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A root (also known as a root word or radical) is the core of a word that is irreducible into more meaningful elements. In morphology, a root is a morphologically simple unit which can be left bare or to which a prefix or a suffix can attach. The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family (this root is then called the base word), which carries aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. Content words in nearly all languages contain, and may consist only of, root morphemes. However, sometimes the term "root" is also used to describe the word without its inflectional endings, but with its lexical endings in place. For example, chatters has the inflectional root or lemma chatter, but the lexical root chat. Inflectional roots are often called stems. A root, or a root morpheme, in the stricter sense, a mono-morphemic stem.
The traditional definition allows roots to be either free morphemes or bound morphemes. Root morphemes are the building blocks for affixation and compounds. However, in polysynthetic languages with very high levels of inflectional morphology, the term "root" is generally synonymous with "free morpheme". Many languages have a very restricted number of morphemes that can stand alone as a word: Yup'ik, for instance, has no more than two thousand.
The root is conventionally indicated using the mathematical symbol √; for instance, the Sanskrit root "√bhū-" means the root "bhū-".
Examples
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English verb form running contains the root run. The Spanish superlative adjective amplísimo contains the root ampli-. In the former case, the root can occur on its own freely. In the latter, modification via affixation is required to be used as a free form. English has minimal use of morphological strategies such as affixation and features a tendency to have words that are identical to their roots. However, such forms as in Spanish exist in English such as interrupt, which may arguably contain the root -rupt, which only appears in other related prefixed forms (such as disrupt, corrupt, rupture, etc.). The form -rupt cannot occur on its own.
Examples of (consonantal roots) which are related but distinct to the concept developed here are formed prototypically by three (as few as two and as many as five) consonants. Speakers may derive and develop new words (morphosyntactically distinct, i.e. with different parts of speech) by using non-concatenative morphological strategies: inserting different vowels. Unlike 'root' here, these cannot occur on their own without modification; as such these are never actually observed in speech and may be termed 'abstract'. For example, in Hebrew, the forms derived from the abstract consonantal roots, a major Hebrew phonetics concept ג-ד-ל (g-d-l) related to ideas of largeness: gadol and gdola (masculine and feminine forms of the adjective "big"), gadal "he grew", higdil "he magnified" and magdelet "magnifier", along with many other words such as godel "size" and migdal "tower".
Roots and reconstructed roots can become the tools of etymology.
Secondary roots
Secondary roots are roots with changes in them, producing a new word with a slightly different meaning. In English, a rough equivalent would be to see a conductor as a secondary root formed from the root to conduct. In abjad languages, the most familiar are Arabic and Hebrew, in which families of secondary roots are fundamental to the language, secondary roots are created by changes in the roots' vowels, by adding or removing the long vowels a, i, u, e and o. (Notice that Arabic does not have the vowels e and o.) In addition, secondary roots can be created by prefixing (m−, t−), infixing (−t−), or suffixing (−i, and several others). There is no rule in these languages on how many secondary roots can be derived from a single root; some roots have few, but others have many, not all of which are necessarily in current use.
Consider the Arabic language:
- مركز [mrkz] or [markaza] meaning 'centralized (masculine, singular)', from [markaz] 'centre', from [rakaza] 'plant into the earth, stick up (a lance)' ( ر-ك-ز | r-k-z). This in turn has derived words مركزي [markaziy], meaning 'central', مركزية [markaziy:ah], meaning 'centralism' or 'centralization', and لامركزية, [la:markaziy:ah] 'decentralization'
- أرجح [rjh] or [ta'arjaħa] meaning 'oscillated (masculine, singular)', from ['urju:ħa] 'swing (n)', from [rajaħa] 'weighed down, preponderated (masculine, singular)' ( ر-ج-ح | r-j-ħ).
- محور [mhwr] or [tamaħwara] meaning 'centred, focused (masculine, singular)', from [mihwar] meaning 'axis', from [ħa:ra] 'turned (masculine, singular)' (ح-و-ر | h-w-r).
