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The nippy postie plays a nifty game of footie

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2005

Paul Rastall
Paul Rastall
Affiliation:
Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Portsmouth
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Abstract

The various functions of a simple but complicated suffix. Present-day English has relatively few productive suffixes, but /-ij/, spelt both -y and -ie, as in bouncy and birdie, is one of the most striking. According to Quirk et al. in their Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, these affixes ‘can be used fairly freely’ and they are ‘freely used with largely concrete nouns to form gradable adjectives’ (1985:1553).

Type
Original Article
Information
English Today , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , July 2005 , pp. 24 - 26
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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