his research, the researcher looked up on it. However, the verb reevaluate was not on the list.
Although the verb can be paraphrased as ‘evaluate again’, the researcher ignored it as the verb was not found on the list.
The last finding related to the use of prefix re- in this research is that there was no hyphenation found. It means that ambiguity is not an important issue for
The Jakarta Post readers. It is also possible that the diction used in The Jakarta
Post was quite understandable for the daily news
paper’s readers so that it is unnecessary to add a hyphen between the prefix re- and the base to which the
prefix is attached.
4. Suffix –en
