Fact-checked by Grok 2 weeks ago

Suffix

A suffix is a bound morpheme that attaches to the end of a word stem or root to modify its meaning, grammatical function, or syntactic category, serving as a key element in morphological processes across languages.^[1]^[2] In English and many other languages, suffixes enable the formation of complex words by adding layers of lexical or grammatical information, often following a specific order where derivational suffixes precede inflectional ones.^[2]^[3] Suffixes are broadly classified into two types: derivational and inflectional. Derivational suffixes create new words by changing the part of speech or adding specific semantic content, such as the suffix -er, which typically converts a verb into a noun denoting the agent performing the action (e.g., "teach" becomes "teacher").^[2]^[1] These suffixes are not required by syntax, can be unpredictable in form or meaning, and may appear as either prefixes or suffixes in different languages.^[1] In contrast, inflectional suffixes adjust a word's form to express grammatical features like tense, number, or case without altering its core lexical meaning or category, such as -s for plural nouns (e.g., "dog" becomes "dogs") or -ed for past tense verbs (e.g., "walk" becomes "walked").^[3]^[2] Inflectional suffixes are obligatory in certain syntactic contexts, highly regular, and in English, exclusively realized as suffixes attached outermost in word structure.^[1] The study of suffixes falls within morphology, the branch of linguistics concerned with word formation and internal structure, highlighting their role in productivity and language evolution.^[3] For instance, suffixes like -ation derive abstract nouns from verbs (e.g., "inform" to "information"), expanding vocabulary while maintaining systematic patterns.^[1] This affixation process distinguishes suffixes from prefixes, which precede the root, and underscores their contribution to grammatical flexibility and semantic nuance in both spoken and written language.^[3]

Definition and Fundamentals

Linguistic Definition

In linguistics, a suffix is defined as a bound morpheme that attaches to the end of a base word, root, or stem to modify its meaning, grammatical category, or function.^[4]^[5] Suffixes are inherently dependent, meaning they cannot occur independently as free-standing words and must always combine with another morpheme to convey meaning.^[6]^[7] This post-positional attachment distinguishes suffixes from other types of affixes, such as prefixes, which precede the base.^[8] A primary characteristic of suffixes is their role in morphological processes, where they facilitate word formation by either altering the semantic content or adjusting grammatical properties without fundamentally disrupting the base's core identity.^[4]^[5] Unlike free morphemes, which function autonomously (e.g., as independent lexical items), suffixes are obligatorily bound and contribute to the structural complexity of words in various language families.^[6] They are particularly prominent in synthetic languages, such as agglutinative and fusional types, where multiple suffixes can stack to build intricate forms, though isolating languages employ them more sparingly in favor of analytic constructions.^[9] Suffixes play a central part in morphology by enabling both inflectional and derivational mechanisms, with the former adjusting grammatical features and the latter generating novel lexical items from existing bases.^[4]^[8] This attachment follows specific positional rules, ensuring suffixes integrate seamlessly with the host morpheme to produce cohesive linguistic units.^[7]

Comparison to Other Affixes

Suffixes differ from other affixes primarily in their position relative to the word stem, attaching to the end of a base word to modify its meaning or grammatical function.^[5] In contrast, prefixes are added to the beginning of a word, as in the English example unhappy where un- negates the adjective happy, often altering scope in ways that affect the entire word from the outset.^[10] This positional difference influences how affixes interact with word order and stress patterns, with suffixes typically following the stem's phonological structure without disrupting its initial segments.^[10] Infixes, another type of affix, are inserted within the body of a word rather than at its edges, leading to internal restructuring that can break up the original stem more disruptively than the external addition of suffixes.^[11] For instance, in Tagalog, the infix -in- is placed after the initial consonant of roots like takbo ('run') to form tinakbo ('was run'), marking patient focus.^[12] Infixes are rarer than suffixes or prefixes globally and particularly uncommon in European languages, where edge-bound affixes predominate, whereas they occur more frequently in Austronesian languages like Tagalog.^[11] Typologically, languages vary in their preference for suffixes versus prefixes, reflecting broader morphological strategies. Agglutinative languages such as Turkish rely heavily on suffixes to stack grammatical information sequentially onto roots, with all derivational and inflectional morphemes appearing as suffixes due to the language's suffixing nature.^[13] Conversely, many Bantu languages exhibit a prefix-dominant structure, where noun class markers and verbal agreements are realized as prefixes on stems, as seen in the preverbal pronominal object prefixes common across the family.^[14] This head-initial versus head-final tendency in affixation aligns with syntactic patterns in these language families.^[15] Functionally, suffixes, prefixes, and infixes all serve to modify word meaning or grammar, but their typical roles diverge: suffixes frequently encode inflectional categories like tense or number (e.g., -ed for past tense in English), integrating closely with the stem's morphology.^[10] Prefixes, by comparison, often convey derivational changes such as negation (un-) or locative relations (re- in rewrite), with a broader scope that can apply to compounds or phrases.^[10] Infixes tend to disrupt the stem for expressive or focus-shifting purposes, overlapping with suffixes in grammatical marking but differing in their internal placement.^[12] These distinctions highlight how affix position correlates with language-specific productivity and semantic nuance.^[11]

