What if I told you that in some languages, the
word for decentralization and the literal phrase
for stabbing a spear into the dirt are actually
mathematically identical at their core? Yeah,
which is just, it sounds completely absurd when
you first hear it. Right, because you usually
don't think about the words coming out of your
mouth as having some kind of mathematical formula.
It's like, when we look at a massive skyscraper,
we just see the shiny glass. Right. Right. and
the solid steel exterior. Exactly, yeah. We don't
see the rebar or the concrete foundation or,
you know, the thousands of tiny metal brackets
holding all those massive beams together. We
just appreciate the finished product. We assume
it's one solid, unchangeable structure. Right.
But if you had x -ray vision, you'd suddenly
see all that invisible architecture. You'd realize
that this giant complex tower is actually built
from a surprisingly small set of fundamental
pieces. They're just repeating and combining
in different ways. And that is exactly our mission
for today's Deep Dive. We are taking X -ray vision
to human language. We are going to drill down
into the irreducible core of how we communicate,
stripping away the surface to look at the hidden
linguistic scaffolding underneath. I love that
framing. Yeah, and by the time we're done here,
you, the listener, you will never look at a simple,
everyday word the same way again. Okay, let's
unpack this. So before we can really understand
the grand architecture of thousands of different
human languages, we have to look at the individual
bricks. We have to define what a root actually
is. Right. And a root, which is sometimes called
a root word or a radical, or an edamon, is the
absolute core of a word. Like the baseline. Exactly.
It's the primary lexical unit. Basically, it's
a piece of meaning that cannot be reduced down
any further. If you try to chop it up into smaller
parts, it just completely loses its semantic
meaning. It's the ultimate base layer. And the
way linguists actually write this down is wild
to me. Yeah, the notation. Yeah. They treat it
almost like an equation. To avoid confusing a
root with just a normal, fully formed word, linguists
often use the mathematical radical symbol, like
the the literal square root symbol. Which is
so cool. It really is. So if someone wants to
talk about the ancient Sanskrit root for the
concept of being or becoming, they don't just
write out BHU. They write the square root symbol
and then boo. Right. It visually reminds you
that you are looking at the foundational math
of a language. It acts as a visual cue saying,
hey, we have drilled down to the bedrock here.
Yeah. And traditionally, these foundational bricks
are divided into two categories. You have free
morphemes and bound morphemes. And English, as
a language, is heavily biased toward the free
route. We really minimize what is called affixation.
Affixation, meaning gluing prefixes or suffixes
onto a word. We generally don't like doing that
if we don't have to. Exactly. We strongly prefer
our everyday words to be identical to their roots.
Think of a free root like a fully formed independent
Lego block. OK, I like that. So take the English
word running. The root is run. You can just take
run, set it down on the table all by itself,
and it works perfectly in a sentence. It's free.
Right. It doesn't need any help. But stepping
outside of English, That Lego block approach
is definitely not universal. Oh, not at all.
Like, take polysynthetic languages. For example,
Yupik, which is spoken by indigenous peoples
in Alaska and Siberia. Yupik is an incredible
contrast to English. In a polysynthetic language,
words are formed through extreme inflection and
compounding. Extreme compounding. Yeah, they
basically take a single root and just endlessly
stack bound elements onto it. They do this to
convey time, subject, object, location, all of
it. A single Yupik word can contain the exact
same amount of grammatical information as an
entire English sentence. Which is just mind -blowing.
And because they rely so heavily on stacking
all these bound elements onto a single base,
their pool of free roots, meaning words that
can just stand completely alone without any extra
pieces attached, is remarkably small. Very small.
Yupik restricts its free roots to no more than
2 ,000 words. 2 ,000! They generate a massive,
infinitely expressive language from just 2 ,000
standalone pieces. That extreme efficiency really
shows how much heavy lifting a root can do when
a language is designed to maximize it. Totally.
