Affixácie

Affixácie, known in English as affixation, is a fundamental process of word formation in which one or more affixes are attached to a base or stem to derive a word or to mark grammatical information. Affixes include prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and circumfixes, each occupying different positions relative to the stem.

Prefixes attach at the front, as in un- in unhappy; suffixes attach at the end, as -ness in happiness; circumfixes wrap around the stem, as ge- and -t in German geliebt (from lieben). Infixes insert inside the stem, a pattern found in languages such as Tagalog with infixes like -um-.

Affixation serves two broad functions: derivational affixes create new words or modify word class, and inflectional affixes signal grammatical categories such as tense, number, case, or mood, without changing the core meaning of the word.

Morphological typology distinguishes languages by how they employ affixes. Agglutinative languages, such as Turkish and Finnish, build long chains of affixes each with a regular meaning; fusional languages, like Russian or Latin, fuse several grammatical categories into a single affix; isolating languages rely less on affixation. Some languages combine affixation with root-and-pattern systems, as in Arabic.

Phonology and orthography interact with affixation. Affixes may cause morphophonemic adjustments in the stem, and allomorphy can produce variant forms. Studying affixation illuminates historical sound changes and the evolution of word formation across languages.