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29 

 

 
ELT FORUM 6 (1) (2017) 

 

Journal of English Language Teaching 

 
http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt 

 
 

STUDENTS’ PROBLEMS IN MAKING 

DERIVATIONAL WORDS 

 

Dwi Putri Setyani, Rudi Hartono, Arif Suryo Priyatmojo  
 

English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia  

 

Article Info 
________________  
Article History: 

Received in June 

2017  
Approved in July 2017 

Published in August 2017 
________________  
Keywords: derivational 
morphology, error analysis, 
descriptive qualitative 
research  
  
____________________ 

 
Abstract  
___________________________________________________________________  
This paper aims to find out what kinds of errors the students made in making derivational words and the 

most frequent errors occurred. It is a descriptive qualitative research which focuses on the error analysis of 

derivational morphology. The subject of this study was the students of English Education UNNES batch 

2012. By using quota sampling, 25 students were taken for the try-out test and another 25 students were 

taken for the real test. The data were obtained from a test and questionnaire.  In analyzing the data, the 

researcher used error analysis method. It consists of identifying errors, describing errors, explaining errors 

and error evaluation. The finding errors were analyzed based on the Surface Structure Taxonomy that 

specifies four types of errors namely omission, addition, misordering and misformation. The result showed 

that errors were found in all categories of derivational morphology. There were 146 errors which consisted 

of 98 (67,1%) misformation, 34 (23,3%) omission, and 14 (9,6%) addition. Thus, it was crystal clear that 

the most frequent errors occurred in misformation. 

  
 © 2017 Universitas Negeri Semarang 

  


 Correspondent Address: ISSN 2252-6706 
B3 Building FBS Unnes  

Sekaran, Gunungpati, Semarang, 50229  

E-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com  



D. Putri Setyani  & R. Hartono & A. Suryo Priyatmojo / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

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INTRODUCTION 

One of the most fundamental units that should be learned to master English is vocabulary 

(words). Words help us to convey our thoughts through language. Anyone who has mastered 

English usually has a long list of words to convey information both spoken and written. Words 

(written or spoken) are used to convey a broad sense of meanings (Priyatmojo, 2011). They are 

associated with a wide range of information and that each type of information forms an important 

area of study for a subfield of linguistics. Within the field of morphology, it is possible to learn 

deeply about the nature of words. 

Morphology is the part of linguistics that deals with the study of words. According to 

Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams (2011:41), morphology is part of grammatical knowledge of a 

language.  The term morphology is derived from the Greek word morph which means “form” and 

logos which means science. It is the study of the internal structure of words, and of the rules by which 

words are formed. Akmajian, Demers and Harnish (1984:55) explain that, “Morphology is the 

subfield of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words and the interrelationships among 

words.” For every word people have learned, they intuitively know something about its internal 

structure, for instance, the word tree. It cannot be broken down into any meaningful parts. In 

contrast, the word trees is made up of two parts: the word tree plus an additional element, -s (known 

as the “plural” ending). 

Morphology is generally classified into two major parts. They are inflectional morphology 

and derivational morphology. Haspelmath and Sims (2010:18) describe that derivational 

morphology or derivation is the relationship between lexemes of a word family. Another definition 

was stated by Katamba (1993:47). He stated that derivational morphology form words in different 

ways. The first is by changing the meaning of the base to which they are attached, e.g. kind vs un-

kind (both are adjectives but with opposite meanings); obey vs dis-obey (both are verbs but with 

opposite meanings). The second is by changing the word-class that a base belongs to, e.g. the 

addition of -ly to the adjective kind and simple produces the adverbs kind-ly and simp-ly. As a rule, it 

is possible to derive an adverb by adding the suffix –ly to an adjectival base.  

There are nine categories of derivational morphology. They are: 1) Adverbs derived from 

adjectives (e.g. exactly, efficiently, slowly); 2) Nouns derived from nouns (e.g. kingdom, friendship, 

disadvantage); 3) Nouns derived from adjectives (e.g. purity, radicalism, freedom); 4) Noun derived 

from verbs (e.g. performance, commitment, singer); 5) Adjectives derived from adjectives (e.g. 

pinkish, illegal, disagreeable); 6) Adjectives derived from verbs (e.g. readable, reliable, explosive); 7) 

Adjectives derived from nouns (e.g. joyful, meaningless, selfish); 8) Verbs derived from verbs (e.g. 

underestimate, untie, disbelieve); and 9) Verb derived from nouns (e.g. hasten, beautify, terrorise).  

