suffixations

Suffixation is a process in linguistics where a suffix is added to a base word to create a new word or to change the meaning, part of speech, or grammatical function of the base word. Suffixes can be inflectional or derivational. Inflectional suffixes change the form of a word to indicate grammatical categories such as tense, number, or case, without changing its basic meaning. For example, in English, the suffix "-ed" is added to verbs to form the past tense, as in "walk" to "walked." Derivational suffixes, on the other hand, create new words with different meanings or parts of speech. For instance, the suffix "-ness" is added to adjectives to form nouns, as in "happy" to "happiness."

Suffixation is a productive process in many languages, allowing speakers to create new words and express complex ideas. It is a fundamental aspect of morphology, the study of word formation and structure. The use of suffixes can vary significantly across languages, with some languages employing a rich system of suffixation while others rely more on other means of word formation, such as prefixation or compounding.