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*a prefix is an ‘affix’ which is placed before the ‘stem’ of a word*
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(adding it to the beginning of 1 ‘word’ changes it into another ‘word’)
(for example, when the prefix un- is added to the word happy, it creates the word unhappy)
(particularly in the study of ‘languages’, a ‘prefix’ is also called a pre-formative, because it alters the form of the words to which it is ‘affixed’)
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(‘prefixes’ (like other ‘affixes’) can be either…)
‘inflectional’
(creating a new ‘form’ of the ‘word’ with the same basic ‘meaning’ + same ‘lexical category’ (but playing a different role in the ‘sentence’))
*OR*
‘derivational’
(creating a new word with a new ‘semantic meaning’ (+ sometimes also a different ‘lexical category’)
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(‘prefixes’ (like all other ‘affixes’) are usually ‘bound morphemes’)
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(in ‘english’, there are no ‘inflectional prefixes’)
(‘english’ uses ‘suffixes’ instead for that purpose)
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*meta-alert* –>
(the word prefix is itself made up of the stem fix (meaning “attach” in this case), and the prefix pre- (meaning “before”), both of which are derived from ‘latin roots’)
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*SKETCHES*
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