Suffix

In linguistics, a suffix (also sometimes termed postfix or ending) 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.

Particularly in the study of Semitic languages, suffixes are called afformatives, as they can alter the form of the words. In Indo-European studies, a distinction is made between suffixes and endings (see Proto-Indo-European root). Suffixes can carry grammatical information or lexical information. An inflectional suffix is sometimes called a desinence^[1] or a grammatical suffix.^[2] Inflection changes the grammatical properties of a word within its syntactic category

Derivational suffixes can be divided into two categories: class-changing derivation and class-maintaining derivation.

Description

A suffix (also sometimes termed postfix or ending) 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.

Particularly in the study of Semitic languages, a suffix is called an afformative, as they can alter the form of the words. In Indo-European studies, a distinction is made between suffixes and endings. A word-final segment that is somewhere between a free morpheme and a bound morpheme is known as a suffixoid^[3] or a semi-suffix^[4] (e.g., English -like or German -freundlich 'friendly'). 'Bold text

Productivity

Suffixes can carry grammatical information (inflectional suffixes) or lexical information (derivational/lexical suffixes). An inflectional suffix is sometimes called a desinence^[1] or a grammatical suffix.^[2]

Examples

Some examples in European languages:

Girls, where the suffix -s marks the plural.

He makes, where suffix -s marks the third person singular present tense.

It closed, where the suffix -ed marks the past tense.

De beaux jours, where the suffix -x marks the plural.

Elle est passablement jolie, where the suffix -e marks the feminine form of the adjective.

Inflectional suffixes

Inflection changes the grammatical properties of a word within its syntactic category. In the example:

I was hoping the cloth wouldn't fade, but it has faded quite a bit.

the suffix -ed inflects the root-word fade to indicate past tense.

Inflectional suffixes do not change the word class of the word after inflection.^[5] Inflectional suffixes in modern English include:

• -s third person singular present
• -ed past tense
• -t past tense
• -ing progressive/continuous
• -en past participle
• -s plural
• -en plural (irregular)
• -er comparative
• -est superlative
• -n't negative

Derivation

Derivational suffixes can be divided into two categories: class-changing derivation and class-maintaining derivation.^[6] In English, they include

• -ise/-ize (usually changes nouns into verbs)
• -fy (usually changes nouns into verbs)
• -ly (usually changes adjectives into adverbs)
• -ful (usually changes nouns into adjectives)
• -able/-ible (usually changes verbs into adjectives)
• -hood (usually class-maintaining, with the word class remaining a noun)
• -ess (usually class-maintaining, with the word class remaining a noun)
• -ness (usually changes adjectives into nouns)
• -less (usually changes nouns into adjectives)
• -ism (usually class-maintaining, with the word class remaining a noun)
• -ment (usually changes verbs into nouns)
• -ist (usually class-maintaining, with the word class remaining a noun)
• -al (usually changes nouns into adjectives)
• -ish (usually changes nouns into adjectives/ class-maintaining, with the word class remaining an adjective)
• -ity (usually changes adjectives into nouns)
• -tion (usually changes verbs into noun)
• -logy/-ology (usually class-maintaining, with the word class remaining a noun)

Examples

• -oid
• -like

Synthetic languages

Many synthetic languages—Czech, German, Finnish, Latin, Hungarian, Russian, Turkish, etc.—use a large number of endings.

References