Unlike derivational morphology, inflectional morphology does not change referential or 

cognitive meaning. While a derivational affix may move a base into a new word class (e.g., kind 

(adjective) but kind-ly (adverb), an inflectional morphology does not alter the word-class of the base 

to which it is attached. Inflectional morphology are only able to modify the form of a word so that it 

can fit into a particular syntactic slot. Basically, English has only eight bound inflectional affixes 

(Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams, 2011:51): 1) {-s} third person singular present; 2) {-ed} past tense; 

3) {-ing} progressive; 4) {s} plural; 5) -„s possessive; 6) {-er} comparative, and 7) {-est} superlative.  

However, English (like all languages) has many irregular forms, which may be irregular in a 

variety of ways. First, irregular words may use different inflections than regular ones: for example, 

the modern past participle inflection of a regular verb is {-ed}, but the past participle of freeze is frozen 

and the past participle of break is broken. Second, irregular forms may involve internal vowel 

changes, as in man/men, woman/women, blow/blew, ring/rang/rung. Third, some forms derive from 

historically unrelated forms: went, the past tense of go, historically was the past tense of a different 



D. Putri Setyani  & R. Hartono & A. Suryo Priyatmojo / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

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verb, wend. This sort of realignment is known as suppletion. Other examples of suppletion include 

good, better, and best, and bad, worse, and worst. Fourth, some words show no inflectional change: 

sheep is both singular and plural; hit is both present and past tense, as well as past participle. Fifth, 

many borrowed words, especially nouns, have irregular inflected forms such as alumnae as the plural 

of alumna.  

The distinction between inflectional and derivational morphology was also explained by 

(Akmajian, Demers, and Harnish 1984:55): First, inflectional affixes never change the part of speech 

of the base morpheme to which they are attached. For example, both eat and eats are verbs; both girl 

and girls are nouns. In contrast, derivational affixes often change the part of speech of the base 

morpheme. Thus, read is a verb, but readable is an adjective. (As noted earlier though, some 

derivational affixes do not change part of speech: for example, derivational prefixes in English 

generally do not change the part of speech of the base morpheme to which they are attached, so that 

both charge and recharge, for instance, are verbs.) In short, an inflectional affix never changes the part 

of speech of its base morpheme, while a derivational affix may. 

Second, inflectional and derivational suffixes occur in a certain relative order within words: 

namely, inflectional suffixes follow derivational suffixes. Thus, in modernize – modernizes the 

inflectional –s follows derivational –ize. If an iflectional suffix is added to a verb, as with modernizes, 

then no further derivational suffixes can be added. English has no form modernizesable, with 

inflectional –s followed by derivation –able. For these reasons, it is often noted that inflectional 

affixes mark the “outer” layer of words, while derivational affixes mark the “inner” layer.  

Intuitively, the function of certain derivational affixes is to create new base forms (new stems) 

that other derivational or inflectional affixes can attach to. Thus, the suffix –ize creates verbs from 

adjectives, and such –ize verbs, like other verbs, can have the inflectional ending –s attached to them. 

In this sense, then, certain derivational affixes create new members for a given part-of-speech class, 

whereas inflectional affixes always attach to already existing members of a given part-of-speech 

class.  

Finally, inflectional and derivational affixes can be distinguished in terms of semantic 

relations. In the case of inflectional affixes, the relation between the meaning of the stem morpheme 

and the meaning of the stem + affix is quite regular. Hence, the meaning difference between tree and 

trees (singular versus plural) is paralleled quite regularly in other similar pairs of nouns and noun + 

plural affix combinations. In contrast, in the case of derivational affixes the relation between the 

meaning of the base morpheme and the meaning 1`of the base + affix is sometimes unpredictable, as 

we have seen. For example the pair fix and fixable shows a simple meaning relation (“X” and “able to 

be X”d”); but recall pairs such as read – readable or wash-washable, where the –able form has 

undergone semantic drift and has accrued new elements of meaning beyond the simple combination 

of the meaning of the base and the meaning of –able. Such semantic drift is generally not found in 

cases of a base + inflectional affix, so that a word such trees is simply the plural of tree and has not 

accrued additional meaning.  

Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams (2011:52) summarized the difference between derivational and 

inflectional morphology as follows: 

    

Inflectianal Derivational 

Grammatical function Lexical function 

No word class change May cause word class change 



D. Putri Setyani  & R. Hartono & A. Suryo Priyatmojo / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

32 

 

Small or no meaning change Some meaning change 

Often required by rules of grammar Never required by rules of grammar 

Follow derivational morphemes in a word Precede inflectional morphemes in a word 

Productive Some productive, many nonproductive 

 

Table 1.1 The differences between Derivational and Inflectional Morphology 

 

These theories implicitly show that the change of derivational words does not have specific 

rules or standards. Certain changes occur such as transformation by adding suffixes (-ance, -dom, -ful, 

-hood, -ion, -ist, -ity, etc) or prefixes (-uni, -bi, -di, -multi, etc). Different process happens when we want 

to change the class of words. Based on the writer‟s experience when she got derivational exercises 

from the lecturer, she found some difficulties in transforming the words. The writer was a bit 

confused in choosing the appropriate suffixes to be added in the words. This difficulty caused her 

making errors in her work. Due to its complexity of the irregular change, the researcher wants to 

analyze students‟ errors in changing derivational words. Therefore, this reason has inspired the 

researcher to  conduct a study on students‟ problem in making derivational words by describing 

kinds of errors and find out the most frequent errors occurred in the students batch 2012 of English 

Department UNNES. Hopefully, it will prevent the students from making the same errors in the 

future. 

 

METHODOLOGY OF THE RESEARCH 

This study was a descriptive qualitative research. Kothari (2004:2) states that descriptive 

research includes surveys and fact-finding enquiries of different kinds. The major purpose of 

descriptive research is description of the state of affairs as it exists at present. It concerns with 

describing the characteristics of a particular individual, or of a group. 

This study used qualitative research method in analizing the data since the aim of the study is 

to explain what kind of errors occured and to describe the most frequent error.  Therefore, the data 

was analyzed and explained deeply in the form of words rather than numbers to analyze the errors 

made by students. However, quantitative method was also needed to process some data which was 

can only be represented in the form of numbers and tables. Nonetheless, this research did not use too 

complicated formula to present the results. Quantitative method was only used to calculate the 

percentage of the errors occurred. Meanwhile qualitative approach described and gave details 

analysis of information in the form of sentences. It represents an attractive and fruitful way of doing 

research. 

This study was conducted at State University of Semarang. The population of this study was 

the English Education Students Batch 2012. Meanwhile the sample were 25 students for the try-out 

test and another 25 students for the real test. In this study, the researcher used quota sampling. It is a 

nonprobability sampling method in which elements are selected to ensure that the sample represents 

certain characteristics in proportion to their prevalence in the population. The researcher was 

intended to find students who had taken derivational morphology class and whoever was available 



D. Putri Setyani  & R. Hartono & A. Suryo Priyatmojo / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

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for the set quota (twenty five students for the try-out test and the different twenty five students for 

the real test). They were supposed to do the test and questionnaire to know the errors occurred in 

making derivational words.  

The choice was under the consideration that firstly, they were assumed to have good 

derivation mastery since they had already passed some sequence of derivation classes in the previous 

semesters, such as: Word-based Lexical, Introduction to Linguistics and English Syntax. Secondly, 

as teacher candidates, they should master it since they have to deliver English lesson especially 

derivation in the right way. In fact, due to no particular rules in changing derivational words, it may 

lead into confusion for some students. Therefore, the researcher aims to analyze the type of errors 

appearing in students‟ work, know the frequency of each error, and the most frequent error in 

making derivational words.  

In this research, the researcher had a role as the data collector. At first, the researcher gave 

consent form to the subjects as an approval from the students to participate in the research. Then, 

the researcher conducted the try-out test which was administered on May 13th 2016 by twenty five 

students. There were 45 items of completion test and the time allotment was 90 minutes. It was 

conducted before the real test to find the validity and reliability of the test items. After the items were 

valid and reliable, the researcher composed the real test and administered it to another twenty five 

students of English education students‟ batch 2012 of English Department UNNES. They did 27 

items for 60 minutes on May 20th 2016.  

At the end of the test, the students did the given questionnaire. The questionnaire was given 

to strengthen the result of the test. It helped the researcher to see the learning difficulty from 

students‟ perspective. It consisted of 20 closed statements related to students‟ difficulty in 

derivational morphology. It was given at the end of the test with the 20 minutes of time allotment. 

The researcher used the Likert scale to analyze the questionnare. Likert item is used to measure 

respondents‟ attitudes to a particular question or statement. 

