nonsuffixal

Nonsuffixal is an adjective used in linguistics to describe forms, morphemes, or morpho-syntactic systems that do not employ suffixes as a productive means of deriving or inflecting forms. The term is formed from non- and suffixal, and is used mainly in typological descriptions to contrast with suffixal systems in which grammatical or derivational information is encoded by attaching suffixes to a base.

The concept can apply to languages that are isolating or analytic, where affixation is minimal or absent, or to particular word forms within a language that appear without suffixal markings. It is also used to describe morphological strategies in which other devices—such as word order, particles, compounding, or internal vowel changes—carry functional load instead of suffixes. While some languages exhibit extensive suffixation, others are described as nonsuffixal or largely nonsuffixal in certain domains, such as plural marking or tense inflection.

Examples commonly cited in discussions of nonsuffixal or non-suffixing morphology include languages with strong analytic tendencies, like Mandarin Chinese, which relies more on particles and word order than on suffixes for grammatical distinctions. In contrast, many languages with rich suffixal morphology show little nonsuffixal activity in the same domains. It is important to note that no natural language is completely nonsuffixal across all domains; the term is typically relative to a specific grammatical domain or historical stage.

Related terms include nonsuffixing, nonaffixal, prefixal, and isolating or analytic morphologies, all of which describe alternative strategies for expressing grammatical meaning.