Talk:afformation

The cites page is full of peculiar quotes - this seems to be one of the more common nonce words (though I can't work out how to define any of the cites given). As all the cites seem to mean different things, I don't think they meet CFI. There is a heading for the use of afformation in relation to Hebrew grammar, but Google books was unhelpful for finding actual quotes and I wasn't sure where to turn next. Conrad.Irwin 20:08, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I ran into similar problems. It clearly has something to do with Hebrew grammar, but I could not, for the life of me, figure out what exactly that was. Perhaps I'll drop a note on Ruakh's page. He might know. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 20:14, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

This isn't a term I was familiar with, but going by the examples I can find, it seems (1) that this term is not restricted to Semitic linguistics, only perhaps a bit more common there, and (2) that it means roughly "a regular pattern of word formation by attaching a certain something to an existing word". It seems to be a lot less common than (deprecated template usage) afformative, which apparently means "the something that gets attached in afformation". Some sources give me the impression that (deprecated template usage) afformative vs. (deprecated template usage) affix is incorporated-into-resulting-root vs. not — which would explain why the term is more prominent in Semitic linguistics, where there's typically a clearer notion of "root" than in other languages due to the whole root+pattern thing. However, not all sources support this impression; for example, several talk of the afformatives used to form duals and feminines and whatnot, and seem to take (deprecated template usage) afformative vs. (deprecated template usage) affix as semantically-bleached-former-lexeme vs. not. Your AGr. Babel is decent, right? Check out google books:afformative greek; you'll be able to make out more from it than I can. And it might be worth asking Ivan Štambuk; he seems to be very knowledgeable when it comes to Semitic linguistics (certainly much more knowledgeable than I). —Ruakh_TALK 23:30, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes it's a type of affix - specifically suffix to a root or basis. --Ivan Štambuk 00:02, 2 May 2008 (UTC)