The roots The root is the primary lexical unit of a 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 of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. They constitute a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. The most widely spoken Semitic language by far today is Arabic . It is followed by Amharic (2 are characterized as a sequence of consonants or "radicals" (hence also the term consonantal root). Such abstract consonantal roots are used in the derivation of actual words by adding the vowels and non-root consonants (or "transfixes In linguistic morphology, a transfix is a discontinuous affix, which occurs at more than one position in a word. The prototypical example comes from the Semitic languages, where nearly all word derivation and inflection involves the interdigitation of a discontinuous root with a discontinuous affix. For example, derivations and inflections of the") which go with a particular morphological category around the root consonants, in an appropriate way, generally following specific patterns. It is a peculiarity of Semitic linguistics that a large majority of these consonantal roots are triliterals (although there are number of quadriliterals, and in some languages also biliterals).
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Triconsonantal roots
A triliteral or triconsonantal root (Hebrew Extinct as a regularly spoken language by the 4th century CE, but survived as a liturgical and literary language; revived in the 1880s: שוֹרֶש, shoresh Arabic Arabic (العربية al-ʿarabīyah, ( Arabic pronunciation ) or عربي ʿarabi) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. Arabic has more speakers than any other language in the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million: جذر ثلاثي, jidhr thulāthī) is a root containing a sequence of three consonants.
The following are some of the forms which can be derived from the triconsonantal root k-t-b (general overall meaning "to write") in Hebrew and Arabic:
| Semitological abbreviation Akkadian (also Accadian, Assyro-Babylonian) is an extinct Semitic language (part of the greater Afroasiatic language family) that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate. The name of the language is | Hebrew name | Arabic name Arabic grammar is the grammar of the Classical and Modern Standard Arabic. Arabic is a Semitic language and its grammar has many similarities with the grammar of other Semitic languages | Morphological category | Hebrew Form | Arabic form | Approximate translation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| G verb stem | Pa'al (or Qal) | fa‘ala فَعَلَ (Stem I) | 3rd. masc. sing perfect | katabh כתב | kataba كتب | "he wrote" |
| 1st. plur. perfect | katabhnu כתבנו | katabnā كتبنا | "we wrote" | |||
| 3rd. masc. sing. imperfect | yikhtobh יכתוב | yaktubu يكتب | "he writes, will write" | |||
| 1st. plur. imperfect | nikhtobh נכתוב | naktubu نكتب | "we write, will write" | |||
| masc. sing. active participle | kotebh כותב | kātib كاتب | "writer" | |||
| Š verb stem | Hiph‘il | af‘ala أَفْعَلَ (Stem IV) | 3rd. masc. sing perfect | hikhtibh הכתיב | aktaba أكتب | "he dictated" |
| 3rd. masc. sing. imperfect | yakhtibh יכתיב | yuktibu يكتب | "he dictates, will dictate" | |||
| Št(D) verb stem | Hitpa‘‘el | istaf‘ala استَفْعَلَ (Stem X) | 3rd. masc. sing perfect | hitkattebh התכתב | istaktaba استكتب | "he corresponded" (Hebrew), "he asked (someone) to write (something), had a copy made" (Arabic) |
| 3rd. masc. sing. imperfect | yitkattebh יתכתב | yastaktibu يستكتب | (imperfect of above) | |||
| Noun with m- prefix and original short vowels: | maf‘al مَفْعَل | singular | mikhtabh מכתב | maktab مكتب | "letter" (Hebrew), "office" (Arabic) | |
- Note: The Hebrew fricatives transcribed as "kh" and "bh" above are single phonetic sounds, which can also be transcribed in a number of other ways, such as "ch" and "v" (Eastern-European influenced) or IPA: [x] and [v]. They are transliterated "kh" and "bh" on this page to retain the connection with the pure consonantal root k-t-b.
In Hebrew grammatical terminology, the word binyan (Hebrew Extinct as a regularly spoken language by the 4th century CE, but survived as a liturgical and literary language; revived in the 1880s בנין, plural בינינים binyanim) is used to refer to a verb stem or overall verb derivation pattern, while the word mishqal (or mishkal) is used to refer to a noun derivation pattern, and these words have gained some use in English-language linguistic terminology. The Arabic terms, called وزن wazn (plural أوزان, awzān) for the pattern and جذر jidhr (plural جذور, judhūr) for the root have not gained the same currency as the Hebrew equivalents, and Western grammarians continue to use "stem"/"form"/"pattern" for the former and "root" for the latter (though "form" and "pattern" are accurate translations of the Arabic grammatical term wazn (originally meaning 'weight, measure'), and "root" is a literal translation of jidhr).
