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roots A root is the part of a plant, generally underground, that anchors the plant body, and absorbs and stores water and nutrients. Root or roots may also refer to: Art, entertainment, and media * ''The Root'' (magazine), an online magazine focusing ...
of the reconstructed
Proto-Indo-European language Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...
(PIE) are basic parts of
word A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...
s that carry a
lexical Lexical may refer to: Linguistics * Lexical corpus or lexis, a complete set of all words in a language * Lexical item, a basic unit of lexicographical classification * Lexicon, the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge * Lex ...
meaning, so-called
morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...
s. PIE roots usually have
verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
al meaning like "to eat" or "to run". Roots never occurred alone in the language. Complete
inflected In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defi ...
verbs, nouns, and adjectives were formed by adding further morphemes to a root and potentially changing the root's vowel in a process called
ablaut In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German '' Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its ...
. A root consists of a central
vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
that is preceded and followed by at least one
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
each. A number of rules have been determined that specify which consonants can occur together, and in which order. The modern understanding of these rules is that the consonants with the highest sonority (') are nearest to the vowel, and the ones with the lowest sonority such as
plosives In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...
are furthest away. There are some exceptions to these rules such as thorn clusters. Sometimes new roots were created in PIE or its early descendants by various processes such as root extensions (adding a sound to the end of an existing root) or metathesis.


Word formation

Typically, a root plus a
suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
forms a stem, and adding an ending forms a word. \underbrace_ For example, ' "he bears" can be split into the root "to bear", the suffix ' "
imperfective aspect The imperfective ( abbreviated or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a ge ...
" and the ending ' "present tense, third
person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, ...
singular Singular may refer to: * Singular, the grammatical number that denotes a unit quantity, as opposed to the plural and other forms * Singular homology * SINGULAR, an open source Computer Algebra System (CAS) * Singular or sounder, a group of boar, ...
".Examples of PIE roots are taken from and . The suffix is sometimes missing, which has been interpreted as a
zero suffix In morphology, a null morpheme or zero morpheme is a morpheme that has no phonetic form. In simpler terms, a null morpheme is an "invisible" affix. It is a concept useful for analysis, by contrasting null morphemes with alternatives that do have ...
. Words with zero suffix are termed ''root verbs'' and ''root nouns''. An example is "I am". Beyond this basic structure, there is the
nasal infix The nasal infix is a reconstructed nasal consonant or syllable that was inserted ( infixed) into the stem or root of a word in the Proto-Indo-European language. It has reflexes in several ancient and modern Indo-European languages. It is one of ...
which functions as a present tense marker, and reduplication, a
prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the Word stem, stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy'' ...
with a number of grammatical and derivational functions.


Finite verbs

Verbal suffixes, including the zero suffix, convey grammatical information about tense and
aspect Aspect or Aspects may refer to: Entertainment * ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art * Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company * Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England * ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
, two grammatical categories that are not clearly distinguished. Imperfective (present, durative) and perfective aspect ( aorist, punctual) are universally recognised, while some of the other aspects remain controversial. Two of the four moods, the subjunctive and the
optative The optative mood ( or ; abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope regarding a given action. It is a superset of the cohortative mood and is closely related to the subjunctive mood but is distinct from the desiderative mo ...
, are also formed with suffixes, which sometimes results in forms with two consecutive suffixes: ' > ' "he would bear", with the first ' being the present tense marker, and the second the subjunctive marker. Reduplication can mark the present and the perfect. Verbal endings convey information about
grammatical person In linguistics, grammatical person is the grammatical distinction between deictic references to participant(s) in an event; typically the distinction is between the speaker ( first person), the addressee ( second person), and others (third pers ...
,
number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
and
voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound producti ...
. The
imperative mood The imperative mood is a grammatical mood that forms a command or request. The imperative mood is used to demand or require that an action be performed. It is usually found only in the present tense, second person. To form the imperative mood, ...
has its own set of endings.


