tuletusmorfoloogia

Tuletusmorfoloogia refers to the study of how new words are formed by adding affixes to existing words. It is a branch of morphology, which itself is the study of word structure. In tuletusmorfoloogia, the focus is on derivation, a process that creates new words with different meanings or grammatical categories from the base word. This is distinct from inflectional morphology, which modifies words to indicate grammatical features like tense or number without changing the core meaning or part of speech.

The affixes used in tuletusmorfoloogia are called derivational morphemes. These can be prefixes, which are added to the beginning of a word, or suffixes, which are added to the end. For example, in English, adding the prefix "un-" to "happy" creates "unhappy," a new word with an opposite meaning. Similarly, adding the suffix "-ness" to "happy" forms "happiness," changing the word from an adjective to a noun.

Different languages have their own specific sets of derivational affixes and rules governing their use. Tuletusmorfoloogia examines these patterns to understand how vocabulary grows and evolves within a language. It helps linguists analyze word formation, identify semantic relationships between words, and understand the underlying structure of a language's lexicon. The systematic nature of derivation allows for the creation of a vast number of words from a limited set of roots.