sufiksu

Sufiksu is the genitive form of the Estonian noun sufiks, which means suffix. In linguistic usage, a suffix is a morpheme that attaches to the end of a word to modify its meaning or grammatical function. Sufiksu and suffixes are a type of bound morpheme, meaning they cannot stand alone, and they are a key component of word-formation systems that also include prefixes and infixes.

Suffixes serve two broad purposes in many languages: derivational suffixes, which create new words or change a word’s lexical category, and inflectional (grammatical) suffixes, which encode information such as tense, number, person, case, or mood. In practice, suffixes can alter a word’s part of speech or its grammatical role within a sentence. Examples from English include -ed marking past tense, -ing forming participles, and -s indicating plural or third-person singular. Other languages have extensive suffix systems, especially those with agglutinative or richly inflected morphologies.

Estonian, like many Finnic languages, relies heavily on suffixes to signal case, number, and verb tense and mood, contributing to its characteristic morphological richness. In linguistic descriptions, dictionaries, and educational texts, sufiksu is used to refer to the concept of a suffix and to discuss its functions within word formation and grammar. The term’s etymology aligns with common European linguistic terminology, with cognates such as German Suffix or Latin suffixus.