Word Formation: When the Obvious Derivative Is Wrong
A word-formation task gives a root word in capitals and a gap in a sentence; candidates must supply the correct derived form. Three items: (1) "The teacher praised the students for their ____ (PERSIST) in finishing the project." (2) "The new road will ____ (LONG) the journey to the coast considerably." (3) "His explanation was so ____ (CLEAR) that nobody understood the instructions." Candidate Domingos writes "persistence", "length", and "clearness". The rubric states that spelling counts and that the derived word must fit grammatically and semantically.
1. Mark each of Domingos's three answers, justifying each decision.
Read the worked answer
- (1) "persistence" - correct. The gap follows "their" and is the subject of a prepositional phrase, so a noun is required. Persistence is the standard noun from persist.
- (2) "length" - incorrect. The gap follows the modal "will" and precedes the object "the journey", so a verb is required. Length is a noun. The correct form is lengthen. Domingos has produced a related word of the wrong class - a common error where the root's most familiar derivative is chosen without checking the slot.
- (3) "clearness" - incorrect on two grounds. First, semantics: the sentence says nobody understood, so the required meaning is negative - unclear. Second, even for the positive meaning, the natural noun is clarity, not clearness. The correct answer is unclear. Pattern: Domingos checks word family but not (a) part of speech required by the slot or (b) whether the sentence's meaning calls for a negative prefix.
2. State a three-step procedure a candidate should apply to any word-formation gap, and show it working on item (2).
Read the worked answer
Three-step procedure:
- Identify the slot's part of speech - what precedes and follows the gap (determiner, modal, preposition, subject position).
- Check polarity and meaning - does the sentence need a negative, a comparative, a plural?
- Only then choose the affix and verify spelling. Applied to item (2):
- Step 1: "will ____ the journey" → modal + object → verb needed.
- Step 2: "considerably" signals increase → positive, comparative sense, no negative prefix.
- Step 3: verb from long = lengthen (suffix -en forms verbs from adjectives). This procedure would have caught the error at step 1, before any spelling decision was made.