THE ENGLISH SUFFIX -ЕR: DERIVATIVES, COMPOUNDS AND ТHEIR АCQUISITION IN SERBIAN EFL LEARNERS
Keywords:
affixes, derivatives, compounds, English, SerbianAbstract
The suffix -er is one of the most productive affixes in present-day English, appearing in derivatives, compounds and syntactic phrases, that is, both morphologically simple and complex words. It encompasses a variety of meanings, such as agent, instrument, clothing, activity, to name but a few. Accordingly, -er formations differ in transparency/vagueness of meaning so the aim of this paper was not only to illustrate some of the characteristics of structure and meaning of words containing the suffix -er, but also to explore their intelligibility in advanced Serbian EFL learners and shed light on the meanings which they commonly attribute to -er formations. Given that the suffix -er also exists in Serbian, mainly denoting agents, and that L1 affects the acquisition of L2, one could expect of the learners to achieve the best results precisely on these test items, but that proved not to be the case as the most prevalent answers were those related to the instrumental meaning of the suffix -er, not the agential one, and the highest scores were also gained for items denoting instruments not agents.
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