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The suffix -ing also has other uses in English, although these are less common. It may be used to form derivative nouns (originally masculine) with the sense "son of" or "belonging to", used as patronymics or diminutives. Examples of this use include surnames like Browning, Channing and Ewing, and common nouns like bunting, shilling, and farthing.
Where the suffix -ing is preceded by a vowel or diphthong, there is a smoothing effect that results in a single vowel. Thus go+ing is usually pronounced as a single syllable [ɡɔːn] rather than as a two-syllable word ending in /ən/, and doing is [dɜːn] rather than /duː.ɪŋ/. [23]
When suffixes are added to words ending with a hard or soft g (such as -ed, -ing, -er, -est, -ism, -ist, -edness, -ish(ness), -ily, -iness, -ier, -iest, -ingly, -edly, and -ishly), the sound is normally maintained. Sometimes the normal rules of spelling changes before suffixes can help signal whether the hard or soft sound is intended.
The diminutive suffixes may be stacked to create forms going even further, for example, malusieńki is considered even smaller than malusi or maleńki. Similarly, koteczek (little kitty) is derived from kotek (kitty), which is itself derived from kot (cat).
Historically, the -ing suffix was attached to a limited number of verbs to form abstract nouns, which were used as the object of verbs such as like. The use was extended in various ways: the suffix became attachable to all verbs; the nouns acquired verb-like characteristics; the range of verbs allowed to introduce the form spread by analogy ...
ing OE place, small stream Lockinge [53] suffix difficult to distinguish from -ingas without examination of early place-name forms. inver, inner [5] SG mouth of (a river), confluence, a meeting of waters Inverness, Inveraray, Innerleithen: prefix cf. aber. keld ON spring Keld, Threlkeld [54] keth, cheth C wood Penketh, Culcheth [27] suffix cf ...
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry grammatical information (inflectional endings) or lexical information (derivational/lexical ...
This applies especially to the -ing ending of verbs, but also in other words such as morning, nothing, ceiling, Buckingham, etc. G-dropping speakers may pronounce this syllable as [ɪn] or [ən] (reducing to a syllabic [n] in some cases), while non-G-dropping speakers have /ɪŋ/ (/əŋ/ with the weak vowel merger) or /iŋ/.