Affiksid

Affiksid are morphemes that attach to a word stem to modify its meaning or its grammatical function. They are bound morphemes, meaning they cannot stand alone as independent words. Affiksid can occur at the beginning of a word (prefixes), at the end (suffixes), inside a word (infixes), or around a word (circumfixes). They can be derivational, forming new lexical items or changing word class, or inflectional, signaling tense, number, case, mood, or agreement without altering the core meaning.

Prefixes attach to the left of the stem, as in un- in unhappy or re- in redo. Suffixes attach to the right, as in -ed in walked, -ing in walking, or -s to mark plurality. Infixes insert inside a word; they occur in several languages, notably Tagalog, where the infix -um- can appear after the initial consonant in certain verbs. Circumfixes surround a word, with material both before and after the stem; a classic example is German ge- … -t, as in lieben (to love) becoming geliebt (loved) in past participle form.

Affiksid play a central role in the morphology of languages. They enable word formation and grammatical marking without increasing the number of independent roots. Languages differ in their reliance on affiksid: agglutinative languages like Turkish and Finnish stack numerous affiksid on one stem; fusional languages blend multiple grammatical categories into single affiksid; isolating languages minimize affixation and rely more on separate words or function words.

In linguistic analysis, affiksid are studied alongside other word-formation processes, including clitics and reduplication, to understand how meaning and syntax are encoded in human language. See also morphology, prefix, suffix, infix, circumfix.