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dc.contributor.authorLohndal, Terje
dc.date.accessioned2023-09-26T12:41:47Z
dc.date.available2023-09-26T12:41:47Z
dc.date.issued2020-02-28
dc.description.abstractA root is a fundamental minimal unit in words. Some languages do not allow their roots to appear on their own, as in the Semitic languages where roots consist of consonant clusters that become stems or words by virtue of vowel insertion. Other languages appear to allow roots to surface without any additional morphology, as in English car. Roots are typically distinguished from affixes in that affixes need a host, although this varies within different theories.<p> <p>Traditionally roots have belonged to the domain of morphology. More recently, though, new theories have emerged according to which words are decomposed and subject to the same principles as sentences. That makes roots a fundamental building block of sentences, unlike words. Contemporary syntactic theories of roots hold that they have little if any grammatical information, which raises the question of how they acquire their seemingly grammatical properties. A central issue has revolved around whether roots have a lexical category inherently or whether they are given a lexical category in some other way. Two main theories are distributed morphology and the exoskeletal approach to grammar. The former holds that roots merge with categorizers in the grammar: a root combined with a nominal categorizer becomes a noun, and a root combined with a verbal categorizer becomes a verb. On the latter approach, it is argued that roots are inserted into syntactic structures which carry the relevant category, meaning that the syntactic environment is created before roots are inserted into the structure. The two views make different predictions and differ in particular in their view of the status of empty categorizers.en_US
dc.identifier.citationLohndal T: Syntactic categorization of roots. In: Aronoff M. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics 2020, 2020. Oxford University Press p. 1-28en_US
dc.identifier.cristinIDFRIDAID 1798573
dc.identifier.doi10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.257
dc.identifier.isbn9780199384655
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10037/31213
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisherOxford University Pressen_US
dc.rights.accessRightsopenAccessen_US
dc.rights.holderCopyright 2020 The Author(s)en_US
dc.titleSyntactic categorization of rootsen_US
dc.type.versionacceptedVersionen_US
dc.typeChapteren_US
dc.typeBokkapittelen_US


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