(LEE'S) LINGUISTICS LESSON #5

buckle up and enjoy!

certain affixes (suffixes, prefixes and infixes) can only affect certain types of words. affixes have the ability to change the category of a word, like changing it from a noun to an adjective, an adjective to an adverb etc

some words can have more than one affix attached to them, like a prefix and a suffix together, like the word unlockable, which is actually three parts in one: un-lock-able.

like I mentioned before certain affixes can only affect certain types of words, so in order to be able to use more than one of them, the first affix has to be able to modify the root word and the second affix has to be able to modify the new word

if the second affix can't do that bc it can't modify the new category of word, then you have to switch the order that you apply them. For example, the word indecipherable, which has two suffixes. it really looks like this before you put everything together in-decipher-able

decipher is a verb, and here we have two affixes attached to it. here's the cool part: only one of the two affixes in and able can modify a verb. that's why we need to apply them in a certain order.

let's try to do it here to see which order is the right one.

or 1: in-, able
if we attach in- to decipher, we get indecipher, which isn't a grammatical word. This is because the prefix in- can't be used to modify a verb, and the suffix -able can't modify a verb either

order 2: -able, in-
so we've established that our first option doesn't work, which leaves us with only one other option. by process of elimination, we can determine that order 2 is correct. but WHY is it correct? let's go through it and find out!

like I mentioned, decipher is a verb, and -able IS in fact, a suffix that can modify a verb and turn it into an adjective. decipher becomes decipherable. now we have an adjective, and guess which prefix can modify an adjective? that's right, in- can.

so decipherable becomes indecipherable and we have our answer!

but what about my first example in this thread, unlockable? now, unlockable has two meanings.
1: able to be unlocked
2: not able to be locked

these are two TOTALLY different meanings that this one word can have. so why is that? how on earth does that make sense?

it goes back to the suffix order that I talked about before. let's break it down!

un-lock-able, these are the three parts of this word, two affixes and a root, just like indecipherable. so what makes this different?

the difference here is the prefix un-. unlike in-, un- CAN modify verbs, meaning that both affixes in this case can modify the root

un- can modify lock, and so can -able, but it's the order that they're applied to lock that gives unlockable two different meanings.

attempt 1: un-, able

if we add un- to the verb lock, we get unlock, which is a another verb, meaning to open up a lock.

with the verb unlock, we can add the suffix -able, and we get unlockable, which is an adjective meaning that something is able to be unlocked!

order 2: -able, un-

if we add -able to the verb lock, we get lockable, an adjective meaning something that can be locked

the cool thing about un- is that it can modify both verbs and adjectives, which works out perfectly when we apply it to lockable and get unlockable. this is another snazzy adjective meaning something that is unable to be locked

so now that we've broken these words down, you can understand how the order that affixes are applied in is crucial to grammatical word-forming, and how some words, like unlockable, have completely different meanings that change based on the order you apply the affixes in!

english linguistics are hard and complicated but they're pretty awesome, and I hope you enjoyed this lesson! congratulations for making it this far into the thread, you did well!