A Comparative Morphological Approach to Class Maintaining Derivational Affixes in English and Kurdish

Abstract

This paper is a comparative morphological study of some class maintaining derivational affixes that do not alter the grammatical categories lexemes in Standard English and Central Kurdish from the standpoints of Generative Morphology. For the comparative analysis of the two languages, some of the derivational affixes that form new meanings from the existing lexemes and retain the grammatical categories of the newly derived lexemes have been classified. The main aim of the study is to identify the points of similarity and difference of class maintaining derivational affixes in both languages. The findings indicate that in the addition of nominal affixes, English and Kurdish are similar in that ‘concrete nouns’ could remain concrete nouns, as well as could convert into abstract nouns by adding certain affixes. In English, a prefix can also be added to a concrete noun to derive a new concrete noun, whereas in Kurdish, only a prefix can be added to an abstract noun to form a concrete noun. In the addition of adjectival affixes, both languages are similar in that adjectives can derive new adjectives by attaching some prefixes and some suffixes to the existing lexemes. In English, the cardinal numbers remain cardinals when the suffixes –teen and –ty are attached to them, whereas in Kurdish the only rare case can be seen when the suffix –a is attached to the two cardinal numerals hawt/ haft ‘seven’ and hašt ‘eight’. The suffixes –th in English and -(h)am and -(h)amin in Kurdish can be attached to the cardinal numbers to form the ordinal numbers.