Previous claims of suffix borrowing are investigated, particularly for -arius, -aria, -arium, -ianus, -atum, -atus, -ensis, -tor, -ator, -atio, -ura, -inus, and -ella. Some of these were borrowed, others werenot, and in a few cases Greek speakers had not borrowed a suffix but believed that they had done so. Not all Latinate suffixes found in Byzantine and modern Greek go back to antiquity.

Latin loanwords (and codeswitches) were normally written in the Greek alphabet and took Greek endings. Their spellings started out as approximate transcriptions of the Latin pronunciation (not transliterations of the Latin spelling), but over time the Greek spellings could either remain fixed as the Latin pronunciation changed or be updated to reflect such changes. Most loanwords joined a Greek declensional class that closely resembled their Latin declension, but some changed declension or gender when borrowed. Some borrowings (including all verbs) acquired Greek suffixes as part of the borrowing process. Some loanwords were created by univerbating Latin phrases, making Latin-Latin compounds, or making Greek-Latin compounds with the Latin element taken directly from Latin. Derivatives could also be formed from previously-borrowed loanwords using any of the usual Greek derivation and compoundingprocesses.

This chapter introduces nouns in Chinese and provides specific characteristics, including meaning and use. Noun affixes and their usages are also introduced. These are supplemented by discussions on the functions of nouns in a sentence.

Researchers on the vocabulary growth of native speakers of English, usually distinguish three main ways in which a learner’s vocabulary increases – through being taught or deliberately learning new words, through learning new words by meeting them in context, and through recognising and building new words by gaining control of the prefixes and suffixes and other word building devices. In this chapter we look at the extent to which word building affects vocabulary size, the psychological reality of the relationship between inflected and derived words and their stem form, and the teaching and learning options for gaining control of English word-building processes. There are two related but distinguishable reasons for focusing on word parts. First, prefixes and stems can work as mnemonic devices to help learners remember new words by relating them to the meanings of the known parts that they contain. Second, knowledge of prefixes and suffixes can help learners see the relationship between word family members where one or more of the members is already known. The chapter contains lists of useful word parts and describes a strategy for using word parts to help remember words.

The formation of new words ending in free(e.g. costfree, glutenfree, and troublefree) has become highly productive since the turn of the millennium. The new suffix free has found an ecological niche that is distinct from that of its rival -less: expressions of the form Xfree have developed a new sense quite distinct from those of the rival form Xless. We demonstrate our claim by comparing internet citations of existing words of the form Xless with equivalent new words of the form Xfree.

Expands the discussion of coordinate structures started in the previous chapter to another kind to syntactic ambiguity involving a prepositional phrase in the title of the Princeton University introductory linguistics course: Introduction to Language and Linguistics. On one interpretation, the left conjunct is only Language; while on the other, it is Introduction to Language. Each interpretation corresponds to a unique hierarchical structure. To determine why one interpretation is more appropriate than the other, it is necessary to consider the meaning of the words language and linguistics, including how they relate. This leads to a basic discussion of what a language is and what language is from the perspective of modern linguistics. This chapter wraps up the analysis of coordinate structures with a discussion of the use and misuse of coordinate structures in writing. It demonstrates how coordinate structures can be a source of ambiguity, redundancy, and vagueness—all hallmarks of poor writing.