Derivacionales

Derivacionales, in linguistics, refers to the set of processes that form new words from existing bases by adding affixes or making other morphological changes. Derivation is distinguished from inflection by typically changing the word’s meaning and often its syntactic category, rather than simply marking tense, number, or agreement.

The main mechanisms are prefixation and suffixation, where prefixes (at the beginning) or suffixes (at the end) attach to a base to yield a new word. Some languages also employ infixation or other alterations. Derivation can also occur by back-formation, where a new word is created by removing an apparent affix, or by zero-derivation, where a word changes category or function without any visible affix. Productivity varies across languages and affixes; some derivations are highly productive and routinely create new words, while others are lexicalized and rarely extended.

Derivational morphology often changes the word class: verbs can yield nouns (teach + er → teacher), adjectives can yield nouns (happy + ness → happiness), nouns can yield adjectives (beauty + -ful → beautiful in languages with compatible derivational paths). In Spanish and other Romance languages, common derivational suffixes include -ción, -dad, -idad, -ero/-era, and -ante/-ente, as in educación, felicidad, amabilidad, or actuación. In English, productive derivational suffixes include -er, -ness, -able, and -ment, as well as prefixation with un-, re-, and others. Derivational systems contribute to the expansion of the lexicon and the expressive flexibility of a language.