- مسخر [msxr], تمسخر [tamasxara] meaning 'mocked, made fun (masculine, singular)', from مسخرة [masxara] meaning 'mockery', from سخر [saxira] 'mocked (masculine, singular)' (derived from س-خ-ر[s-x-r])." Similar cases may be found in other Semitic languages such as Hebrew, Syriac, Aramaic, Maltese language and to a lesser extent Amharic.
Similar cases occur in Hebrew, for example Israeli Hebrew מ-ק-מ √m-q-m 'locate', which derives from Biblical Hebrew מקום måqom 'place', whose root is ק-ו-מ √q-w-m 'stand'. A recent example introduced by the Academy of the Hebrew Language is מדרוג midrúg 'rating', from מדרג midrág, whose root is ד-ר-ג √d-r-g 'grade'."
According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann, "this process is morphologically similar to the production of frequentative (iterative) verbs in Latin, for example:
- iactito 'to toss about' derives from iacto 'to boast of, keep bringing up, harass, disturb, throw, cast, fling away', which in turn derives from iacio 'to throw, cast' (from its past participle iactum).
Consider also Rabbinic Hebrew ת-ר-מ √t-r-m 'donate, contribute' (Mishnah: T'rumoth 1:2: 'separate priestly dues'), which derives from Biblical Hebrew תרומה t'rūmå 'contribution', whose root is ר-ו-מ √r-w-m 'raise'; cf. Rabbinic Hebrew ת-ר-ע √t-r-' 'sound the trumpet, blow the horn', from Biblical Hebrew תרועה t'rū'å 'shout, cry, loud sound, trumpet-call', in turn from ר-ו-ע √r-w-'." and it describes the suffix.
Category-neutral roots
Decompositional generative frameworks suggest that roots hold little grammatical information and can be considered "category-neutral". Category-neutral roots are roots without any inherent lexical category but with some conceptual content that becomes evident depending on the syntactic environment. The ways in which these roots gain lexical category are discussed in Distributed Morphology and the Exoskeletal Model.
Theories adopting a category-neutral approach have not, as of 2020, reached a consensus about whether these roots contain a semantic type but no argument structure, neither semantic type nor argument structure, or both semantic type and argument structure.
In support of the category-neutral approach, data from English indicates that the same underlying root appears as a noun and a verb - with or without overt morphology.
-
English examples - overt Root Noun Verb advertise an advertisement to advertise character a character to characterize employ an employment to employ alphabet an alphabet to alphabetize -
English Examples - Covert Root Noun Verb dance a dance to dance walk a walk to walk chair a chair to chair wardrobe a wardrobe to wardrobe
In Hebrew, the majority of roots consist of segmental consonants √CCC. Arad (2003) describes that the consonantal root is turned into a word due to pattern morphology. Thereby, the root is turned into a verb when put into a verbal environment where the head bears the "v" feature (the pattern).
Consider the root √š-m-n (ש-מ-נ).
| Pattern | Pronounced word | Gloss |
|---|---|---|
| CeCeC (n) | šemen | oil, grease |
| CaCCeCet (n) | šamenet | cream |
| CuCaC (n), CaCeC (adj) | šuman, šamen | fat |
| hiCCiC (v) | hišmin | grow fat/fatten |
| CiCCeC (n) | šimen | grease |
Although all words vary semantically, the general meaning of a greasy, fatty material can be attributed to the root.
Furthermore, Arad states that there are two types of languages in terms of root interpretation. In languages like English, the root is assigned one interpretation whereas in languages like Hebrew, the root can form multiple interpretations depending on its environment. This occurrence suggests a difference in language acquisition between these two languages. English speakers would need to learn two roots in order to understand two different words whereas Hebrew speakers would learn one root for two or more words.
| English Root | English Word | Hebrew Root | Hebrew Word | Gloss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| √CREAM | cream | √š-m-n ש-מ-נ | šamenet | 'cream' |
| √FAT | fat | šuman (n), šamen (adj) | 'fat' |
Alexiadou and Lohndal (2017) advance the claim that languages have a typological scale when it comes to roots and their meanings and state that Greek lies in between Hebrew and English.