Nouns and adjectives

Nouns usually derive from roots or verb stems by suffixation or by other means. (See the morphology of the Proto-Indo-European noun for some examples.) This can hold even for roots that are often translated as nouns: , for example, can mean "to tread" or "foot", depending on the
ablaut In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German '' Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its ...
grade and ending. Some noun stems like ' "lamb", however, do not derive from known verbal roots. In any case, the meaning of a noun is given by its stem, whether this is composed of a root plus a suffix or not. This leaves the ending, which conveys case and number. Adjectives are also derived by suffixation of (usually verbal) roots. An example is "begotten, produced" from the root "to beget, to produce". The endings are the same as with nouns.


Infinitives and participles

Infinitive Infinitive (abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The word is deri ...
s are verbal nouns and, just like other nouns, are formed with suffixes. It is not clear whether any of the infinitive suffixes reconstructed from the daughter languages (', ', ', among others) was actually used to express an infinitive in PIE.
Participle In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
s are verbal adjectives formed with the suffixes ' (
active Active may refer to: Music * ''Active'' (album), a 1992 album by Casiopea * Active Records, a record label Ships * ''Active'' (ship), several commercial ships by that name * HMS ''Active'', the name of various ships of the British Royal ...
imperfective and aorist participle), ' (perfect participle) and ' or ' (
mediopassive The mediopassive voice is a grammatical voice that subsumes the meanings of both the middle voice and the passive voice. Description Languages of the Indo-European family (and many others) typically have two or three of the following voices: acti ...
participle), among others.


Shape of a root

In its base form, a PIE root consists of a single vowel, preceded and followed by consonants. Except for a very few cases, the root is fully characterized by its consonants, while the vowel may change in accordance with
inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...
or word derivation. Thus, the root ' can also appear as ', with a long vowel as ' or ', or even unsyllabic as ', in different grammatical contexts. This process is called
ablaut In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German '' Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its ...
, and the different forms are called ablaut grades. The five ablaut grades are the e-grade, o-grade, lengthened e- and o-grades, and the zero-grade that lacks a vowel. In linguistic works, ' is used to stand in for the various ablaut grades that the vowel may appear in. Some reconstructions also include roots with ' as the vowel, but the existence of ' as a distinct vowel is disputed; see Indo-European ablaut: a-grade. The vowel is flanked on both sides by one or more consonants; the preceding consonants are the ''onset'', the following ones are the ''coda''. The onset and coda must contain at least one consonant; a root may not begin or end with the ablaut vowel. Consequently, the simplest roots have an onset and coda consisting of one consonant each. Such simple roots are common; examples are: "to give", ' "to bear", "to put", "to run", "to eat", "sharp", ' "to tread", "to sit", and "to clothe". Roots can also have a more complex onset and coda, consisting of a consonant cluster (multiple consonants). These include: "to breathe", "red", "to plough", "straight", "to bind", "to freeze", "to flow", "to sleep", and "to moisten". The maximum number of consonants seems to be five, as in "to twine". Early PIE scholars reconstructed a number of roots beginning or ending with a vowel. The latter type always had a long vowel (' "to put", ' "to grow", ' "to give"), while this restriction did not hold for vowel-initial roots (' "to eat", ' "to drive", ' "to smell").
Laryngeal theory The laryngeal theory is a theory in the historical linguistics of the Indo-European languages positing that: * The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) had a series of phonemes beyond those reconstructable by the comparative method. That is, th ...
can explain this behaviour by reconstructing a laryngeal following the vowel (', , ', resulting in a long vowel) or preceding it (', , , resulting in a short vowel). These reconstructions obey the mentioned rules.


