Root (linguistics)

A root (or root word) is a word that does not have a prefix in front of the word or a suffix at the end of the word.[1] 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 the most significant
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 minus 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 calledstems, and a root in the stricter sense may be thought of as a monomorphemic stem.

The traditional definition allows roots to be either free morphemes or bound morphemes. Root morphemes are essential 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 such 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 of a word is a unit of meaning (morpheme) and, as such, it is an abstraction, though it can usually be represented
alphabetically as a word might be. For example, it can be said that the root of the English verb form running is run, or the root of the
Spanish superlative adjective amplísimo is ampli-, since those words are clearly derived from the root forms by simple suffixes that
do not alter the roots in any way. In particular, English has very little inflection and a tendency to have words that are identical to
their roots. But more complicated inflection, as well as other processes, can obscure the root; for example, the root of mice is mouse
(still a valid word), and the root of interrupt is, arguably, rupt, which is not a word in English and only appears in derivational forms
(such as disrupt, corrupt, rupture, etc.). The root rupt is written as if it were a word, but it is not.

This distinction between the word as a unit of speech and the root as a unit of meaning is even more important in the case of
languages where roots have many different forms when used in actual words, as is the case in Semitic languages. In these, roots are
formed by consonants alone, and speakers elaborate different words (belonging potentially to different parts of speech) from the root
by inserting different vowels. For example, in Hebrew, the root gdl represents the idea of largeness, and from it we have 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 asgodel "size" and migdal "tower".

Roots and reconstructed roots can become the stock-in-trade ofetymology.[2]

Contents
Secondary roots
See also
References
External links

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 conductor as a secondary root formed from the root to conduct. In abjad languages, the most familiar of
which 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 other roots
have many, not all of which are necessarily in current use.

Consider the Arabic language:

‫[ ﻣﺮﻛﺰ‬mrkz] or [markaza] meaning ‘centralized (masculine, singular)’, from [markaz] ‘centre’, from [rakaza] ‘plant into
the earth, stick up (a lance)’ (‫ | رﻛﺰ‬rkz).
‫[ أرﺟﺢ‬rjh] or [ta'arjaħa] meaning ‘oscillated (masculine, singular)’, from ['urju:ħa] ‘swing (n)’, from [rajaħa] ‘weighed
down, preponderated (masculine, singular)’ (‫ | رﺟﺢ‬rjħ).
‫[ ﻣﺤﻮر‬mhwr] or [tamaħwara] meaning ‘centred, focused (masculine, singular)’, from [mihwar] meaning ‘axis’, from
[ħa:ra] ‘turned (masculine, singular)’ ‫ | ﺣﻮ (ر‬hwr).
‫[ ﻣﺴﺨﺮ‬msxr], ‫[ ﺗﻤﺴﺨﺮ‬tamasxara] meaning ‘mocked, made fun (masculine, singular)', from‫[ ﻣﺴﺨﺮة‬masxara]
meaning ‘mockery’, from‫[ ﺳﺨﺮ‬saxira] ‘mocked (masculine, singular)’ (derived from‫[ﺳﺨﺮ‬sxr])."[3] 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 ‫√ מקמ‬mqm ‘locate’, which derives from Biblical Hebrew ‫ מקום‬måqom
‘place’, whose root is ‫√ קומ‬qwm ‘stand’. A recent example introduced by the Academy of the Hebrew Language is ‫ מדרוג‬midrúg
‘rating’, from ‫ מדרג‬midrág, whose root is ‫√ דרג‬drg ‘grade’."[3]

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 fromiacto ‘to boast of, keep bringing up, harass, disturb, throw
, cast, fling away’, which
in turn derives from iacio ‘to throw, cast’ (from its pasits past participleclamitum).[3]
Consider also Rabbinic Hebrew ‫√ תרמ‬trm ‘donate, contribute’ (Mishnah: T’rumoth 1:2: ‘separate priestly dues’), which derives from
Biblical Hebrew ‫ תרומה‬t'rūmå ‘contribution’, whose root is ‫√ רומ‬rwm ‘raise’; cf. Rabbinic Hebrew ‫√ תרע‬tr` ‘sound the trummpet,
blow the horn’, from Biblical Hebrew ‫ תרועה‬t'rū`å ‘shout, cry, loud sound, trumpet-call’, in turn from ‫√ רוע‬rw`."[3] and it describes
the suffix.

See also
Lemma (morphology)
Lexeme
Morphological typology
Morphology (linguistics)
Phono-semantic matching
Principal parts
Proto-Indo-European root
Radical (Chinese character)(this is more based upon a writing system than a spoken language)
Semitic root
Word family
Word stem

References
1. Kemmer, Suzanne. "Words in English: Structure"(http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words04/structure/index.html).
Words in English. Retrieved 26 December 2018.
2. Compare: Durkin, Philip (2011) [2009]. "8: Semantic change".The Oxford Guide to Etymology(https://books.google.
com/books?id=UZkjLniuwRQC). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 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."
 3. Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2003, Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew(http://www.palgrave.com/pr
oducts/title.aspx?is=140391723X), Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1-4039-1723-X. pp 65–66.

External links
Virtual Salt Root words and prefixes
Espindle - Greek and Latin Root Words

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