Talk:Suffix

This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Linguistics Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Linguistics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of linguistics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LinguisticsWikipedia:WikiProject LinguisticsTemplate:WikiProject LinguisticsLinguistics articles Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2020 and 9 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Courtneywray. Peer reviewers: Meganmckenna1, Chasethomas31, Annalieseg33.

Above undated message substituted from

Missing ized- e.g. robotized, 24.55.106.132 16:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC) ing, eg ending[reply]

I have distinguished between syntactic and semantic suffixes and have named them as "alternatives" since off the top of my head I can think of any that are both. I'm also going to change the examples to have the same root-word as I think this will illustrate the difference better. Lou.weird 15:00, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've reverted the last edit (diff) as I think it's covered in the 'grammatical functions' section and I'm not sure what it adds to it. Please have another go at rewriting it if I'm wrong. Lou.weird 13:47, 20 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

These so called suffix morphemes are technically called inflectional morphemes according my Linguistics book from The Ohio State University. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.105.32.138 (talk) 07:14, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.86.99.151 (talk) 01:42, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply] 

== Missing =eklgnerngkelrngerlkngerlkngerlgngerggeg Or have I got it all wrong? 160.39.130.192 14:28, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• -arian... Librarian, Libertarian, Communitarian.
• -ical...

gerverf feer , Polemical.refgergreger

These (and -ized above) should go in {{Table_suffixes}} but I don't know how to access that and edit it - does anyone else? --Lou.weird 13:25, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Librarian does not fit your pattern: -ian is added to library, rather than -arian to lib. 203.229.115.58 12:07, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is clearish a word? Dictionary.com finds no definitions for it, and the first Google return is for a slang dictionary. 203.229.115.58 12:07, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there are a number of suffixes - widely understood and recognised - which are colloquial, even jocular, in use. Another example is "-esque", such as "Tolkien-esque" or "Shakespeare-esque", to indicate that something has a similarity or similar essence to something else (e.g. "Your use of maps to illustrate your epic fantasy stories is very Tolkien-esque" or "Using a rhyming couplet to bring a chapter to a close is a very Shakespeare-esque technique").

These present a difficulty in the sense that their usage - especially in the jocular sense - will often create technically non-existent words (indeed, the humour is often entirely in the fact that the word isn't a real word. e.g. "Is it just me or isn't it a bit freezing-ish in here?". The question being otherwise in no sense humourous, other than for the silly redundant construction of a non-existent word "freezingish").

Indeed, "-ish" is even sometimes used colloquially in speech as if a word on its own. e.g. "Was that any good?" / "Well, ish").

Though they shouldn't simply be ignored or discounted for their slang-ish, colloquial-esque nature, because they are used frequently (and, as they really aren't peculiar to any subgroup, but really are part of the common use of the language itself across all groups, then is it even strictly accurate to describe them as "slang"?).

Plus there are instances where "-ish" and "-esque" do form valid words, such as "Polish" (as there's no way to discern the difference when written, as there is in speech, that's "pole-ish" - the people, language and generic adjective for things originating from Poland - not "pol-ish" - a cleaning substance and / or verb for bringing out a shiny appearance) or, say, "Arabesque". Of course, that's where the "-ish" and "-esque" suffixes in their jocular, colloquial sense stem from: A deliberate knowing over-application of a valid suffix elsewhere, as if capable of being mated with any word or even set of words at all.

Perhaps a new category to distinguish the more "genuine" suffixes from these slightly more jocular and colloquial ones? Note that one of the suffixes already on this page "-ville" is also frequently re-applied in a jocular sense. e.g. "cools-ville" being the figurative "place of all coolness".

Oh, wait, I've discovered another one accidentally there. "Coolness" isn't actually a word either (according to my Concise Oxford English here). So there's another example of colloquial "over-application" of a suffix. In fact, I almost didn't catch that one, because it is very, very common to apply "-ness" to words, but probably a fair amount of them strictly aren't "real words".

I think maybe a whole new section might be required to explain this. That in colloquial usage, many suffixes are mated with nearly any word at all, often creating non-existent words, to capture either a jocular or otherwise-difficult-to-explain semantic. It's a deliberately knowing loose grammar to "bend" the language into those corners it otherwise could not reach.

