Suffix

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In linguistics, a suffix (also sometimes termed 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. In Indo-European studies, a distinction is made between suffixes and endings (see Proto-Indo-European root). A word-final segment that is somewhere between a free morpheme and a bound morpheme is known as a suffixoid[1] or a semi-suffix[2] (e.g. English -like or German -freundlich 'friendly').

Suffixes can carry grammatical information (inflectional suffixes) or lexical information (derivational suffixes). An inflectional suffix is sometimes called a desinence.[3]

Some examples in European languages:

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.
De beaux jours, where the suffix -x marks the plural.
Elle est passablement jolie, where the suffix -e marks the feminine form of the adjective.

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

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

Inflection changes the grammatical properties of a word within its syntactic category. In the example:

I was hoping the cloth wouldn't fade, but it has faded quite a bit.

the suffix -ed inflects the root-word fade to indicate past tense.

Inflectional suffixes do not change the word class of the word after inflection.[4] Inflectional suffixes in modern English include:

Derivational suffixes can be divided into two categories, namely class-changing derivation and class-maintaining derivation.[5] Derivational suffixes in modern English include:

  • -ise/-ize (usually changes nouns into verbs)
  • -fy (usually changes nouns into verbs)
  • -ly (usually changes adjectives into adverbs)
  • -ful (usually changes nouns into adjectives)
  • -able/-ible (usually changes verbs into adjectives)
  • -hood (usually class-maintaining, with the word class remaining a noun)
  • -ess (usually class-maintaining, with the word class remaining a noun)
  • -ness (usually changes adjectives into nouns)
  • -less (usually changes nouns into adjectives)
  • -ism (usually class-maintaining, with the word class remaining a noun)
  • -ment (usually changes verbs into nouns)
  • -ist (usually class-maintaining, with the word class remaining a noun)
  • -al (usually changes nouns into adjectives)
  • -ish (usually changes nouns into adjectives/ class-maintaining, with the word class remaining an adjective)
  • -tion (usually changes verbs into noun)
  • -logy/-ology (usually class-maintaining, with the word class remaining a noun)

References

  1. Kremer, Marion. 1997. Person reference and gender in translation: a contrastive investigation of English and German. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, p. 69, note 11.
  2. Marchand, Hans. 1969. The categories and types of present-day English word-formation: A synchronic-diachronic approach. Munich: Beck, pp. 356 ff.
  3. The Free Online Dictionary
  4. Jackson and Amvela(2000): Word, Meaning and Vocabulary- An Introduction to Modern English Lexicology. London, Athenaeum Press, p.83
  5. Jackson and Amvela(2000): Word, Meaning and Vocabulary- An Introduction to Modern English Lexicology. London, Athenaeum Press, p.88