Verbalderived

Verbalderived is a term used in linguistics to describe words that originate from verbs through derivation. In practice, verbalderived items include deverbal nouns, adjectives, and other parts of speech that are formed from a verb rather than from a base noun or adjective. The label highlights the verb as the source of formation.

The primary processes involved are derivational affixation and, in some languages, prefixes or infixes that create new word classes. English provides common examples such as builder (from build + -er), movement (move + -ment), and creative (create + -ive). Some languages rely heavily on suffixation to yield deverbal nouns or adjectives, while others rely more on conversion or zero-derivation, where a verb is used with little or no overt marking, as in using a verb as a noun. Cross-linguistic patterns vary: German often forms agents and actions with suffixes like -er or -ung, French uses -ment for nouns, and Russian employs a range of deverbal suffixes such as -ение or -ство.

Semantically, verbalderived forms frequently encode agentive, resultative, or aspectual meanings related to the original verb. They can also convey abstract properties or events associated with the action. The boundaries between verbalderived items and other word-formation classes can be fluid, especially in languages with rich morphology or productive derivational systems.

Notes: verbalderived is not always standardized; some scholars prefer terms like deverbal. In computational linguistics, it may appear as a lexeme feature indicating origin in a verb.

See also: deverbal noun, deverbal adjective, nominalization, verbal noun.