When it comes to infixing, I define two types. They are Serialized Infixing and Internalized Infixing. Let us explore more about these two.
A Small Introduction
The topic of these types of infixing comes when we have more than one affix to be infixed. In the posts before, we have not seen this phenomena because we were looking at one feature, adjectivals, gender and plurals. But, if we need to combine any of these, we need a plan to follow.
Serialized Infixing
Given a word with an affix infixed into it already, Serialized infixing places the second affix abutting the first.
Though this seems like the easy way, this is not the general case of infixing. This kind of infixing is primarily done when the second affix is a grammatical case (Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Ablative etc).
Consider this example. We have iE <boat> and we attribute an adjectival property to it, ‘speed’ this becomes i-hOn-E <fast boat>
i -hOn -E => fast boat Boat+ speed +Boat
ek which is ‘accusative case’ in crang is generally, serialized to the already existing i-hOn-E <fast boat>.
i -hOn -ek- -E => fast boat (accusative) Boat+ speed Acc +Boat
Internalized Infixing
Although, serialized infixing is used with cases and morphs which are very frequently used, the much more productive and general method of infixing is the internalization of infixes.
So, except instances like case affixation, everywhere else, affixes are internalized. What that entails is, given a word already infixed with an affix, the second affix is placed in such a way that it is infixed to the original affix thus internalized by the original(first) affix.
Consider this example where from before we already have i-hOn-E <fast boat>, to attribute the male gender to it, we bring in the gender affix which is the word for adult human male ti.
i -hO -ti -n -E => fast boat (accusative) Boat+ speed+ male +speed +Boat i -hO -tin -(a)n -E => fast boat (accusative) Boat+ speed+ female +speed +Boat * a is added phonologically.