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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.^[1]

Some examples from English:

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.

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

Suffixes used in English frequently have Greek, French or Latin origins.

[edit] 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
• -ed past tense
• -ing progressive/continuous
• -en past participle
• -s plural
• -en plural (irregular)
• -er comparative
• -est superlative
• -n't negative^[2]

[edit] 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:

• -ize/-ise
• -fy
• -ly
• -able/-ible
• -ful
• -ness
• -less
• -ism
• -ment
• -ist
• -al
• -ish

[edit] See also

• Affix
• Inflection
• Derivation (linguistics)
• Lexeme
• Marker (linguistics)
• Morpheme
• Pejorative suffix
• Prefix morpheme
• Wiktionary:Suffix
• Wiktionary:Category:English suffixes

[edit] References