Magnitude of productivity: inflectional affix or derivational affix

Abstract

This paper discusses the level of efficiency in terms of productivity between the two main affixes in the English Language with regard to their ability to create new words when they are attached to bases. These affixes are: inflectional affix and derivational affix. The paper looks at how dynamic each of these affixes is in the manner in which they can create new forms of words in the language. To be able to measure the magnitude between the two affixes in terms of their productivity levels, they were both applied to the same randomly selected words. A simple random technique was used to select seven (7) words each from the four (4) major word class items for the analysis. The paper focuses on the major word class category because members of the major word class admit new members unlike the minor word class category which does not readily admit new members. The four (4) major word class members are nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives. Both the inflectional affix and the derivational affix were applied on each of the selected words to determine their level of productivity in each word category. In the word category, percentages were used to show the level of effectiveness of each affix. At the end of the category analysis, the percentages obtained by each of the affixes at the various stages were computed and used as the overall percentage for the final analysis in the paper. The paper equally looks at the differences between the inflectional affix and the derivational affix with regard to the characteristics of the new words that they create. Accordingly, an inflectional affix does not change the core lexical meaning or the lexical category of the base to which it is attached. On the other hand, derivational affix may or may not change the lexical category of the base it is applied to but typically changes the meaning of the base. Based on this literature, affixation (attaching affixes to bases) was applied to each of the selected words to find out the kind of the new forms or words that would be created. For example, if the new word formed was a different variant or form of the base, then it meant that the inflectional affix was used to create that particular new word. On the other hand, if the new word formed was in a different semantic category from the base, then the derivational affix was used in creating that new word. This was how the paper identified the new words as to whether they were created by the inflectional affix or the derivational affix. It was established that the derivational affix was more productive than the inflectional affix on the randomly selected words.