What is the Difference Between Stem and Root?

The main difference between stems and roots lies in their morphological and semantic properties in linguistics. Here are the key distinctions between the two:

1. Lexical Meaning: Stems have lexical meaning, which means they can be used to convey a specific meaning or concept in a language. In contrast, roots have no lexical meaning and cannot be used by themselves to convey a meaning.
2. Derivational Affixes: Stems can contain derivational affixes (prefixes or suffixes), which are used to change the meaning or create new words from the base form. Roots, on the other hand, cannot contain affixes.
3. Relationship to Affixes: A root is a part of a word that remains when all affixes have been removed, while a stem is a form to which affixes have been added.

For example, consider the English verb "prefer." The root is "fer," which has no lexical meaning and cannot stand alone in a sentence. The stem, on the other hand, is "prefer," which has a specific meaning and can be used in a sentence. The verb "prefer" can be broken down into the root "fer" and the prefix "re-".

In summary, roots are the base from which words are derived, while stems are intermediate forms between the root and the final word. Roots have no lexical meaning, whereas stems have meaning and can be used to convey a specific concept in a language.

Comparative Table: Stem vs Root

Here is a table that highlights the differences between stems and roots:

For example, consider the word "dependent":

• Stem: The stem of "dependent" is "depend".
• Root: The root of "dependent" is "depend".

In this case, the stem and root are the same because "depend" is a form of the word that has affixes added to it, and it also carries the core meaning of the word.