derivationsform

Derivationsform, or derivational form, is a term used in linguistics to describe the form of a word produced through derivation. Derivation is the aspect of word formation that creates new lexemes or changes a word’s grammatical category by adding derivational morphemes, as opposed to inflection, which marks grammatical relations on existing words without changing their core meaning or part of speech.

Derivational processes typically involve prefixes and suffixes, or other modification of the base form. Derivational morphemes carry semantic content and often alter the word class, producing adjectives from nouns (for example, beauty becomes beautiful), nouns from verbs (teach becomes teacher), or nouns from adjectives (happy becomes happiness). Some derivations are productive and productive derivational patterns can generate many new words, while others are limited or irregular.

A derivational form may coincide with or differ from an inflected form. Inflection adjusts tense, number, case, or agreement without changing the core meaning or part of speech, whereas derivation tends to create new lexical items with new meanings or grammatical roles. In many languages, derivational morphology is a central part of vocabulary growth and word formation, with extensive affix inventories and complex rules.

The concept is commonly used in German-language linguistics and is often described in terms of wortbildung and derivation. In English-language literature, the same idea is typically discussed under derivation or derivational morphology. See also derivation, word formation, and morphology.