Morphological derivation
Morphological derivation
Main page

Morphological derivation

logo
Community Hub0 subscribers
What are your thoughts?
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Morphological derivation

Morphological derivation, in linguistics, is the process of forming a new word from an existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as un- or -ness. For example, unhappy and happiness derive from the root word happy.

It is differentiated from inflection, which is the modification of a word to form different grammatical categories without changing its core meaning: determines, determining, and determined are from the root determine.

Derivational morphology often involves the addition of a derivational suffix or other affix. Such an affix usually applies to words of one lexical category (part of speech) and changes them into words of another such category. For example, one effect of the English derivational suffix -ly is to change an adjective into an adverb (slowslowly).

Here are examples of English derivational patterns and their suffixes:

However, derivational affixes do not necessarily alter the lexical category; they may change merely the meaning of the base and leave the category unchanged. A prefix (write re-write; lordover-lord) rarely changes the lexical category in English. The prefix un- applies to adjectives (healthyunhealthy) and some verbs (doundo) but rarely to nouns. A few exceptions are the derivational prefixes en- and be-. En- (replaced by em- before labials) is usually a transitive marker on verbs, but it can also be applied to adjectives and nouns to form transitive verbs: circle (verb) → encircle (verb) but rich (adj) → enrich (verb), large (adj) → enlarge (verb), rapture (noun) → enrapture (verb), slave (noun) → enslave (verb).

When derivation occurs without any change to the word, such as in the conversion of the noun breakfast into the verb to breakfast, it's known as conversion, or zero derivation.

Derivation that results in a noun may be called nominalization. It may involve the use of an affix (such as with employ → employee), or it may occur via conversion (such as with the derivation of the noun run from the verb to run). In contrast, a derivation resulting in a verb may be called verbalization (such as from the noun butter to the verb to butter).

Some words have specific exceptions to these patterns. For example, inflammable actually means flammable, and de-evolution is spelled with only one e, as devolution.

See all
User Avatar
No comments yet.