In
linguistics, a
suffix (also sometimes called a
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 to which they are fixed. In
Indo-European studies, a distinction is made between suffixes and endings (see
Proto-Indo-European root).
Suffixes can carry grammatical information (
inflectional suffixes), or lexical information (
derivational suffixes). An inflectional suffix is sometimes called a
desinence.
Some examples from English:
Girls, where the suffix
-s marks the
plural.
It closed, where the suffix
-ed marks the
past tense.
Many
synthetic languages—
Czech,
German,
Finnish,
Latin,
Hungarian,
Russian, etc.—use a large number of endings.
Suffixes used in English frequently have
Greek,
French or
Latin origins.
Inflectional suffixes
Inflection changes grammatical properties of a word within its
syntactic category.
In the example:
The weather forecaster said it would clear today, but it hasn't cleared at all.
the suffix
-ed inflects the
root-word
clear to indicate past tense.
Some inflectional suffixes in present day English:
- -s third person singular present
Derivational suffixes
In the example:
"The weather forecaster said it would be clear today, but I can't see clearly at all"
the suffix
-ly modifies the root-word
clear from an
adjective into an
adverb.
Derivation can also form a semantically distinct word within the same syntactic category.
In this example:
"The weather forecaster said it would be a clear day today, but I think it's more like clearish!"
the suffix
-ish modifies the root-word
clear, changing its meaning to "clear, but not very clear".
Some derivational suffixes in present day English:
See also
