Identification and Distinction of Root, Stem and Base in English Linguistics Teaching

DOI

10.2991/978-2-494069-02-2_76How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Root; Stem; Base; Identification; Distinction

Abstract

Based on the author’s observation and confusions of undergraduates in ethnic minority college, it is found that most students are not able to distinguish such terms as root, stem and base in specific words. They do not know to what level they should analyze the root, they feel confused about the stem in words without inflectional affix attached and they do not know how to identify the base in words with both derivational and inflectional morphemes or in words with two or more than two derivational morphemes. To help students clearly understand, identify and distinguish the three terms, this paper first reviewed the definitions and types of the three terms, and highlighted their differences and relationship. Then, it analyzed the specific words in terms of the three concepts. Last, to answer students’ questions, it is concluded that to identify the root, all the affixes should be removed and the root usually belong to a lexical category that can be found in the English dictionary, that to identify the stem, only inflectional affixes should be removed and if there is no inflectional affixes attached, stem will not be discussed and that to identify the base in words with both derivational and inflectional morphemes, the inflectional morpheme should be deleted first and then derivational morphemes and in words with more than two derivational morphemes, which one should be removed first depends on the contribution it makes to the formation and meaning of the words.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Panpan Cao
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/11/14
TI  - Identification and Distinction of Root, Stem and Base in English Linguistics Teaching
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Education: Current Issues and Digital Technologies (ICECIDT 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 698
EP  - 706
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-494069-02-2_76
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-494069-02-2_76
ID  - Cao2022
ER  -