Re: confession: roots

On Fri, 4 May 2001 14:39:01 -0500, Patrick Dunn <tb0pwd1@...>
wrote:

>Okay, I confess, I *really* don't understand roots.  I understand that
>languages evolve from earlier languages, but my understanding of a root is
>that it is not a useable word, just a sliver of meaning, and how the hell
>did that ever evolve?  Or is a root just the earlier word stripped of its
>grammar?
>
>So, like, the roots for "philosopher" are philo- and soph-, but the words
>they come from are "philia" and "sophia."
In our IE languages, and seemingly the Semitic languages too, and probably
lots of langs all over, the roots are _underlying_. The underlying root
there would appear to be "phil" and "soph", though I disclaim further
knowledge of Greek roots.

Someone said we could say that roots are mostly something linguists have
invented to help analyze morphological structures. That's true, in the same
sense that phonemes are invented by linguists; they are nonetheless quite
functional at the underlying level in our languages.

The existence of roots seems simple enought to me; they are the bricks in
our lexical structuring. As to how roots-that-don't-surface evolve, I'd
guess the original word goes obsolete (diving to the underlying level)
after a fruitful career of spouting out derivatives. As long as the rules
of derivation remain stable, the root remains at the underlying level
through the power of its surface derivations. When the rules of derivations
change, however, and the lexical structure is reordered en masse, the
origin of the derivatives may become unclear to the extent that the old
underlying root is lost completely.

"The life and times of a lexical root..." ;)

I may be wrong, but English has always seemed to me to be less root-
conscious than some other langs, such as my native language. Please take
that as a very descriptive hypothesis; I don't claim for extensive root-
systems to be inherently superior.

So I'll take an example of an Icelandic root and its surface forms:

/far/  (semantically associated with movement of various sorts; cognate
        of English 'fare')

fara (vb)    go
ferð (n)     voyage, trip
ferðast (vb) travel
ferill (n)   path of movement; career, life-path
ferli (n)    process
far (n)      mark, (im)print ("fingrafar" = finger print)
far (n)      vessel, vehicle

There the root does surface in two different noun forms. However, my
Icelandic mind does not feel those words to be representative of the root
itself; and that's not just my linguistic opinion, it's my "feeling" of the
language.

Now, those were just derivatives of the main root /far/; the wonder of Indo-
European ablauts brings us, meanwhile, a root that is subordinate to the
main root: /fOur/, "fór". It surfaces in the past tense paradigm of the
verb "fara", and in various umlauted derivatives (compare, btw, the
relationship between the roots "sing" and "sang" in English):

færa (vb)    move (transitive)
færni (n)    capability, ability
færi (n)     opportunity; tool
færð (n)     conditions for movement
fær (adj)    capable, able
færsla (n)   "action", only in banking and accounting

Finally, there's the root /fjar/ (cognate of English 'far') which is almost
certainly related to /far/, but much less subordinate to it:

fjarri (adj)  far away
fjara (n)     low-tide (sea)
fjarski (n)   far away place
fjörður (n)   fjord/firth
fjara (v)     run short, lose
fjör (n)      (archaic) life; (modern) fun

And I'm not going into composed words...

Regards,
Óskar

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