In linguistic

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 morphology

Morphology (linguistics)

In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...

, a transfix is a discontinuous affix

Affix

An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...

, which occurs at more than one position in a word. The prototypical example comes from the Semitic languages

Semitic languages

The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...

, where nearly all word derivation and inflection involves the interdigitation of a discontinuous root

Nonconcatenative morphology

Nonconcatenative morphology, also called discontinuous morphology and introflection, is a form of word formation in which the root is modified and which does not involve stringing morphemes together...

 with a discontinuous affix. For example, derivations and inflections of the Maltese

Maltese language

Maltese is the national language of Malta, and a co-official language of the country alongside English,while also serving as an official language of the European Union, the only Semitic language so distinguished. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic...

 discontinuous triliteral root |k-t-b| (to write) are shown below:

Transfixes on Maltese k-t-b

transfix	word	gloss
-i-e-	kiteb	"he wrote"
-i--u	kitbu	"they wrote"
mi--u-	miktub	"written"
--ie-	ktieb	"book"
-o--a	kotba	"books"

See also

• Nonconcatenative morphology
  Nonconcatenative morphology
  Nonconcatenative morphology, also called discontinuous morphology and introflection, is a form of word formation in which the root is modified and which does not involve stringing morphemes together...
  
  
• Prefix
  Prefix
  A prefix is an affix which is placed before the root of a word. Particularly in the study of languages,a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the words to which it is affixed.Examples of prefixes:...
  
  
• Suffix
  Suffix
  In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
  
  
• Infix
  Infix
  An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem . It contrasts with adfix, a rare term for an affix attached to the end of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix.-Indonesian:...
  
  
• Circumfix
  Circumfix
  A circumfix is an affix, a morpheme that is placed around another morpheme. Circumfixes contrast with prefixes, attached to the beginnings of words; suffixes, that are attached at the end; and infixes, inserted in the middle. See also epenthesis...
  
  
• Interfix
  Interfix
  Interfix is a term in linguistics and more specifically, morphology . It describes an affix which is placed in between two other morphemes and does not have a semantic meaning...
  
  
• Simulfix
  Simulfix
  In linguistics, a simulfix is a type of affix that changes one or more existing phonemes in order to modify the meaning of a morpheme.Examples of simulfixes in English are generally considered irregularities, all of which left over from pluralization rules that existed before the Great Vowel Shift...
  
  
• Suprafix
  Suprafix
  In linguistics, a suprafix is a type of affix where a suprasegmental change modifies an existing morpheme's meaning. In many languages, they are used to differentiate between otherwise identical lexemes, but in some they are used derivationally or inflectionally.An example in English is the...
  
  
• Duplifix