Personally, as you can probably tell from the difficulty I'm having expressing myself in this here reply, I don't feel qualified or up to the task of creating such a new section. But I do think that one is needed to cover these "loose grammar" usages of suffixes. Because, as I've somewhat demonstrated in this very reply itself, these forms of "loose grammar" are employed with regularity. PetrochemicalPete 11:05, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why are there no "-burg", "-ian" (for a nationality), "-town", "-land", "-(s)ton"?, "-iard" (for a nationality), "-ania/nia/ia", "nesia", or related suffixes? I know "nesia" means island and I think I once heard an explanation for "-burg".

"Burg" is a loanword for German. It just means a town, same as "Ville".--MacRusgail 14:19, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just wondering, should we simply "be bold" here and add all these extra suffixes to the list as broken links, awaiting someone to eventually come along and fire up a new page about them?

As for "-burg" being similar to "-ville", that's quite correct, and isn't that all the more reason that "-burg" should be included in the list? Because being on par with "-ville", if "-ville" is included then "-burg" should equally be there. A case of either both should be listed or neither should, but not one without the other or that's some kind of weird xenophilic bias to loanwords from only one language, while discounting those from another. English is much more Germanic at its core than it is French too, so it would even be a somewhat counter-intuitive bias in this case. PetrochemicalPete 11:21, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What about -er??

How about -tion?

And: -ful

The following discussion was brought from

I put this up for deletion (see reasons there). The only part of this article that informs the reader about the topic of word endings is the first:

In linguistics, an ending is a group of one or more letters added to the end of a stem to denote inflection, i.e., either declension of nouns and adjectives or conjugation of verbs. It is distinguished from a suffix in that it does not carry additional semantic meaning but serves only to establish the word's use in the sentence. Examples in English include the -s added to nouns to form the plural and the -ed added to verbs to form the past tense.

... and it is wrong. "A group of one or more letters": not linguistics. Confuses letters with sounds. "To denote inflection": it might not be inflection (could be a clitic). "Either declension ... or conjugation": Could be other things as well. "It is distinguished from a suffix...": if it's an ending and it's not a clitic, then it's a suffix by definition. "Does not carry additional semantic meaning": well, besides the fact that semantics implies meaning, what about the plural -s? It doesn't carry meaning?

The rest of the article has nothing to do with the core idea except tangentially.

When I came by, "Ending" was linked from a few other places. In some cases it was wrongly linked (e.g. from "ending song"), comprehensibly because the word is so general. It was linked from two linguistics-related articles; in one I replaced it by a link to suffix (which was the intended meaning) and in other it was simply part of the expression "verb ending" (self-explanatory in its context).

Moreover, "ending" is not a linguistics term. It's a common word that you can find in non-professional grammars or in informal speech. I don't think this very general word should have an article, so I proposed to delete it. I could live with it being renamed to "word ending" and turned into a disambiguation page, if there's something to disambiguate to (suffix, (en-)clitic, etc.). --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 13:37, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, if you feel this article should be renamed. But I think it should not be merged with Suffix because it is not the same. I am not a native English speaker, so I could choose an improper term. I was searching several Czech-English dictionaries for English equivalents of "koncovka". All suggest "ending", some also mention "desinence" or "termination". The term koncovka is used in the Czech linguistic literature regullarly for morphs (not letters) denoting inflexions. It corresponds to the definition you cite. Koncovka is distinguished from přípona (suffix). This distinction is very important in Czech, as it is a strongly inflected language.

It really does not carry semantic meaning. It has syntactic function (and meaning). Plural carries meaning but not

semantic

.

I think "word ending" would be OK. --Pajast 11:23, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Word ending" should be a redirect to suffix. I guess "ending" by itself could be a disambiguation page. Pajast, I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make between "ending" and "suffix". Could you give some examples from English? Remember that affixes can be inflectional or derivational. FilipeS 11:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe, English liguists use the term "suffix" for both inflectional and derivational (I don't know). This may be the source of confusing. Koncovka (or ending – in dictionaries) is inflectional, přípona (or suffix) is derivational in Czech linguistic theory. Well, "word ending" could be redirected to Suffix, but there should be more examples. --Pajast 14:22, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that ending in languages with Indo-European influence are separate things (ending is not suffix, suffix is not ending).