See also: Category:Triconsonantal_rootsBiliteral origin of some triliteral roots
Ghil'ad Zuckermann says, "Note that although most roots in Hebrew seem to be tri-radical, many of them were originally bi-radical, cf. the relation between גזז √ g-z-z ‘shear’, גזמ √ g-z-m ‘prune’ and גזר√ g-z-r ‘cut’, as well as between פרז√ p-r-z ‘divide a city’, פרט √ p-r-ţ ‘give change’ and פרע √ p-r-‘ ‘pay a debt’."[1] Zuckermann analyses the Hebrew Extinct as a regularly spoken language by the 4th century CE, but survived as a liturgical and literary language; revived in the 1880s root שקפ √ sh-q-p "look out/through" as deriving from קפ√ q-p "bend, arch, lean towards" (cf. קפח√ q-p-ħ, קפה√ q-p-h, קפא √ q-p-' and קפי √ q-p-y "arch, bend"), fitted into the shaCCéC verb-pattern. "This verb-pattern is usually causative, cf. שטפ√ sh-ţ-p ‘wash, rinse, make wet’, from טפ √ ţ-p ‘wet’, as well as שלכ √ sh-l-k ‘cast off, throw down, cause to go’, from לכ √ l-k ‘go’".[1]
Quadriliteral roots
A quadriliteral is a consonantal root containing a sequence of four consonants (instead of three consonants, as is more often the case). A quadriliteral form is a word derived from such a four-consonant root. For example, the abstract quadriliteral root t-r-g-m / t-r-j-m gives rise to the verb forms תרגם tirgem in Hebrew Extinct as a regularly spoken language by the 4th century CE, but survived as a liturgical and literary language; revived in the 1880s and ترجم tarjama in Arabic Arabic (العربية al-ʿarabīyah, ( Arabic pronunciation ) or عربي ʿarabi) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. Arabic has more speakers than any other language in the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million, meaning "he translated". In some cases, a quadriliteral root is actually a reduplication of a two-consonant sequence. So in Hebrew דגדג digdeg means "he tickled", and in Arabic زلزال zilzāl means "earthquake".
Generally, only a subset of the verb derivations formed from triliteral roots are allowed with quadriliteral roots. For example, in Hebrew, the Pi``el, Pu``al, and Hitpa``el, and in Arabic, forms similar to the stem II and stem V forms of triliteral roots Arabic grammar is the grammar of the Classical and Modern Standard Arabic. Arabic is a Semitic language and its grammar has many similarities with the grammar of other Semitic languages.
Traditionally in the Semitic languages, forms with more than four basic consonants (i.e. consonants not introduced by morphological inflection or derivation) were occasionally found in nouns — mainly loanwords from other languages — but never in verbs. However, in modern Israeli Hebrew, syllables A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants) are allowed to begin with a sequence of two consonants (a relaxation of the situation in early Semitic, where only one consonant was allowed), and this has opened the door to apparent five root-consonant forms, such as טלגרף tilgref "he telegraphed". But, -lgr- always appears as an indivisible cluster in the derivation of this verb, so that these five root-consonant forms do not display any fundamentally different morphological patterns from four root-consonant forms (and the hypothetical term "quinqueliteral" would be misleading if it implied otherwise).
See also
- apophony vs. transfixation (root-and-pattern) In linguistics, apophony is the alternation of sounds within a word that indicates grammatical information (often inflectional)
- Arabic grammar Arabic grammar is the grammar of the Classical and Modern Standard Arabic. Arabic is a Semitic language and its grammar has many similarities with the grammar of other Semitic languages
- broken plural In linguistics, broken plurals are a grammatical phenomenon typical in many Semitic languages of the Middle East and East Africa in which a singular noun is "broken" to form a plural by having its root consonants embedded in a different "frame", rather than by merely adding a prefix or suffix to the original singular noun
- nonconcatenative morphology Nonconcatenative morphology, also discontinuous morphology and introflection, is a form of word-formation in which the root is modified and which does not involve stringing morphemes together. In English, for example, plurals are usually formed by adding the suffix /z/:
- Phono-semantic matching Phono-semantic matching is a linguistic term referring to camouflaged borrowing in which a foreign word is matched with a phonetically and semantically similar pre-existent native word/root
- Proto-Indo-European root The roots of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language are basic morphemes carrying a lexical meaning. By addition of suffixes, they form stems, and by addition of endings, these form grammatically inflected words (nouns or verbs)
- transfix In linguistic morphology, a transfix is a discontinuous affix, which occurs at more than one position in a word. The prototypical example comes from the Semitic languages, where nearly all word derivation and inflection involves the interdigitation of a discontinuous root with a discontinuous affix. For example, derivations and inflections of the
- Khuzdul
References
- ^ a b See p. 1 of Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2003 2003 was a common year that started on a Wednesday, according to the Gregorian calendar. It was the 2003rd year of the Common Era or the Anno Domini designation; the 3rd year of the 3rd millennium and of the 21st century; and the 4th of the 2000s decade, ‘‘Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew’’, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan Palgrave Macmillan is an international academic and trade publishing company, headquartered in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom and with offices in New York, Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, Delhi, Johannesburg. It was created in 2000 when St. Martin's Press Scholarly and Reference in the USA and Macmillan Publishers in the UK united, (Palgrave Studies in Language History and Language Change, Series editor: Charles Jones). ISBN 1-4039-1723-X.
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Categories: Triconsonantal roots | Linguistic morphology | Semitic linguistics
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