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In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are derivational and affixes. Derivational affixes, such as un-, -ation, anti-, pre- etc., introduce a semantic change to the word they are attached to. Inflectional affixes introduce a syntactic change, such as singular into plural (e.g. -(e)s), or present simple tense into present continuous or past tense by adding -ing, -ed to an English word. All of them are by definition; and may be .
| + Categories of affixes ! Affix !! Example !! Schema !! Description |
| Appears before the stem |
| Appears before the stem, but is only partially bound to it |
| Appears after the stem |
| Appears after the stem, but is only partially bound to it |
| Appears within a stem — common e.g. in Austronesian languages |
| One portion appears before the stem, the other after |
| Links two stems together in a compound word |
| Incorporates a reduplication portion of a stem (may occur before, after, or within the stem) |
| A discontinuous affix that interleaves within a discontinuous stem |
| Changes a segment of a stem |
| Changes a suprasegmental feature of a stem |
| The elision of a portion of a stem |
Prefix and suffix may be subsumed under the term adfix, in contrast to infix.
When marking text for interlinear glossing, as shown in the third column in the chart above, simple affixes such as prefixes and suffixes are separated from the stem with hyphens. Affixes which disrupt the stem, or which themselves are discontinuous, are often marked off with angle brackets. Reduplication is often shown with a tilde. Affixes which cannot be segmented are marked with a back slash.
| -o, | -aʔ | "person" | , ełtálṉew̱ | ʔəɬtelŋəxʷ | "person" |
| -nát | -net | "day" | sȼićel | skʷičəl | "day" |
| -sen | -sən | "foot, lower leg" | sxene, | sx̣ənəʔ | "foot, lower leg" |
| -áwtw̱ | -ew̕txʷ | "building, house, campsite" | , á,leṉ | ʔeʔləŋ | "house" |
Some linguists have claimed that these lexical suffixes provide only adverbial or adjectival notions to verbs. Other linguists disagree, arguing that they may additionally be syntactic Verb argument just as free nouns are and, thus, equating lexical suffixes with incorporated nouns. Gerdts (2003) gives examples of lexical suffixes in the Halkomelem language (the word order here is verb–subject–object):
| VERB | SUBJ | OBJ | ||
| (1) | niʔ | šak’ʷ-ət-əs | łə słeniʔ | łə qeq |
| "the woman washed the baby" | ||||
| VERB+LEX.SUFF | SUBJ | |||
| (2) | niʔ | šk’ʷ-əyəł | łə słeniʔ | |
| "the woman baby-washed" | ||||
In sentence (1), the verb "wash" is šak’ʷətəs where šak’ʷ- is the root and -ət and -əs are inflectional suffixes. The subject "the woman" is łə słeniʔ and the object "the baby" is łə qeq. In this sentence, "the baby" is a free noun. (The niʔ here is an auxiliary verb, which can be ignored for explanatory purposes.)
In sentence (2), "baby" does not appear as a free noun. Instead it appears as the lexical suffix -əyəł which is affixed to the verb root šk’ʷ- (which has changed slightly in pronunciation, but this can also be ignored here). The lexical suffix is neither "the baby" (definiteness) nor "a baby" (indefinite); such referential changes are routine with incorporated nouns.
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