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derivational morphology

derivational morphology

8.7
Making new words by adding prefixes or suffixes to other words
  • noun
  • /ˌdɛrɪˈveɪʃənəl mɔːrˈfɑːlədʒi/
  • Specialized
translation icon : morfología derivacional
  • Teachers often emphasize derivational morphology to improve students' vocabulary skills by showing them how prefixes and suffixes change word meanings.
  • acquisition of derivational morphology

Examples

  • It is also clear that much vocabulary knowledge occurs through the acquisition of derivational morphology.

    Academic text (2012)
  • Children in Grade 4 were selected for this study because, according to Tyler and Nagy (1989), rudimentary knowledge of derivational morphology begins before Grade 4 with respect to relational knowledge.

    Academic text (2012)
  • Derivational Morphology and Acquisition of Literacy

    Academic text (2012)
  • Derivational Morphology

    Academic text (2012)
  • Demonstration of a change in syntactic word class is reflective of the knowledge needed to produce and understand the developmentally advanced content of derivational morphology.

    Academic text (2015)
  • Tyler, A., & Nagy, W. (1989). The acquisition of English derivational morphology. Journal of Memory and Language, 28, 649-667.

    Academic text (2012)
  • In addition, future research might include an application component in the prompting system to measure receptive derivational morphology knowledge, such as generating a sentence using the targeted multimorphemic word.

    Academic text (2015)
  • The study of derivational morphology helps us understand how words are formed in the English language.

  • Understanding derivational morphology can aid learners in deciphering unfamiliar words by analyzing their components.

Synonyms

morphology
vsderivational morphology
  • Specialized
1 7.2

The study of how words are formed and change in a language

focuses specifically on creating new words by adding affixes

Surface Forms

Morphology

derivational + morphology

The meaning is directly compositional: 'derivational' specifies the type of 'morphology' (the study of word formation), so a learner who knows both words can infer it refers to morphology concerned with derivation. This follows a standard modifier + noun pattern found cross-linguistically, making the expression transparent to learners familiar with the constituent terms.

Etymology

Derivational morphology is like building with blocks: you add parts such as prefixes and suffixes to a base word to make something new. So, derivational morphology means the study of how we 'make new words' by adding these word parts.