Which term describes the process of forming a new word by adding affixes to a base word?

• A. Inflection
• B. Circumfixation
• C. Interfixation
• D. Derivation

Answer: (D)

Derivation is the process of forming a new word by attaching derivational affixes to a base word, often changing its meaning and even its part of speech. When you add prefixes or suffixes that create a new lexical item, you’re expanding the vocabulary in a way that isn’t just a grammatical tweak.

For example, adding -er to teach yields teacher, a new word that names a person who teaches. Adding -ness to happy gives happiness, turning an adjective into a noun with a new sense. These changes create different, stand-alone words rather than simply altering the form of the same word.

Inflection, by contrast, tweaks a word to signal tense, number, mood, case, or person—forms like walk, walks, walked, walking. It doesn’t produce a new word with a new meaning; it just marks grammatical information on the same word.

Circumfixation involves affixes on both sides of a base, wrapping around it. It’s not the usual way English builds new words and is more characteristic of other languages, where a prefix and a suffix work together around the stem.

Interfixation refers to a linking morpheme inserted between two stems in a compound to connect them, not to create a new lexical item by attaching affixes to a base.

So the process described is derivation.