Triliteral Roots

[ltrout99]

I am thinking about creating a conlang based on middle-eastern languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. I read that both languages have a triliteral root system that makes use of 3 consonants to change meaning. I have been searching everywhere for how this works and all are fairly confusing too me. What I am wondering, Are ALL words in Arabic (and/or Hebrew) derived from those 3 consonants? I heard of the KTB root in Arabic and that a certain word like Katabu can mean I read (this is an example, I know it isn't correct) while Kitabu can mean book? So that means the root is for nouns and verbs. I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, it just doesn't make sense to me.

[Irkan]

Looks like you have reach that stage through which a lot of conlangers pass in which you get interested in triliteral roots.

I don't know much about Arabic or Hebrew, so I can't help much, but here's a basic explanation of what I have read. First of all, triletaral roots don't belong to any part of speech (in a similar way to how s-ng has none in English, but sing is a verb and song is a noun). Now, for the k-t-b root, which holds a meaning related to writing. Depending on the vowels and other affixes (I have no idea how they work) you can create nouns or verbs (and probably more stuff) from a root with no specific meaning. That's how you get kitab (something that's written) or aktub (I write).

Not all words in this languages are derived from this triliteral roots, but a lot are.

PS: I think Ahzoh is working on a triconsonantal-root-based conlang, maybe he can help.

[linguoboy]

You may need to register at the site to read this, but it's a solid introduction to triconsonantal morphology with a view to conlanging: http://www.incatena.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=9392.

[Ahzoh]

Roots in the Semitic languages do not belong to any one part of speech. Roots are simply an abstraxt set of consonants. They could be any number: two, three, four, all the way to five. It just so happens that three is the most common. And no not all words are derived from another root, some words are their own root. Arabic in particular has a lot of suffixes with which to derive many verbs from a single root. Arabic also has a lot of verbal noun and participle patterns to derive noun from the root.
It is better to think of a root K-T-B less as a verbal root and more of all-purpose root that imparts the concept of writing.
For example of K-T-B, you can get the verb "kataba" which is the root placed in the Form I pattern CaCaCa (C=consonant), a pattern that imparts the basic meaning of the root, into verb form. There is the Form II pattern CaC2C2aCa (numbers indicate gemination of the second consonant of a root) which imparts a causative or intensive meaning, thus kattaba.
For nouns, K-T-B can be used to derive kātib "writer", it is the root placed in the pattern CāCiC which indicates "someone who does X", in this case, someone who writes.
In arabic, there are patterns like these that indicate the one who is on the receiving end of the basic meaning of the root (one who is X-ed), an object related to the meaning of the root (that which is X-ed), a place relating to the meaning of the root (place of X-ing), and even time relating to the meaning of the root (time of X-ing).

Why they exist is due to lots of vowel mutation (specifically, a-mutation) and vocal syncope combined together and blurring or outright eliminating the original vowels of a root, to the point where they are no longer identifiable. Additionally, lots of analogy occurs where even words that were not affected by the vowel mutation and syncope mimics what happens to the words that did.
And since the consonants are the only thing that remain consonant in all the shifting, the speakers start identifying the set of consonants as the root.

Really, a triconsonantal root system is simply an out-of-control ablaut system.

Yes, I'm working on Vrkhazhian which is a very well-developed a priori triconsonatal root language.

[ltrout99]

Roots in the Semitic languages do not belong to any one part of speech. Roots are simply an abstraxt set of consonants. They could be any number: two, three, four, all the way to five. It just so happens that three is the most common. And no not all words are derived from another root, some words are their own root. Arabic in particular has a lot of suffixes with which to derive many verbs from a single root. Arabic also has a lot of verbal noun and participle patterns to derive noun from the root.
It is better to think of a root K-T-B less as a verbal root and more of all-purpose root that imparts the concept of writing.
For example of K-T-B, you can get the verb "kataba" which is the root placed in the Form I pattern CaCaCa (C=consonant), a pattern that imparts the basic meaning of the root, into verb form. There is the Form II pattern CaC2C2aCa (numbers indicate gemination of the second consonant of a root) which imparts a causative or intensive meaning, thus kattaba.
For nouns, K-T-B can be used to derive kātib "writer", it is the root placed in the pattern CāCiC which indicates "someone who does X", in this case, someone who writes.
In arabic, there are patterns like these that indicate the one who is on the receiving end of the basic meaning of the root (one who is X-ed), an object related to the meaning of the root (that which is X-ed), a place relating to the meaning of the root (place of X-ing), and even time relating to the meaning of the root (time of X-ing).

Why they exist is due to lots of vowel mutation (specifically, a-mutation) and vocal syncope combined together and blurring or outright eliminating the original vowels of a root, to the point where they are no longer identifiable. Additionally, lots of analogy occurs where even words that were not affected by the vowel mutation and syncope mimics what happens to the words that did.
And since the consonants are the only thing that remain consonant in all the shifting, the speakers start identifying the set of consonants as the root.

Really, a triconsonantal root system is simply an out-of-control ablaut system.

Yes, I'm working on Vrkhazhian which is a very well-developed a priori triconsonatal root language.

This clears it up a lot! One question I have though, can a root every be aaaCCC? Or something to that effect?

[Ahzoh]

No, and I do not even see such a word appearing diachronically. You'll likely have mostly CCVC, CVC, CV, and CVCC monosyllables.

[linguoboy]

No, and I do not even see such a word appearing diachronically. You'll likely have mostly CCVC, CVC, CV, and CVCC monosyllables.

Seems to me if you have VCVCC or VCCVC, you could potentially have VCCC as well. What kind of shapes do we see in Maghrebi, for instance?

[Ahzoh]

Perhaps a better way of looking at roots (which are not all tri-consonantal) is as something extracted from individual words during morphological processes and inserted into a new pattern to produce a new word, and as a convenient shorthand for the parts of the input word which remain constant through to the output word. It's better not to think of all words as a combination of a meaningful root and a meaningful pattern, because the former doesn't really exist, or at least not in any useful sense, and the latter requires us to postulate the existence of all sorts of patterns which may only occur with a small handful of words and have no clear derivational purpose. Not only this, but many words are derived from already-existing words and carry over an affixed or infixed consonant to the new word (ḥār > miḥwar > tamaḥwara for example), and some patterns convert vowels and semivowels into root consonants or only replicate part of the original word. Instead we should talk about derivational patterns as modifications of existing words and roots as the main thing that carries over in the course of that modification. Does that make sense? Derivation can happen from all parts of speech - there is denominal derivation, deverbal variation etc - but the important thing is that it doesn't happen directly from roots, because roots have no semantic value in and of themselves except inasmuch as they imply other words with that root. مكتب maktab 'office' and كاتب kātib 'clerk' are much more clearly directly related than maktab and some Platonic notion of 'writing'.