I need root morphemes

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leafar
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I need root morphemes

Post by leafar »

I need a really long list of concepts. Also, which natural languages have the most / most useful roots? Latin, arabic, hebrew? Basically I just need a link to somewhere with massive list so that I can use it as an influence for a language that I'm working on.
Last edited by leafar on 04 Dec 2010 14:29, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: I need root morphemes

Post by Ear of the Sphinx »

leafar wrote:I need a really long list of concepts.
What phonology do you have? Every morpheme must fit your phonology.

Edit: Ok, check Swadesh list.
Last edited by Ear of the Sphinx on 04 Dec 2010 14:32, edited 1 time in total.
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leafar
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Re: I need root morphemes

Post by leafar »

Milya0 wrote:
leafar wrote:I need a really long list of concepts.
What phonology do you have? Every morpheme must fit your phonology.
I'm still working on that. I have 49 conconants and 20 vowel sounds (although I'm seriously considering culling some) and I haven't yet decided what to do with them. But for now I want to work on roots, and then I'll get back to the phonology. I just want to figure out how my language will work in terms of meanings and how meanings change and combine (I'm talking purely in terms of concepts, not phonology), then I'll work on the practicalities.
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Re: I need root morphemes

Post by leafar »

Milya, do you have a link to the swadesh list?
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Re: I need root morphemes

Post by Ear of the Sphinx »

leafar wrote:
Milya0 wrote:
leafar wrote:I need a really long list of concepts.
What phonology do you have? Every morpheme must fit your phonology.
I'm still working on that. I have 49 conconants and 20 vowel sounds (although I'm seriously considering culling some) and I haven't yet decided what to do with them. But for now I want to work on roots, and then I'll get back to the phonology. I just want to figure out how my language will work in terms of meanings and how meanings change and combine (I'm talking purely in terms of concepts, not phonology), then I'll work on the practicalities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swadesh_li ... in_English
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leafar
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Re: I need root morphemes

Post by leafar »

Thanks. It's not quite what I had in mind though. What I meants was, either, for example, a full list of roots in various languages, such as latin, hebrew, arabic, and greek (as used in those languages as opposed to in english), or, if anyone has complied one, a big list of concepts in general. I want to construct my language based on a certain number of root concepts.
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Re: I need root morphemes

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leafar
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Re: I need root morphemes

Post by leafar »

Thanks Mahal, that's not exactly what I was after but potentially it's better than what I had in mind. However, I find the idea that all words can be described using words from a list of only 64 a bit hard to conceive of. I wonder if there's some place where you can type in any word and then have it display the relevant semantic primes.
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Re: I need root morphemes

Post by Trailsend »

leafar wrote:Also, which natural languages have the most / most useful roots?
...all of them?

I'd need clarification on what you're really asking here.
leafar wrote:However, I find the idea that all words can be described using words from a list of only 64 a bit hard to conceive of.
Actually you only need 20!

...

I'm not being seriously. Well, not mostly. Remember that "words" are not real things, they're imaginary things--it sounds to me more like you're looking for different ways that languages divide up the infinitely detailed thematic space of the universe into the finite semantic space of a lexicon. This task does not in fact require very many words, thanks to the vague notion of what it means to "describe" a thing. Even languages with very limited lexicons can find ways to refer to pretty much anything, even things the language doesn't have words for. (See! I just did it, in the previous sentence!)
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Re: I need root morphemes

Post by leafar »

Trailsend,

English uses lots of latin and greek words or bits of words, and it uses them either as full words or as prefixes or suffixes. But what I'm after is a full list of all roots in those languages (as opposed to a list of bits of latin and greek that english uses). And the same for other languages. Latin and greek are used a lot in english so presumably those languages have lots of very useful roots. I would imagine sanskrit, arabic and hebrew also. To help construct my language, I'd like to see full lists of all roots in those languages, so that I can then decide which ones to use in mine. I've come across some lists but they're very short. I need something much more complete.

