avledningen

Avledning, in the linguistic sense, refers to the process of forming new words by affixation or other changes that shift a word’s meaning or its lexical category. In Norwegian linguistics, avledning is contrasted with bøyning (inflection), which marks grammatical features without creating a new word form. Avledning expands the lexicon by deriving nouns, adjectives, or verbs from existing bases.

Derivation occurs mainly through affixation and conversion. Affixation adds prefixes or suffixes to a base, often changing its part of speech or semantic field. Conversion (zero-derivation) forms new words without adding visible affixes, for example by using a noun as a verb or vice versa. In some cases, word formation includes back-formation, whereby a shorter form is created from an existing word, though this is less systematic.

Common productive suffixes include -het, -skap, -ing, -ende, and -lig, which can create nouns or adjectives from other words. Prefixes such as negative or modifying elements can also contribute to derivation, though Norwegian productivity and preferences vary with dialect and standard. Derivation is a key mechanism for vocabulary development, often reflecting semantic shifts and new cultural or technical domains.

Examples (Norwegian): fri + -het yields frihet (freedom); snill + -het yields snillhet (kindness); venn + -skap yields vennskap (friendship); lese + -ing yields lesing (reading). These illustrate how avledning can produce related but distinct words with different grammatical roles.

See also: bøyning, sammensetning (compounding), norsk ordforråd, Bokmål, Nynorsk.