Separate article may be reasonable. D1gggg (talk) 13:18, 22 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In linguistics suffix and ending are perfectly well defined and distinguished concepts. Pajast is not trying to make it. Suffixes form words and endings form word forms. An English example would be Sabbaticals, morphologically sabbat-ic-al-s. -ic- and -al- are suffixes and -s is an ending (plural). If this article is supposed to be about linguistic concepts, then treating suffix and ending as synonyms is simply and plainly wrong. Berndf (talk) 10:59, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• MERGE- I really think we should merge. There is not a lot of info on that page and considering this is the English Wikipedia I don't think we really need that page. Besides some of the info on that page is already on this page. I tried to redirect it once but the author of the page reverted it.--Cssiitcic (talk) 21:18, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Support, unless someone makes a plausible case that the other article will contain content that does not belong here, and that content just hasn't been added yet. Just off hand, I don't see any other examples of two articles like this pair, so I'm skeptical that such a plausible case can be made, though I'm open to the possibility. Pi zero (talk) 22:26, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• I give anyone else a week to oppose or else the page WILL be merged. Thanks.--Cssiitcic (talk) 18:43, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. There are many place names that are used in the English wikipedia that retain their foreign actual names. No need for linguistic dumbing down. We are dumbed down in enough ways. Ouedbirdwatcher (talk) 23:42, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  What do place names have to do with whether or not these two articles should be merged? Pi zero (talk) 16:22, 8 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Therefore, I would suggest to do something with the

On the topic of suffixes: an article on suffix (linguistics) could include as many examples in different languages, and even language families, as possible and too detailed information could be moved to their own pages if this page becomes too long. And this page needs somebody from the fields of linguistics -> semantics -> lexicology.Kazkaskazkasako (talk) 20:18, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with this article currently is that it's far too specific to English, Latin and Greek have suffixes as do other languages. You could also merge in the ending concept here or start another article on this. The rule of thumb with encyclopedia articles is that you should be able to translate an article and it should still make sense; that doesn't work so well if the article is about the English language only.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 22:23, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here on the English encyclopædia, it is generally best to show English examples for various linguistic concepts. I will look at getting some references in order and adding some German and Russian information on suffixes and endings. (ся is a fun little thing) Irbisgreif (talk) 18:31, 14 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It makes sense to describe endings in German and Russian, not English. D1gggg (talk) 12:40, 22 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, the lazy form of English linguistics as taught to today's school kids, particularly in the United States, makes no distinction between suffixes and endings. On the other hand, academically rigorous morphology as taught at classical universities and decent secondary schools around the world, makes a sharp distinction between suffixes and endings. Suffixes modify the word's semantics (e.g., "play" -> "player", "playful", "playfully", "playfulness"), while an ending leaves the word's semantics intact and changes only the inflection (e.g., "play" -> "played", "playing", "plays"). In my pedagogical experience, the difference between a suffix and an ending can be easily explained to an average ten-year-old.

The article only gives tangentle mention of suffixes in other languages. This isn;t Engliah language Suffixes; it is a generalized overview of suffixes which should include how they are used in other languages.陣内_Jinnai 15:44, 27 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

At this stage it's only describing what a suffix is, and very broad groups of suffix which occur in English. I'm sure other languages can be added, if they have suffixes which don't have any English equivalent. If it's simply for the sake of adding other languages (eg. "inflectional morpheme suffixes in other languages") then I really can't see any point. As long as the article can be generally translated directly into other languages with the only change being the examples, I can't see any problem with it as it is – except, as I say, that the article may simply want broadening to include types that don't occur in English. One example might be the Esperanto suffixes. Or perhaps they're derivational? Knole Jonathan (talk) 12:13, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Some types of suffixes that are missing in the current version of the article:

• Suffixes that indicate gender. German:-a, -er, -or, -in, -rich
• Suffixes that indicate relationships. German: -son,
• Suffixes that indicate that the word refers to a settlement in a poarticular region. German: -ingen -em, -en, -um
• Suffixes that turn verbs into a noun for a subject doing something. Russian: -nik, German: -er
• Suffixes that turn verbs into adjectives. German: -lich, -lig, -lisch
• Diminutives and Pejorative suffixes

-----<)kmk(>--- (talk) 09:50, 11 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a list of suffixes. It's somewhat unfortunate that

fix it. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 23:46, 30 May 2014 (UTC)[reply

]

The suffix -ski/-sky/-skie has been added to many English (AmE, mostly, I think) words as a sort of diminutive or endearment (eg. "brewski", "broski", "Polski", "Russki[e]" etc). I'm curious to know where this trend might have come from and if it is of any note? It might have been originally insulting, poking fun at Slavic populations in the U.S. but it's become, from my perspective at least, more and more common in recent years and might do with some clarification as to its origins. 70.166.129.157 (talk) 22:39, 6 May 2011 (UTC) Melzipan —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.166.129.157 (talk)

While looking for items on Wikidata, I've found that we have two (2) items:

• http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q102047 for suffix, named suffix.
• http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q719278 possibly for desinences, named Suffix.