Classification of Suffixes

Inflectional Suffixes

Inflectional suffixes are bound morphemes attached to the end of a word to express grammatical features such as tense, number, gender, case, person, aspect, mood, or possession, without changing the word's lexical category or fundamentally altering its core semantic content.^[16] These suffixes serve the purpose of adding essential grammatical information to existing words, enabling the expression of syntactic relationships within a sentence, and they are inherently non-productive in the sense that they do not generate new lexical entries but rather modify forms within established paradigms.^[17] For instance, unlike derivational suffixes that can shift a word's meaning or category to create novel vocabulary, inflectional ones are obligatory in many contexts to conform to grammatical rules.^[18] Inflectional suffixes primarily affect major word classes, including verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. In verbs, they often mark tense and aspect, such as the English suffix -ed indicating past tense (e.g., walk-ed). For nouns, common suffixes denote number or case, like -s for plurality in English (e.g., cat-s). Adjectives and adverbs may use suffixes for degree, such as -er for the comparative form (e.g., tall-er). These modifications ensure words fit into the sentence's grammatical structure while preserving their original part of speech.^[19] The realization of inflectional suffixes varies across language types, particularly in fusional and agglutinative languages. In fusional languages, such as Latin, a single suffix can blend multiple grammatical categories; for example, the ending -is on second-declension nouns simultaneously encodes genitive case and singular number (e.g., serv-is "of the servant").^[18] Conversely, agglutinative languages like Turkish employ suffixes that more transparently stack to represent individual categories, with -lar/-ler distinctly marking plural number on nouns (e.g., ev-ler "houses") without fusing additional meanings.^[20] This distinction highlights how inflectional morphology adapts to a language's typological profile, though boundaries between types can blur in practice. A key limitation of inflectional suffixes is their inability to create new words; they are strictly bound to the morphological paradigms of existing lexical roots and must adhere to language-specific rules of agreement and distribution, preventing arbitrary attachment.^[17] This paradigm-bound nature ensures systematicity but restricts flexibility compared to freer affixation processes.^[16]

Derivational Suffixes

Derivational suffixes are morphemes appended to a base word to form a new word by altering its semantic content or grammatical category, thereby expanding the lexicon through processes of word formation.^[4] Unlike inflectional suffixes, which modify words for grammatical purposes without changing their part of speech, derivational suffixes enable category shifts, such as converting an adjective like happy into the noun happiness via the suffix -ness.^[4] This process contributes to lexical innovation by creating derived forms that convey related but distinct meanings, often adding nuances like abstraction or agency.^[21] The productivity of derivational suffixes varies, with some being highly active in contemporary language use to generate novel words, while others are fossilized and restricted to established forms. For instance, the suffix -able is highly productive, forming adjectives from verbs to indicate capability or possibility, as in readable from read or doable from do.^[21] In contrast, suffixes like -hood are less productive, typically limited to specific bases such as brother yielding brotherhood, but not extending productively to others like friendhood.^[4] Productivity is often measured by the suffix's ability to combine with new or infrequent bases, reflecting its role in ongoing morphological creativity.^[21] Common types of derivational suffixes include nominalizers, which derive nouns from other categories; verbalizers, which form verbs; and adjectival suffixes, which create adjectives. Nominalizers such as -ness convert adjectives to abstract nouns (e.g., kind to kindness), -tion or -ation derive nouns from verbs indicating action or result (e.g., create to creation), and -ment forms nouns from verbs denoting concrete outcomes (e.g., judge to judgment).^[4]^[21] Verbalizers like -ize transform adjectives or nouns into verbs, often implying causation or process (e.g., modern to modernize or terror to terrorize), while -ify serves a similar function (e.g., simple to simplify).^[4] Adjectival suffixes include -ous, which derives adjectives from nouns to denote possession of a quality (e.g., danger to dangerous), -ful from nouns indicating abundance (e.g., hope to hopeful), and -al from nouns to form relational adjectives (e.g., nation to national).^[4]^[21] Derivational suffixes in English are subject to constraints on attachment order and blocking effects that limit possible combinations. Typically, derivational suffixes attach to the base before any inflectional suffixes, ensuring that category changes precede grammatical modifications, as seen in forms like modernization (where -ize derives the verb, followed by -ation, and then potentially -s for plural).^[4] A key constraint is the "monosuffix" rule for Germanic-origin suffixes, which generally prohibits more than one such suffix per word, resulting in ungrammatical forms like dressingless (attempting -ing + -less).^[22] Blocking occurs when an existing derived form prevents further productive attachment; for example, unhappy blocks the hypothetical unhapply, as the prefix un- combines directly with the simplex base happy, rendering intermediate derivations non-viable.^[22] These restrictions maintain morphological well-formedness and avoid redundancy in the lexicon.^[22]

