A Study of the Functions of Suffixes in Azeri Turkic

Azeri Turkic is an agglutinative language. One of its dialects is widely spoken in Tabriz. The goal of this paper is to study the functions of suffixes in Tabriz dialect. In the present paper, the independence and meaningfulness of the forms are the criteria for determining the type of a form in the explanation of the morphological and syntactic functions of the simple suffixes. The result of the study shows that, in Azeri Turkic, a suffix helps a verb to change into a non-verb word and extends its own function. Moreover, a suffix helps non-verb words conjugate like verbs. This helps verbs and other words to be so various and numerous that they can express meanings, concepts, and emotions with delicate and elaborate differences. 80 suffixes out of 196 suffixes found inAzeri Turkic are simple. A word can take up to 7 suffixes. Some of the suffixes determine the morphological nature of a word and some others determine its syntactic functions. Morphological suffixes immediately follow a stem while the syntactic suffixes occur in the final position. The suffixes have different phonetic realizations on the basis of vowel harmony rules.