Derivational Morphology
- LAST REVIEWED: 18 August 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 31 March 2016
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0043
- LAST REVIEWED: 18 August 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 31 March 2016
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0043
Introduction
Derivational morphology is concerned with forming new lexemes, that is, words that differ either in syntactic category (part of speech) or in meaning from their bases. Derivation is typically contrasted with inflection, which is the modification of words to fit into different grammatical contexts. Words formed by derivation are complex in the sense that they typically have a base or root that has been modified in some systematic way to form a new word. The most widespread of techniques for derivation is affixation, the addition of prefixes, suffixes, infixes, circumfixes, and so on, but new words are often formed by other means such as reduplication, internal modification or rearrangement of consonants and vowels, or by subtraction of segments. Languages frequently have means of derivation that form agents, patients, or locations from verbs or other syntactic categories, or verbs of various sorts from nouns or adjectives. Adjectives may be formed from either nouns or verbs. Words may also undergo derivation that does not change their category but rather modifies their meaning, maintaining category. So, adjectives, nouns, or verbs may be negated, concrete nouns can be made abstracts or collectives, verbs may be made transitive or causative. Most general reference works on morphology treat derivation alongside inflection, so the reader is referred for additional resources to the Oxford Bibliographies article Morphology.
General Textbooks
Any general textbook on morphology will treat derivation. All of the texts below give good basic introductions to the topic. Aronoff and Fudeman 2010 and Lieber 2016 are geared toward undergraduate students who do not have an extensive background in linguistics. The other texts are more advanced and treat matters of theory that concern derivation in more depth. Spencer 1991 is an excellent theoretical introduction, but it is out of date at this point.
Aronoff, M., and K. Fudeman. 2010. What is morphology? 2d ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
A clear and comprehensive introductory work, with good exercises. Matters concerning derivation are spread across a number of chapters.
Bauer, L. 2003. Introducing linguistic morphology. 2d ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press.
Basics concerning derivation are concentrated in the beginning chapters of the book, with theoretical issues postponed to later in the text.
Booij, G. 2007. The grammar of words: An introduction to linguistic morphology. 2d ed. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199226245.001.0001
A more advanced text, this has a single concise chapter devoted solely to derivation, but derivation figures in many of the theoretical debates discussed elsewhere.
Haspelmath, M., and A. Sims. 2010. Understanding morphology. 2d ed. London: Hodder Education.
Like Booij 2007, this is intended for more advanced students.
Katamba, F., and J. Stonham. 2006. Morphology. 2d ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Extensive treatment of derivation, especially in its relation to matters concerning phonology.
Lieber, R. 2016. Introducing morphology. 2d ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
This text concentrates on analysis, postponing matters of theory to the end, and it has two chapters devoted to derivational morphology.
Spencer, A. 1991. Morphological theory: An introduction to word structure in generative grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.
Now somewhat dated, this text gives an excellent overview of the theoretical debates that were important in the first two decades of generative morphology.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Acceptability Judgments
- Acquisition, Second Language, and Bilingualism, Psycholin...
- Adpositions
- Affixation
- African Linguistics
- Afroasiatic Languages
- Agreement
- Algonquian Linguistics
- Altaic Languages
- Analogy in Language and Linguistics
- Anaphora
- Animal Communication
- Aphasia
- Applicatives
- Applied Linguistics, Critical
- Arawak Languages
- Argument Structure
- Artificial Languages
- Athabaskan Languages
- Australian Languages
- Austronesian Linguistics
- Auxiliaries
- Balkans, The Languages of the
- Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan
- Berber Languages and Linguistics
- Bilingualism and Multilingualism
- Biology of Language
- Blocking
- Borrowing, Structural
- Caddoan Languages
- Caucasian Languages
- Causatives
- Celtic Languages
- Celtic Mutations
- Chomsky, Noam
- Chumashan Languages
- Classifiers
- Clauses, Relative
- Clinical Linguistics
- Cognitive Linguistics
- Colonial Place Names
- Comparative Reconstruction in Linguistics
- Comparative-Historical Linguistics
- Complementation
- Complexity, Linguistic
- Compositionality
- Compounding
- Computational Linguistics
- Conditionals
- Conjunctions
- Connectionism
- Consonant Epenthesis
- Contrastive Analysis in Linguistics
- Conversation Analysis
- Conversation, Maxims of
- Conversational Implicature
- Cooperative Principle
- Coordination
- Copula
- Creoles
- Creoles, Grammatical Categories in