See also
- Etymology
- Lemma (morphology)
- Lexeme
- Morphological typology
- Morphology (linguistics)
- Phono-semantic matching
- Principal parts
- Proto-Indo-European root
- Radical (Chinese character)
- Semitic root
- Word family
- Word stem
References
- Katamba, Francis (2006). Morphology (2nd ed.). Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 42. ISBN 9781403916440.
- "Root". Glossary of Linguistic Terms. 3 December 2015.
- Kemmer, Suzanne. "Words in English: Structure". Words in English. Retrieved 26 December 2018.
- Compare: Durkin, Philip (2009). "8: Semantic change". The Oxford Guide to Etymology. Oxford: Oxford University Press (published 2011). p. xciv. ISBN 9780191618789. Retrieved 2017-11-10.
In etymological reconstruction at the level of proto-languages, it is customary to reconstruct roots, which are assigned glosses, reflecting what is taken to be the common meaning shown by the words derived from this root.
- Wehr, Hans (1976). Cowan, J Milton (ed.). Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (PDF) (3rd ed.). Ithaca, N.Y.: Spoken Language Services. p. 358. ISBN 0-87950-001-8. Retrieved 12 March 2020.
- Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2003, Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew Archived 2014-02-01 at the Wayback Machine, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1-4039-1723-X. pp 65–66.
- Lohndal, Terje (28 February 2020). "Syntactic Categorization of Roots". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.257. hdl:11250/2644577. ISBN 978-0-19-938465-5.
- Levinson, Lisa (27 November 2014). "The ontology of roots and verbs". The Syntax of Roots and the Roots of Syntax: 208–229. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199665266.003.0010. ISBN 978-0199665273.
- Acquaviva, Paolo (May 2009). "Roots and Lexicality in Distributed Morphology". York Papers in Linguistics. 2 (10). University of York. Department of Language and Linguistic Science. hdl:10197/4148.
- Coon, Jessica (1 February 2019). "Building verbs in Chuj: Consequences for the nature of roots". Journal of Linguistics. 55 (1): 35–81. doi:10.1017/S0022226718000087. S2CID 149423392.
- Arad, Maya (2003). "Locality Constraints on the Interpretation of Roots: The Case of Hebrew Denominal Verbs". Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. 21 (4): 737–778. doi:10.1023/A:1025533719905. S2CID 35715020.
- Alexiadou, Artemis; Lohndal, Terje (18 May 2017). "On the division of labor between roots and functional structure". The Verbal Domain. 1. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198767886.003.0004. hdl:10037/19837.
External links
- Virtual Salt Root words and prefixes
- Espindle – Greek and Latin Root Words Archived 2008-09-13 at the Wayback Machine
This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Root linguistics news newspapers books scholar JSTOR August 2012 Learn how and when to remove this message A root also known as a root word or radical is the core of a word that is irreducible into more meaningful elements In morphology a root is a morphologically simple unit which can be left bare or to which a prefix or a suffix can attach The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word and of a word family this root is then called the base word which carries aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents Content words in nearly all languages contain and may consist only of root morphemes However sometimes the term root is also used to describe the word without its inflectional endings but with its lexical endings in place For example chatters has the inflectional root or lemma chatter but the lexical root chat Inflectional roots are often called stems A root or a root morpheme in the stricter sense a mono morphemic stem The traditional definition allows roots to be either free morphemes or bound morphemes Root morphemes are the building blocks for affixation and compounds However in polysynthetic languages with very high levels of inflectional morphology the term root is generally synonymous with free morpheme Many languages have a very restricted number of morphemes that can stand alone as a word Yup ik for instance has no more than two thousand The root is conventionally indicated using the mathematical symbol for instance the Sanskrit root bhu means the root bhu ExamplesThis section has multiple issues Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page Learn how and when to remove these messages This section relies largely or entirely on a single source Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources Find sources Root linguistics news newspapers books scholar JSTOR December 2024 This section needs expansion with examples and additional citations You can help by adding to it June 