The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology

The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology is intended as a companion volume to The Oxford Handbook of Compounding (OUP 2009) Written by distinguished scholars, its 41 chapters aim to provide a comprehensive and thorough overview of the study of derivational morphology.

The handbook begins with an overview and a consideration of definitional matters, distinguishing derivation from inflection on the one hand and compounding on the other. From a formal perspective, the handbook treats affixation (prefixation, suffixation, infixation, circumfixation, etc.), conversion, reduplication, root and pattern and other templatic processes, as well as prosodic and subtractive means of forming new words. From a semantic perspective, it looks at the processes that form various types of adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs, as well as evaluatives and the rarer processes that form function words. The book also surveys derivation in fifteen language families that are widely dispersed in terms of both geographical location and typological characteristics.

Rochelle Lieber is Professor of Linguistics at the University of New Hampshire. Her interests include morphological theory, lexical semantics, and the morphology-syntax interface. She is the author of several books including Morphology and Lexical Semantics (CUP, 2004), Introducing Morphology (CUP, 2010) and, with Laurie Bauer and Ingo Plag, The Oxford Reference Guide to English Morphology (OUP, 2013).


Pavol Stekauer is Professor of English linguistics at P.J. Safarik University. His research has focused on an onomasiological approach to word-formation. His publications include An Onomasiological Theory of English Word-Formation (Benjamins, 1998), Meaning Predictability in Word-Formation (Benjamins, 2005), and Word-Formating in the World's Languages. A Typological Survey (with Valerie and Kortvelyessy: CUP, 2012).



Rochelle Lieber and Pavol Stekauer are co-editors of two handbooks: The Handbook of Word-formation (Springer, 2005) and The Oxford Handbook of Compounding (OUP, 2009).