Alphie Rodriguez

Linguistics 10

December 9th 2011

Professor C. Potter

Infixes in Languages

The literal meaning of the word infix is A word element, a type of affix, that can be
inserted within the base form of a word (rather than at its beginning or end) to
create a new word and intensify the meaning. The process of inserting an infix is
called infixation. (about.com) an infix is just an affix at times a single letter word
that that is placed in between another affix and a base word. English is not a
language that contains a lot of infixing unlike other languages such as Tagalog, Latin
and German. Infixes are really rare compared to how often affixes are used. There
are many examples of infixation. For example, unbelievable; this word can be
stressed by infixing a word like freaking, bloody or an obscene word like the F word
forming a new word such as, Un-freaking-believable or Un-bloody-believable. This
new word is stressing and conveying a new feeling.

Most morphemes that serve as infixes dont hold a real meaning, like ma- in
saxophone (saxomaphone), violin (viomalin), telephone (temaphone) The
morpheme ma- is an example taken from the TV series the Simpsons Homeric
infixation is a morphological construction that has recently gained currency in
Vernacular American English. (Reduplication in English Homeric Infixation, Alan Yu)
Something very important about the Homeric infixation is that while in English some
words which bear input stress on the 1st and 3rd syllables only the infix, -ma-,
invariably appears after the unstressed second syllable, whether the main stress is
on the first or the third syllable. (Reduplication in English Homeric Infixation, Alan
Yu) Another example of meaningless morphemes that serve as infixes is -iz- which is
used in the Hip-Hop world. Some examples are: ahead (ahizead), house (hizoouse)
and soldiers (sizoldiers). while the expletive in its infixal usage generally
appears before the stressed syllable (1), the Homeric infix must come after a
trochaic foot (2), the -iz- infix popularized by hip-hop singers is attracted by stress
as well.(A Natural History of Infixation, page 2) However, not all morphemes
serving as infixes are the same. Some hold a real meaning, for example the word
bloody. In the United States the word bloody means something that is stained or
covered in blood. While in Great Britain the word means something different. This
particular British word has been an intense swear word since at least 1676. Infixes
are all said to be meaningless morphemes attached to two other morphemes at
once, but the examples show two different types of infixes. Some which are truly
meaningless, and others which are morphemes that hold a true meaning, real
English words.

There is an Irish tale about a man called stingy Jack who is well known now as Jack-
o-lantern. Before he was called Jack-o-lantern his name was Jack of the lantern. In
English spoken Language there are words that some people can not pronounce
correctly like the word sixth or asks. In English we accommodate the way we speak
and communicate with others. A way that we do that is by deleting letters from
words, or inversing letters and connecting the words to accommodate sounds. For
example, in Italian instead of writing lo ho which means I have it, we write Lho for
short and the pronunciation is easier and it would sound like lo without the h
instead of lo ho where we find a stop in between the words. However, when the
words are connected by an apostrophe () Loh the words flow without a stop. The
deletion of words is to help the speaker say things more clearly and without a
struggle. Another example is Luniversit which is short for La Universit. The
English translation is the university. There is a deletion of a word to accommodate a
better sound. There are two vowels and it makes it awkward to say it when there
are two vowels sounds; so instead the a is dropped and the pronunciation is
smoother with no stops. Another example in English is, Jack of the lantern where it
is easier to say Jack-o-lantern rather than when saying the whole phrase. The infix
o- is only to omit of the just to make the words flow when we speak. Language in
relation with linguistics is all about phonology. The sound is what constructs the
English language more than how it is written.

There are many languages that use infixation as little as English does. However,
there are many other languages that use infixation a lot. Some of those languages
are German, Latin, Tagalog, Austronesian language, Pingding Mandarin. Some
examples are: hind higidindigidi not, not and tahali
tagadahagadaligidi noon. (Natural History of Infixation) These are examples
of spoken Tagalog. Infixes are very rare in most languages like in English, but they
convey a new kind of message when it is used. While in other languages the infixing
is needed to form a sentence. In the case of Tagalog the use of infixing it is required
in the languages, to be able to convey a message. Infixes may be a very small part
of a language and at times those morphemes may seem useless and meaningless.
However, those meaningless morphemes help us underline, convey a new type of
feeling, and/or stress the meaning of the infixed word.