2024 Learn how and when to remove this message English verb form running contains the root run The Spanish superlative adjective amplisimo contains the root ampli In the former case the root can occur on its own freely In the latter modification via affixation is required to be used as a free form English has minimal use of morphological strategies such as affixation and features a tendency to have words that are identical to their roots However such forms as in Spanish exist in English such as interrupt which may arguably contain the root rupt which only appears in other related prefixed forms such as disrupt corrupt rupture etc The form rupt cannot occur on its own Examples of consonantal roots which are related but distinct to the concept developed here are formed prototypically by three as few as two and as many as five consonants Speakers may derive and develop new words morphosyntactically distinct i e with different parts of speech by using non concatenative morphological strategies inserting different vowels Unlike root here these cannot occur on their own without modification as such these are never actually observed in speech and may be termed abstract For example in Hebrew the forms derived from the abstract consonantal roots a major Hebrew phonetics concept ג ד ל g d l related to ideas of largeness gadol and gdola masculine and feminine forms of the adjective big gadal he grew higdil he magnified and magdelet magnifier along with many other words such as godel size and migdal tower Roots and reconstructed roots can become the tools of etymology Secondary rootsSecondary roots are roots with changes in them producing a new word with a slightly different meaning In English a rough equivalent would be to see a conductor as a secondary root formed from the root to conduct In abjad languages the most familiar are Arabic and Hebrew in which families of secondary roots are fundamental to the language secondary roots are created by changes in the roots vowels by adding or removing the long vowels a i u e and o Notice that Arabic does not have the vowels e and o In addition secondary roots can be created by prefixing m t infixing t or suffixing i and several others There is no rule in these languages on how many secondary roots can be derived from a single root some roots have few but others have many not all of which are necessarily in current use Consider the Arabic language مركز mrkz or markaza meaning centralized masculine singular from markaz centre from rakaza plant into the earth stick up a lance ر ك ز r k z This in turn has derived words مركزي markaziy meaning central مركزية markaziy ah meaning centralism or centralization and لامركزية la markaziy ah decentralization أرجح rjh or ta arjaħa meaning oscillated masculine singular from urju ħa swing n from rajaħa weighed down preponderated masculine singular ر ج ح r j ħ محور mhwr or tamaħwara meaning centred focused masculine singular from mihwar meaning axis from ħa ra turned masculine singular ح و ر h w r مسخر msxr تمسخر tamasxara meaning mocked made fun masculine singular from مسخرة masxara meaning mockery from سخر saxira mocked masculine singular derived from س خ ر s x r Similar cases may be found in other Semitic languages such as Hebrew Syriac Aramaic Maltese language and to a lesser extent Amharic Similar cases occur in Hebrew for example Israeli Hebrew מ ק מ m q m locate which derives from Biblical Hebrew מקום maqom place whose root is ק ו מ q w m stand A recent example introduced by the Academy of the Hebrew Language is מדרוג midrug rating from מדרג midrag whose root is ד ר ג d r g grade According to Ghil ad Zuckermann this process is morphologically similar to the production of frequentative iterative verbs in Latin for example iactito to toss about derives from iacto to boast of keep bringing up harass disturb throw cast fling away which in turn derives from iacio to throw cast from its past participle iactum Consider also Rabbinic Hebrew ת ר מ t r m donate contribute Mishnah T rumoth 1 2 separate priestly dues which derives from Biblical Hebrew תרומה t ruma contribution whose root is ר ו מ r w m raise cf Rabbinic Hebrew ת ר ע t r sound the trumpet blow the horn from Biblical Hebrew תרועה t ru a shout cry loud sound trumpet call in turn from ר ו ע r w and it describes the suffix Category neutral rootsDecompositional generative frameworks suggest that roots hold little grammatical information and can be considered category neutral Category neutral roots are roots without any inherent lexical category but with some conceptual content that becomes evident depending on the syntactic environment The ways in which these roots gain lexical category are discussed in Distributed Morphology and the Exoskeletal Model Theories adopting