Talk:Morphological derivation

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Untitled
I don't believe there is an accepted 'un' noun in English. Any examples? Istvan 06:34, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 'The undead'. But define 'accepted', anyway.BovineBeast 06:37, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * 'Merry unbirthday!' --150.241.250.3 (talk) 14:46, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Probably "unrest" and "untruth" are sufficiently mainstream and pure. (There are more that have nominalizing suffixes, like "uncertainty" and "unconsciousness" and, arguably, "untruth" falls into this category too.)--GrounderUK (talk) 00:22, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

A question
How are words like "go" and "undergo" called? Are they derivatives, cognates or something else? Arath 16:26, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * This is an agglutination between two free morphemes "under" and "go". It is indeed a derivation, and more information is on the page  on  agglutination Acsliter (talk) 23:32, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Derivation outside morphology
This article treats derivation as a purely morphological phenomenon (which may be true), although there are theories of syntax (e.g. BPS) which are based on derivational processes as well. It might be a good idea to describe derivation in a more general sense and mention the fact that it's used mainly but not only in theories of morphology, and then explain morphological derivation in more detail. -Michael Sappir • (Talk) 11:15, 26 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Does it treat derivation as purely morphological, or is this an article specifically on morphological derivation (as the title suggests)? Perhaps those kinds of derivation (in that case borrowing ) are just outside the scope of this particular article.  This may be an reason for an addition to the "see also" list that could include a link to loanword Acsliter (talk) 23:39, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Perspectives need to be distinguished
Derivation can mean many things. For example:
 * 1) As a matter of historical record or inference, one word in a language was predated by another word of different form (from the same or a different language) which is deemed its source. (Marxism (English) < Marxisme (French))
 * 2) Speakers of a language produce a derived word as needed by applying a transformation to an other word following rules understood by hearers/readers. (un- + popular > unpopular, Marx + -ism = Marxism)
 * 3) Hearers/readers can infer the knowledge of a derived word from the meanings of its components. (Marxism = Marx + -ism)

Note that all three senses may apply to the same word, as in the case of Marxism. And of course the first users of the English word Marxism were probably English readers of French publications or English hearers of French speech. Thus the word entered the English lexicon so that many (most ?) users of the word Marxism did not actually coin it (2 above). It is possible that some of the earliest users of Marxism in English did coin the phrase, but it is highly likely that an inkhorn term like Marxism was transmitted between languages in Europe quite rapidly.

I don't think the article has bothered to make clear what it might be talking about. One need follow no specific theoretical framework to see this as a problem. In fact, the first thing I would want an encyclopedia article to do is to make such distinctions. DCDuring (talk) 20:02, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Nice Points. I think Point 1 refers to the Etymological Derivation and Point 2 and 3 refer to the Morphological Derivation. 121.241.127.1 (talk) 20:27, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Non-affixing derivation
The article currently describes derivations through the use of affixes. But there are also cases of derivations that do not use affixation but instead something word-internal. For example, the Semitic languages are full of derivations that are made by changing the vowels of a word. Such a system is also found in Proto-Indo-European, some examples of which survive in English, e.g. sing > song. In languages where the placement of the accent plays a morphological role, a change in accent alone may constitute derivation. Again, Indo-European has examples of this, e.g. Greek tómos "slice" > tomós "cutting (i.e. making slices)". It would be very helpful if the article could give an overview of this kind of non-affixing morphology found across the world. Rua (mew) 12:01, 1 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Those are actually all examples of affixes, they're just not suffixes or prefixes. The article on  affixes shows some of those - sing > song is a simulfix, tómos > tomós is a suprafix.  The Semitic pattern are transfixes and in fact the language they provide an example from is Maltese.  Acsliter (talk) 23:46, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Ncñgvjbñ 112.211.198.243 (talk) 08:50, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

"Derivation(linguistics)" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Derivation(linguistics)&redirect=no Derivation(linguistics)] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. Steel1943 (talk) 06:45, 15 November 2023 (UTC)