Derivation

This chapter studies derivations. The formation of words from words was also a topic of ancient etymology. At least as early as the first century BC, in Roman scholar Varro’s study of the Latin language, the origin of words was taken to have two aspects. One was their initial application or assignment to things. The priority at that point was that words assigned should be as few as possible, so that they could be learned more quickly. The other is distinguished in an earlier passage as the way in which ‘the derivatives of these names have arrived at their differences’. The priority there was that derivatives should be as many as possible, so that people ‘may more easily say those that they need to use’. The first aspect called for historical inquiry into forms individually. In contrast, the second required a technical study, with a few brief precepts that are as short as possible.