linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...

, a disfix is a subtractive

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone are ...

, a morpheme manifest through the subtraction of segments from a

root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the sur ...

stem Stem or STEM may refer to: Plant structures * Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang * Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure * Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushro ...

. Although other forms of disfixation exist, the element subtracted is usually the final segment of the stem. Productive disfixation is extremely rare among the languages of the world but is important in the

Muskogean languages Muskogean (also Muskhogean, Muskogee) is a Native American language family spoken in different areas of the Southeastern United States. Though the debate concerning their interrelationships is ongoing, the Muskogean languages are generally div ...

of the southeastern United States. Similar subtractive morphs in languages such as French and Portuguese are marginal.Hardy & Montler, 1988, "Alabama H-infix and Disfixation", in Haas, ed., ''In Honor of Mary Haas: From the Haas Festival Conference On Native American Linguistics'', p. 399.

Terminology

The terms "disfix" and "disfixation" were proposed by Hardy and

Timothy Montler Timothy Montler is an American academic and linguist. Montler is a professor of linguistics at the University of North Texas, as of 2013. He has worked to preserve the Klallam language since 1990. Montler collaborated with Adeline Smith, a Lower ...

in a 1988 paper on the morphology of the

Alabama language Alabama (also known as Alibamu) is a Native American language, spoken by the Alabama-Coushatta tribe of Texas. It was once spoken by the Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town of Oklahoma, but there are no more Alabama speakers in Oklahoma. It is a Mu ...

. The process had been previously described by

Leonard Bloomfield Leonard Bloomfield (April 1, 1887 – April 18, 1949) was an American linguist who led the development of structural linguistics in the United States during the 1930s and the 1940s. He is considered to be the father of American distributionalism ...

who called it a ''minus feature'', and

Zellig Harris Zellig Sabbettai Harris (; October 23, 1909 – May 22, 1992) was an influential American linguist, mathematical syntactician, and methodologist of science. Originally a Semiticist, he is best known for his work in structural linguistics and d ...

who called it a "minus morpheme". Other terms for the same or similar processes are ''subtraction, truncation, deletion,'' and ''minus formation''.Manova 2011:125-6

Examples

Muskogean

In Muskogean, disfixes mark pluractionality (repeated action, plural subjects or objects, or greater duration of a verb). In the

, there are two principal forms of this morpheme: * In most verbs, the last two segments are dropped from the penultimate

syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of Phone (phonetics), speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered t ...

of the

, which is the final syllable of the root. If the syllable has only two segments, it is elided altogether.Hardy & Montler 1988:391-2 For example: ::''balaaka'' 'lies down', ''balka'' 'lie down' ::''batatli'' 'hits', ''batli'' 'hits repeatedly' ::''cokkalika'' 'enters', ''cokkaka'' 'enter' * In some verbs, the final consonant of the

penult Penult is a linguistics term for the second to last syllable of a word. It is an abbreviation of ''penultimate'', which describes the next-to-last item in a series. The penult follows the antepenult and precedes the ultima. For example, the main ...

is dropped, but the preceding vowel lengthens to compensate: ::''salatli'' "slide", ''salaali'' 'slide repeatedly' ::''noktiłifka'' "choke", ''noktiłiika'' 'choke repeatedly'

French

Bloomfield described the process of disfixation (which he called minus features) through an example from FrenchBloomfield 1933:217 although most contemporary analyses find this example to be inadequate because the masculine forms might be taken as the base form and the feminine forms simply as suppletives. Though not productive like Muscogean and therefore not true disfixation,Speakers of French may learn these words by rote as

suppletive In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as "irregular" or eve ...

pairs rather than deriving one from the other morphologically. Without active morphology, there is arguably no affix involved (cf. Wolfgang U. Dressler, "Subtraction", in: Geert E. Booij, Christian Lehmann & Joachim Mugdan (eds.), ''Morphology'', Berlin, New York: de Gruyter 2000, 581-587, p 582). some French plurals are analysed as derived from the singular, and many masculine words from the feminine by dropping the final consonant and making some generally predictable changes to the vowel: Historically, this reflects that the masculine was once pronounced similar to the current feminine, and the feminine formed by adding . The modern situation results from regular

apocope In phonology, apocope () is the loss (elision) of a word-final vowel. In a broader sense, it can refer to the loss of any final sound (including consonants) from a word. Etymology ''Apocope'' comes from the Greek () from () "cutting off", from ...

which removed a consonant from the masculine and the final schwa of the feminine.

Portuguese

In Portuguese, some words which have the masculine ending ''-ão'' have a feminine equivalent ''-ã'', synchronically analyzable as a disfixation. ''irmão - irmã'' (brother - sister) ''cristão - cristã'' (Christian ''m.'' - Christian ''f.'') ''bretão - bretã'' (Breton ''m.'' - Breton ''f.'') ''artesão - artesã'' (craftsman - craftswoman) ''órfão - órfã'' (orphan ''m.'' - orphan ''f.'') ''charlatão - charlatã'' (conman - conwoman) The root cause of this disfixation is the loss of intervocalic ''-n-'' in the evolution of Latin to Portuguese. Therefore, the Latin ending ''-anus'' became ''-ão'' in Portuguese and its feminine ''-ana'' became ''-ãa'' and then ''-ã''. For comparison, notice the Spanish equivalents ''hermano-hermana'', ''cristiano-cristiana'', etc. It is important to note, however, that not all words with -ão come from Latin ''-anus'', meaning that their feminine derivation will be different (cf. ''leão-leoa'', for instance). There are also words whose disfixation was made by comparison (the case of ''charlatão'', which is a French loanword). There are also two words which have feminine derivations made through disfixation: ''mau'' (bad) and ''réu'' (defendant, as used in law), whose feminines are ''má'' and ''ré'' respectively.

Notes

Bibliography

*Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York, NY: Holt ritish edition 1935 London: Allen and Unwin. *George Aaron Broadwell. "Subtractive Morphology in Southern Muskogean", ''International Journal of American Linguistics,'' Vol. 59, No. 4, Muskogean Languages of the Southeast (Oct., 1993), pp. 416-429 *Heather Hardy and Timothy Montler, 1988. "Alabama H-infix and Disfixation", in William Shipley, ed., ''In Honor of Mary Haas: From the Haas Festival Conference on Native American Linguistics.'' Mouton de Gruyter. {{ISBN, 3-11-011165-9 *Stela Manova. Subtraction. Understanding Morphological Rules: Studies in Morphology Volume 1, 2011, pp 125-172 Affixes