Questions: Prefix and Suffix Affixation

Question 1

What is the correct morphological structure of the word 'unhappiness'?

• A. [[un-happy]-ness] — un- attaches first, then -ness attaches to the adjective unhappy
• B. [un-[happy-ness]] — -ness attaches first, then un- attaches to the noun unhappiness
• C. [un-happy-ness] — all three morphemes attach simultaneously to the root
• D. Either order is grammatical — prefixes and suffixes can attach in any sequence

Answer: (A)

The structure must be [[un-happy]-ness] because -ness selects for adjective bases. un- first attaches to the adjective happy to form the adjective unhappy; then -ness attaches to the adjective unhappy to form the noun unhappiness. The alternative [un-[happiness]] would require un- to attach to a noun, but un- does not productively attach to nouns in English — *unhappiness as an input to un- is ungrammatical. The category-changing property of -ness forces this inside-out ordering.

Question 2

Which of the following best illustrates the key asymmetry between prefixes and suffixes in English?

• A. Prefixes are always more productive than suffixes in generating new words
• B. Suffixes typically change the grammatical category of the base; prefixes typically preserve it
• C. Prefixes attach only to nouns; suffixes attach to verbs and adjectives
• D. Suffixes are borrowed from Latin while prefixes are native Germanic morphemes

Answer: (B)

This is the core asymmetry: -ness turns dark (adjective) into darkness (noun) — a category change. un- turns happy (adjective) into unhappy (still an adjective) — category preserved. This asymmetry has deep consequences: suffixes do the syntactic heavy lifting in derivation, determining what grammatical role the new word plays in a sentence. Prefixes modify meaning while leaving the word's category — and therefore its syntactic behavior — unchanged. Option A is false: suffixes are generally more productive in English. Option C oversimplifies: both attach to multiple categories.

Question 3

The productivity of an affix can be restricted by the phonological properties of the base it attaches to.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

This is correct and well-illustrated by the contrast between -ity and -ness. The suffix -ity strongly prefers Latinate bases (probability, felicity) and sounds unnatural with Germanic ones (*hardity, *sadity). The suffix -ness is productive across both Germanic and Latinate bases (hardness, sadness, brightness). These restrictions reflect the phonological contexts and etymological strata in which each affix originally developed. An affix's productivity is not uniform across all possible bases — it is shaped by both sound-structure requirements and the etymological history of the vocabulary.

Question 4

Prefixes and suffixes are equally likely to change the grammatical category of the base they attach to.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

In English, this is clearly false: suffixes far more commonly change grammatical category (dark → darkness, adjective to noun; terror → terrify, noun to verb), while prefixes almost always preserve the category of the base (happy → unhappy, both adjectives; write → rewrite, both verbs). This asymmetry holds broadly across English derivational morphology. Suffixes are described as 'morphologically more powerful' precisely because they determine the syntactic category of the derived word — something prefixes typically do not do.

Question 5

Why does the category-changing property of suffixes constrain the order in which multiple suffixes can be stacked?

Model answer: Each suffix selects for a specific grammatical category in its base. Since suffixes change category, the output category of one suffix must match the input category requirement of the next, forcing strict inside-out ordering. For example, -ize attaches to nouns and adjectives to form verbs (modern → modernize); then -ation attaches to verbs to form nouns (modernize → modernization). The reverse order *-ation-ize would require -ize to attach to a noun, violating its selectional restrictions. Each suffix creates a category that determines what can attach next, forming a dependency chain that constrains the order of all further derivation.

This is why morphological structure must be analyzed hierarchically, not as a flat sequence. The brackets in [[modern-ize]-ation] encode the fact that -ize must apply first because -ation requires a verbal base that only -ize has created. Prefixes, being category-neutral, stack more freely — but suffix stacking order is determined by category dependencies at each step.