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The roots of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of consonants or "radicals" (hence the term consonantal root). Such abstract consonantal roots are used in the formation of actual words by adding the vowels and non-root consonants (or "transfixes"), 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 many of these consonantal roots are triliterals, meaning that they consist of three letters (although there are a number of quadriliterals, and in some languages also biliterals). Such roots are also common in other Afroasiatic languages. While Berber mostly has triconsonantal roots, Chadic, Omotic, and Cushitic have mostly biconsonantal roots;[1] and Egyptian shows a mix of biconsonantal and triconsonantal roots.[2]
Triconsonantal roots
[edit]A triliteral or triconsonantal root (Arabic: ??? ?????, ji?r ?ulā?ī; Hebrew: ???? ??????????, ?ore? t?lat-?i?uri; Syriac: ????, ?er?ā) 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:
The Hebrew fricatives stemming from begadkefat lenition are transcribed here as "?", "?" and "?", to retain their connection with the consonantal root ????? k-t-b. They are pronounced [x], [θ], [β] in Biblical Hebrew and [χ], [t], [v] in Modern Hebrew respectively. Modern Hebrew has no gemination; where there was historically gemination, they are reduced to single consonants, with consonants in the begadkefat remaining the same.
Semitological Abbreviation |
Hebrew Name |
Arabic Name |
Morphological Category |
Hebrew Form |
Arabic Form |
Approximate Translation | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
G verb stem | ??????? ???? |
pā‘al or qāl |
?????? | fa‘ala (Stem I) |
3rd Sg. M. Perfect | ???? | kā?a? | ??? | kataba | He wrote |
1st Pl. Perfect | ?????? | kā?a?nū | ????? | katabnā | We wrote | |||||
3rd Sg. M. Imperfect | ?????? | yi?to? | ???? | yaktubu | He writes, will write | |||||
1st Pl. Imperfect | ?????? | ni?to? | ???? | naktubu | We write, will write | |||||
Sg. M. Active Participle | ????? | kō?ē? | ???? | kātib | Writer | |||||
? verb stem | ????????? | hip?‘īl | ???????? | af‘ala (Stem IV) |
3rd Sg. M. Perfect | ?????? | hi?tī? | ???? | ?aktaba | He dictated |
3rd Sg. M. Imperfect | ?????? | ya?tī? | ???? | yuktibu | He dictates, will dictate | |||||
?t(D) verb stem | ??????????? | hi?pā‘ēl | ?????????? | istaf‘ala (Stem X) |
3rd Sg. M. Perfect | ?????? | hi?kattē? | ?????? | istaktaba | He corresponded (Hebrew), had a copy made (Arabic) |
3rd Sg. M. Imperfect | ?????? | yi?kattē? | ?????? | yastaktibu | (imperfect of above) | |||||
Noun with m- prefix & original short vowels |
???????? | mip?‘āl | ??????? | maf‘āl | Singular | ????? | mi?tā? | ???? | maktab | Letter (Hebrew), Office (Arabic) |
In Hebrew grammatical terminology, the word binyan (Hebrew: ?????, plural ??????? binyanim) is used to refer to a verb derived 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 ??? wazn (plural ?????, awzān) for the pattern and ??? ja?r / ji?r (plural ????, ju?ūr) for the root have not gained the same currency in cross-linguistic Semitic scholarship 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 wazan (originally meaning 'weight, measure'), and "root" is a literal translation of ji?r.