But let's talk about the other side of that coin,
the bound roots. Because we actually have these
in English, too, and they are kind of weird.
Yeah. Like in Spanish, you have the superlative
adjective amplicimo, where the root amplo cannot
stand on its own. It requires modification. But
a great English example is the word interrupt.
So the prefix is interrupt, meaning between,
and the root is unrupt. But here's where I get
confused. If unrupt is the root and it carries
the core meaning of breaking or bursting, why
can't I just go around rupting things? Right,
you can't just say, I'm going to rupt that. Exactly.
It always needs inter or core attached to it.
Why is it trapped? Well, what's fascinating here
is that this perfectly illustrates the hidden
scaffolding we were talking about earlier. You
cannot go around rupting things because English
swallowed that specific Latin genetic code whole
without ever granting it independent status.
Ah. It is permanently bound. But its presence,
across words like disrupt, corrupt, rupture,
and interrupt, that proves that the root exists.
It's an inherited piece of linguistic architecture.
Right. Gives us a glimpse into how a root provides
the genetic code. for a whole family of words,
even if it never gets to step out into the daylight
by itself. It's like linguistic DNA. But OK,
English generally builds words by taking solid
fixed Lego pieces and maybe snapping a prefix
on it, which is a process called concatenative
morphology, where you chain things end to end.
What do you do if you don't have Legos? Right.
Because some languages don't build with blocks
at all. They build with skeletons. Yes. And now
we are moving from concatenative languages to
non -concatenative language. And the prime examples
here are the Semitic languages like Arabic and
Hebrew that use consonantal roofs. Instead of
a fixed block like run or rupt, the foundational
root of a word is typically just a skeleton of
three consonants. Sometimes two, sometimes up
to five, but typically three. So they build words
by taking that three -consonant skeleton and
injecting different vowels into the empty spaces.
Exactly. The consonants provide the broad abstract
meaning, and the vowels are poured in to determine
the specific grammatical function. Like, is it
a noun, a verb, and an adjective? Right. It's
a completely different way of engineering a word.
Let's take Hebrew phonetics, for example. Look
at the three -consonant root G -D -L, gimel,
dalet, lamed. This abstract root carries the
general sweeping idea of largeness. Yes. So if
you inject an A and an O into the skeleton, you
get gadal, which is the masculine adjective for
big. And if you change the vowels, you change
the grammatical function. But that core concept
of largeness remains perfectly intact. Inject
different vowels into GDL, and gadal becomes
the verb he grew. Right. Higdal means he magnified.
Maggillet is a magnifier. And gadal means size,
and migdal means tower. All of those wildly different
words, big, grew, magnified, size, tower, they
all share the exact same GDL skeleton. But wait,
you can't actually pronounce GDL without vowels.
No, you can't. So is the root GDL a real word
anyone would ever say out loud? Or is it just
a raw abstract formula floating in the background
of all these other words? Well, if we connect
this to the bigger picture, you've just hit on...
the most profound difference between a language
like English and a Semitic language. Oh, really?
Yeah. These continental roots are entirely abstract.
You will never walk down the street in Tel Aviv
and hear someone just say G -D -D -L. It doesn't
exist as spoken speech. Wow. It acts as an invisible
conceptual anchor. For speakers of these languages,
the meaning of a word isn't just tied to the
specific sounds they're making right now. It's
explicitly tied to a shared underlying mathematical
idea that connects a whole web of vocabulary.
So a tower and a magnifier are fundamentally
the same word built on different scaffolding.
Exactly. But that brings up a really practical
problem. If a society relies on these ancient
abstract skeletons to build their words, how
do they invent entirely new concepts. Do they
have to invent entirely new three -letter skeletons
from scratch every time a new piece of technology
drops? No, not at all. They use what are called
secondary roots. They take an existing root and
they mutate it to create a new baseline for a
slightly different meaning. This allows the vocabulary
to expand infinitely without needing to invent
entirely new architectural blueprints from scratch.
