The various functions of a simple but complicated suffix. Present-day English has relatively few productive suffixes, but /-ij/, spelt both -y and -ie, as in bouncy and birdie, is one of the most striking. According to Quirk et al. in their Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, these affixes ‘can be used fairly freely’ and they are ‘freely used with largely concrete nouns to form gradable adjectives’ (1985:1553).