摘要：The phonemic structure of the Lithuanian suffixes has not been researched. The aim of this research is to identify and define the structural models and usage regularities of the Lithuanian suffixes of nouns, adjectives, numerals and pronouns. Nearly five hundred suffixes are analyzed in the article. Regularities of usage of the Lithuanian suffixes are estimated from more than ten thousand suffixed derivatives of the contemporary Lithuanian language.
Suffixes may be composed from one to eight sounds (including complex suffixes). However, the majority of the suffixes (98 percent) are not longer than four sounds.
Suffixes have been classified into 17 patterns. The most typical model of a suffix is a vowel-consonant (VC) combination. This structure amounts to 44 percent of all suffixes. This model has a large variety of suffixes and a high productivity: half of derivatives in the Dictionary of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language are the VC structures (excluding -imas, -ymas derivatives).
There are many suffixes which are composed of one consonant (15 percent), a vowel and two consonants (10 percent), two consonants (8 percent) and vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant (8 percent). Their derivatives account for a quarter of all suffixed nouns, adjectives, numerals and pronouns.
This research has revealed only the main structure of suffixes, but it has not established the structure of real usage of suffixes of the standard Lithuanian language.