Biliteral origin of some triliteral roots
[edit]Although most roots in Hebrew seem to be triliteral, many of them were originally biliteral, cf. the relation between:
???? √g-z | ||
---|---|---|
?????? | √g-z-z | shear |
?????? | √g-z-m | prune, cut down |
?????? | √g-z-r | cut |
???? √p-r | ||
---|---|---|
?????? | √p-r-z | divide a city |
?????? | √p-r-? | give change |
?????? | √p-r-r | crumble into pieces |
?????? | √p-r-‘ | pay a debt[3] |
The Hebrew root ?????? – √sh-q-p "look out/through" or "reflect" deriving from ???? – √q-p "bend, arch, lean towards" and similar verbs fit into the shaCCéC verb-pattern.[clarification needed]
???? √q-p | |
---|---|
?????? | √q-p-' |
?????? | √q-p-h |
?????? | √q-p-? |
?????? | √q-p-y |
This verb-pattern sh-C-C is usually causative, cf.
???? | √?-p | "wet" | ?????? | √sh-?-p | "wash, rinse, make wet" |
???? | √l-k | "go".[3] | ?????? | √sh-l-k | "cast off, throw down, cause to go" |
History
[edit]There is debate about whether both biconsonantal and triconsonantal roots were represented in Proto-Afroasiatic, or whether one or the other of them was the original form of the Afroasiatic verb.[4] According to one study of the Proto-Semitic lexicon,[5] biconsonantal roots are more abundant for words denoting Stone Age materials, whereas materials discovered during the Neolithic are uniquely triconsonantal. This implies a change in Proto-Semitic language structure concomitant with the transition to agriculture. In particular, monosyllabic biconsonantal names are associated with a pre-Natufian cultural background, i.e., older than c.?14500 BCE. As we have no texts from any Semitic language older than c.?3500 BCE, reconstructions of Proto-Semitic are inferred from these more recent Semitic texts.[citation needed]
Quadriliteral roots
[edit]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 ????? tarjama in Arabic, ????? tirgem in Aramaic and Hebrew, ???? t?r?ggw?m? in Amharic, all meaning "he translated". In some cases, a quadriliteral root is actually a reduplication of a two-consonant sequence. So in Arabic ????? da?da?a and Hebrew ????? digdeg (borrowed from Arabic) means "he tickled" from the reduplicated root d-?-d-?, and in Arabic ????? zalzala means "he shook" from the root z-l-z-l. Other Arabic example include ????? ba??ara means "he scattered", ????? marja?a means "he swung", and ????? qarfa?a means "he squatted".
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 Hi?pa?el, and in Arabic, forms similar to the stem II and stem V forms of triliteral roots.
Another set of quadriliteral roots in modern Hebrew is the set of secondary roots. A secondary root is a root derived from a word that was derived from another root. For example, the root ?-?-?-?? m-s-p-r is secondary to the root ?-?-?? s-p-r. ?????? saphar, from the root s-p-r, means "counted"; ????????? mispar, from the same root, means "number"; and ????????? misper, from the secondary root ?-?-?-??, means "numbered".
An irregular quadriliteral verb made from a loanword is:
- ?????????????[6] (/na??prit?s/) – "we will sprinkle" or "we will splash", from Yiddish shpritsn (cognate to German spritzen)
Quinqueliteral roots
[edit]A quinqueliteral is a consonantal root containing a sequence of five consonants. Traditionally, in Semitic languages, forms with more than four basic consonants (i.e. consonants not introduced by morphological inflection or derivation) were occasionally found in nouns and adjectives, and mainly in loanwords from other languages, but never in verbs.[7] For example Arabic ?????? ?aramram means "numerous", ??????? ?ankabūt means "spider" and ?????? ?a?anfar means "lion". However, in modern Israeli Hebrew, syllables are allowed to begin with a sequence of two consonants (a relaxation of the situation in early Semitic, where only one consonant was allowed), which has opened the door for a very small set of loan words to manifest apparent five root-consonant forms, such as ?????? tilgref "he telegraphed".[8] However, -lgr- always appears as an indivisible cluster in the derivation of this verb and so the five root-consonant forms do not display any fundamentally different morphological patterns from four root-consonant forms (and the term "quinqueliteral" or "quinquiliteral" would be misleading if it implied otherwise). Only a few Hebrew quinqueliterals are recognized by the Academy of the Hebrew Language as proper, or standard; the rest are considered slang.