Sonority hierarchy

When the onset or coda of a root contains a consonant cluster, the consonants in this cluster must be ordered according to their sonority. The vowel constitutes a sonority peak, and the sonority must progressively rise in the onset and progressively fall in the coda. PIE roots distinguish three main classes of consonants, arranged from high to low sonority: # Non-
labial The term ''labial'' originates from '' Labium'' (Latin for "lip"), and is the adjective that describes anything of or related to lips, such as lip-like structures. Thus, it may refer to: * the lips ** In linguistics, a labial consonant ** In zoolog ...
sonorants ', denoted collectively as '. # Labial sonorants ', denoted collectively as '. # Obstruents, denoted collectively as '. These include three subgroups: #*
Plosive In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...
s (voiceless ', voiced ' and aspirated '), denoted collectively as '. #* The sibilant '. #* The
laryngeals The laryngeal theory is a theory in the historical linguistics of the Indo-European languages positing that: * The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) had a series of phonemes beyond those reconstructable by the comparative method. That is, the ...
', denoted collectively as '. The following rules apply: * A consonant closer to the main vowel must have a higher sonority than the consonant further away. Thus, consonants in the onset must follow the order ', and the reverse ' in the coda, giving ' as the full root shape. Roots with a different order of sonority, like ' or ', are not allowed. * Only one member of each sonority class may appear in the onset or coda. Thus, roots like ', ' or ' are not allowed. Laryngeals can also occur in the coda ''before'' a sonorant, as in "small".


Obstruent clusters

The obstruent slot of an onset or coda may consist of multiple obstruents itself. Here, too, only one member of each subgroup of obstruents may appear in the cluster; a cluster may not contain multiple laryngeals or plosives. The rules for the ordering within a cluster of obstruents are somewhat different, and do not fit into the general sonority hierarchy: * Only voiceless plosives occur when preceded by ' in the onset. * A laryngeal may appear before or after any obstruent other than another laryngeal. Examples are "to grab", "to fly", "to dry", ' "to pour, rain", ' "to awake", and ' "to be silent". In several roots, a phenomenon called s-mobile occurs, where some descendants include a prepended ' while other forms lack it. There does not appear to be any particular pattern; sometimes forms with ' and without it even occur side by side in the same language.


Further restrictions

PIE abided by the general cross-linguistic constraint against the co-occurrence of two similar consonants in a word root. In particular, no examples are known of roots containing two plain voiced plosives (') or two glides ('). A few examples of roots with two fricatives or two nasals ( "to burn", "to give, to take" etc.) can be reconstructed, but they were rare as well. An exception, however, were the voiced aspirated and voiceless plosives, which relatively commonly co-occurred (e.g. "to burn", ' "to fly"). In particular, roots with two voiced aspirates were more than twice as common than could be expected to occur by chance. An additional constraint prohibited roots containing both a voiced aspirated and a voiceless plosive ('), unless the latter occurs in a word-initial cluster after an ' (e.g. "to stiffen"). Taken together with the abundance of '-type roots, it has been proposed that this distribution results from a limited process of voice assimilation in pre-PIE, where a voiceless stop was assimilated to a voiced aspirate, if another one followed or preceded within a root.


Exceptions

Thorn clusters are sequences of a dental (') plus a velar plosive (' etc.). Their role in PIE phonotactics is unknown. Roots like "to perish" apparently violate the phonotactical rules, but are quite common. Some roots cannot be reconstructed with an ablauting ', an example being ' "to grow, to become". Such roots can be seen as generalized zero grades of unattested forms like ', and thus follow the phonotactical rules. Some roots like ' "to sneeze" or ' "to duck" do not appear to follow these rules. This might be due to incomplete understanding of PIE phonotactics or to wrong reconstructions. ', for example, might not have existed in PIE at all, if the Indo-European words usually traced back to it are
onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...
s.


