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Roots can be either Free Morpheme s or Bound Morpheme s. Root morphemes are essential for Affixation and Compound s. The root of a word is a unit of meaning (morpheme) and, as such, it is an abstraction, though it can usually be represented in writing as a word would be. For example, it can be said that the root of the English verb form ''running'' is ''run'', or the root of the Spanish superlative adjective ''amplísimo'' is ''ampli-'', since those words are clearly derived from the root forms by simple suffixes that do not alter the roots in any way. In particular, English has very little inflection, and hence a tendency to have words that are identical to their roots. But more complicated inflection, as well as other processes, can obscure the root; for example, the root of ''mice'' is ''mouse'' (still a valid word), and the root of ''interrupt'' is, arguably, ''rupt'', which is not a word in English and only appears in derivational forms (such as ''disrupt'', ''corrupt'', etc.). The root ''rupt'' is written as if it were a word, but it's not. This distinction between the word as a unit of speech and the root as a unit of meaning is even more important in the case of languages where roots have many different forms when used in actual words, as is the case in Semitic Language s. In these, roots are formed by Consonants Alone , and different words (belonging to different parts of speech) are derived from the same root by inserting vowels. For example, in Hebrew, the root ''gdl'' represents the idea of largeness, and from it we have ''gadol'' and ''gdola'' (masculine and feminine forms of the adjective "big"), ''gadal'' "he grew", ''higdil'' "he magnified" and ''magdelet'' "magnifier", along with many other words. Reconstructed roots The root of a word, in and the Semitic family. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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