affix - Lexical affixes

A grammatical element which cannot occur on its own, but must always attach to the root or stem of a word. Every language has a limited or closed set of affixes. In English, they may precede the stem (prefixes), as in impossible, or follow it (suffixes), as in formal. Some other languages have infixes, which are attached within the word.

affix	example
prefix	undo prefix + root
suffix	looking root + suffix
infix 1	fanfreakingtastic ro- + infix + -ot
circumfix	Kabyle: θissliθ "bride" (compare to issli "groom") circumfix + root + circumfix
suprafix	produce (noun) produce (verb) (changing stress)

1 English tmeses, as in this example, are by some considered infixes.

Lexical affixes

Lexical affixes (or semantic affixes) are bound elements that appear as affixes, but function as incorporated nouns within verbs and as elements of compound nouns. font-family: Chrysanthi Unicode, Doulos SIL, Gentium, GentiumAlt, Code2000, TITUS Cyberbit Basic, DejaVu Sans, Bitstream Vera Sans, Bitstream Cyberbit, Arial Unicode MS, Lucida Sans Unicode, Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro, Matrix Unicode;">

Lexical Suffix			Noun
-O,	-aʔ	"person"	,EL̶TÁLṈEW̱	ʔəɬtelŋəxʷ	"person"
-NÁT	-net	"day"	SC̸IĆEL	skʷičəl	"day"
-SEN	-sən	"foot, lower leg"	SXENE,	sx̣ənəʔ	"foot, lower leg"
-ÁWTW̱	-ew̕txʷ	"building, house, campsite"	,Á,LEṈ	ʔeʔləŋ	"house"

Lexical suffixes when compared with free nouns often have a more generic or general meaning. 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 bathed the baby"
		VERB+LEX.SUFF	SUBJ
(2)	niʔ	šk’ʷ-əyəł	łə słeniʔ
	"the woman bathed the/a baby"

In sentence (1), the verb "bathe" is šak’ʷətəs where šak’ʷ- is the root and -ət and -əs are inflectional suffixes.