Please help me ,pedants -homework on suffixes and prefixes...seems wrong to me!

[Pogleswood]

I'm posting in the hope that one of you will actually know the answer to this. DS has a homework sheet which starts by defining prefixes and suffixes,fine so far.Then he has a list of word to sort into boxes by beginning or ending - the implication being that these are the prefix or suffix.
One of these words is subtraction-suffix 'tion',I'm happy with that.But we also have words ending in 'ough'(enough),'ial'(special) and station(to go in the suffix 'tion' box).
At the other end we have the prefix 'a'and ,amongst other word,'again'.
I think my question is: surely prefixes and suffixes do not cover any group of letters which can end or begin a word?(so not 'ough'etc,and ,in english, what about the 'as'at the beginning of ascend?)
This is making me extremely irritated,but I'm prepared to admit I may be wrong!Please help!

Hmm. My initial thoughts are that suffixes originally carry either grammatical information, or form derivations of the same word. For example -coholic is now a suffix, even though the original suffix was -ic following alcohol. But enough is odd - will go a-hunting.

I think you're right. A definition of prefix I found says:
An affix, such as dis- in disbelieve, attached to the front of a word to produce a derivative word or an inflected form.

And for suffix:
a letter or letters added to the end of a word to form another word, such as -s and -ness in dogs and softness

Which to me implies that the word has to actually mean something without the prefix/suffix. In the examples you've given - ough, ial - the words are meaningless without them.

OK - Ask Oxford says "Affix

An affix is an addition to the base form or stem of a word which modifies its meaning or creates a new word, e.g. a prefix or suffix (such as super- or -ology). " My thinking with your list of oddities is that they reflect the original language from which the word derives - which may have been an affix in that language, iyswim.

Hmm. Will have to think (and consult OED)

Well, OED says for special "[ad. OF. especial (see ESPECIAL a.) or L. speci{amac}lis individual, particular, f. speci{emac}s SPECIES. Cf. It. speciale, speziale; MDu. speciael (Du. speciaal), G. spec-, spezial, -iell.] "

So the suffix has been there for a long time, in many languages, and is only really a change to the Latin (those amac emac words are how the computer has represented a and e with diacritics, sorry). In English, then, I'd say that the whole of special is the stem, and that say "ness" or "ity" would be suffixes. And if they're wanting your DS to go way back into Indo-European, this is maybe not so much homework as a PhD topic...

Will have a look at the other words.

Oh my - enough is a barrel of laughs. It's dropped its original g (yogh) initial, and so in a sense has even lost a suffix. I think you're right, but can't work out where the teacher has got this from - I don't want to shout "Nonsense" unless I'm sure we're not missing something. Except I do really...

prefix, I mean!

OK - enough - the -ough would have to be added to the stem en, which would mean that "en" would have to have some semantic meaning on its own. which it doesn't.

The homework is nonsense

Well, I thought prefixes and suffixes are letters or groups of letters that you can add to the beginning or end of a word to make another, but if you take the suffix or prefix off, you are still left with a word with meaning. So, yes, fine if you add the suffix 'ion' to the root word 'subtract' you get subtraction. And according to this site www.betterendings.org/homeschool/Words/Root%20Words.htm#ROOT, both 'stat' and 'spec' appear to be 'root' words, so your suffixes are 'ion' and 'ial' respectively.

But I don't get 'enough', surely there's not a single letter you can take off that leaves you with a root word?

I agree with you Pogle. But I think the work sheet isn't really about suffixes etc, it's just about teaching children to recognise and spell common lexical blocks, they have just mis-named the exercise.

Thanks for all the replies - at least now I feel I'm not alone!Biccy,I agree 'stat'is a root word,from latin,and I suppose 'ascend'is a latin prefix on a latin root - it just seems to be a bit excessive,and confusing, for Yr 4.And I have a literal minded child who will be confused by the fact that some of these words follow rules he can understand and some don't!Oh,well, I will discuss latin words and the origin of english with him...(we already discuss phonics etc)
yes,theyoungvisiter,it is a spelling patterns homework,isn't it.If they'd called it that I wouldn't mind at all,it's just bringing the whole affix question in that made me want to scream!
I'm tempted to print habbibu's interesting comments and discuss with his teacher,except that she is lovely and doesn't deserve it!
Thanks- I like it here in Pedants Corner!

Oh dear,missing apostrophe.How embarrassing.I meant Pedants' Corner...

I don't think you need a whole word for it to be a root. In this example the root is en-, meaning complete. You can then add suffixes to it to subtley changes it meaning giving you, for example, enough and entire.

You could argue that en- is actually a prefix, e.g. encapsulate.

Spend ages checking spelling of subtley then fail to check grammar.