Word - Morphology

Morphology

In synthetic languages, a single word stem (for example, love) may have a number of different forms (for example, loves, loving, and loved). However for some purposes these are not usually considered to be different words, but rather different forms of the same word. In these languages, words may be considered to be constructed from a number of morphemes. In Indo-European languages in particular, the morphemes distinguished are

• the root
• optional suffixes
• a desinence, or inflectional suffix.

Thus, the Proto-Indo-European *wr̥dhom would be analyzed as consisting of

1. *wr̥-, the zero grade of the root *wer-
2. a root-extension *-dh- (diachronically a suffix), resulting in a complex root *wr̥dh-
3. The thematic suffix *-o-
4. the neuter gender nominative or accusative singular desinence *-m.