verbformative

Verbformative is a linguistic term used to describe a morpheme, affix, or verbalizing process that creates a verb from a base belonging to another word class, such as a noun or an adjective, or from a different verbal form. The concept focuses on derivational mechanisms that shift word class and semantics, rather than on tense, aspect, or agreement inflection.

In English, common verb-formatives include suffixes such as -ize, -ify, -ate, and -en, which convert stems into verbs with related meanings. Examples include realize (from real), modernize (from modern), beautify (from beauty), strengthen (from strength), and darken (from dark). Prefixes can also participate in verb formation in some cases, and languages may employ multiple strategies, including infixes, internal vowel changes, or compounding, to derive verbs from other parts of speech. The precise semantics of a verb-formative often involves action, process, causation, or transition.

Typologically, verb-formatives vary across languages. Some languages rely heavily on suffixal derivation to produce verbs, while others use prefixation, reduplication, tonal changes, or periphrastic constructions. This contrasts with inflectional endings that mark tense, aspect, mood, or agreement on already-formed verbs, and with periphrastic verb formation, which uses auxiliary words rather than bound morphemes. The study of verb-formatives helps describe how languages expand their verbal lexicon and encode new meanings through systematic morphological processes.

Notes: The term is descriptive and may be used differently across grammars; some grammars prefer terms like verbalizer or derivational affix for the same concept. See also derivational morphology and verbalization.