PREFIXATION AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH OTHER WORD-FORMATION PROCESSES: A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH, RUSSIAN AND UZBEK

Abstract

This article examines the position of prefixation within the system of wordformation and the boundaries that separate it from suffixation, compounding, conversion, parasynthesis and shortening-based processes. The study is contrastive. English supplies the primary data; Russian and Uzbek supply typological control at the two poles of a scale, since Russian prefixation is highly productive while Uzbek has no inherited prefixes at all. Four diagnostics are applied at every boundary: linear position, category-changing capacity, phonological integration and productivity. The analysis shows that prefixation is not a discrete category but the stable end point of a diachronic cline that starts with free lexical items and passes through an intermediate prefixoid stage. The Uzbek evidence is decisive on this point: every element described as a prefix in Uzbek grammars (be-, no-, ser-, ba-, ham-) entered the language through contact with Persian, and later through Russian, and only afterwards began to attach to native stems. A second finding concerns division of labour. Where a language possesses both a prefixal and a suffixal exponent of one function, the two do not remain synonymous; Uzbek bepul and pulsiz, both formed on pul 'money', have specialised in opposite directions. The article concludes that a gradient model with weighted criteria describes the data better than a binary affix versus non-affix opposition, and it notes the consequences of this conclusion for dictionary practice and for teaching English word-formation to Uzbek-speaking learners