derivation, in descriptive linguistics and traditional grammar, the formation of a word by changing the form of the base or by adding affixes to it (e.g., “hope” to “hopeful”). It is a major source of new words in a language. In historical linguistics, the derivation of a word is its history, or etymology. In generative grammar, derivation means a sequence of linguistic representations that indicate the structure of a sentence or other linguistic unit resulting from the application of some grammatical rule or set of rules.