6.3 Homework

6.3.1 Task

Do a short online search on negative affixes in English. Negative affixes are prefixes or suffixes that most commonly negate its base. Here are some examples:

  1. political/apolitical
  2. legal/illegal
  3. homeless, tasteless, endless

Gather examples. For this exercise, there is no need to go overboard and attempt an exhaustive list. But also don’t gather fewer than 8. The aim is to create a little classification system. Try to group affixes according to their similarities. Pick the dimensions yourself.

Here are some that could inform your classification: phonology (allomorphy), the word class(es) of the base, etymology (consult the OED!), meaning and use differences …. Also remember that there are often hierarchical structures in language. You can make sub- and sub-sub-categories etc. if you feel like it’s appropriate.

Finally, find an example sentence for each one in a corpus of your choice.

Bonus: provide information on the frequency of a few select affixes.

In a nutshell:

  1. Gather negative affixes in English.
  2. Group them together into categories.
  3. Provide 1 corpus example each of their use.
  4. Expert mode: gather frequency lists of some of them.

Send me your results as PDF. For the classification, an unordered list will do, but also consider making a tree-diagram.

6.3.2 Tip of the day

Use spreadsheets! You will inevitably have to at some point enter some numbers into something like LibreCalc, Microsoft Excel, or Google Sheets. We will benefit from spreadsheets throughout this module, but this is not where their utility stops. Being able to do some quick formulae and vlookups in Excel are common skills needed outside Uni.

Especially for teachers, spreadsheets are an essential skill: for grades, averages, homework, quick stats on exams, lesson planning, Sitzplan (oh memories :D), what have you. If you know your way around Excel, you can speed up your tax returns (Steuererklärung) a lot, too. Many teachers end up working as freelancers. For a freelancer (and anyone else really), gathering your receipts, bills and pay slips neatly arranged and categorized as data in a spreadsheet can save you endless amounts of time and even money.

This is not where it stops though. Timetables and To-Do-Lists are also neat to do in a spreadsheet if you need more fine-grained control over the layout than the clunky online calendar you are probably using. Here are some things I have used spreadsheets for in the past: notes, training log, travel plans, shopping lists. You could even use them for recipes or counting calories if that’s what you’re into.

I myself have since moved past Excel/Calc and use only plain text files. If I need to do some maths or stats, I use .csv or .tsv files in combination with statistical software such as R. That might seem to be the ultra-nerd level, but isn’t so difficult to learn at all, and can save you additional time and frustration. Maintaining a CV for example is a breeze if you have everything as plain data and deal with the formatting in an automated fashion, and only when you need to.