The purposes of this study were to investigate the relation between knowledge of formatives and knowledge of formative derivatives and the relation between knowledge of nonformatives and knowledge of nonformative derivatives, and to determine if the first relation is greater than the second. The subjects were 178 college freshmen who were enrolled in a two-year college and a four-year university located in New York City and who were native speakers of English heterogeneously distributed on a measure of verbal intelligence. Findings were that knowledge of formatives is strongly related to knowledge of formative derivatives, and this relation is strong when verbal intelligence, Latin and Romance language study, and word-part vocabulary study are partialed; knowledge of nonformatives is related to knowledge of nonformative derivatives, but this relation is not strong when verbal intelligence, Latin and Romance language study, and word-part vocabulary study are partialed; and nonformative word-part vocabulary study is not strongly related to knowledge of formative derivatives or to knowledge of nonformative derivatives. (Three implications regarding instruction are included.) (Author/RB)