- Critical Periods
- Cross-Language Speech Perception and Production
- Cyberpragmatics
- Default Semantics
- Definiteness
- Dementia and Language
- Dené-Yeniseian Hypothesis, The
- Dependencies
- Dependencies, Long Distance
- Derivational Morphology
- Determiners
- Dialectology
- Dialogue
- Diglossia
- Disfluency
- Distinctive Features
- Dravidian Languages
- Ellipsis
- Endangered Languages
- English as a Lingua Franca
- English, Early Modern
- English, Old
- Ergativity
- Eskimo-Aleut
- Euphemisms and Dysphemisms
- Evidentials
- Exemplar-Based Models in Linguistics
- Existential
- Existential Wh-Constructions
- Experimental Linguistics
- Fieldwork
- Fieldwork, Sociolinguistic
- Finite State Languages
- First Language Attrition
- Formulaic Language
- Francoprovençal
- French Grammars
- Frisian
- Gabelentz, Georg von der
- Gender
- Genealogical Classification
- Generative Syntax
- Genetics and Language
- Gestures
- Grammar, Categorial
- Grammar, Construction
- Grammar, Descriptive
- Grammar, Functional Discourse
- Grammars, Phrase Structure
- Grammaticalization
- Harris, Zellig
- Heritage Languages
- History of Linguistics
- History of the English Language
- Hmong-Mien Languages
- Hokan Languages
- Honorifics
- Humor in Language
- Hungarian Vowel Harmony
- Iconicity
- Ideophones
- Idiolect
- Idiom and Phraseology
- Imperatives
- Indefiniteness
- Indo-European Etymology
- Inflected Infinitives
- Information Structure
- Innateness
- Interface Between Phonology and Phonetics
- Interjections
- Intonation
- IPA
- Irony
- Iroquoian Languages
- Islands
- Isolates, Language
- Jakobson, Roman
- Japanese Word Accent
- Jones, Daniel
- Juncture and Boundary
- Khoisan Languages
- Kiowa-Tanoan Languages
- Kra-Dai Languages
- Labov, William
- Language Acquisition
- Language and Law
- Language Contact
- Language Documentation
- Language, Embodiment and
- Language for Specific Purposes/Specialized Communication
- Language, Gender, and Sexuality
- Language Geography
- Language Ideologies and Language Attitudes
- Language in Autism Spectrum Disorders
- Language Nests
- Language Revitalization
- Language Shift
- Language Standardization
- Languages of Africa
- Languages of the Americas, Indigenous
- Languages of the World
- Learnability
- Lexemes
- Lexical Access, Cognitive Mechanisms for
- Lexical Semantics
- Lexical-Functional Grammar
- Lexicography
- Lexicography, Bilingual
- Linguistic Accommodation
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Linguistic Areas
- Linguistic Landscapes
- Linguistic Prescriptivism
- Linguistic Profiling and Language-Based Discrimination
- Linguistic Relativity
- Linguistics, Educational
- Listening, Second Language
- Literature and Linguistics
- Loanwords
- Machine Translation
- Maintenance, Language
- Mande Languages
- Markedness
- Mass-Count Distinction
- Mathematical Linguistics
- Mayan Languages
- Mental Health Disorders, Language in
- Mental Lexicon, The
- Mesoamerican Languages
- Metaphor
- Metathesis
- Metonymy
- Minority Languages
- Mixed Languages
- Mixe-Zoquean Languages
- Modification
- Mon-Khmer Languages
- Morphological Change
- Morphology
- Morphology, Blending in
- Morphology, Subtractive
- Movement
- Munda Languages
- Muskogean Languages
- Nasals and Nasalization
- Negation
- Niger-Congo Languages
- Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages
- Northeast Caucasian Languages
- Nostratic
- Number
- Numerals
- Oceanic Languages
- Papuan Languages
- Penutian Languages
- Philosophy of Language
- Phonetics
- Phonetics, Acoustic
- Phonetics, Articulatory
- Phonological Research, Psycholinguistic Methodology in
- Phonology
- Phonology, Computational
- Phonology, Early Child
- Pidgins
- Polarity
- Policy and Planning, Language
- Politeness in Language
- Polysemy
- Possessives, Acquisition of
- Pragmatics, Acquisition of
- Pragmatics, Cognitive
- Pragmatics, Computational
- Pragmatics, Experimental
- Pragmatics, Game Theory in
- Pragmatics, Historical
- Pragmatics, Second Language
- Prague Linguistic Circle, The
- Presupposition
- Pronouns
- Psycholinguistics
- Quechuan and Aymaran Languages
- Questions
- Reading, Second-Language
- Reciprocals
- Reduplication
- Reflexives and Reflexivity
- Register and Register Variation
- Relevance Theory
- Salish Languages
- Saussure, Ferdinand de
- Second Language Acquisition, Anaphora Resolution in
- Semantic Maps
- Semantic Roles
- Semantic-Pragmatic Change
- Semantics, Cognitive
- Sentence Processing in Monolingual and Bilingual Speakers
- Sign Language Linguistics
- Sociolinguistics
- Sociolinguistics, Variationist
- Sonority
- Sound Change
- South American Indian Languages
- Specific Language Impairment
- Speech Perception
- Speech Production
- Speech Synthesis
- Suppletion
- Switch-Reference
- Syllables
- Syncretism
- Synonymy
- Syntactic Change
- Syntactic Knowledge, Children’s Acquisition of
- Tense, Aspect, and Mood
- Text Mining
- Tone
- Tone Sandhi
- Topic
- Transcription
- Transitivity and Voice
- Translation
- Trubetzkoy, Nikolai
- Tucanoan Languages
- Tupian Languages
- Typology
- Usage-Based Linguistics
- Uto-Aztecan Languages
- Valency Theory
- Verbs, Serial
- Visual Word Recognition
- Vocabulary, Second Language
- Voice and Voice Quality
- Vowel Harmony
- Whitney, William Dwight
- Word Classes
- Word Formation in Japanese
- Word Stress
- Writing, Second Language
- Writing Systems
- Yiddish
- Zapotecan Languages