ordfamilien

An ordfamilie, or word family, is a set of words that share a common root or stem and are related through derivation or inflection. In linguistic analysis it helps describe how a single lexical core can yield a range of related forms. A typical ordfamilie includes the base word (the lemma), its inflected variants, and derived forms produced by affixation or compounding. Depending on the framework, the family may also encompass different parts of speech that originate from the same root. The exact membership can vary with language and methodology, and some drift over time can blur boundaries.

Formation and boundaries: Word families arise through processes such as prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and compounding. Regular morphological patterns create predictable members, as in English with act, action, actor, active, activate, activation. Boundaries are not always clear: semantic shift, irregular derivations, or borrowings from other roots can place a word outside what another analyst would call the same ordfamilie. Likewise, a word may belong to more than one family if it is derived from more than one root or has several etymologies.

Usage and relevance: In dictionaries, grammars, and language-learning materials, ordfamilier are used to organize related forms and to illustrate productive patterns. In computational linguistics, the concept underpins stemming and lemmatization, helping software treat different forms as related for search, indexing, and analysis. Recognizing ordfamilier also aids historical linguistics, showing how words evolve and classify within a language's morphology.