Examples Across Languages

English Examples

English employs a limited set of inflectional suffixes to indicate grammatical categories such as number, possession, and tense without altering the word's core meaning or part of speech. For nouns, the plural suffix -s (or -es after sibilants) is added to form plurals, as in "cat" becoming "cats" or "box" becoming "boxes."^[23] The possessive suffix -'s marks ownership, exemplified by "dog" to "dog's."^[23] For verbs, the present tense third-person singular suffix -s appears in forms like "walk" to "walks," while -ing denotes the progressive aspect in "walking" and -ed indicates past tense or participle in "walked."^[4] These eight inflectional suffixes in English are highly productive and obligatory in specific syntactic contexts.^[24] Derivational suffixes in English create new words by changing the part of speech or adding nuanced meanings, often drawing from Germanic roots or borrowed elements. Noun-forming suffixes include -ness, which abstracts qualities from adjectives, as in "kind" to "kindness."^[25] Adjective-forming suffixes like -ly convert nouns or adjectives to adverbs or adjectives, such as "quick" to "quickly."^[26] Verb-forming suffixes include -en, which denotes causation or result, turning adjectives or nouns into verbs like "short" to "shorten."^[27] Other common derivational suffixes are -er for agents (e.g., "teach" to "teacher") and -ize for verbalization (e.g., "civil" to "civilize").^[28] Many English suffixes trace their origins to Old English Germanic forms, with significant influences from Norman French after 1066 and Latin via ecclesiastical and scholarly borrowings. For instance, the suffix -ment, used in nouns denoting action or result (e.g., "develop" to "development"), entered English from Old French, ultimately deriving from Latin -mentum.^[29] Inflectional endings like the plural -s evolved from Old English -as for masculine nouns.^[30] English allows suffix stacking, where multiple derivational suffixes attach sequentially to a base, often building complex words like "nation" + "-al" + "-ize" + "-ation" yielding "nationalization," which denotes the process of making something national.^[31] However, irregularities persist, particularly in plurals retained from Old English, such as "ox" to "oxen" using the archaic -en ending instead of -s, reflecting historical umlaut and stem changes.^[32]

Examples in Other Languages

In Indo-European languages, suffixes often derive agent nouns or abstract concepts. In French, the suffix -eur forms agentive nouns from verb stems, as in chanteur ("singer") derived from chanter ("to sing").^[33] Similarly, in German, the suffix -heit creates abstract nouns denoting states or qualities, exemplified by Freiheit ("freedom") from the adjective frei ("free").^[34] In Russian, the aspectual suffix -yva- (or variants like -iva-) marks secondary imperfective verbs, often conveying iterative or distributive actions, as in davyvat' ("to keep giving") from the perfective dat' ("to give").^[35] Non-Indo-European languages exhibit diverse suffix use, particularly in marking grammatical relations or possession. In the Australian Aboriginal language Barngarla, the instrumental case suffix -ngu indicates means or instrument, attaching to nouns to specify "with" or "by means of," as in forms derived from base nouns like mara ("hand") becoming mara-ngu ("with the hand").^[36] Turkish, an agglutinative Turkic language, builds complex words through chained suffixes; for instance, ev-ler-im-de means "in my houses," where -ler marks plural, -im indicates first-person possession, and -de denotes locative case.^[37] Rare cases in Austronesian languages blur traditional suffix boundaries, with infix-like elements and reduplication functioning similarly to suffixes for derivation. In Malay, reduplication acts as a suffixal process to pluralize or intensify nouns, such as anak-anak ("children") from anak ("child"), where the partial repetition conveys plurality.^[38] Cross-linguistically, suffixes predominate in inflectional morphology according to Matthew Dryer's typology in the World Atlas of Language Structures, with 406 of 969 sampled languages showing strong suffixing preference (suffixing index exceeding 80% of total affixes), far outnumbering the 58 predominantly prefixing languages; examples include West Greenlandic and Central Yup'ik, which rely almost exclusively on suffixes for categories like case and tense.^[39]

