Part of a word responsible for its lexical meaning
In
linguistics
, a
word stem
is a part of a
word
responsible for its
lexical
meaning. Typically, a stem remains unmodified during
inflection
with few exceptions due to
apophony
(for example in
Polish
,
miast-o
("city") and
w mie??-e
("in the city"); in English,
sing
,
sang
, and
sung
, where it can be modified according to morphological rules or peculiarities, such as
sandhi
)
Uncovering and analyzing
cognation
between word stems and roots within and across
languages
has allowed
comparative philology and comparative linguistics
to
determine the history
of languages and
language families
.
[1]
The term is used with slightly different meanings depending on the
morphology
of the language in question. In
Athabaskan linguistics
, for example, a verb stem is a
root
that cannot appear on its own and that carries the
tone
of the word.
Root vs stem
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By attaching the morpheme
-ship
to the
root word
friend
(which some linguists
[2]
call a stem, too), the new word
friendship
was synthesized. While an
s
can be attached to
friendship
to form
friendships
, it can not be attached to the root within it to form
friendsship
. A stem is a base from which all its
inflected
variants are formed.
[3]
For example, the
stabil-
(a variant of
stable
unable to stand alone) is the root of the
destabilized
, while the stem consists of
de·stabil·ize
, including
de-
and
-ize
. The
-(e)d
, on the other hand, is not part of the stem.
Stem may either consist of a root (e.g.
run
) alone or a
compound word
, such as
meatball
and
bottleneck
(examples of compound nouns) or
blacken
and
standardize
(examples of compound verbs). The stem of the
verb
to wait
is
wait
: it is the part that is common to all its inflected variants.
- wait
(infinitive, imperative, present subjunctive, and present indicative except in the 3rd-person singular)
- wait
s (3rd person singular simple present indicative)
- wait
ed (simple past)
- wait
ed (past participle)
- wait
ing (present participle)
Citation forms and bound morphemes
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In languages with very little inflection, such as
English
and
Chinese
, the stem is usually not distinct from the "normal" form of the word (the lemma, citation, or dictionary form). However, in other languages, word stems may rarely or never occur on their own. For example, the English verb stem
run
is indistinguishable from its present tense form (except in the third person singular). However, the equivalent
Spanish
verb stem
corr-
never appears as such because it is cited with the infinitive inflection (
correr
) and always appears in actual speech as a non-finite (infinitive or participle) or conjugated form. Such morphemes that cannot occur on their own in this way are usually referred to as
bound morphemes
.
In
computational linguistics
, the term "stem" is used for the part of the word that never changes, even morphologically, when inflected, and a lemma is the base form of the word.
[
citation needed
]
For example, given the word "produced", its lemma (linguistics) is "produce", but the stem is "produc-" because of the inflected form "producing".
Paradigms and suppletion
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]
A list of all the inflected forms of a word stem is called its inflectional paradigm. The paradigm of the
adjective
tall
is given below, and the stem of this adjective is
tall
.
- tall (positive); taller (comparative); tallest (superlative)
Some paradigms do not make use of the same stem throughout; this phenomenon is called
suppletion
. An example of a suppletive paradigm is the paradigm for the adjective
good
: its stem changes from
good
to the bound morpheme
bet-
.
- good (positive); better (comparative); best (superlative)
Oblique stem
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Both in
Latin
and
Greek
, the
declension
(inflection) of some
nouns
uses a different stem in the
oblique cases
than in the
nominative
and
vocative
singular cases. Such words belong to, respectively, the so-called
third declension
of the Latin grammar and the so-called
third declension
of the Ancient Greek grammar. For example, the
genitive
singular is formed by adding
-is
(Latin) or -ο? (Greek) to the oblique stem, and the genitive singular is conventionally listed in Greek and Latin dictionaries to illustrate the oblique.
Examples
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]
Latin word
|
meaning
|
oblique stem
|
adeps
|
fat
|
adip-
|
altitudo
|
height
|
altitudin-
|
index
|
pointer
|
indic-
|
rex
|
king, ruler
|
reg-
|
supellex
|
equipment, furniture
|
supellectil-
|
|
Greek word
|
meaning
|
oblique stem
|
?ναξ
(anax)
|
lord
|
?νακτ- (anakt-)
|
?ν?ρ
(an?r)
|
man
|
?νδρ- (andr-)
|
κ?λπι?
(kalpis)
|
jug
|
κ?λπιδ- (kalpid-)
|
μ?θημα
(math?ma)
|
learning
|
μαθ?ματ- (math?mat-)
|
|
English words derived from Latin or Greek often involve the oblique stem:
adip
ose
,
altitudin
al
,
andr
oid
, and
mathemat
ics
.
Historically, the difference in stems arose due to sound changes in the nominative. In the Latin third declension, for example, the nominative singular suffix
-s
is combined with a stem-final consonant. If that consonant was
c
, the result was
x
(a mere orthographic change), while if it was
g
, the
-s
caused it to
devoice
, again resulting in
x
. If the stem-final consonant was another
alveolar consonant
(
t, d, r
), it elided before the
-s
. In a later era,
n
before the nominative ending was also lost, producing pairs like
atlas, atlant-
(for English
Atlas
,
Atlantic
).
See also
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References
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]
- What is a stem?
?
SIL International
, Glossary of Linguistic Terms.
- Bauer, Laurie (2003)
Introducing Linguistic Morphology
. Georgetown University Press; 2nd edition.
- Williams, Edwin and Anna-Maria DiScullio (1987)
On the definition of a word.
Cambridge MA, MIT Press.
External links
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]