Semitic root

 ( Linguistic Morphology ) 

The roots of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of or "" (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 ""), 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 languages mostly has triconsonantal roots, Chadic languages, Omotic languages, and Cushitic have mostly biconsonantal roots; and Egyptian shows a mix of biconsonantal and triconsonantal roots.*

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Triconsonantal roots A triliteral or triconsonantal root (; , ;, ; , ) is a root containing a sequence of three consonants.

The following are some of the forms which can be derived from the triconsonantal root כ־ת־ב ك-ت-ب (general overall meaning "to write") in Hebrew and Arabic:

The Hebrew fricatives stemming from begadkefat lenition are transcribed here as "ḵ", "ṯ" and "ḇ", to retain their connection with the consonantal root כ־ת־ב k-t-b. They are pronounced , , in Biblical Hebrew and , , 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.

G verb derived stem		pā‘al or qāl	فَعَلَ	fa‘ala (Stem I)	3rd Sg. M. Perfect		kāṯaḇ	كتب	kataba	He wrote
					1st Pl. Perfect		kāṯaḇnū	كتبنا	katabnā	We wrote
					3rd Sg. M. Imperfect		yiḵtoḇ	يكتب	yaktubu	He writes, will write
					1st Pl. Imperfect		niḵtoḇ	نكتب	naktubu	We write, will write
					Sg. M. Active Participle		kōṯēḇ	كاتب	kātib	Writer
Š verb stem		hip̄‘īl	أَفْعَلَ	af‘ala (Stem IV)	3rd Sg. M. Perfect		hiḵtīḇ	أكتب	ʔaktaba	He dictated
					3rd Sg. M. Imperfect		yaḵtīḇ	يكتب	yuktibu	He dictates, will dictate
Št(D) verb stem		hiṯpā‘ēl	استَفْعَلَ	istaf‘ala (Stem X)	3rd Sg. M. Perfect		hiṯkattēḇ	استكتب	istaktaba	He corresponded (Hebrew), had a copy made (Arabic)
					3rd Sg. M. Imperfect		yiṯkattēḇ	يستكتب	yastaktibu	(imperfect of above)
Noun with m- prefix & original short vowels		mip̄‘āl	مَفْعَل	maf‘āl	Singular		miḵtāḇ	مكتب	maktab	Letter (Hebrew), Office (Arabic)

In Hebrew grammar terminology, the word binyan (, plural בניינים 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 وزن wazn (plural أوزان, awzān) for the pattern and جذر / (plural جذور, ) 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 grammar term wazan (originally meaning 'weight, measure'), and "root" is a literal translation of .

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Biliteral origin of some triliteral roots Although most roots in Hebrew seem to be triliteral, many of them were originally biliteral, cf. the relation between:

	√g-z-z	shear
	√g-z-m	prune, cut down
	√g-z-r	cut

	√p-r-z	divide a city
	√p-r-ṭ	give change
	√p-r-r	crumble into pieces
pay a debtSee 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). .

The Hebrew language 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.

	√q-p-'
	√q-p-h
	√q-p-ḥ
	√q-p-y

This verb-pattern sh-C-C is usually causative, cf.

	√ṭ-p	"wet"		√sh-ṭ-p	"wash, rinse, make wet"
	√l-k	"go".		√sh-l-k	"cast off, throw down, cause to go"

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History 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.

Tom Güldemann (2025). 9783110421668, De Mouton Gruyter. ISBN 9783110421668

According to one study of the Proto-Semitic lexicon, 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 culture cultural background, i.e., older than . As we have no texts from any Semitic language older than , reconstructions of Proto-Semitic are inferred from these more recent Semitic texts.

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Quadriliteral roots 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, ተረጐመ täräggwämä in Amharic language, all meaning "he translated". In some cases, a quadriliteral root is actually a reduplication of a two-consonant sequence. So in Arabic daġdaġa and Hebrew digdeg (borrowed from Arabic) means "he tickled" from the reduplicated root d-ġ-d-ġ, and in Arabic zalzala means "he shook" from the root z-l-z-l. Other Arabic example include baʕṯara means "he scattered", marjaḥa means "he swung", and qarfaṣa 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 Piʿel, Puʿal, and Hiṯpaʿel, 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:

• () – "we will sprinkle" or "we will splash", from Yiddish shpritsn (cognate to German spritzen)

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Quinqueliteral roots 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. A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language by J.A. Haywood and H.M. Nahmad (London: Lund Humphries, 1965), , p. 261. For example Arabic ʕaramram means "numerous", ʕankabūt means "spider" and ḡaḍanfar means "lion". However, in modern Israeli Hebrew, 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".. 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:

• ( – "he synchronized"), via the English word from Greek
• ( – "he did stupid things")
• ( – "he had a flirt"), from the English or Yiddish past tense of the English word

In Amharic language, there is a very small set of verbs which are conjugated as quinqueliteral roots. One example is wäšänäffärä 'rain fell with a strong wind'.p. 153. Thomas Leiper Kane. 1990. Amharic-English Dictionary. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. The conjugation of this small class of verb roots is explained by Wolf Leslau.pp. 566–569, 1043. Wolf Leslau. ''Reference Grammar of Amharic. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Unlike the Hebrew examples, these roots conjugate in a manner more like regular verbs, producing no indivisible clusters.

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See also

• Apophony
• Arabic grammar
• Broken plural
• Indo-European ablaut
• Khuzdul
• K-T-B
• Modern Hebrew grammar
• Nonconcatenative morphology
• Phono-semantic matching
• Proto-Indo-European root
• Š-L-M
• Transfix

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Notes

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External links

• 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? – هل يفهم المهندسون الحاسوبيّون علم الصرف فهماً عميقاً؟, available also in Arabic, Indonesian, French

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