Phonological and Morphological Impacts

Pronunciation Alterations

In English, the addition of suffixes can induce significant pronunciation alterations, primarily through changes in stress patterns that trigger vowel shifts and reductions. For instance, the noun photograph, pronounced /ˈfoʊ.təˌɡræf/ with primary stress on the first syllable, undergoes clipping to photo (/ˈfoʊ.toʊ/), a truncated form retaining the initial stress. However, when the suffix -graphic is added to form photographic (/ˌfoʊ.təˈɡræf.ɪk/), the stress shifts to the antepenultimate syllable, causing the vowel in the second syllable to reduce from /oʊ/ to a schwa (/ə/), while the vowel in the -graph- portion retains /æ/ under the new primary stress, altering the overall rhythm of the word. This suffix-induced stress shift exemplifies how derivational suffixes like -ic or -graphic often reposition primary stress, leading to secondary stress on preceding syllables and consequent vowel weakening in unstressed positions.^[40] Vowel reduction is a common outcome of such stress changes, particularly with suffixes like -ic, which frequently cause stem vowels in unstressed positions to shorten or centralize to /ɪ/ or schwa, as in economic (/ˌi.kəˈnɑm.ɪk/), where the suffix imposes a new stress pattern and reduces vowels in the base economy (/ɪˈkɑn.ə.mi/). This process aligns with English's tendency to reduce vowels in unstressed syllables to schwa or /ɪ/, enhancing articulatory ease. Phonetic rules further amplify these effects through assimilation and epenthesis. For example, the suffix -ness in happiness (/ˈhæp.i.nəs/) triggers anticipatory nasalization of the preceding vowel /ɪ/, which assimilates to the following nasal /n/, resulting in a nasalized [ɪ̃] due to velum lowering in preparation for the nasal consonant. Epenthesis, the insertion of sounds to facilitate pronunciation, can also occur to avoid phonotactically complex sequences in suffixed words.^[41] Historical sound changes, such as the Great Vowel Shift (GVS) from the 15th to 18th centuries, have also shaped suffix-induced alterations in modern English. During the GVS, long vowels in stressed syllables raised or diphthongized, but suffixed forms often preserved earlier, reduced variants in the stem due to stress avoidance. A classic case is divine (/dɪˈvaɪn/), where the stem vowel reflects a shifted Middle English /iː/ to /aɪ/, contrasted with divinity (/dɪˈvɪn.ə.ti/), in which the unstressed stem vowel reduces to /ɪ/, retaining a pre-shift quality and illustrating how suffixes can "freeze" vowels against GVS progression.^[42]^[43] Not all suffixes provoke such changes; unstressed, neutral suffixes like -ly typically do not alter the base's stress or vowel quality, as in quickly (/ˈkwɪk.li/), where the primary stress remains on the root quick (/kwɪk/) and the suffix attaches as a weak syllable without inducing shifts or reductions. This exception highlights the distinction between stress-shifting derivational suffixes and non-shifting ones, preserving the base's phonetic integrity.^[44]^[45]

Morphological Productivity

Morphological productivity refers to the degree to which a suffix can be systematically applied to new bases to form novel words, reflecting the creative potential of language users in expanding the lexicon.^[46] In English, for instance, the suffix -ness exhibits high productivity by freely deriving abstract nouns from adjectives, as seen in established forms like happiness and recent coinages like woke-ness. This capacity distinguishes productive suffixes from unproductive ones, where membership in the resulting word class remains fixed or diminishes over time.^[46] Several factors influence the productivity of suffixes, including phonological compatibility and semantic restrictions. Phonological constraints limit attachment based on sound patterns, such as prosodic requirements where a suffix like English -en (as in weaken) prefers bases ending in certain vowels or avoids clashes in stress placement.^[47] Semantic restrictions further constrain usage; for example, the derivational suffix -ize in English is more productive with Latinate or technical roots (e.g., computerize, prioritize), but less so with native Germanic bases due to meaning incompatibilities like verbalizing concrete nouns. These factors interact to determine how readily a suffix generates acceptable neologisms without violating linguistic well-formedness.^[47] Cross-linguistically, morphological productivity varies by language type, with agglutinative languages demonstrating higher suffix productivity than isolating ones. In agglutinative languages like Finnish, case suffixes such as -ssa (inessive, meaning 'in') are highly productive, attaching to a wide range of noun bases to form new inflected words in chains, enabling flexible expression of location or possession (e.g., talossa 'in the house' extended to novel compounds).^[48] This contrasts with isolating languages like Mandarin, where suffixation is minimal and productivity low, as most words rely on compounding rather than affixation, with limited derivational suffixes like -hua (nominalizer) showing restricted application to specific semantic classes.^[49] Such differences highlight how typological features shape the ease of suffix-driven word formation.^[50] Productivity is measured through corpus-based metrics and observations of neologism formation to quantify a suffix's potential for expansion. Key metrics include type frequency (the number of unique words formed with the suffix) and the proportion of hapax legomena (words occurring only once, indicating recent or potential innovations), which together estimate actual and possible productivity.^[51] For example, the ratio of new types to tokens in large corpora reveals trends, as with English -ness showing increasing hapax forms in contemporary texts. Neologism analysis further assesses productivity by tracking novel formations, such as Google-ize or email-ize, which demonstrate a suffix's viability for unforeseen bases.^[52] These methods provide empirical evidence of a suffix's role in lexical growth, prioritizing observable patterns over theoretical limits.^[53]