Other examples are:
- ???????????[9] (/sin?kren/ – "he synchronized"), via the English word from Greek
- ???????????[10] (/χin?tre?/ – "he did stupid things")
- ??????????????[11] (/hitflar?tet/ – "he flirted"), from the English or Yiddish past tense of the English word
In Amharic, there is a very small set of verbs which are conjugated as quinqueliteral roots. One example is w???n?ff?r? 'rain fell with a strong wind'.[12] The conjugation of this small class of verb roots is explained by Wolf Leslau.[13] Unlike the Hebrew examples, these roots conjugate in a manner more like regular verbs, producing no indivisible clusters.
See also
[edit]- Apophony
- Arabic grammar
- Broken plural
- Indo-European ablaut
- Khuzdul
- K-T-B
- Modern Hebrew grammar
- Nonconcatenative morphology
- Phono-semantic matching
- Proto-Indo-European root
- ?-L-M
- Transfix
Notes
[edit]- ^ Hayward, Richard J. (2000). "Afroasiatic". In Heine, Bernd; Nurse, Derek (eds.). African Languages: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. pp. 74–98, here 93.
- ^ *Stauder, Andréas (2023). "Egyptian Morphology in Afroasiatic Perspective". In Almansa-Villatoro, M. Victoria; ?tubňová Nigrelli, Silvia (eds.). Ancient Egyptian and Afroasiatic: Rethinking the Origins. Eisenbrauns. pp. 53–136, here 81. ISBN 9781646022120.
- ^ a b See p. 1 of Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2003, Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, (Palgrave Studies in Language History and Language Change, Series editor: Charles Jones). ISBN 1-4039-1723-X.
- ^ Güldemann, Tom (2018). "Historical linguistics and genealogical language classification in Africa". In Güldemann, Tom (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of Africa. The World of Linguistics, Volume 11. Berlin: De Mouton Gruyter. pp. 58–444, here 311. doi:10.1515/9783110421668-002. ISBN 9783110421668. S2CID 133888593.
- ^ Agmon (2010:23)
- ^ "????? ??????? – Morfix Dictionary - ??????". Archived from the original on 2025-08-05.
- ^ A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language by J.A. Haywood and H.M. Nahmad (London: Lund Humphries, 1965), ISBN 0-85331-585-X, p. 261.
- ^ "The inadequacy of the consonantal root: Modern Hebrew denominal verbs and Output-Output correspondence" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2025-08-05. Retrieved 2025-08-05..
- ^ "????? ??????? – Morfix Dictionary - ?????". Archived from the original on 2025-08-05.
- ^ "????? ??????? – Morfix Dictionary - ?????". Archived from the original on 2025-08-05.
- ^ "????? ??????? – Morfix Dictionary - ?????". Archived from the original on 2025-08-05.
- ^ p. 153. Thomas Leiper Kane. 1990. Amharic-English Dictionary. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
- ^ pp. 566–569, 1043. Wolf Leslau. Reference Grammar of Amharic. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
References
[edit]- Agmon, Noam (2010), "Materials and Language: Pre-Semitic Root Structure Change Concomitant with Transition to Agriculture" (PDF), Brill's Annual of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics, 2: 23–79, doi:10.1163/187666310X12688137960669, archived from the original (PDF) on 2025-08-05, retrieved 2025-08-05
External links
[edit]- Semitic Roots Repository
- Roots in Quranic Arabic
- Project Root List
- Learn Hebrew Verbs
- Alexis Amid Neme and Eric Laporte (2013), Pattern-and-root inflectional morphology: the Arabic broken plural |year=
- Alexis Amid Neme and Eric Laporte (2015), Do computer scientists deeply understand Arabic morphology? – ?? ???? ????????? ??????????? ??? ????? ????? ???????, available also in Arabic, Indonesian, French