An analysis on English affixation in a Political article text written by Morton Abramowitz published on Newsweek Magazine

ABSTRACT

A language emerges based on agreement of society. Every society speaks different languages, they have certain morphological characteristics or features to form and create new words by using affixation processes. The focus of this research is on morphology, which studied about affixation processes of the political article text to find out the morphological types of English affixation that is written by Morton Abramowitz published on Newsweek magazine. This research is analyzed to answer the research problem, how is English affixation used in a political article text written by Morton Abramowitz on Newsweek magazine.

The researcher used descriptive qualitative research. The data of this research were in the forms of words or written text that is the English political article text. The political article text was taken from Newsweek magazine, which was written by Morton Abramowitz. In data collection, the researcher began by finding an English political article text in Newsweek magazine. The data were only from one article text, entitled “The Problem is Pakistan.” In the data analysis, the researcher began by reading and understanding the text, classified the words based on affixation processes namely inflectional and derivational affixes by developing table.

The researcher found three types of English affixation used in political article text of Morton Abramowitz; that are prefixes, suffixes and a circumfix. English affixations, which are found in political article text of Morton Abramowitz are inflectional and derivational affixes, and in this political article text of Morton Abramowitz, dominantly used inflectional affixes. It is used 66.5% which contain suffixes; whereas 33.5% of derivational affixes consist of prefixes, suffixes, and circumfix. Moreover, the researcher found types of internal change that are irregular verbs. According to Humboldt’s typological language theory, inflectional and derivational affixes, which are used by Morton Abramowitz in his political article text are the characteristic of synthetic language, but here the characteristic of analytic language is dominantly used, namely free morphemes lexical and functional word.

The researcher suggested for further researchers who are interested in a morphological study to conduct comparative study on morphological types of languages. Hopefully it will enlarge our knowledge about morphological types of languages and how the words are formed in some languages.