morphemessuffixesthat

Morpheme suffixes that are the terminal elements of words, carrying grammatical or derivational meaning. Grammatical suffixes, often called inflections, modify a word to indicate tense, number, case, or person without changing its core meaning or word class. Examples include the past tense '-ed' in 'walked', the plural '-s' in 'cats', and the third-person singular '-s' in 'he walks'. These are generally predictable and do not create new words.

Derivational suffixes, on the other hand, alter a word's meaning or change its grammatical category, creating new words. For instance, '-ness' added to an adjective like 'happy' forms the noun 'happiness'. Similarly, '-able' transforms a verb into an adjective, as in 'readable'. Other common derivational suffixes include '-ly' (adverbial), '-er' (agent noun), and '-ify' (verb formation). The formation of new words through derivational suffixes is a key process in word enrichment. The distinction between inflectional and derivational suffixes is crucial in linguistic analysis, particularly in morphology.