Prefix Morphological Processes of Verbs in

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CHAPTER IV RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

The researcher divides this chapter into two sections in analysing the data, i.e. morphological processes of verbs in The Jakarta Post editorials and summary remarks. The analysis of the study is based on the research question. After revealing the bases, the researcher analysed any morphological processes found during the formation of the verbs and then summarised the results.

A. Morphological Processes of Verbs in

The Jakarta Post Editorials The researcher provides a data presentation which shows the affixed verbs found in the editorials. The verbs presented in the tables ignored the inflectional affixes occurring in the original text. There are also other columns which are mentioned in the previous chapter, which are meant to show the bases with their word classes, and the morphological processes happening within the affixation. Besides, there is a column called frequency which shows how often each word occurs in the whole 32 editorials. The data presentation also provides some information dealing with numbers and the percentage of occurrence of each affix as additional references to the readers.

1. Prefix

dis - The verbs containing prefix dis- in the editorials were not widely used. The verbs containing the prefix in The Jakarta Post editorials appeared only 11 31 times out of 32 editorials. In other words, about 34.38 editorials had verbs containing prefix dis -. Based on the occurrence per day, one prefixed verb occurred once in almost three days. From that amount, some verbs occurred more than once, i.e. discourage , discover , and displace . The table below also shows that all the dis-prefixed verbs have eight different bases, which are mostly verbs. The only verb of which base is not a verb is discourage. Here is the table showing the whole verbs containing prefix dis - in The Jakarta Post editorials. no verb base word class morphological process freq 1 disappear appear v - 1 2 disclose close v - 1 3 discontinue continue v - 1 4 discourage courage n conversion 2 5 discover cover v - 2 6 discredit credit v - 1 7 displace place v - 2 8 disregard regard v - 1 Table 4.1 Verbs containing prefix dis - Based on the findings presented in the table above, almost every verb started with prefix dis - had a verb base. In other words, the prefixed verbs were formed from verbs. In fact, the prefix dis- is not a kind of verbaliser so that it does not change the word class of its base. In her undergraduate thesis, Widyastuti 2008, p. 22 states that compared to the whole words containing prefix dis -, there are only 32.67 words which are categorised as verbs. It means that there are 67.33 words containing prefix dis - which are not attached to verb bases. From the editorials, the researcher found seven verbs of which verb bases were attached to. There was only one verb of which base was not a verb, i.e. discourage . The verb was derived from a noun base, i.e. courage. Since the prefix dis - cannot 32 change the word class of its base, the word discourage should be a noun unless another morphological process happens. The word became a verb without any other affixation and other letters added, decreased or changed as well. In other words, the only change happening was the word class. Thus, the conclusion is that the morphological process happening was conversion. Another fact revealed from the findings is that there was not any morphophonology process found. It means that the bases of the verbs were still visible when the prefix dis- had been attached to them. All the prefixed verbs can be analysed into prefix dis - plus the base, e.g. disappear can be decomposed into dis- plus appear ; discontinue can be decomposed into dis - plus continue ; and discredit can be decomposed into dis - plus credit . Related to the prefix dis -, there were some other phenomena which hindered the researcher to firstly determine whether the verbs were modified by prefix dis - or not. The first one was borrowing. There were some words borrowed from other languages and the affixation happened in the donor language. For example, the word is disburse. The researcher could not decompose this word into prefix dis- and the base burse since the verb burse does not exist in English . This prefixed word was adopted from French desbourser, which stands for des- means dis - and bourser means purse . It is not surprising when the word disburse is related to purse since the verb means ‘pay out’ www.merriam-webster.com. Another morphological process found in the verb formation was back formation. The verb which the researcher analysed as the product of the word-formation process was disrupt . This word cannot be analysed as the formation of the prefix 33 dis- and the word rupt since it is not lexicalised. Referring to Online Etymology Dictionary , the researcher found out that the verb disrupt comes from the word disruption . The – ion ending is considered as a suffix added to form a noun from a verb. Therefore, to form a verb, the English speakers usually remove the part considered as the noun-forming suffix - ion . There were some unanalysable words due to the process of decomposition. Some of them were not formed from the prefix dis- plus a verb base. The example is distribute. It is not a result of a formation of the prefix dis- plus a word tribute. Compared to the word contribute, it can be recognised that the word tribute exists in English and some prefixes e.g. dis - and con - are possibly attached to the word to yield other words distribute and contribute . However, when the prefix dis- , which brings contrary meaning, is attached to the tribute as considered above, the meaning does not accord the whole word distribute itself. Therefore, it can be concluded that the verb distribute is not a product of the prefix dis- discussed in this research plus a base tribute. The findings and the analysis conducted by the researcher showed that there was one case involving conversion when the affixation happened. Because of the nature of it, prefix dis - cannot yield a verb unless the base is a verb. Besides, the verb affixation and any morphological process found in this category did not blur the visibility of the bases so that the researcher could reveal the bases first before doing further analysis on the morphological processes. Other morphological processes as mentioned above borrowing and backformation 34 caused problems for the researcher in recognising and determining the verbs included in this category.

2. Prefix