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The basic rule is that words including at least one back vowel get back vowel suffixes (karba – in(to) the arm), while words excluding back vowels get front vowel suffixes (kézbe – in(to) the hand). Single-vowel words which have only the neutral vowels (i, í or é) are unpredictable, but e takes a front-vowel suffix.
First, prefixes and suffixes, most of which are derived from ancient Greek or classical Latin, have a droppable vowel, usually -o-. As a general rule, this vowel almost always acts as a joint-stem to connect two consonantal roots (e.g. arthr-+ -o-+ -logy = arthrology), but generally, the -o-is dropped when connecting to a vowel-stem (e.g. arthr ...
Grammatical abbreviations are generally written in full or small caps to visually distinguish them from the translations of lexical words. For instance, capital or small-cap PAST (frequently abbreviated to PST) glosses a grammatical past-tense morpheme, while lower-case 'past' would be a literal translation of a word with that meaning.
The suffix is often humorously appended to other English words to create nonce words. For example, stupidology would refer to the study of stupidity; beerology would refer to the study of beer. [1] Not all scientific studies are suffixed with ology. When the root word ends with the letter "L" or a vowel, exceptions occur.
In Greek, the present stem often consists of the root with a suffix of y (ι ˰ in Greek). If the root ends in the vowel a or o, and the consonant n or r, the y exchanges position with the consonant and is written i: *cháryō > chaírō "I am glad" — echárē "he was glad" *phányō > phaínō "I reveal" — ephánē "he appeared"
The vowel alternation may involve more than just a change in vowel quality. In Athabaskan languages, such as Navajo, verbs have series of stems where the vowel alternates (sometimes with an added suffix) indicating a different tense-aspect. Navajo vowel ablaut, depending on the verb, may be a change in vowel, vowel length, nasality, and/or tone.
In morphology, a root is a morphologically simple unit which can be left bare or to which a prefix or a suffix can attach. [2] [3] The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family (this root is then called the base word), which carries aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents.
Most commonly, the change is a result of sound assimilation with an adjacent sound of opposite voicing, but it can also occur word-finally or in contact with a specific vowel. For example, the English suffix -s is pronounced [s] when it follows a voiceless phoneme (cats), and [z] when it follows a voiced phoneme (dogs). [1]