Derivational morphology

Derivational morphology

Derivational morphology changes the meaning of words by applying derivations. Derivation is the combination of a word stem with a morpheme, which forms a new word, which is often of a different class. For example, develop becomes development, developmental or redevelop.

The suffix -ation converts the verb nationalize, into the derived noun nationalization. The suffix -ize converts the noun plural, into the verb pluralize.

Nominalization is a common kind of derivation in English, and it involves forming new nouns from verbs or adjectives, by adding suffixes to them, for example:

Suffix Verb/adjective Derived noun
-ness happy (A) happiness
-ee employ (V) employee

The study of derivational morphology can be quite complicated, as the classes of words that an affix apply to are not always clearcut. For example, the suffix -ee cannot be added to all verbs, i.e. to add it to run (V) gives runee, which is clearly not an English word.

See also

References

  • Speech and Language Processing, Jufarsky, D. & Martin J.,H.