Historical and Theoretical Aspects

Historical Evolution

The historical evolution of suffixes traces back to reconstructed forms in Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the ancestor of many modern languages, where nominal suffixes such as *-ti- were used to form abstract nouns or derive related forms, evolving into Latin third-declension endings such as -ī in ablative singular for i-stem nouns.^[54] These PIE suffixes, often combining with stems to indicate case, number, or derivation, underwent sound changes and analogical shifts across daughter languages, as evidenced in early Indo-European branches like Anatolian and Italic.^[55] In English, suffixes originated primarily from Germanic roots during the Old English period (c. 450–1150 CE), with examples like -dom (from Proto-Germanic *-dōmaz, denoting state or domain, as in cyningdōm "kingdom") reflecting inherited inflectional and derivational patterns from North Sea Germanic dialects.^[56] The Norman Conquest of 1066 introduced French-derived suffixes, such as -age (from Old French -age, indicating collective nouns or actions, e.g., mari-age "marriage"), which blended with native forms and expanded derivational possibilities amid multilingual contact.^[56] This period marked a pivotal shift, with phonological erosion and language mixing accelerating the simplification of inherited Germanic inflections. Globally, suffixes have undergone typological changes, including loss in analytic languages like English, where Old English's rich inflectional endings (e.g., dative plural -um in stānum "stones") eroded due to vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and contact with Old Norse and Norman French, resulting in reliance on word order and prepositions by Middle English.^[57] Conversely, synthetic languages have seen gains through creolization, where new contact varieties develop suffixes; for instance, Haitian Creole innovated agentive -è (e.g., odyans-è "joker" from odyans "joke") and verbal -é/-té (e.g., bétiz-é "to do betting" from bétiz "bet"), drawing from French substrates to build productivity.^[58]^[59] Borrowing has further shaped suffixes, with Renaissance scholars (c. 1500–1700) importing Latin and Greek elements into English, such as -ology (from Greek -logía "study of," e.g., biology coined in the 19th century but rooted in Renaissance neologisms like theology).^[60] In modern times, English has adopted neoclassical suffixes via cultural events, exemplified by -gate (from Watergate scandal in 1972, denoting political scandals, e.g., Irangate), which proliferated in the late 20th century as a productive derivational morpheme.^[61]

Theoretical Perspectives

In generative morphology, suffixes are conceptualized as operations within the lexicon that apply to base forms to derive new words, drawing from Chomsky's foundational framework of word-formation rules that integrate morphology into the broader generative grammar.^[62] This approach, advanced by scholars like Aronoff, posits that morphological rules function as rewrite rules in the lexicon, distinguishing between productive and non-productive operations while emphasizing the Lexicalist Hypothesis, which separates word formation from syntactic transformations.^[63] Key theoretical tenets include level-ordering of affixes, where suffixes are stratified by phonological and semantic constraints, and blocking mechanisms that prevent overgeneration, ensuring that morphology operates as a constrained computational system rather than a free assembly process.^[62] Optimality Theory (OT) applies to suffixes through a constraint-based framework where selection and realization emerge from the interaction of ranked, violable constraints at the morphology-phonology interface.^[64] In this model, faithfulness constraints preserve the identity of the base form (e.g., input-output correspondence for features in roots and affixes), while markedness constraints penalize complex or phonologically marked structures in pronunciation, such as voiced codas or specific place features.^[65] Suffix selection thus results from optimal candidate evaluation, where higher-ranked faithfulness may yield to markedness in cases of allomorphy, as seen in Realization OT's use of language-specific realization constraints to govern morphological exponence.^[64] This parallel evaluation resolves conflicts without serial rule application, providing a unified account of morphological variation across languages.^[65] Typological theories highlight universal tendencies in suffix usage linked to word order, as articulated in Greenberg's implicational universals.^[66] Universal 28 states that languages with dominant SOV order overwhelmingly prefer suffixes over prefixes for inflection, with statistical analyses of large samples showing 91% exclusive suffixing in SOV languages compared to only 5% in VO languages.^[66] This preference correlates with postpositional structures (Universal 20), reflecting a head-final pattern where affixes align with object patterning, as evidenced in cross-linguistic surveys of over 600 languages.^[66] Such universals underscore suffixes' role in agglutinative tendencies within SOV-dominant typologies, informing broader debates on areal and genetic influences on morphological structure.^[66] A central debate in theoretical morphology concerns whether suffixes are stored as holistic lexical entries or computed via rule-based decomposition, with psycholinguistic models offering contrasting perspectives.^[67] Dual-route models propose parallel pathways: a direct storage route for frequent or irregular forms and a computational route for rule-governed assembly of regular suffixes, balancing efficiency in lexical access.^[67] This contrasts with single-route interactive models, where morphological processing emerges from distributed activation without discrete storage, and whole-word storage views that treat complex forms as unanalyzed units.^[67] The tension highlights ongoing questions about representational economy, with evidence suggesting hybrid mechanisms that adapt to frequency and regularity in real-time processing.^[67]

