Morphological derivation

Morphological derivation is like playing with Legos to make new, fancier toys! Just like you can use different pieces of Lego blocks to build new things, morphological derivation is when we use different parts of words to create new words.

For example, if we take the word "happy" and add the suffix "-ness" to the end, we get "happiness." The suffix "-ness" is like a special piece of Lego that we can attach to the end of "happy" to make a new word that means "the state of being happy."

Another example is taking the word "friend" and adding the prefix "un-" to the beginning to make "unfriend." The prefix "un-" means "not," so "unfriend" means "not a friend."

In this way, we can create lots of new words by changing and adding parts to existing words. Just like you can make lots of different toys with Legos, we can make lots of different words with morphological derivation!