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
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.