What to do?

I'm from the portuguese community, I'm trying to improve some articles, while doing it, I've found this issue.

Thank you. --Guiwp (talk) 18:05, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Near the beginning of the article, where examples are given, one of them is "closed", where "ed" marks the past tense. Is this a good example, given that "close" in the present tense already ends with E? Wouldn't a better example be something like "talked", where the past tense really does add "ed" to the present tense?

It has less explanations than

@Medeis: Regarding this edit, -n’t is a suffix marking a negative inflected form in certain analyses, for instance that of Geoffrey K. Pullum and Arnold M. Zwicky in Cliticization vs. Inflection: English N'T. Someone on Wiktionary recently pointed me to this article, and I found it convincing.

Two of the larger pieces of evidence they mention are the following: -n’t can only be attached to auxiliary verbs such as do, is, have, will, should, and its attachment to particular auxiliary verbs creates irregular forms (so to speak), such as will → won’t. The clitics you mentioned, ’ll and ’ve, do not have irregular combinations, though they do have predictable variations in pronunciation depending on what they are attached to, and they can be attached to any word (or properly speaking, phrase): for instance, the kittens’ve been licking rainbows, the kittens annoyingly’ve been licking rainbows, the rainbows the kittens licked’ve been gorgeous. (Bizarre examples, but they are at least grammatical.) Both facts argue on behalf of a suffix analysis for -n’t: generally clitics can attach to any word, and irregular word–clitic combinations are rare. Irregularity is generally associated with suffixes or inflected forms.

So, the article should at least mention that n’t is sometimes considered a suffix. The traditional English grammatical terminology for words containing -n’t is contraction, but I think that’s sort of a non-committal classification: contraction just means an orthographic word that originated from two separate orthographic words. Whether the components of the contraction are words or clitics or suffixes, that is a separate question. I don’t recall hearing the term clitic when I learned English grammar, so perhaps traditional grammar doesn't care to distinguish. — Eru·tuon 09:26, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that it cannot be added generally, whereas ing is universal for non-defective verbs and that it causes irregular terms like won't, when -est does not, are strong arguments that this is a clitic, not a suffix. Plus, you yourself are arguing that this is a minority view supported by one analysis. You can add a separate section, but it can't simply be shoe-horned in with universally recognized suffixes. μηδείς (talk) 04:34, 30 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Medeis: I was planning to add a citation and an explanation that it is not universally accepted as a suffix, but you reverted me rather quickly. Admittedly, I got distracted halfway through. — Eru·tuon 05:45, 30 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, the fact that a suffix cannot be added to every verb is not significant. That is true of all of the verbal suffixes in the article. The auxiliaries will and can do not use the suffixes -ing or (past participial) -ed; many modal verbs do not use third-person singular present suffix -s; most verbs with a past participle use only one of the possible suffixes -ed, -t, and -en. So it is quite plausible that a negative suffix would be restricted to particular verbs. — Eru·tuon 06:21, 30 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have no problem with this being added as long as the material is (1) separated from the list of normally accepted suffixes (which trace back to Germanic, while "n't" is very recent) and the analysis is (2) directly attributed

WP:ATTRIBUTION to the authors of the paper propounding it. Unless we have tertiary sources describing such clitics as suffixes as a matter of course and without comment we should be following established usage, not establishing usage. We also have Contraction (grammar) which should be mentioned along with n't if it is to be listed. μηδείς (talk) 16:57, 30 November 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

this article starts off by saying that a suffix follows a stem. This contradicts the article on PIE roots which defines a stem as containing a root followed by a suffix, so the suffix is in the stem, not after it. So we have a contradiction and the result is nonsense. Which is it? CecilWard (talk) 23:18, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's great other languages use suffixes and it is true that this article should mention that other languages use suffixes. But unless the example directly relates to how that language affects English suffixes, we don't need a list of suffixes from other languages. I mean, where would we stop? Why not list examples from all 6500 languages? I think not. That's why we have wikis in other languages and that nice little list on the side that directs people to that language. Want Russian language suffixes? go to the Russian wiki! In the spirit of being Wikipedia:Be bold, I'm deleting examples from other languages. This has been done at other articles such as Palindrome. Thank you. Masterhatch (talk) 21:03, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]