Confixes are affixes consisting of at least one prefix and one suffix on either side of a root word, creating a new meaning. They are used extensively in Indonesian and Malay, as well as in German, Dutch, Arabic, Japanese, and other languages. Confixes are discontinuous morphemes that must be present on both sides of the stem for meaning to form. They are versatile and used to form verbs from nouns, adjectives from verbs, superlative forms in Czech and Hungarian, honorific confixes in Japanese, and feminine markers in Berber.
In the field of linguistics, the term “confix” refers to a specific type of affix. Confixes consist of at least one prefix and one suffix, which are placed on either side of a root word. When a confix is added to a root, a new meaning is created that is separate from the meaning of the root word itself. The term “circumfix” is often used interchangeably with “confix”. Confixes are used extensively in Indonesian and Malay, and appear to varying degrees in many other languages, such as Arabic, German, and Japanese, to name a few.
“Confix” comes from Latin roots; con means “with” and fix means “attacks” in this context. Unlike a prefix, which is attached to the front of a root, or a suffix, which is attached to the end, a confix is split and attached to both ends. The fact that the separate parts of confix appear on different sides of the stem makes confix morphemes discontinuous. Morphemes are the smallest units of a word that carry meaning. Although confixes are discontinuous, both halves of them must be present for meaning to form.
Learners of German often learn to use confixes without realizing they are doing it. The perfect and passive participles of German regular verbs are formed using the confix ge-____-t. For example, to form the passive participle of the verb fragen, meaning “to ask,” one would attach ge-____-t to the stem, frag, to get gefragt. Dutch uses confixes similar to German.
Older forms of the English language also employed confixes in the formation of present participles, but this usage is no longer the norm. An early English confix was “a-____-ing”. Examples include lines like, “They went hunting” or the lyrics to the song “Times are changing,” a line made famous by singer-songwriter Bob Dylan in the 1960s.
Indonesian often uses confixes to form verbs from nouns. For example, one meaning of the word hantu is “ghost”. When the meng-____-i confix is added, the new word menghantui can be a verb meaning “to frighten or haunt.” Similarly, confixes can be used to form adjectives from verbs, as with lihat and kelihatan, which can mean “see” and “visible” respectively.
As might be evident from these examples, confixes are extremely versatile. One can find examples of them being used to form nouns from verbs in Hebrew. Czech and Hungarian use confixes in certain situations to obtain superlative forms. Japanese employs some honorific confixes, and Berber often uses them to mark the feminine. Confixes are also used in negation in many dialects of Arabic and other languages, such as Guaraní.
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