nominalsuffix

A nominal suffix is a bound morpheme that attaches to the stem of a noun or to a word that functions as a noun, and which derives a new noun or marks grammatical features on the noun. Nominal suffixes are a common feature of languages with rich suffixal morphology.

Derivational nominal suffixes create new nouns from other parts of speech or from nouns themselves. English examples include -ness (happiness), -ment (development), -er (teacher); there are many others such as -ity, -hood, -ship. Diminutive or augmentative nominal suffixes form smaller or larger, familiar or pejorative forms, e.g., -let (book → booklet), -ling (duck → duckling).

Inflectional nominal suffixes encode grammatical categories such as number, case, gender, or definiteness. English primarily uses a plural suffix -s on nouns; other languages attach a range of case endings to nouns as suffixes, and some mark gender or definiteness through suffixal systems, e.g., German -en, -er; Latin -us/-a endings; Turkish suffixes for plural and cases.

Typology: In agglutinative languages such as Turkish or Finnish, nominal suffixes form long strings that encode number, case, possession, and definiteness. In fusional languages like Russian or German, a single suffix can carry multiple features. In analytic languages, suffixal morphology is less productive.

Historical notes: Nominal suffixes often arise from older suffixes that fossilize and become part of a word class's paradigm; loanword adaptation frequently borrows or reuses suffixes to derive new nouns.

See also: Nominalization; Derivational morphology; Inflection; Suffix.