Derivational morphology

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Derivational morphology is a process where one word is changed into another. The process takes a
word stem like ‘national’ and adds a prefix, suffix or infix to make a new word such as ‘international’ or
‘nationality.’ Changes in derivational morphology are used to convert nouns, adjectives and verbs into
one another.

Using an existing word to make a new word is called derivation. The term occurs because the meaning
of the new word derivates from and away from the original meaning. It is separate from inflection,
which adds additional letters, not morphemes, to a word to change its grammatical function. In this
sense, changing ‘national’ to ‘nationalize’ is derivation, but turning ‘nationalize’ into ‘nationalizing’ or
‘nationalized’ is inflection and not derivation.

There are many derivational morphology combinations such as turning verbs into adjectives or nouns.
Adjectives can be converted into adverbs, nouns, verbs and other adjectives. Nouns can be converted
into verbs and adjectives. It is possible for each class to be converted into another word in the same
class like ‘red’ and ‘reddish.’ The ability to convert one class of word into another class of word is a sign
of the flexibility of English.

The term for converting an adjective or verb to a noun is called nominalization. This is a key part of
derivational morphology. The adjective ‘national’ can become the verb ‘nationality.’ The verb
‘nationalize,’ itself a derivational morphology of ‘national,’ can be converted into ‘nationalization,’ a
noun.

An adjective, during derivational morphology, becomes an adverb when ‘-ly’ is added to the stem word.
This changes ‘ready’ into ‘readily’ and ‘slow’ into ‘slowly.’ Adjectives such as ‘slow’ can also become
nouns during nominalization by adding suffixes such as ‘-ness’ to create ‘slowness.’ Adjectives such as
‘red’ can become verbs as well like ‘redden.’ Adjectives are one of the most flexible classes of word in
derivational morphology.

Suffixes, prefixes and infixes perform a number of functions. The morphemes used to create such
appendages to stem words rarely function as words by themselves. Some, such as ‘pro’ and ‘anti,’
became standalone words, but developed out of morphemes. Some affixes perform the same function
as one another and some are preferred for some words, but not for others. For example, English has
‘atheist,’ but not ‘non-theist,’ and it has ‘polytheist,’ but not ‘multi-theist.’

•Derivation by compounding:

Compounding or composition is the process of combining two or more words (free morphemes) to
create a new word.(commonly a noun, verb, or adjective).

Example: black+ board=blackboard

Three types of compounding:

1.copulative compounds: Copulative compounds are compounds, which have two semantic heads .

Example: bittersweet, sleepwalk

2.Endocentric compounds: If a compound donotes a subtype of the concept denoted by its head it is
called endocentric.

Thus cat food is the type of food, sky blue is the type of blue. Airplane, policeman, and bath towel.

3.Exocentric compounds: If the meaning of the compound does not follow from the meaning of its parts
it is said to be exocentric. For example redneck is a person and does not a type of neck; walkman is the
type of portable radio.

•Derivation by modification of Base : Modification is a morphological process which produces an

alternation within a root or base. For example: the root “ Man “ is modified when it undergoes the
pluralization that results in the form .”men”. Foot _feet, tooth __ teeth, goose __ geese etc.

•Minor process of Derivation: There are many different ways to minor process or minor word
formation process in morphology.

1.The combination of two separate words to produce a single new term is called blending. For
example(Breakfast+ lunch =brunch) (smoke +fog= smog).

2.clipping is the process whereby new words are formed by shortening other words; i.e., phone from
(tele) phone, plane from (air)plane, lab from ( laboratory).

3.Back-formation is the process by which new words are formed by removing an affix. For example
television (televise), editor (edit), creation(create), revision (revise).

4.Words derived from the initial of several words are called Acronym. For example National Aeronautics
and space Agency ( NASA), Pakistan super league (PSL) etc.

5.Reduplication is a process of forming new words by doubling a morphemes. For example Humpty
Dumpty, Hocus pocus etc.