LSEL 12: A Dictionary of English Affixes

A Dictionary of English Affixes

Their function and meaning

Gabriele Stein
University of Heidelberg

A student’s dictionary of English confronts the learner with more than 50 000 words – an intimidating prospect. The present book shows that a few hundred word elements occur over and over again (affixes for instance like -ation, bio-, de-, -ize, -less, un-). Learning these – their individual meaning and how they combine – is a gigantic step towards understanding the many thousands of complex words of which they form a part. So a lexical item like bidirectionally will easily be analysed and processed as a combination of bi-direct-ion-al-ly, ‘in two directions’. The inclusion and clear differentiation of affix synonyms and antonyms completes this new and systematic lexical treatment. A Dictionary of English Affixes thus constitutes a unique linguistic tool for vocabulary expansion as well as text comprehension and analysis.

But in addition, the book will have a quite distinct and separate application in automated language processing.

Gabriele Stein is professor of English language and linguistics at the university of Heidelberg. Her recent books include two studies on lexical description and vocabulary acquisition: Better Words and Developing Your English Vocabulary.

ISBN 9783895863875 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in English Linguistics 12. 190pp. 2007.