| المستخلص: |
Affixation plays an important role in the formation of words and the enlargement of the vocabulary. The present study investigates affixation as a morphological process of forming words on the basis of affixes in English and Arabic. This study aims at describing, analyzing and comparing affixation in English and Arabic by defining it, showing different ways of classifying affixes and illustrating their types. It also aims at showing the similarities and differences between the two languages in terms of affixation. There are some hypotheses for this study that: affixation as a linguistic phenomenon exists in English and Arabic. The two compared languages are inflected languages but Arabic uses inflection more than English. Nouns and verbs are governed by their types and morphological rules through the process of affixation in Arabic but not in English. Both English and Arabic have words formed by the addition of more than one affix. The order of the combination of derivational and inflectional affixes is not the same in both languages. The study consists of four chapters and an appendix. Chapter One is an introduction that involves the problem, aims, hypotheses, procedures, limits of the study, the significance of the study and definitions of related terms. Chapters Two and Three deal with affixation in English and Arabic respectively. Chapter Four includes a comparison between affixation in English and Arabic, and it arrives at the main conclusions (the similarities and differences), recommendations and suggestions for further studies. The main conclusions arrived at in the study are: affixation is found in both languages and has a considerable role in forming words with grammatical or lexical information. Position and function of affixes are great factors in classifying their types in both languages. However, English is concerned with the types of affixes and their details through the process of affixation whereas Arabic is interested in the idea of? al-wazn and does not pay much attention to the types of affixes and their description. Arab morphologists do not deal with the types of affixes as a separate topic. Both languages have a positional and functional classification of affixes. The former are prefixes, suffixes and infixes. The latter are derivational and inflectional affixes. Though affixation, generally, refers to the process of adding affixes to the roots of the words in both languages, it also involves other means in some cases. In Arabic, it can be done by a deletion with a change in the diacritics or replacement of affixes. In English, there is a zero affix or replacement. All these means occur with the process of inflection and exactly in the inflection of what is called the irregular plural in English and the broken plural in Arabic. English does not have the property of diacritics in the process of affixation while in Arabic, diacritics occupy a considerable role in the affixation process. There are many words in English and Arabic which are formed by multiple affixation. English deals with multiple affixation as a separate topic, while Arabic does not deal with it as a separate and clear topic and does not mention any details concerning it, though most Arabic words are formed by more than one affix. There are similarities and differences between English and Arabic in terms of affixation, but the domain of differences is larger than that of the similarities.
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