Definition of "affixation" [affixation]

• The adding of an affix to a word. (noun)

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• "[...] nonhuman animals may have the capacity to learn surface transformations involved in affixation, but they cannot link them to other aspects of linguistic structure."
• "When I wrote that back-formation was “essentially [affixation] in reverse”, I was simplifying matters somewhat."
• "If affixation means forming a word by adding an affix (e.g. frosty from frost, refusal from refuse, instrumentation from instrument), then back-formation is essentially this process in reverse: it adapts an existing word by removing its affix, usually a suffix (e.g. sulk from sulky, proliferate from proliferation, back-form from back-formation)."