Root (linguistics) | EPFL Graph Search

A root (or root word) is the core of a word that is irreducible into more meaningful elements. In morphology, a root is a morphologically simple unit which can be left bare or to which a prefix or a suffix can attach. 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 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 without 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 called stems, and a root in the stricter sense, a root morpheme, may be thought of as a monomorphemic stem. The traditional definition allows roots to be either free morphemes or bound morphemes. Root morphemes are the building blocks 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 is conventionally indicated using the mathematical symbol √; for instance, the Sanskrit root "√bhū-" means the root "bhū-". 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. 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 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.

Morphological and Material Programability of a Hall-Effect Based Soft Tactile Sensors

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Sudong Lee

The different receptors in human skin show not only diversity in the stimuli to which they respond, but also variable sensitivity and directionality. This is often determined by their location or morphology, and can play an important role in filtering or a ...

IEEE2024

A subpopulation of cortical VIP-expressing interneurons with highly dynamic spines

Graham Knott, Jérôme Blanc, Christina Georgiou, Kok Sin Lee

Structural synaptic plasticity may underlie experience and learning-dependent changes in cortical circuits. In contrast to excitatory pyramidal neurons, insight into the structural plasticity of inhibitory neurons remains limited. Interneurons are divided ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2022