- derivation
-
—derivational, adj. —derivationally, adv./der'euh vay"sheuhn/, n.1. the act or fact of deriving or of being derived.2. the process of deriving.3. the source from which something is derived; origin.4. something that is or has been derived; derivative.5. Math.a. development of a theorem.b. differentiation.6. Gram.a. the process or device of adding affixes to or changing the shape of a base, thereby assigning the result to a form class that may undergo further inflection or participate in different syntactic constructions, as in forming service from serve, song from sing, and hardness from hard (contrasted with inflection).b. the systematic description of such processes in a given language.7. Ling.a. a set of forms, including the initial form, intermediate forms, and final form, showing the successive stages in the generation of a sentence as the rules of a generative grammar are applied to it.b. the process by which such a set of forms is derived.[1375-1425; late ME derivacioun < L derivation- (s. of derivatio) a turning away, equiv. to derivat(us) (ptp. of derivare; see DERIVE, -ATE1) + -ion- -ION]
* * *
▪ traditional grammarin descriptive linguistics and traditional grammar, the formation of a word by changing the form of the base or by adding affixes to it. In this sense, derivation is also called “word formation.” In historical linguistics, the derivation of a word is its history and etymology. In generative grammar, derivation means a sequence of linguistic representations that indicate the structure of a sentence or other linguistic unit before, during, and after the application of some grammatical rule or set of rules.* * *
Universalium. 2010.
