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 afformative:, which apparently means "the something that gets attached in afformation". Some sources give me the impression that afformative: vs. 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 undefined: vs. undefined: as semantically-bleached-former-lexeme vs. not. Your AGr. Babel is decent, right? Check out ; 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)