Lexical meaning

The meaning of a reconstructed root is conventionally that of a verb; the terms ''root'' and ''verbal root'' are almost synonymous in PIE grammar. This is because, apart from a limited number of so-called root nouns, PIE roots overwhelmingly participate in verbal inflection through well-established morphological and phonological mechanisms. Their meanings are not always directly reconstructible, due to
semantic shift Semantic change (also semantic shift, semantic progression, semantic development, or semantic drift) is a form of language change regarding the evolution of word usage—usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from ...
s that led to discrepancies in the meanings of reflexes in the attested
daughter language In historical linguistics, a daughter language, also known as descendant language, is a language descended from another language, its mother language, through a process of genetic descent. If more than one language has developed from the same pro ...
s. Many nouns and adjectives are derived from verbal roots via suffixes and ablaut. Nevertheless, some roots did exist that did not have a primary verbal derivation. Apart from the aforementioned root nouns, the most important of these were the so-called Caland roots, which had adjectival meaning. Such roots generally formed proterokinetic adjectives with the suffix ', thematic adjectives in ' and compounding stems in '. They included at least ' "red", "white", "deep" and "heavy". Verbal roots were inherently either imperfective or perfective. To form a verb from the root's own aspect, verb endings were attached directly to the root, either with or without a thematic vowel. The "other" aspect, if it was needed, would then be a so-called "characterised" stem, as detailed in
Proto-Indo-European verb Proto-Indo-European verbs reflect a complex system of morphology, more complicated than the substantive, with verbs categorized according to their aspect, using multiple grammatical moods and voices, and being conjugated according to person, nu ...
. The characterised imperfective stems are often different in different descendants, but with no association between certain forms and the various branches of Indo-European, which suggests that a number of aspects fell together before PIE split up.


Creation of new roots

Roots were occasionally created anew within PIE or its early descendants. A variety of methods have been observed.


Root extensions

Root extensions are additions of one or two sounds, often plosives, to the end of a root. These extensions do not seem to change the meaning of a root, and often lead to variant root forms across different descendants. The source and function of these extensions is not known. For ' 'to push, hit, thrust', we can reconstruct: * ' >
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
''τύκος'' (''túkos'') "hammer",
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
''стуκ'' (''stuk'') and ''сту́κать'' (''stúkat''´) "knock" and "to knock" * ' >
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
''stoke'' (Germanic ''k'' goes back to PIE '.) * ' >
Vedic upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the '' Atharvaveda''. The Vedas (, , ) are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the ...
''tudáti'' "beats"


Sonorant metathesis

When the root contains a sonorant, the zero grade is ambiguous as to whether the sonorant should be placed before the ablaut vowel or after it. Speakers occasionally analysed such roots the "wrong" way, and this has led to some roots being created from existing ones by swapping the position of the sonorant. An example of such a pair of roots, both meaning "to increase, to enlarge": * > Gothic ''wahsjan'' "to grow", Ancient Greek ''αὔξω'' (''aúxō'') "to increase". * > Gothic ''aukan'' "to increase, to grow", Latin ''augeō'' "to increase", Lithuanian ''áugti'' "to grow". Another example concerns the root "sky", which formed a vṛddhi derivative in this way: * > Ancient Greek ''Ζεύς'' (''Zeús''), Latin ''diēs'' "day", Sanskrit ''dyú'' "sky, day". * > Latin ''dīvus'' "divine", Old Prussian ''deiwis'', Sanskrit ''devá'' "deity".


Back-formations

Sometimes, commonly used words became the template for a new root that was back-formed from the word, different from the root from which the word was originally formed. For example, the ablauting noun "lifetime" was formed as a u-stem derivative of the root . The oblique stem alternant ' was then reinterpreted as the e-grade of a new root, which formed a new neuter s-stem , a formation which is only created from roots.


See also

* ''
Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben The ''Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben'' (''LIV'', ''"Lexicon of the Indo-European Verbs"'') is an etymological dictionary of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) verb. The first edition appeared in 1998, edited by Helmut Rix. A second edition follow ...
'' (''"Lexicon of the Indo-European Verbs"'', in German), a lexicon of PIE verbal roots


Notes


References


Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links


American Heritage Indo-European Roots Index

Database query to the online version of Pokorny's PIE dictionary


* Jonathan Slocum
Indo-European Lexicon
from the University of Texas Linguistic Research Center {{good article
Roots A root is the part of a plant, generally underground, that anchors the plant body, and absorbs and stores water and nutrients. Root or roots may also refer to: Art, entertainment, and media * ''The Root'' (magazine), an online magazine focusing ...
Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...