If you're telling me that all concepts can be (usefully) described using just a relative tiny handful of words / concepts, I'm glad to hear it, but to be able to fully understand that I'd have to have some sort of semantic prime dictionary, where you type in a word and it gives you a breakdown of the semantic roots involved in that word.
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Re: I need root morphemes

Post by Trailsend »

leafar wrote:English uses lots of latin and greek words or bits of words, and it uses them either as full words or as prefixes or suffixes. But what I'm after is a full list of all roots in those languages (as opposed to a list of bits of latin and greek that english uses). And the same for other languages. Latin and greek are used a lot in english so presumably those languages have lots of very useful roots. I would imagine sanskrit, arabic and hebrew also. To help construct my language, I'd like to see full lists of all roots in those languages, so that I can then decide which ones to use in mine. I've come across some lists but they're very short. I need something much more complete.
Every language has lots of very useful roots. Roots of Latin and Greek origin occur in English due to the historical development of the English language--not because Latin or Greek roots are more "useful" than, say, Chinese ones. (Japanese, for example, contains tons of roots borrowed from Chinese and very few borrowed from Greek--this is not because Chinese roots are more useful than Greek ones, but because Japan is right next to China.)

I intend all this to show that you don't need to pick particular languages with "useful" roots to look at for inspiration--any language will do.

Furthermore, the sort of root list you are describing may be less useful than you'd like. The most interesting things about many roots (especially those from languages not related to English) lies in their connotation and semantic framing which is often difficult to render accurately in English; you have to look at contextual usage to get a better feel for what they mean.

But it may be less abstract than that. Are you talking about "roots" in the concrete sense of "petra = stone, hydro = water," or derivational things like "-tom = cut, -ology = study of"?
If you're telling me that all concepts can be (usefully) described using just a relative tiny handful of words / concepts, I'm glad to hear it, but to be able to fully understand that I'd have to have some sort of semantic prime dictionary, where you type in a word and it gives you a breakdown of the semantic roots involved in that word.
Ah, but you see? "Usefully described" is not actually more precise than "described." Useful for what? To whom? What is useful for a veteran cab driver in New York may not be the same as what's useful for a computational biologist in California, which may not be the same as what's useful for a politician in Russia, which may not be useful for a fisherman in Japan.
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Re: I need root morphemes

Post by leafar »

What I'm looking for is two things :

1) A full list of roots in whatever language. I emphasised latin and greek because of the huge influence that they've had on english, and english is of course one of the most popular and influential languages. But if most languages are good, then that's fine. However I'd prefer latin or greek or hebrew or arabic because I've had more contact with those than say, japanese. To be honest, I'm most keen on latin.

2) Some sort of online dictionary where you can type in any word, and it gives you a list of the semantic primes that are relevant to that word.
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Re: I need root morphemes

Post by Trailsend »

leafar wrote:1) A full list of roots in whatever language. I emphasised latin and greek because of the huge influence that they've had on english, and english is of course one of the most popular and influential languages. But if most languages are good, then that's fine. However I'd prefer latin or greek or hebrew or arabic because I've had more contact with those than say, japanese. To be honest, I'm most keen on latin.
Well, a "full" list of roots sounds like basically a Latin dictionary, yes?

Here's an online resource that isn't "full," but includes a list of correspondences for 6000 Latin words. (Click on the alphabetical links about halfway down the page.)
2) Some sort of online dictionary where you can type in any word, and it gives you a list of the semantic primes that are relevant to that word.
This one could be tricky, because as far as I know, there isn't a consensus on what semantic primes are. You may be best off tracking down a book by Goddard or Wierzbicka; I'm unaware of any online resource like what you describe, and the Natural Semantic Metalanguage page is unfortunately sparse on details.
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leafar
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Re: I need root morphemes

Post by leafar »

Thanks.

But surely a full list of a language's root morphemes / words isn't the same as a full list of all it's words (a regular dictionary). For example, dis is a morpheme, and dislodge is a word that uses that morpheme plus a verb to create another verb.

