miðbundinn

Miðbundinn is a linguistic term used to describe a bound morpheme that occurs inside a word, rather than at its beginning or end. The name literally means "middle-bound," reflecting its position within the stem or base to which it attaches. In typological work, miðbundinn is often used as a synonym or a descriptive label for infixes—morphemes inserted within a word rather than affixes placed at edges.

Etymology and sense of the term derive from Icelandic, combining mið meaning "middle" with bundinn meaning "bound" or "attached." The form is mainly encountered in academic discussions of morphology and infixation and is not part of everyday Icelandic usage outside specialized terminology.

Function and scope: Miðbundinn describes a morphosyntactic process in which a morpheme is inserted inside a word to modify meaning or grammatical category. This contrasts with prefixes (before the stem) and suffixes (after the stem), as well as circumfixes that attach at both ends. In linguistic typology, infixes can encode tense, aspect, mood, voice, or noun classes, among other categories. A well-documented example occurs in Tagalog, where the infix -um- is inserted after the initial consonant of a base form to create certain verbal forms, such as sulat (to write) becoming sumulat (to write, a completed or focused form).

Notes: While the term miðbundinn is used in linguistic literature to discuss infixation, it is not a widely common label in everyday Icelandic and is more often encountered in cross-linguistic descriptions of morphological systems.

See also: bound morpheme, infix, affix, circumfix, morphology, word formation.