Proto-Indo-European root

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This article contains characters used to write reconstructed Proto-Indo-European words (for an explanation of the notation, see Proto-Indo-European phonology). Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode combining characters and Latin characters.

The roots of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) are basic parts of words to carry a lexical meaning, so-called morphemes. PIE roots usually have verbal meaning like "to eat" or "to run". Roots never occurred alone in the language. Complete inflected verbs, nouns, and adjectives were formed by adding further morphemes to a root and potentially changing the root's vowel in a process called ablaut.

A root consists of a central vowel that is preceded and followed by at least one consonant each. A number of rules have been determined to specify which consonants can occur together, and in which order. The modern understanding of these rules is that the consonants with the highest sonority (*l, *r, *y, *n^[a]) are nearest to the vowel, and the ones with the lowest sonority such as plosives are furthest away. There are some exceptions to these rules such as thorn clusters.

Sometimes new roots were created in PIE or its early descendants by various processes such as root extensions (adding a sound to the end of an existing root) or metathesis.
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