Edit : I guess what I'm after is a list of basic concepts. Some languages have very weird and very specific roots, which are peculiar to that culture. I want something more basic and universal, so that I can create a system of constructing words from those morphemes. Even latin has a lot of roots which are too culturally specific, but as long as I have a full list I can discard those. I do have a list of latin and greek. I have 826 latin roots and 300 and something greek ones. But in the list it says that they're primary roots and I can't find the rest. I'll have to keep searching, or just stick to what I've got, assuming it's sufficient.

http://www.wordempire.com/examples/
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Re: I need root morphemes

Post by Trailsend »

Many good dictionaries do contain entries for derivational affixes, yes.

Was the Swadesh list not a sufficient collection of basic concepts?
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Re: I need root morphemes

Post by leafar »

Trailsend wrote:Many good dictionaries do contain entries for derivational affixes, yes.

Was the Swadesh list not a sufficient collection of basic concepts?
It just seems so random. Too specific about certain things, like snow, and mountain. I'm after something much more basic, building blocks that can be used to "describe" snow, mountains, doors, etc etc.

For example, I'd like to be able to build the word "sun" with simple concepts, as simple as possible, ie

temperature / high
sphere
above (ie in the sky)
colour / orange
brightness

I know that there could be many ways to build the word "sun", but with the most basic of building blocks, I can devise a system for building words. I'm probably not explaining this very well.


Edit : And I am aware that the simpler the building blocks used, the more of them I'll need to use to build a word. But I'm sure I can devise a happy medium.
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Re: I need root morphemes

Post by Trailsend »

Ah--what you're describing is called "oligosynthesis," and many folks have tried it in many different ways. You might check out Toki Pona's wordlist if you haven't already.
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Re: I need root morphemes

Post by leafar »

Trailsend wrote:Ah--what you're describing is called "oligosynthesis," and many folks have tried it in many different ways. You might check out Toki Pona's wordlist if you haven't already.
Toki Pona sounds very interesting. I like the idea of a language having a philosophy, and I want mine to have one. However, TP is too happy clappy, and way too basic. In my language, I'd like to have a large number of roots with which to construct any word (even is that means sticking two or more together, as long as the desired meaning, or a very good approximation, is achieved), but nothing too "specific" like snow, or tree. What I'll probably end up doing is working with latin roots, discarding the fluffy roots, and sticking with the basics, and then testing them to see how well they work, and then coming up with my own. The main philosophy of my language would be freedom to express any idea. So the word order would be very free, and maybe even the order of roots within a word (ie prefix-ROOT, or ROOT-suffix to mean the same thing).
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Re: I need root morphemes

Post by Tanni »

leafar wrote:Trailsend,

English uses lots of latin and greek words or bits of words, and it uses them either as full words or as prefixes or suffixes. But what I'm after is a full list of all roots in those languages (as opposed to a list of bits of latin and greek that english uses). And the same for other languages. Latin and greek are used a lot in english so presumably those languages have lots of very useful roots. I would imagine sanskrit, arabic and hebrew also. To help construct my language, I'd like to see full lists of all roots in those languages, so that I can then decide which ones to use in mine. I've come across some lists but they're very short. I need something much more complete.

If you're telling me that all concepts can be (usefully) described using just a relative tiny handful of words / concepts, I'm glad to hear it, but to be able to fully understand that I'd have to have some sort of semantic prime dictionary, where you type in a word and it gives you a breakdown of the semantic roots involved in that word.
Leafar, one possibility would be to make such a list by yourself, at least for English. You could write a program which scans a text and lists all the words used in alphabetical order, so no word will occure more than once in that list. Then go through that list, and divide the syllables of every word with more than one syllable by blanks and apply that program again. If your original text was long enought, you will get a pretty complete list of English morphemes. If it should be just the native English morphemes, then just weed out the foreign words first.
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