 

RESULT AND ANALYSIS 

 

In analyzing the data, the researcher used error analysis method by Ellis (1997:15): 1) 

Identifying errors. The researcher identified all errors made by the students in derivational 

morphology categories. 2) Describing errors. Once all the errors had been identified, they could be 

described and classified based on surface structure taxonomy; omission, addition, misformation, and 

misordering. 3) Explaining errors. Calculating the errors and explaining the errors‟ description and 

its frequency. 5) Error evaluation. In the last step, the researcher evaluated the errors and the most 

frequent error. From the evaluation, it could be seen in which part of derivational morphology the 

students made errors and how well their mastery in learning derivational morphology.  

As the researcher stated in the previous part, the errors were classified into 4 types of errors 

according to Dulay, Burt and Krashen cited in James (1998:106) as follows: Omission, Addition, 

Misformation and Misordering. From the data analyzed, it was found 146 errors with the 

calculation result as follows: They were 34 errors of omission, 14 errors of addition, 98 errors of 

misformation, and (0) no error of misordering.  

 



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Table 2.1 Total Errors‟ Occurence 

 
The result above revealed a total of 146 data containing errors. Of all these errors, it indicated 

that misformation (n=98) accounted for the majority of errors. This is followed by omission (n=33), 

addition (n=15) and misordering (n=0).  Out of the total errors, it showed that the most frequent 

errors occurred in deriving noun to noun and verb to adjective with 30 errors. It was followed by 25 

errors in deriving verb to verb, 23 errors in deriving adjective to adjective, 11 errors in deriving 

adjective to adverb, 10 errors in deriving verb to noun, 9 errors in deriving noun to verb, 5 errors in 

driving noun to adjective and 3 errors in deriving adjective to noun. 

  The percentage of students‟ errors were converted into a pie chart. The pie chart showed the 

detail percentage of each errror types as follows.  

 

 

Diagram 2.1 The Classification of Errors 

 

The Diagram 1 showed that the majority of errors consist of misformation errors with 98 

(67,1%). Misformation is characterized by the use of the wrong form of a structure or morpheme. 

Specifically, It spread out almost in all derivation categories. From the calculation, there were 16 

misformation errors in deriving noun to noun, 1 misformation error in deriving adjective to noun, 7 

misformation errors in deriving verb to noun, 23 misformation errors in deriving adjective to 

adjective, 29 misformation errors in deriving verb to adjective, 2 misformation errors in deriving 

noun to adjective, 18 misformation errors in deriving verb to verb, 1 misformation error in deriving 

adjective to adverb and 1 misformation error in deriving noun to verb. Off  all 9 derivational 

classifications, the majority of misformation errors occured in deriving verb to adjective (n=29) and 

no misformation error was found in deriving adjective to adverb. The following are the examples 

and explanations of misformation errors found in students‟ work. One of the example was in item 

number 15: [It would be (responsible *antonym) ____________ to ignore this warning.] in which the 

majority of misformation errors occured. 13 from 25 students made the same errors by answering 



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unresponsible. At a glance, this answer might seem does not contain any error. In fact, the word 

unresponsible does not exist in English dictionary. On the one hand, the prefix un- which means „not‟ 

is extremely widespread and used in adjectives: for instance unhappy, unreadable, unacceptable, 

uncertain,  but on the other hand it does not mean that un- can be prefixed to all adjectives freely. We 

do not find ungood, unpossible, and unresponsible. In this case, those students tended to apply the 

regular rules to those that are irregular. In misformation terminology, these errors are called as 

regularization. The word responsible in this context, has prefix –ir which means not responsible.  

The second classification was omission. It refers to the absence of an item which must be 

present in a well-formed utterance. There are 34 (23,3%) errors in omission and they were found in 

seven categories of derivational morphology. They occurred in deriving noun to noun (14), adjective 

to noun (2), verb to noun (1), verb to adjective (1), noun to adjective (1), verb to verb (7), and noun 

to verb (8). One of the example was on item number 7: [She showed uncharacteristic (nervous) 

_______ during the show]. In this part, the researcher noticed flaw of the students spelling which 

omitted certain parts of the letters. It was detected only one error (nervous). The correct answer was 

nervousness. It meant that the student omitted the suffix –ness from nervousness.  

