Suffixly

Suffixly is an open-source software library and research project that focuses on suffix-based morphology in natural language processing. It provides tools to analyze, generate, and experiment with word forms created by attaching suffixes. The project emphasizes a language-agnostic design with language-specific modules for suffix inventories and morphophonological rules.

Originating in academic labs, Suffixly was released as an open-source project in the mid-2010s and has since been maintained by a community of contributors. The project aims to offer a modular morphological engine that can be adapted to a range of languages with rich affixation, from agglutinative to fusional systems.

Its core features include a suffix lexicon, rule-based morphophonology, and support for both derivational and inflectional suffixes. It offers a finite-state machinery for analysis and generation, an API for Python and JavaScript, and data formats designed to interoperate with common NLP pipelines. It also supports multiple scripts.

Suffixly is used in linguistic research to study suffix productivity, in developing morphological analyzers for under-resourced languages, and in educational tools illustrating how new word forms are built. It is also employed to augment datasets for machine learning by generating inflected variants.

Reception focuses on its flexibility and transparency, with users noting the need for comprehensive suffix inventories for each language. As with other open-source projects, adoption varies by language and community resources, but it is regarded as a useful niche tool for morphology-oriented NLP work.