[*] 233.
The words in Latin formed immediately from the root by means of
Primary Suffixes, are few. For—
- Inherited words so formed were mostly further developed
by the addition of other suffixes, as we might make an adjective
lone-ly-some-ish. meaning nothing
more than lone, lonely,
or lonesome.
- By such accumulation of suffixes, new compound suffixes
were formed which crowded out even the old types of derivation.
Thus,—
A word like
mēns,
mentis
, by the suffix
ōn-
(
nom.
-ō), gave
mentiō
, and this, being divided into
men +
tiō, gave rise to a new type of abstract
nouns in
-tiō: as,
lēgā-tiō,
embassy.
A word like
audītor, by the suffix
io- (
nom.
-ius), gave rise to adjectives like
audītōr-ius, of which the
neuter (
audītōrium
) is used to denote the
place
where the action of the verb is performed. Hence
tōrio- (
nom.
-tōrium), N.,
becomes a regular noun-suffix (§ 250.
a).
So in English such a word as suffocation gives a suffix
-
ation, and with this is made
starvation, though there is no such word as
starvate.
