Root, stem, base

Taken from: Bauer, Laurie (1983:20-21): English word-formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

‘Root’, ‘stem’ and ‘base’ are all terms used in the literature to designate that part of a word that remains when all affixes have been removed.

A root is a form which is not further analysable, either in terms of derivational or inflectional morphology. It is that part of word-form that remains when all inflectional and derivational affixes have been removed. A root is the basic part always present in a lexeme. In the form ‘untouchables’ the root is ‘touch’, to which first the suffix ‘-able’, then the prefix ‘un-‘ and finally the suffix ‘-s’ have been added. In a compound word like ‘wheelchair’ there are two roots, ‘wheel’ and ‘chair’.

A stem is of concern only when dealing with inflectional morphology.

In the form ‘untouchables’ the stem is ‘untouchable’, although in the form ‘touched’ the stem is ‘touch’; in the form ‘wheelchairs’ the stem is ‘wheelchair’, even though the stem contains two roots.

A base is any form to which affixes of any kind can be added. This means that any root or any stem can be termed a base, but the set of bases is not exhausted by the union of the set of roots and the set of stems: a derivationally analysable form to which derivational affixes are added can only be referred to as a base. That is, ‘touchable’ can act as a base for prefixation to give ‘untouchable’, but in this process ‘touchable’ could not be referred to as a root because it is analysable in terms of derivational morphology, nor as a stem since it is not the adding of inflectional affixes which is in question.

Hi Singdha

Root is the smallest meaningful part of a word.

Stem is any morpheme which a syntactical affix can be added to

Base is any morpheme which an affix can be added to.

here agree is a root and base at the same time..it is a root because it is bare and an base because dis- and -ment can be added to it.

disagree is a stem because its is a verb and by adding ment it changes to an adjective

dis/ment are affixes.

affixes can't stand alone in languages. they are added to bases to change their meaning both semantically and syntactically.

I got your point Fateme but if we take the two words independently that is

Disagreement then we get dis--- agree---ment in which as you told dis/ment are affixes and the root word is agree........ but now if we take the word Disagree separately then dis---- agree in which dis is an affix but what about agree?? is this root or stem.... or we will consider the whole word disagree as verb...

Agree is root and is capable of being stem! If ment is going to be added to it then agree plays the role of stem here. They are tied together. I mean we cant say since a morpheme is root it can't be stem or base.

I hope i was clear :)

yes i get the thing clear ........thanks a lot Fateme......

U're WC:)

I think the distinction is in the derivation. Stem-word is essentially chopping of the affix/suffix and what remains. Root needs to be a proper and valid word. That is, it must be morphologically the base. Root of went is go, but not the stem. When addition of suffix/affix transforms the root word, then root and stem may not be same.

You may check Wikipedia for this. it contain many articles related to this . :)

WIKIPEDIA is full of this thing . You may search for it and it contain a lot of pages about this ..

In Morphological Analysis we extract the root word and add additional information like tense aspects and modality. But, in most of the applications we do not require so much information. So, we resolve to some lighter applications a lemmatizer or a stemmer. A lemmatizer would remove the infections (in your case affixes) and would give you a proper word while a stemmer may remove the affixes and would not provide you with a proper word. For example, lets take a word 'features'. A lemmatizer would give you 'feature' (a complete word making some sense, this called a lemma) while a stemmer may give you 'featur '. it might seem that lemmatizers are more useful then stemmers, but it is not true. It depends what you wish to achieve, what are you developing.

So, in morphological analysis you get root + affixes, a lemmatizer gives you a complete word making sense (lemma) which removes affixes and add some info to make it a proper dictionary word. A stemmer gives you a stem (after removing affixes) which may or may not resort to a dictionary word. Hope this clears your doubt.

Yes sir my doubt is clear now.....:)

great; thnx a lot guys coz i also was lost in between stems and roots, lemmas and so on. This discussion has really enlightened me.

dis-agree-ment is a noun, which is formed by means of the suffix -ment from the verb dis-agree, which itself is formed by means of the prefix dis- from the verb /agree/. Note that morphological derivations (nearly) always combine morphemes, which have a meaning and belong to some category. In this case, /agree/ is the only element that can freely occur - thus, /agree/ must be the core element or root. However, roots can be projected on stems, and stems can be projected on words without any specific marking. It is more important to analyze the steps of derivation according to the category and meaning of the parts than to classify the parts into arbitrary classes like roots or stems.

Thanks a lot sir for your suggestion

Root, stem, base

Taken from: Bauer, Laurie (1983:20-21): English word-formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

‘Root’, ‘stem’ and ‘base’ are all terms used in the literature to designate that part of a word that remains when all affixes have been removed.

A root is a form which is not further analysable, either in terms of derivational or inflectional morphology. It is that part of word-form that remains when all inflectional and derivational affixes have been removed. A root is the basic part always present in a lexeme. In the form ‘untouchables’ the root is ‘touch’, to which first the suffix ‘-able’, then the prefix ‘un-‘ and finally the suffix ‘-s’ have been added. In a compound word like ‘wheelchair’ there are two roots, ‘wheel’ and ‘chair’.

A stem is of concern only when dealing with inflectional morphology.

In the form ‘untouchables’ the stem is ‘untouchable’, although in the form ‘touched’ the stem is ‘touch’; in the form ‘wheelchairs’ the stem is ‘wheelchair’, even though the stem contains two roots.

A base is any form to which affixes of any kind can be added. This means that any root or any stem can be termed a base, but the set of bases is not exhausted by the union of the set of roots and the set of stems: a derivationally analysable form to which derivational affixes are added can only be referred to as a base. That is, ‘touchable’ can act as a base for prefixation to give ‘untouchable’, but in this process ‘touchable’ could not be referred to as a root because it is analysable in terms of derivational morphology, nor as a stem since it is not the adding of inflectional affixes which is in question.

Thank you, Mr. Caka,

That was the only answer that made sense on all levels and explained it very well.

Best

 A stem is that part of a word to which grammatical

Affixes are added. 

A stem is a part of word not changed after removing the Affixes and Prefixes  while A root is a form which is not further analysable.

Stems have the potential to create new words.

Good question!