NYSTCE English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Practice Test

What is a derivational morpheme responsible for?

1. Creating grammatical forms

2. Creating a word that has a new meaning or part of speech

3. Changing tense or number of a word

4. Joining two words together

The correct answer is: Creating a word that has a new meaning or part of speech

A derivational morpheme is responsible for creating a word that has a new meaning or part of speech. These morphemes can be prefixes or suffixes that, when added to a base word, alter its meaning or enable it to take on a different grammatical role. For instance, adding the prefix "un-" to the word "happy" creates "unhappy," which conveys a different meaning, while the suffix "-ness" can turn "happy" into "happiness," transforming it from an adjective to a noun. This ability to shift both meaning and part of speech is a key feature of derivational morphemes. In contrast, grammatical forms, such as tense or number, are typically influenced by inflectional morphemes, which do not create new meanings but rather modify existing words. Moreover, the process of joining two words together is more accurately described as compounding rather than derivation.