Re: confession: roots

At 01:39 PM Friday 5/4/01, you 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?
Someone may correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that roots are
something of an abstraction created by linguists to help analyze word
forms. If two words of related meaning also have clear
morphological/phonological commonality, that commonality can be isolated
from the words in question and called a root. Whether a root was ever a
word in an earlier form of the language is a question for
reconstructionists; the answer often seems to be "no"--the reconstructed
proto-language may have its own systems endings or other "dressing" to make
the roots into words.

I don't recall ever reading any kind of general account of how roots are
related to actual words, in a language evolution sense.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tom Tadfor Little            tom@telp.com
Santa Fe, New Mexico (USA)
Telperion Productions        www.telp.com
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