Derivative morphology transforms one word into another by adding morphemes such as prefixes, suffixes, and infixes. It is used to convert nouns, adjectives, and verbs into each other. Nominalization is the process of converting an adjective or verb into a noun. Adjectives are the most flexible word class in derivative morphology. Suffixes, prefixes, and infixes have various functions and some have become words in their own right.
Derivative morphology is a process where one word is transformed into another. The process takes a root of a word such as “national” and adds a prefix, suffix or infix to create a new word such as “international” or “nationality”. Word fragments added to the root word are called morphemes, hence morphology. There are many common morphemes in English. Such changes in derivational morphology are used to convert nouns, adjectives and verbs into each other.
Using an existing word to create a new word is called derivation. The term occurs because the meaning of the new word is derived 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 changing ‘nationalize’ to ‘nationalization’ or ‘nationalized’ is inflection and not derivation.
There are many combinations of derivative morphology 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 of the same class such as “red” and “reddish”. The ability to convert one word class to another word class is a sign of English’s flexibility.
The term for converting an adjective or verb into a noun is called nominalization. This is a fundamental part of derivational morphology. The adjective “national” can become the verb “nationality”. The verb “nationalize”, itself a derived morphology of “national”, can be converted into “nationalisation”, a noun.
An adjective, during derivative morphology, becomes an adverb when ‘-ly’ is added to the root word. This changes “ready” to “readily” and “slow” to “slowly”. Adjectives like “slow” can also become nouns during nominalization by adding suffixes like “-ness” to create “slowness”. Adjectives like ‘red’ can become verbs like ‘red’. Adjectives are one of the most flexible word classes in derivational morphology.
Suffixes, prefixes and infixes perform a number of functions. The morphemes used to create such word stemming appendages rarely function as words on their own. Some, such as “pro” and “anti,” have become words in their own right, but have developed from morphemes. Some affixes serve the same function as each other, and some are preferred for some words but not for others. For example, English has “atheist”, but not “non-theist”, and has “polytheist”, but not “multitheist”.
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