Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan

L. N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University

Faculty of Philology

Foreign Languages Theory and Practice Department

SIW on the theme:

“Roots and Stems”

 Roots and Stems
The word is the nominative unit of language built up by morphemes and
indivisible into smaller segments as regards its nominative function. The
morphological system of language reveals its properties through the morphemic
structure of words. One of the essential tasks of morphology is to study the
morphemic structure of the word.
The morphemic composition of modern English words has a wide range of
varieties but the preferable morphemic model of the common English word is the
following:
prefix + root + lexical suffix +grammatical suffix.

Roots
In English grammar and morphology, a root is a word or morpheme from
which other words grow, usually through the addition of prefixes and suffixes.
A root is a part of a word with lexical meaning that cannot be broken down
further. Root is a term which is not uniquely defined. Some linguists consider the
root to be the basic free morpheme in a derived form.
A root tells us more about the meaning of a word. Often a complex word has
more than one root, as in blackbird. In the words un-ripe, rip-en and rip-er, the
root is each time ripe. The morphemes un-, -en and -er have grammatical rather
than lexical meaning and therefore are affixes, not roots.
Roots can usually appear as independent words, for which reason they are
called free morphs.
re-fresh and book-ish-ness.
Let”s consider the following nouns, adjectives and verbs in English:
car, book, buy, sell, eat, type, run, play, dog, cat, mouse
These wordforms are roots, because:
1. Each wordfrom in the same set is also a stem.
2. Each form has lexical meaning.
3. None of these wordforms contains an affix.
 Stems
In linguistics, a stem is a part of a word responsible for its lexical meaning.
A stem is the root or roots of a word, together with any derivational affixes, to
which inflectional affixes are added (plurals, past tense, etc).
A stem consists minimally of a root, but may be analyzable into a root
plus derivational morphemes. A stem may require an inflectional operation (often
involving a prefix or suffix) in order to ground it into discourse and make it a fully
understandable word. If a stem does not occur by itself in a meaningful way in a
language, it is referred to as a bound morpheme. A stem must have lexical
meaning.
For example, undo is a stem that can be inflected for word forms such
as undoes or undid. The root is do, of course.
In the English word friendships contains the stem friend, to which the
derivational suffix -ship is attached to form a new stem friendship, to which the
inflectional suffix -s is attached.
Stems may be a root (take) or they may be morphologically complex, as
in compound words (meatball, bottleneck) or words with derivational morphemes
(black-en or standard-ize). For instance, the stem of the complex
noun photographer is photo-graph-er, but not photo.
One more, the root of the verb form destabilized is stabil-, a form
of stable that does not occur alone. the stem is de-stabil-ize, which includes the
derivational affixes de- and -ize, but not the inflectional past tense suffix -(e)d.
That is, a stem is that part of a word that inflectional affixes attach to.
The Difference between Root and Stem
Root Stem
A root is a form which is not further A stem is a form to which affixes -
analysable, either in terms of prefixes or suffixes have been added.
derivational or inflectional
morphology.
It is that part of word-form that remains A stem is a part of a word responsible
when all inflectional and derivational for its lexical meaning.
affixes have been removed.
Untouchables: the root is touch, the Untouchables: the stem is
suffix -able, the prefix un- and the untouchable, although in the form
suffix -s have been added. touched the stem is touch.
Wheelchair: two roots, wheel and Wheelchairs: the stem is wheelchair,
chair. even though the stem contains two
roots.
Tasks
Glossary
Affixation is the process of adding a prefix or suffix to a word.
Blending is a type of word formation in which two or more words are
merged into one so that the blended constituents are either clipped, or partially
overlap (brunch).
Composition is the way of forming new words by putting two or more
stems together to build a new word. Composition is very productive in Modern
English. It is mainly characteristic of noun and
Conversion is a productive word-formation process in which a word is
converted into a new word class without the addition of an affix.
Compounds are nouns, verbs, adjectives or prepositions that are made up of
two or more words and have one unit of meaning (assistant office manager, long-
legged).
Endocentric compound is compound that fulfils the same linguistic
function as one of its parts (handbag).
Exocentric compound is compound which doesn’t fulfil the same linguistic
function as one of its members.
Abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase, e.g., prof – professor,
pike - turnpike, etc.
Acronym is a word formed from the initial letters of a fixed phrase or title
(TV – television, VIP – very important person, hi-fi – high fidelity).
Shortening is the process of word-formation by means of dropping some
part of the words. It includes abbreviation and clipping.

Task 1. Define the type of word formation:

A mike – shortening: microphone.
To babysit – back formation: babysitter.
To buzz – sound imitation (continuous sound made by insects).
 A torchlight – compound word, two stems are combined.
Homelike – compound word, two stems are combined..
Theatrical – suffixation: theatre (noun st.) + -ical (adj. forming suffix).
Old-fashioned – compound word, old (adj.) + past p. of fashion (v.).
To book – conversion.
Unreasonable – affixation: un- (prefix of negative mean.) + reason + able
(suffix added to verb stems).
Meery-go-round – compound word, three stems are combined.
V- Day – compound-shortened word: Victory Day, two stems are combined.
BBC – shortening: British Broadcasting Corporation.
To bloodtranfuse – back formation: blood transfusion.
A go – conversion: action of going.
To quack – sound imitation: sound made by a duck.
Eatable – suffixation: eat (verb st.) + -able (suffix added to verbal st.)
NATO – abbreviation: North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Anglo-American - compound word, two stems are combined.
To murmur – sound imitation: to speak loudly.
A pub – shortening: public house.
Okay – onomatopoeia: from abbreviation O.K.
NIMBY – acronym: not in my back yard.
To thunder – conversation: thunder.
A.M. – abbreviation: Ante meridiem
Earthquake - compound word: earth + quake.
To dilly-dally – compound word (rhythmic stems).
Fatalism – suffuxation: fatal (noun st.) + ism (suffix added to form nouns of
condition, doctrine).
Zoo – shortening: zoological garden.

Task 2. Explain the semantic correlations:

 To shelter – denote action, process. Shelter – noun of an object.
Breakfast – noun of object. To breakfast – denotes action, process.
Fish – noun of living being. To fish - denotes action, process.
Nurse – noun of living being. To nurse - denotes action, process.
Empty – adjective of spacial position. To empty – denotes action, process.
Poor – adjective of financial position. To poor – denotes action, process.
Monkey – noun of living being. To monkey - denotes action, process.
Ape – noun of living being. To ape – denotes action.

Task 3. Point out the derivational means of words:

Likes – like (root, n.) + -s (indicator of plural form of nouns).
Dislikes – dis- (prefix of opposite meaning) + like (root, n.) + -s (indicator
of plural form of nouns).
A wait – wait (root, n.)
Haves – have (root, n.) + -s (plurality).
Have-nots – have (root, n.) + not + -s (plural). (compound word)