Circumfixes and other discontinuous morphemes
A CIRCUMFIX is a discontinuous affix, with elements added both before and after the stem, as illustrated from Malay in (2) and Basari in (6). Nouns in Basari carry markers that indicate their noun class and number (singular vs. plural). Some of these markers are circumfixes:
A circumfix is often described as a combination of a prefix plus a suffix. But if both the prefix and suffix elements exist in the language as independent affixes, and if the meaning of the combined form is predictable from the independent meanings of the prefix and suffix, then the combination would not be regarded as a circumfix. The two parts of a circumfix must function as a single unit, both semantically and morphologically.
For example, the Malay circumfix illustrated in (2) consists of two parts, ke-and-an. The second of these elements, -an, does occur on its own as a suffix; it is relatively productive and has a variety of uses. The prefix ke-, however, is not productive and occurs only in a small number of frozen forms. Moreover, the meaning of the nominalizer ke- . . .-an cannot be derived from the meanings of its two component parts on their own. That is why the combination is considered to be a single affix, i.e. a circumfix.
Circumfixes are a fairly common type of discontinuous morpheme, but there are other types as well. A frequently cited example is the complex pattern of morphology in Semitic languages, in which the root consists only of consonants, while the vowels and syllable patterns are determined by derivational and inflectional processes.