References

[1]
Linguistics 001 -- Lecture 6 -- Morphology
For example, the English suffix -ing has several uses that are arguably on the borderline between inflection and derivation (along with other uses that are not) ...
[2]
[PDF] 5 Morphology and Word Formation
Derivational morphemes are added to forms to create separate words: {-er} is a derivational suffix whose ad- dition turns a verb into a noun, usually meaning ...
[3]
[PDF] 1. Morphology
Suffix. An affix that goes after a root. Examples -est, -er, -s (quick-est ... So instead of these meaning- based definitions of parts of speech, in.
[4]
Morphology, Part 2 - Penn Linguistics
MORPHOLOGY II. More on various categories of morphemes. Prefixes and suffixes are by definition always bound, but what about the stems?
[5]
Chapter 12.2: Types of Morphemes
Bound morphemes are often affixes. This is a general term that comprises prefixes, which are added to the beginnings of words, like re– and un-, and suffixes, ...
[6]
Roots, Bases and Affixes – ENGL6360 Descriptive Linguistics for ...
A bound morpheme, by contrast, can only occur in words if it's accompanied by one or more other morphemes. Because affixes by definition need to attach to a ...<|control11|><|separator|>
[7]
[PDF] Morphology: The Words of Language
• Piro (Peru) has a suffix, -kaka, that means “cause to”, thus cokoruhakaka means “cause to harpoon”. Page 12. Bound and Free Morphemes. • Infixes: morphemes ...
[8]
[PDF] LNGT0101 Introduction to Linguistics Morphology
Oct 10, 2011 · A suffix is a bound morpheme that follows the base, e.g., “-ing” in ... creat-ive), while inflectional affixes change the grammatical function of ...
[9]
5.3 Morphology beyond affixes – ENG 200: Introduction to Linguistics
Languages that are more synthetic fall into different types. The main division is between agglutinative and fusional languages. In highly agglutinative ...
[10]
Fall 1998 -- Morphology I - Penn Linguistics
Affixes that precede the stem are of course prefixes, while those that follow the stem are suffixes. Thus in rearranged, re- is a prefix, arrange is a stem, ...Missing: comparison | Show results with:comparison
[11]
[PDF] infixation and derivation A chapter on infixa - Juliette Blevins
Aug 29, 2012 · Infixes are less common than prefixes and suffixes, but given their common occurrence in Austronesian (Blust 2009), a family with approximately ...Missing: comparison | Show results with:comparison
[12]
[PDF] MEG Evidence from Reduplication, Infixation, and Circumfixation
Feb 16, 2022 · Infixation in Tagalog Tagalog utilizes several infixes, including -in- which marks patient focus. Examples of this infix are shown in (4). ...
[13]
Turkish | Department of Slavic, German, and Eurasian Studies
Turkish is an agglutinative language and all of the derivational and inflectional morphemes are suffixes, meaning that new particles are always added to the ...
[14]
[PDF] The Bantu verbal prefixes and S-Aux-O-V order in Benue-Congo
Therefore, preverbal pronominal object prefixes and postverbal nominal objects in Bantu are not surprising when looking at the wider Benue-Congo context. [33] ...
[15]
[PDF] Suffix ordering in Bantu: a morpho centric approachl - Bruce Hayes
Bantu prefixes (e.g. Meeussen 1967, Stump 1997). That the resulting 'template' is at least in part arbitrary is seen by comparing the slightly different ...
[16]
Inflectional Morphology - Oxford Academic - Oxford University Press
Inflectional morphology marks relations such as person, number, case, gender, possession, tense, aspect, and mood, serving as an essential grammatical glue.
[17]
6.3. Inflection and derivation – The Linguistic Analysis of Word and ...
Inflectional morphemes encode the grammatical properties of a word. Some common examples of inflectional morphemes include plural markers on nouns, as shown in ...<|control11|><|separator|>
[18]
(PDF) Chapter 4: Morphology - ResearchGate
fusional language: type of language (e.g. Latin) which is rich in inflectional morphemes. frequently encoding several meanings in one form. grammatical ...
[19]
[PDF] The Morphological Analysis of Inflectional Plural Noun Suffixes ...
Inflectional suffixes mark properties such as singular and plural numbers of nouns, verb tenses, and adjective degrees. Learning affixes can help the language ...
[20]
The Production of Nominal and Verbal Inflection in an Agglutinative ...
In languages with fusional morphology, such as Italian, Russian, Arabic, or English, there are more affixes, each of which may represent several functions ...
[21]
Chapter 12.3: Word Formation by Derivation
On this page we will discuss how words can be formed by the adding of derivational morphemes, that is, prefixes and suffixes.Missing: definition | Show results with:definition
