suffixor

Suffixor is a term used in linguistics and computer science to denote an agent that attaches suffixes to base units. In theoretical linguistics, a suffixor is the morphosyntactic operator responsible for adding bound morphemes that mark grammatical categories such as tense, number, case, or mood. In computer science and software engineering, a suffixor can refer to a function, module, or utility that appends one or more suffix strings to an input token, filename, or identifier to create a derived form. The term is not widely standardized and is used informally in discussions about morphology and string processing.

Etymology and usage context: suffixor is derived from the word suffix combined with the agent noun suffix -or, following patterns like prefixor or adapter, but it is not a canonical linguistic term and appears mainly in informal or academic discourse.

Applications and examples: In natural language, English verbs attach -ed to indicate past tense; Turkish nouns take multiple suffixes for case and possession; in programming, a suffixor might append suffixes such as -debug or -v2 to a base filename or build artifact. In data processing, suffixors can generate variant identifiers by attaching version or modality markers.

Relation to related concepts: The idea of a suffixor is related to affixation, suffixation, and inflection in morphology, as well as to string manipulation and token transformation in computing. Some literature uses suffixor interchangeably with suffix-generating functions or suffix-adding operators, though the term remains informal and not widely standardized.

See also: suffix, affix, morphology, inflection, string manipulation, natural language processing.