linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

, a word stem is a

word A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguist ...

part responsible for a word's lexical meaning. The term is used with slightly different meanings depending on the morphology of the language in question. For instance, in Athabaskan linguistics, a verb stem is a

root In vascular plants, the roots are the plant organ, organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often bel ...

that cannot appear on its own and that carries the tone of the word. Typically, a stem remains unmodified during

inflection In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

with few exceptions due to apophony (for example in Polish, ("city") and ("in the city"); in English, ''sing'', ''sang'', and ''sung'', where it can be modified according to morphological rules or peculiarities, such as sandhi). Word stem comparisons across

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

s have helped reveal cognates that have allowed comparative linguists to determine

language families A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ana ...

and their history.

Root vs stem

The word ''friendship'' is made by attaching the

morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...

''-ship'' to the root word ''friend'' (which some linguists also call a stem). While the inflectional plural morpheme ''-s'' can be attached to ''friendship'' to form ''friendships'', it can not be attached to the root ''friend'' within ''friendship'' to form ''friendsship''. A stem is a base from which all its

inflected In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

variants are formed. 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. A stem can be a lone root, such as ''run'', or a

compound word In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word or Sign language, sign) that consists of more than one Word stem, stem. Compounding, composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. C ...

, such as the compound nouns ''meatball'' and ''bottleneck'' or the compound verbs ''blacken'' and ''standardize''. The stem of the

verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...

''to wait'' is ''wait'': The stem is the word part that is common to all of 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

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. 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

A list of all the inflected forms of a word stem is called its inflectional paradigm. The paradigm of the

adjective An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...

''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

Both in

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

and Greek, the declension (inflection) of some

noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...

s uses a different stem in the

oblique case In grammar, an oblique ( abbreviated ; from ) or objective case ( abbr. ) is a nominal case other than the nominative case and, sometimes, the vocative. A noun or pronoun in the oblique case can generally appear in any role except as subject, ...

s 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 -ος (Greek) to the oblique stem, and the genitive singular is conventionally listed in Greek and Latin dictionaries to illustrate the oblique.

Examples

English words derived from Latin or Greek often involve the oblique stem: '' adipose'', '' altitudinal'', '' android'', and '' mathematics''. 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 Alveolar consonants (; UK also ) are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the upper teeth. Alveolar consonants may be articulated wi ...

(''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 An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of world map, maps of Earth or of a continent or region of Earth. Advances in astronomy have also resulted in atlases of the celestial sphere or of other planets. Atlases have traditio ...

, Atlantic).

References

What is a stem?
–

SIL International SIL Global (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics International) is an evangelical Christian nonprofit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, to expan ...

, 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

Searchable reference for word stems including affixes (prefixes and suffixes)
{{Authority control Morphemes Linguistics terminology eo:Radiko#Lingvo