[22]
None
Summary of each segment:
[23]
Section 4: Inflectional Morphemes - Analyzing Grammar in Context
noun plural {-s} – “He has three desserts.” · noun possessive {-s} – “This is Betty's dessert.” · verb present tense {-s} – “Bill usually eats dessert.” · verb ...
[24]
[PDF] Affixes Homework 1
Here is a list of the 8 inflectional suffixes of English. Inflectional Suffix: Example: Grammatical function: -ed exploded past tense or past participle.
[25]
Some Derivational Affixes of English - Rice University
English affixes include adjective suffixes like '-ish', verb suffixes like '-en', noun suffixes like '-ion', and negative prefixes like 'un-'.
[26]
[PDF] What Do Suffixes Mean
offers valuable insights into language mechanics, cognitive processing, and communication effectiveness across cultures and technologies. suffix definition ...
[27]
Section 4: Derivational Morphemes - Analyzing Grammar in Context
Suffix. Meaning. Example ; -ate. become. eradicate ; -en. become. enlighten ; -ify, -fy. make or become. terrify ; -ize, -ise. become. civilize ...
[28]
6.4 Derivational Morphology – Essential of Linguistics
The derivation is the process of creating a new word. The new, derived word is related to the original word, but it has some new component of meaning to it.Missing: definition | Show results with:definition
[29]
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary?f%5Bpos%5D%5B%5D=suffix&search_field=etyma
[30]
Old English Inflection Survivors
For example, the common plural ending for nouns (lasers, malaises, plates) derive from the Old English masculine ending -as, as in cyningas "kings.
[31]
Stacking derivational affixes | NYU MorphLab
Sep 15, 2020 · Examples would include: brok-en-ness, say–able-ness, close–d-ness, etc. However, nouns do enter into productive derivations, e.g. with –ish and ...
[32]
Lesson 5 | Harvard's Geoffrey Chaucer Website
The word keen is the only one of these plurals that does not survive in Modern English. In Modern English we have a few old plurals with "-en" ("oxen," " ...
[33]
[PDF] Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics
Feb 15, 2007 · Because derivational suffixes are more irregular and constrained, and the form-to-meaning is not always predictable, they are applied less ...
[34]
[PDF] Diachronic Semantic and Morphological Analysis of Abstract Noun ...
Differing suffixation has led to German Freiheit (= "free-hood") and. English ... This suffix implies "formation of verbal derivatives, originally abstract nouns ...
[35]
[PDF] D. Altshuler's “A Typology of Partitive Aspectual Operators” (Natural ...
The Russian suffix –yva is called (secondary) imperfective. When applied to accomplishment verbs (as in (2)) it does not entail event culmination. However, if a ...
[36]
https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/33049/577015.pdf
[37]
Turkish / Lingvopedia - lingvo.info
Grammar. Turkish, unlike most European languages, is an agglutinating language. This means that grammatical suffixes are added to an unchanging word stem.
[38]
An Account of Austronesian - BYU Department of Linguistics
Feb 28, 2000 · Reduplication is used to indicate plural number and other changes of meaning. Thus, in Malay, rumah means house, and rumah-rumah means houses.
[39]
Chapter Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology
This map shows the overall extent to which languages use prefixes versus suffixes in their inflectional morphology.Missing: typology | Show results with:typology
[40]
'Photograph', 'photographer', and 'photographic' - Jakub Marian
Notice that not only does the stress change, but with a stress change (in general) usually comes a change in vowel type, and these three words are a great ...Missing: suffix- induced
[41]
3.2: Assimilation and Dissimilation
### Summary of Assimilation and Nasalization Examples in English Related to Suffixes or Word Endings
[42]
Definition and Examples of Epenthesis - ThoughtCo
Apr 29, 2025 · Epenthesis is the insertion of an extra sound into a word. Adjective: epenthetic. Verb: epenthesize. Also known as intrusion or anaptyxis.
[43]
[PDF] HYPOTHESES OF NATURAL PHONOLOGY
Compare the “long/short” pairings of the. English vowel shift rule in divine/divinity, serene/serenity, sane/sanity, etc. No simple feature combination can ...
[44]
[PDF] Handouts for Advanced Phonology: A Course Packet Steve Parker ...
For example, consider the rule of Vowel Shift in English which derives [divayn] from underlying divīn (compare divinity). This rule must be allowed to apply ...
[45]
[PDF] EFL Learner's Awareness of Stress-Moving vs. Neutral Suffixes - ERIC
