In the terminology used to discuss the grammar of the Semitic and some other Afro-Asiatic languages, a triliteral (Arabic: جذر ثلاثي, ǧaḏr thalathi) is a root containing a sequence of three consonants (so also known as a triconsonantal root). The majority of consonantal roots in these languages are generally triliterals (but some may be quadriliterals). Such abstract consonantal roots are used in the derivation of actual words by adding the vowels and non-root consonants which go with a particular morphological category around the root consonants, in an appropriate way, generally following specific patterns. 14th century BCE diplomatic letter in Akkadian, found in Tell Amarna. ... The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 languages (SIL estimate) and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, East Africa, the Sahel, and Southwest Asia (including some 200 million speakers of Arabic). ... Arabic ( or just ) is the largest living member of the Semitic language family in terms of speakers. ... In the terminology used to discuss the grammar of the Semitic languages, a quadriliteral is a consonantal root containing a sequence of four consonants (instead of three consonants, as is more often the case). ...

In Hebrew grammatical terminology, the word Binyan (plural Binyanim) is used to refer to a verb stem or overall verb derivation pattern, while the word Mishqal (or Mishkal) is used to refer to a noun derivation pattern, and these words have gained some use in English-language linguistic terminology. The Arabic terms, called وزن wazn, (plural أوزان, awzaan) for the pattern and جذر ǧaḏr (plural غذور, ǧuḏur) for the root have not gained the same currency as the Hebrew equivalents, and Western grammarians continue to use "stem"/"form"/"pattern" for the former and "root" for the latter (though "form" and "pattern" are literal translations of wazn, and "root" is a literal translation of ǧaḏr).

For example, the following are some of the forms which can be derived from the triconsonantal root k-t-b (general overall meaning "to write") in Hebrew and Arabic:

Note: The Hebrew fricatives transcribed as "kh" and "bh" above are single phonetic sounds, which can also be transcribed in a number of other ways, such as "ch" and "v" (Eastern-European influenced) or [x] and [β] (IPA). They are transcribed "kh" and "bh" on this page to retain the connection with the pure consonantal root k-t-b.

Hebrew grammar is partly analytical, expressing such forms as dative, ablative, and accusative using prepositional particles rather than morphological cases. ... Arabic is a Semitic language. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ...

See also

• Nonconcatenative morphology
• Arabic grammar
  • Broken plural
• Apophony vs. transfixation (root-and-pattern)
• Proto-Indo-European root

Nonconcatenative morphology is an account of morphology developed in the 1980s by J. J. McCarthy and inspired by Autosegmental phonology. ... Arabic is a Semitic language. ... In linguistics, broken plurals is a grammatical phenomenon typical in many Semitic languages of the Middle East and Ethiopia in which a singular noun is broken to form a plural by having its root consonant embedded in a different frame, rather than by merely adding a prefix or suffix to... In linguistics, apophony (also ablaut, gradation, alternation, internal modification, stem modification, stem alternation, replacive morphology, stem mutation, internal inflection) is the alternation of sounds within a word that indicates grammatical information (often inflectional). ... The roots of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) are basic morphemes carrying a lexical meaning. ...

External links

• Project Root List