Inlinguistics, anaffix is amorpheme that is attached to aword stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories arederivational andinflectional affixes. Derivational affixes, such asun-,-ation,anti-,pre- etc., introduce a semantic change to the word they are attached to. Inflectional affixes introduce a syntactic change, such as singular into plural (e.g.-(e)s), or present simpletense into present continuous or past tense by adding-ing,-ed to an English word. All of them arebound morphemes by definition;prefixes andsuffixes may beseparable affixes.
Prefix andsuffix may be subsumed under the termadfix, in contrast toinfix.[5]
When marking text forinterlinear glossing, as shown in the third column in the chart above, simple affixes such as prefixes and suffixes are separated from the stem with hyphens. Affixes which disrupt the stem, or which themselves are discontinuous, are often marked off with angle brackets. Reduplication is often shown with a tilde. Affixes which cannot be segmented are marked with a back slash.
Semantically, lexical or semantic affixes often convey more general or abstract meanings than their corresponding free nouns. For instance, an affix meaning “water” in a broad sense may lack a direct noun equivalent, since available nouns typically refer to more specific types such as “saltwater” or “whitewater.” (while in other cases the lexical suffixes have becomegrammaticalized to various degrees.) Although they behave asincorporated noun roots/stems within verbs and as elements ofnouns, they never occur as freestanding nouns. Lexical affixes are relatively rare and are used inWakashan,Salishan, andChimakuan languages — the presence of these is anareal feature of the Pacific Northwest ofNorth America - where they show little to no resemblance to free nouns with similar meanings. Compare the lexical suffixes and free nouns ofNorthern Straits Saanich written in the Saanich orthography and inAmericanist notation:
Lexical Suffix
Noun
-o,
-aʔ
"person"
, ełtálṉew̱
ʔəɬtelŋəxʷ
"person"
-nát
-net
"day"
sȼićel
skʷičəl
"day"
-sen
-sən
"foot, lower leg"
sxene,
sx̣ənəʔ
"foot, lower leg"
-áwtw̱
-ew̕txʷ
"building, house, campsite"
, á,leṉ
ʔeʔləŋ
"house"
Some linguists have claimed that these lexical suffixes provide only adverbial or adjectival notions to verbs. Other linguists disagree, arguing that they may additionally be syntacticarguments just as free nouns are and, thus, equating lexical suffixes with incorporated nouns. Gerdts (2003) gives examples of lexical suffixes in theHalkomelem language (theword order here isverb–subject–object):
VERB
SUBJ
OBJ
(1)
niʔ
šak’ʷ-ət-əs
łə słeniʔ
łə qeq
"the woman washedthe baby"
VERB+LEX.SUFF
SUBJ
(2)
niʔ
šk’ʷ-əyəł
łə słeniʔ
"the womanbaby-washed"
In sentence (1), the verb "wash" isšak’ʷətəs wherešak’ʷ- is the root and-ət and-əs are inflectional suffixes. The subject "the woman" isłə słeniʔ and the object"the baby" isłə qeq. In this sentence, "the baby" is a free noun. (Theniʔ here is anauxiliary, which can be ignored for explanatory purposes.)
In sentence (2),"baby" does not appear as a free noun. Instead it appears as the lexical suffix-əyəł which is affixed to the verb rootšk’ʷ- (which has changed slightly in pronunciation, but this can also be ignored here). The lexical suffix is neither "the baby" (definite) nor "a baby" (indefinite); such referential changes are routine with incorporated nouns.
Inorthography, the terms for affixes may be used for the smaller elements of conjunct characters. For example,Maya glyphs are generally compounds of amain sign and smalleraffixes joined at its margins. These are calledprefixes, superfixes, postfixes, andsubfixes according to their position to the left, on top, to the right, or at the bottom of the main glyph. A small glyph placed inside another is called aninfix.[6] Similar terminology is found with the conjunct consonants of theIndic alphabets. For example, theTibetan alphabet utilizes prefix, suffix, superfix, and subfix consonant letters.[7]
Separable affix – Verb with a prefix which separates from the core verb in certain positions in a sentencePages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
SI prefix – Order of magnitude indicatorPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
Stemming – Process of reducing words to word stems
Unpaired word – Word that would appear to have a related word but does not
Word formation – Creation of new lexemes or the process of changing words
^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.
Gerdts, Donna B. (2003). "The morphosyntax of Halkomelem lexical suffixes".International Journal of American Linguistics.69 (4):345–356.doi:10.1086/382736.S2CID143721330.
Montler, Timothy. (1991).Saanich, North Straits Salish classified word list. Canadian Ethnology service paper (No. 119); Mercury series. Hull, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization.ISBN0-660-12908-6
