Theroots of verbs and most nouns in theSemitic languages are characterized as a sequence ofconsonants or "radicals" (hence the termconsonantal root). Such abstract consonantal roots are used in the formation of actual words by adding the vowels and non-root consonants (or "transfixes") which go with a particularmorphological category around the root consonants, in an appropriate way, generally following specific patterns. It is a peculiarity of Semitic linguistics that a large majority of these consonantal roots are triliterals (although there are a number of quadriliterals, and in some languages also biliterals).

Such roots are also common in otherAfroasiatic languages. WhileBerber mostly has triconsonantal roots,Chadic,Omotic, andCushitic have mostly biconsonantal roots;^[1] andEgyptian shows a mix of biconsonantal and triconsonantal roots.^[2]

Atriliteral or triconsonantal root (Hebrew:שורש תלת־עיצורי,šoreš təlat-ʻiṣuri;Arabic:جذر ثلاثي,jiḏr ṯulāṯī;Syriac:ܫܪܫܐ,šeršā) is a root containing a sequence of three consonants.

The following are some of the forms which can be derived from the triconsonantal rootk-t-bכ־ת־בك-ت-ب (general overall meaning "to write") in Hebrew and Arabic:

The Hebrewfricatives stemming frombegadkefat lenition are transcribed here as "ḵ", "ṯ" and "ḇ", to retain their connection with the consonantal rootכ־ת־ב k-t-b. They are pronounced[x],[θ],[β] in Biblical Hebrew and[χ],[t],[v] in Modern Hebrew respectively.Modern Hebrew has nogemination; where there was historically gemination, they are reduced to single consonants, with consonants in thebegadkefat remaining the same.

InHebrew grammatical terminology, the wordbinyan (Hebrew:בניין, pluralבנייניםbinyanim) is used to refer to a verbderived stem or overall verb derivation pattern, while the wordmishqal (ormishkal) is used to refer to anoun derivation pattern, and these words have gained some use in English-language linguistic terminology. The Arabic terms, calledوزنwazan (pluralأوزان,awzān) for the pattern andجذرjiḏr (pluralجذور,juḏūr) for the root have not gained the same currency in cross-linguistic Semitic scholarship 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 accurate translations of theArabic grammatical termwazan (originally meaning 'weight, measure'), and "root" is a literal translation ofjiḏr.

Although most roots in Hebrew seem to be triliteral, many of them were originally biliteral, cf. the relation between:

TheHebrew rootש־ק־ף‎ – √sh-q-p "look out/through" or "reflect" deriving fromק־ף‎ – √q-p "bend, arch, lean towards" and similar verbs fit into the shaCCéC verb-pattern.^{[clarification needed]}

This verb-pattern sh-C-C is usuallycausative, cf.

There is debate about whether both biconsonantal and triconsonantal roots were represented inProto-Afroasiatic, or whether one or the other of them was the original form of theAfroasiatic verb.^[4] According to one study of theProto-Semitic lexicon,^[5] biconsonantal roots are more abundant for words denotingStone Age materials, whereas materials discovered during theNeolithic are uniquely triconsonantal. This implies a change in Proto-Semitic language structure concomitant with the transition toagriculture. In particular, monosyllabic biconsonantal names are associated with a pre-Natufian cultural background, i.e., older thanc. 14500 BCE. As we have no texts from any Semitic language older thanc. 3500 BCE, reconstructions of Proto-Semitic are inferred from these more recent Semitic texts.^[citation needed]

Aquadriliteral is a consonantal root containing a sequence of four consonants (instead ofthree consonants, as is more often the case). A quadriliteral form is a word derived from such a four-consonant root. For example, the abstract quadriliteral root t-r-g-m / t-r-j-m gives rise to the verb formsתרגם‎tirgem in Hebrew,ترجم‎tarjama in Arabic, ተረጐመtäräggwämä inAmharic, all meaning "he translated". In some cases, a quadriliteral root is actually a reduplication of a two-consonant sequence. So in Hebrewדגדג‎digdeg / Arabicدغدغ‎daġdaġa means "he tickled", and in Arabicزلزل‎zalzala means "he shook".

Generally, only a subset of the verb derivations formed fromtriliteral roots are allowed with quadriliteral roots. For example, in Hebrew, thePiʿel, Puʿal, and Hiṯpaʿel, and in Arabic, forms similar tothe stem II and stem V forms of triliteral roots.

Another set of quadriliteral roots in modern Hebrew is the set of secondary roots. A secondary root is a root derived from a word that was derived from another root. For example, the rootמ-ס-פ-ר‎m-s-p-r is secondary to the rootס-פ-ר‎s-p-r.סָפַר‎saphar, from the roots-p-r, means "counted";מִסְפָּר‎mispar, from the same root, means "number"; andמִסְפֶּר‎misper, from the secondary rootמ-ס-פ-ר‎, means "numbered".

An irregular quadriliteral verb made from a loanword is:

• נַשְׁפְּרִיץ‎^[6] (/naʃˈprit͡s/) – "we will sprinkle" or "we will splash", fromYiddishshpritsn (cognate to Germanspritzen)

A quinqueliteral is a consonantal root containing a sequence of five consonants. Traditionally, in Semitic languages, forms with more than four basic consonants (i.e. consonants not introduced by morphological inflection or derivation) were occasionally found in nouns, mainly in loanwords from other languages, but never in verbs.^[7] However, in modern Israeli Hebrew,syllables are allowed to begin with a sequence of two consonants (a relaxation of the situation in early Semitic, where only one consonant was allowed), which has opened the door for a very small set of loan words to manifest apparent five root-consonant forms, such asטלגרף‎tilgref "he telegraphed".^[8] However,-lgr- always appears as an indivisible cluster in the derivation of this verb and so the five root-consonant forms do not display any fundamentally different morphological patterns from four root-consonant forms (and the term "quinqueliteral" or "quinquiliteral" would be misleading if it implied otherwise). Only a few Hebrew quinqueliterals are recognized by theAcademy of the Hebrew Language as proper, or standard; the rest are considered slang.

Other examples are:

• סִנְכְּרֵן‎^[9] (/sinˈkren/ – "he synchronized"), via the English word from Greek
• חִנְטְרֵשׁ‎^[10] (/χinˈtreʃ/ – "he did stupid things")
• הִתְפְלַרְטֵט‎^[11] (/hitflarˈtet/ – "he had a flirt"), from the English or Yiddish past tense of the English word

InAmharic, there is a very small set of verbs which are conjugated as quinqueliteral roots. One example iswäšänäffärä 'rain fell with a strong wind'.^[12] The conjugation of this small class of verb roots is explained byWolf Leslau.^[13] Unlike the Hebrew examples, these roots conjugate in a manner more like regular verbs, producing no indivisible clusters.

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• Arabic grammar
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• Agmon, Noam (2010),"Materials and Language: Pre-Semitic Root Structure Change Concomitant with Transition to Agriculture"(PDF),Brill's Annual of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics,2:23–79,doi:10.1163/187666310X12688137960669, archived fromthe original(PDF) on 2021-11-13, retrieved2019-09-03

Look upquadriliteral in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Look uptriliteral in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

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• Alexis Amid Neme and Eric Laporte (2013), Pattern-and-root inflectional morphology: the Arabic broken plural |year=
• Alexis Amid Neme and Eric Laporte (2015), Do computer scientists deeply understand Arabic morphology? – هل يفهم المهندسون الحاسوبيّون علم الصرف فهماً عميقاً؟, available also in Arabic, Indonesian, French

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