A derivation is the formation of words by adding prefixes and suffixes to existing words and bases. This means that derivational morphemes have some lexical meaning and can combine with a limited subgroup of free morphemes or with other derivational morphemes to create a "new" word or change the meaning of a word or change the form-class of a word.

For example, derivational morphemes can transform a word like friend in the following ways:

Nouns

• Friendship

• Friendliness

• Unfriendliness

Adjectives

• friendly

• unfriendly

• friendless

Verb

• befriend

Each of these words has a different meaning than the base friend. The derivational morphemes have created a new word. More importantly, adding a derivational morphemes, primarily a suffix, can change the form-class of a word, from noun to adjective or noun to verb. As such, there are noun-making morphemes, verb-making morphemes, adjective-making morphemes, and adverb-making morphemes.

Some common noun-making morphemes include the following suffixes:

Suffix	Meaning	Example
-acy	state or quality	privacy
-al	act or process of	refusal
-ance, -ence	state or quality of	maintenance, eminence
-dom	place or state of being	freedom, kingdom
-er, -or	one who	trainer, protector
-ism	doctrine, belief	communism
-ist	one who	chemist
-ity, -ty	quality of	veracity
-ment	condition of	argument
-sion, -tion	state of being	concession, transition

Some common verb-making morphemes include the following suffixes:

Suffix	Meaning	Example
-ate	become	eradicate
-en	become	enlighten
-ify, -fy	make or become	terrify
-ize, -ise	become	civilize

Some common adjective-making morphemes include the following suffixes:

Suffix	Meaning	Example
-able	being 'able'	movable, portable
-al	relating to	global, manual
-en	made of	golden, wooden
-ful	full of	hopeful, wishful
-ic	characteristic of	domestic
-ive	tending to	sensitive, selective
-less	lack of, without	endless, powerless
-ous	full of	enormous, mysterious
-y	state, having	windy, slowly

The most common adverb-making morpheme is the suffix -ly, which primarily changes adjectives to adverbs:

• quickly
• happily
• fiercely
• largely
• usefully
• equally

The noun-making, verb-making, and adjective-making tables represent only partial lists, but should give you an introduction to how derivational morphemes function in word formation. More importantly, these lists can serve as the KEY MARKERS for recognizing form-class words. The presence of a derivational morpheme is a key formal test for determining form-class words.

To test your understanding of the concepts discussed on this page, begin with the link below for an example practice exercise:

DERIVATIONAL SAMPLE EXERCISE

For a bit more of a challenge, analyze the following sentence from The Brothers Karamazov for derivational morphemes.

While he was wearying every one with his tears and complaints, and turning his house into a sink of debauchery, a faithful servant of the family, Grigory, took the three-year-old Mitya into his care.

To review your answers to these two samples, check the DERIVATIONAL MORPHEME SAMPLES ANALYSES page.