A Suffix Based Morphological Analysis of Assamese Word Formation

Abstract

Languages have several important features such as part-of-speech, tenses, prefixes and suffixes etc. which play major roles to solve the purpose of the language. In Assamese language suffixation is a very sensitive and unavoidable factor in the formation of Assamese words. Suffixes are letters or group of letters placed right after the nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs etc to intensify the meaning contextually of the newly formed words due to suffixation. Because of the inflectional nature of suffixation, it often creates new words differing in part-of-speech and meaning from the original words, it is attached with. Hence suffixation is morphodyanmic process through which new words are generated from old words changing their forms, function and meaning thus increasing the lexical inventory of Assamese language. This particular study can create a theoretical base about the nature of lexical generativity of suffixes in the formation of Assamese words.