THE DEVELOPMENT OF -FREE AS A SUFFIX-LIKE ELEMENT IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH: COMPARISON AND CONTRAST WITH -LESS

VOL. 60, BOOK 1, PART А, 2022, pp. 355 – 366 Full text (En)

Author: Maria Kolarova

Affiliation: St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia

Abstract
Today, in present-day English, we speak of button-free phones, guilt-free burgers, stress-free living, hangover-free mornings or risk-free investments. Despite the apparent synonymity between -free and -less, there are pairs of formations like child-free and childless or parent-free and parentless which are
characterised by a meaningful difference between the two members. The pattern ‘noun + -free’ is increasingly productive but the status of -free as an affixoid is still debatable. The aim of this research is to shed further light on the behaviour of -free in present-day English by comparing and contrasting this element with the suffix -less.

Key words: suffixation, compounding, synonymous formatives, English