Agent noun


In linguistics, an agent noun is a word that is derived from another word denoting an action, and that identifies an entity that does that action. For example, "driver" is an agent noun formed from the verb "drive".
Usually, derived in the above definition has the strict sense attached to it in morphology, that is the derivation takes as an input a lexeme and produces a new lexeme. However, the classification of morphemes into derivational morphemes and inflectional ones is not generally a straightforward theoretical question, and different authors can make different decisions as to the general theoretical principles of the classification as well as to the actual classification of morphemes presented in a grammar of some language.

Words related to agent noun

An agentive affix is commonly used to form an agent noun from a verb. Examples: