this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
18 points (100.0% liked)
Linguistics
611 readers
22 users here now
Welcome to the community about the science of human Language!
Everyone is welcome here: from laymen to professionals, Historical linguists to discourse analysts, structuralists to generativists.
Rules:
- Stay on-topic. Specially for more divisive subjects.
- Post sources whenever reasonable to do so.
- Avoid crack theories and pseudoscientific claims.
- Have fun!
Related communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Words in semitic languages, unlike indo-european languages are conjugated with a system of roots and templates.
Roots are three (or even four) letter words, that are not meant to be used by themselves since they are equivalent to the infinitive in IE languages. So K-T-B would be "to write" and nothing else. No tense, no gender, etc etc.
Templates fill these in, by applying the root to a template. They specify the tense, gender, x-person etc.
So K-T-B (to write) + _A_A_TU (I did this thing in the past) = KATABTU
tl;dr: roots are verbs and templates are context for them
Thank you! Cool stuff!
I guess the image need a bit more clarity...
i swear i could remember writing an explanation for roots/templates in the image... i'll put it in the post body, thank you :)