a category neutral approach have not as of 2020 reached a consensus about whether these roots contain a semantic type but no argument structure neither semantic type nor argument structure or both semantic type and argument structure In support of the category neutral approach data from English indicates that the same underlying root appears as a noun and a verb with or without overt morphology English examples overt Root Noun Verbadvertise an advertisement to advertisecharacter a character to characterizeemploy an employment to employalphabet an alphabet to alphabetize English Examples Covert Root Noun Verbdance a dance to dancewalk a walk to walkchair a chair to chairwardrobe a wardrobe to wardrobe In Hebrew the majority of roots consist of segmental consonants CCC Arad 2003 describes that the consonantal root is turned into a word due to pattern morphology Thereby the root is turned into a verb when put into a verbal environment where the head bears the v feature the pattern Consider the root s m n ש מ נ Root s m n ש מ נ in Hebrew Pattern Pronounced word GlossCeCeC n semen oil greaseCaCCeCet n samenet creamCuCaC n CaCeC adj suman samen fathiCCiC v hismin grow fat fattenCiCCeC n simen grease Although all words vary semantically the general meaning of a greasy fatty material can be attributed to the root Furthermore Arad states that there are two types of languages in terms of root interpretation In languages like English the root is assigned one interpretation whereas in languages like Hebrew the root can form multiple interpretations depending on its environment This occurrence suggests a difference in language acquisition between these two languages English speakers would need to learn two roots in order to understand two different words whereas Hebrew speakers would learn one root for two or more words Root comparison between English and Hebrew adapted from Syntactic Categorization of Roots English Root English Word Hebrew Root Hebrew Word Gloss CREAM cream s m n ש מ נ samenet cream FAT fat suman n samen adj fat Alexiadou and Lohndal 2017 advance the claim that languages have a typological scale when it comes to roots and their meanings and state that Greek lies in between Hebrew and English See alsoEtymology Lemma morphology Lexeme Morphological typology Morphology linguistics Phono semantic matching Principal parts Proto Indo European root Radical Chinese character Semitic root Word family Word stemReferencesKatamba Francis 2006 Morphology 2nd ed Houndsmills Basingstoke Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan p 42 ISBN 9781403916440 Root Glossary of Linguistic Terms 3 December 2015 Kemmer Suzanne Words in English Structure Words in English Retrieved 26 December 2018 Compare Durkin Philip 2009 8 Semantic change The Oxford Guide to Etymology Oxford Oxford University Press published 2011 p xciv ISBN 9780191618789 Retrieved 2017 11 10 In etymological reconstruction at the level of proto languages it is customary to reconstruct roots which are assigned glosses reflecting what is taken to be the common meaning shown by the words derived from this root Wehr Hans 1976 Cowan J Milton ed Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic PDF 3rd ed Ithaca N Y Spoken Language Services p 358 ISBN 0 87950 001 8 Retrieved 12 March 2020 Zuckermann Ghil ad 2003 Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew Archived 2014 02 01 at the Wayback Machine Houndmills Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 1 4039 1723 X pp 65 66 Lohndal Terje 28 February 2020 Syntactic Categorization of Roots Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics doi 10 1093 acrefore 9780199384655 013 257 hdl 11250 2644577 ISBN 978 0 19 938465 5 Levinson Lisa 27 November 2014 The ontology of roots and verbs The Syntax of Roots and the Roots of Syntax 208 229 doi 10 1093 acprof oso 9780199665266 003 0010 ISBN 978 0199665273 Acquaviva Paolo May 2009 Roots and Lexicality in Distributed Morphology York Papers in Linguistics 2 10 University of York Department of Language and Linguistic Science hdl 10197 4148 Coon Jessica 1 February 2019 Building verbs in Chuj Consequences for the nature of roots Journal of Linguistics 55 1 35 81 doi 10 1017 S0022226718000087 S2CID 149423392 Arad Maya 2003 Locality Constraints on the Interpretation of Roots The Case of Hebrew Denominal Verbs Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21 4 737 778 doi 10 1023 A 1025533719905 S2CID 35715020 Alexiadou Artemis Lohndal Terje 18 May 2017 On the division of labor between roots and functional structure The Verbal Domain 1 doi 10 1093 oso 9780198767886 003 0004 hdl 10037 19837 External linksVirtual Salt Root words and prefixes Espindle Greek and Latin Root Words Archived 2008 09 13 at the Wayback Machine