The third classification was addition. It is the presence of an extra item which must not be 

present in a well formed utterance. The result of the test showed that there were 14 (9,6%) errors of 

addition. Off  all 9 derivational classifications, the majority of addition errors occured in deriving 

adjective to adverb (n=10) and it was followed by deriving verb to noun (n=2) and noun to adjective 

(n=2). The item number 2 was one of the example of addition error found in students‟ work: [Rio 

Haryanto drives (fast) ____________ at Barcelona‟s Catalunya Circuit]. In this item, the majority of 

addition errors occured. The writer identified 10 errors of addition in this item. They produced the 

same errors by answering fastly. At a glance, this answer might seem correct. In fact, the word fastly 

does not exist in English dictionary. It is true that many adverbs end in –ly. However, some adverbs 

are not containing –ly and formed by conversion such as fast and hard. They are derived from the 

adjective fast and hard. Thus, the correct answer of the question number 2 was fast.  

The last classification was misordering. It is the incorrect placement of a morpheme of group 

of morphemes in an utterance. Misordering error was not found in this study. 

In getting further information, the researcher gave questionnaire to the students. The students 

were given twenty minutes to answer twenty close-ended questions of questionnaire. The questions 

represented the students‟ perspective about derivational morphology including their difficulty in 

doing the test. According to the data tabulation, there were 3 highest percentage on students‟ 

difficulty in changing derivational words. Firstly, there were 60% or 15 students agreed that they 

found difficulty in deriving noun to noun. Secondly, there were 12 students or 48% stated that they 

found difficulty in deriving verb to adjective. And thirdly, it was detected that 40% or 10 students 

found difficulty in deriving verb to verb. Based on the result, it can be summarized that most 

students found difficulty in changing derivational words from noun to noun, verb to adjective and 

verb to verb. In addition, the result shows that almost all students strongly agree that it is necessary 

to learn derivational morphology. However, they thought that they have not found any strong 

theoretical basis to learn derivational morphology easily. Therefore, they agreed that there should be 

definite rules in forming derivational morphology changes.     

Hence, according to the result analysis, it showed that errors were found in all categories of 

derivational morphology in changing adjective to adverb, noun to noun, adjective to noun, verb to 

noun, adjective to adjective, verb to adjective, noun to adjective, verb to verb, and noun to verb. 

Based on the error analysis of the surface structure taxonomy, findings indicated that misformation 

(n=98 or 67,1%) was the most frequent error occurred. It almost can be found in all categories of 

derivational morphology. It was followed by omission (n=34 or 23,3%), and addition (n=14 or 

9,6%). Meanwhile, it was crystal clear that the errors‟ calculation showed misformation as the most 



D. Putri Setyani  & R. Hartono & A. Suryo Priyatmojo / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 

36 

 

frequent errors occurred. From the total 146 errors, misformation was on the first rank of the most 

frequent errors with 98 (67,1%) errors. In addition, both questionnaire and test result indicated 

deriving noun to noun (n=30) and verb to adjective (n=30) as the derivation categories where most 

errors occured. 

  

CONCLUSIONS 

 After scrutinizing the data, the writer concludes that she found 146 errors in all derivational 

categories. The errors were classified based on the four types of Surface Structure Taxonomy as 

proposed by Dulay, Burt and Krashen (cited in James, 1998:106). They are omission, addition, 

misordering and misformation. The research findings indicated that the most frequent errors 

occurred in misformation with 98 (67,1%) errors. It was followed by omission  ( 34 errors or 23,3%), 

and addition ( 14 errors or 9,6%).  

Out of the total errors (146), it showed that the majority of errors occurred in deriving noun to 

noun and verb to adjective with 30 errors. It was followed by 25 errors in deriving verb to verb, 23 

errors in deriving adjective to adjective, 11 errors in deriving adjective to adverb, 10 errors in 

deriving verb to noun, 9 errors in deriving noun to verb, 5 errors in driving noun to adjective and 3 

errors in deriving adjective to noun. This is relevant to the questionnaire result which showed the 

highest percentage (60 % or 15 students) found most of students agreed they found difficulty in 

deriving noun to noun. It was followed by 12 students or 48% stated that they found difficulty in 

deriving verb to adjective. It proved that both the test and questionnaire result indicated the most 

frequent errors occurred in deriving noun to noun.  

 

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Ellis, Rod. (1997). Second Language Acquisition. Oxford : Oxford University Press. 

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Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., and Hyams, N. (2011). An Introduction to Language. Wadsworth : Cengage Learning. 

James, Carl. (1998). Errors in Language Learning and Use.  Exploring Error Analysis. USA : Longman. 

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