Affixal

Affixal is an adjective used in linguistics to describe processes, forms, or languages that involve affixes—the prefixes, suffixes, infixes, or circumfixes attached to a base word. In this sense, affixal describes words formed by affixation as well as languages whose morphology makes heavy use of affixes to derive and inflect words.

Affixes serve two broad functions. Derivational affixes create new words or change a word’s lexical category (for example, un- in unhappy, -ness in happiness). Inflectional affixes mark grammatical features such as tense, number, or agreement (for example, walked, cats).

In typology, affixal morphology is contrasted with isolating morphology, where few or no affixes are used, and with analytic processes such as compounding. Affixal languages are often described as agglutinative or fusional; Turkish and Finnish are classic agglutinative examples with extensive affixation, while Mandarin is usually described as isolating.

The term derives from affix, from Latin affixus, joined to -al. It is used in linguistic descriptions and historical analyses of word formation and typology.