In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry grammatical information (inflectional endings) or lexical information (derivational/lexical suffixes).[1] Inflection changes the grammatical properties of a word within its syntactic category. Derivational suffixes fall into two categories: class-changing derivation and class-maintaining derivation.
A word-final segment that is somewhere between a free morpheme and a bound morpheme is known as a suffixoid[2] or a semi-suffix[3] (e.g., English -like or German -freundlich "friendly").
wárraidya "emu" — where the lack of suffixes is because its grammatical number, singular, is "unmarked"
wárraidyalbili "two emus" — dual
wárraidyarri "emus" — plural
wárraidyailyarranha "a lot of emus", "heaps of emus" — superplural[4]: 227–228
Inflectional suffixes
Inflection changes the grammatical properties of a word within its syntactic category. In several languages, this is realized by an inflectional suffix, also known as desinence. In the example:
I was hoping the cloth wouldn't fade, but it has faded quite a bit.
the suffix -d inflects the root-word fade to indicate past participle.
Inflectional suffixes do not change the word class of the word after the inflection.[5] Inflectional suffixes in Modern English include:
Verbs
-s third person singular simple present indicative active
-um (usually ) museum; stadium; auditorium; aquarium; planetarium; medium
-wise From wīse ("manner, way, condition, direction")
Altered Pronunciation in English
A suffix will often change the stress or accent pattern of a multi-syllable word, altering the phoneme pattern of the root word even if the root's morphology does not change.[7] An example is the difference between "photograph" and "photography". In this case, the "-y" ending governs the stress pattern, causing the primary stress to shift from the first syllable ("pho-") to the antepenultimate ("-to-"). The unaccented syllables have their ordinary vowel sound changed to a schwa. This can be a particular problem for dyslexics, affecting their phonemic awareness,[8] as well as a hurdle for non-native speakers.
^Kremer, Marion. 1997. Person reference and gender in translation: a contrastive investigation of English and German. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, p. 69, note 11.
^Marchand, Hans. 1969. The categories and types of present-day English word-formation: A synchronic-diachronic approach. Munich: Beck, pp. 356 ff.
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-stan Chanu (name suffix) Filename extension Germanic weak verb List of types of killing Land (suffix) Comitative case Diminutive Esperanto vocabulary List of family name affixes Thematic vowel Ordinal indicator Japanese honorifics Comparison (grammar) Esperanto words with the infix -um- Productivity (linguistics) List of divided U.S. Routes Arabic nouns and adjectives Modern Hebrew grammar Prefix code Registered association (Finland) List of suffixed Arkansas state highways Patronymic Possessive Digital object identifier Suffixed routes of Saskatchewan Highway 16 Intensive word form List of suffixed routes of Ontario Highway 8 List of surgical procedures Declension Suffixed routes of British Columbia Highway 97 Null morpheme Evidentiality Oma (suffix) List of feeding behaviours HP LaserJet Top-level domain Proxy server List of English suffixes Index notation Comparative (disambiguation) Fully qualified domain name Pseudo-top-level domain List of cognitive biases List of Internet top-level domains Metric prefix Regnal number Country code top-level domain Lil Wayne