Dec 1, 2011 · Stress-moving suffixes: They are the suffixes which change the pattern of stress in a word when added, such as –ic. For example, in the word ...Missing: alteration | Show results with:alteration
[46]
Stress-neutral suffixes - Taalportaal - the digital language portal
... unstressed syllables at the right edge, as illustrated by ... Together with their base words, non-cohering suffixes form compounds of the type strong-weak.
[47]
[PDF] morphological productivity R. Harald Baayen (Baayen, 43) 1
Morphological productivity refers to categories with growing membership, unlike unproductive ones with fixed or declining membership. Large categories are more ...
[48]
[PDF] MORPHOLOGICAL PRODUCTIVITY. A REVIEW OF THE PROBLEM
Phonological constraints are connected not only with the qualities of individual segments, but also with prosodic properties. For example, the suffix -en only ...
[49]
https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-879
[50]
Chinese Morphology | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics
Jul 16, 2025 · Morphological phenomena such as productivity, blocking, and allomorph selection are all observed in Chinese affixal derivation.
[51]
Full article: Cross-Linguistic Differences in Morphological Processing
Oct 10, 2024 · The present study examined cross-linguistic differences in orthographic transparency and morphological complexity during complex word recognition in English ...
[52]
[PDF] Measuring Morphological Productivity - CORE
Abstract. The present article addresses the phenomenon of productivity in derivational morphology from the point of view of its quantification.
[53]
(PDF) Corpus linguistics in morphology: Morphological productivity
The potential productivity measure is highly sensitive to markedness relations. tivity, but marked STER has the greater potential productivity.
[54]
[PDF] Morphological Productivity in the Lexicon - ACL Anthology
Languages like Finnish, Hungarian, and Turkish have relatively rich morphology which governs grammatical functions often delegated to syntax in languages ...Missing: high | Show results with:high
[55]
Proto-Indo-European - Oxford Academic - Oxford University Press
The Anatolian languages exhibit an ablative suffix reconstructable as *-ti, thematic *-o-ti; it is both sg. ... By contrast, *-tó- became the suffix of perfect ...<|separator|>
[56]
https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-10
[57]
History of the English Language
### Summary of Historical Development of Suffixes in English
[58]
26 - Typological change: investigating loss of inflection in early English
These two changes have both been argued to have been triggered by the loss of inflection. English has undergone a typological change from a language in which ...
[59]
[PDF] The emergence of productive morphology in creole languages
odyans-è. 'joker' odyans. 'joke' langaj-è. 'chatterbox' langaj. 'language' tafya-t-è. 'alcoholic' tafya. 'alcoholic beverage' wanga-t-è. 'magician' wanga. ' ...
[60]
[PDF] Creole Lexicon* - groupe europen de recherches en langues créoles
Nevertheless, the possibility of creating verbs by the addition of a suffix –é or –té is perhaps on the increase in contemporary creole: • bétizé ('to do ...
[61]
§31. The Legacy of Latin: III. Modern English – Greek and Latin ...
We will be studying patterns of resemblance between relatively complex Latin words and their corresponding English derivatives.
[62]
[PDF] David Crystal tells the story of English in 100 words
Oct 14, 2011 · And names can become words - first names (valentine), surnames (Alzheimer's), place names. (Watergate) and product names (escalator). English is ...
[63]
Classical Generative Morphology
### Summary of Classical Generative Morphology
[64]
[PDF] Word Formation in Generative Grammar
It is a rule of allomorphy, which spells out the form of particular morphemes in specific morphological environments. We see, then, in SPE, the beginnings of a ...
[65]
Optimality Theory and Morphology - Xu - 2011 - Compass Hub - Wiley
Jul 5, 2011 · This article introduces Realization Optimality Theory, a novel and promising morphological framework which adopts the formalism of ...
[66]
[PDF] The role of morphology in Optimality Theory
Languages differ by constraint rankings. There are two basic types of constraints in conventional OT: markedness and faithfulness. Markedness is a relative ...
[67]
[PDF] The Greenbergian Word Order Correlations
THE GREENBERGIAN WORD ORDER CORRELATIONS affixes are more commonly prefixes in OV languages, though this preference is not statistically significant, since ...
[68]
Psycholinguistic Approaches to Morphology: Theoretical Issues
### Summary of Debates on Morphological Forms in Psycholinguistics