And this connects perfectly to that mind -bending
hook from the start of the deep dive. Let's look
at the Arabic root RKZ. Originally, this ancient
root relates to the highly physical action of
planting a lance or sticking a spear into the
earth. A very specific ancient action. Yeah.
And from that root action, they derive the word
Markaz, which means center. And you can easily
follow the cognitive leap there, right? Planting
a flag or a lance establishes a central point.
Right, but the evolution doesn't stop there.
The language then takes the consonants from Markaz,
M -R -K -Z and treats that as a brand new four
-letter secondary root. And from that new mutated
root they build entirely modern concepts. They
get Markazi for central, Markazi for centralization,
and even Lamarkazi, which means decentralization.
They took a physical spear in the dirt, stretched
the cognitive concept, mutated the consonants,
and ended up with a modern geopolitical term
for decentralization. And Arabic does this constantly.
The root rj means way down. That mutated into
the concept of a swing, which mutated into a
secondary root for oscillated, or SR, which means
mocked, mutated into the secondary root nekester,
meaning made fun. And Hebrew does the exact same
thing. The biblical Hebrew root for Stan is QNQM.
From that skeleton, they built the word Mokum,
meaning place. Right. Modern Israeli Hebrew then
took the consonants from Mokum MQM and turned
that into a brand new secondary root, meaning
to locate. The language is endlessly recycling
its own material to meet modern needs. And the
linguist Gilad Zuckerman points out. This isn't
exclusively a Semitic phenomenon. He compares
it to the production of frequentative verbs in
Latin. Oh, interesting. Yeah, the Latin word
for to throw is iasio. Through grammatical stretching,
that morphed into iactito, which means to toss
about or keep bringing up. is taking a core root
and pulling it like taffy to create a nuanced
secondary meaning. Here's where it gets really
interesting, because we do something conceptually
similar in English, like taking the root verb
to conduct, as in to conduct an orchestra, and
mutating it into the noun conductor, which then
functions as its own solid base for further word
building. Exactly. But examining how these roots
stretch and mutate leads us to what might be
the most fiercely debated area in modern morphology.
Absolutely. We've talked about how roots provide
core meaning, but when a root is just sitting
there in the dictionary completely bare, does
it actually have a grammatical identity? Is the
concept of a chair fundamentally a noun or fundamentally
a verb? Which brings us to the concept of category
-neutral roots. This was born out of decompositional
generative frameworks. Which is a heavy wall
of jargon, let's be honest. Yeah, it's a mouthful.
Let's break that down. Yeah. Decompositional
simply means we are breaking language down into
its absolute smallest parts to see how it works.
Generative frameworks refers to the theories
about how human beings generate or build sentences
in their minds. Okay, so within that framework,
the theory is that roots are totally blank slates.
They hold almost zero grammatical information.
They don't know if they are a noun or a verb
until the surrounding syntax, like the actual
sentence they are placed into, forces them to
choose an identity. Right. Linguists generally
agree that a root has some underlying conceptual
meaning, but there is still heavy debate on whether
these category neutral roots contain what is
called a semantic type or an argument structure.
Right, and to put that simply, an argument structure
dictates who is doing what to whom. Like knowing
a verb requires a subject and an object. Yes,
and a semantic type is the inherent classification.
Is it a physical thing, an action, a property?
The blank slate theory argues the root contains
none of that until the sentence builds a house
around it. And the evidence supporting this blank
slate idea is incredibly intuitive when you look
at English. Look at words with covert morphology,
meaning the word doesn't change its spelling
or add prefixes. Words like dance, walk, Chair.
Wardrobe. I want to dance. Verb. That was a great
dance. Noun. Please chair this meeting. Verb.
Sit in that chair. Noun. The exact same root
is playing completely different roles without
changing a single letter. It is category neutral.
And even with overt morphology where we actually
add prefixes or suffixes, the underlying root
is still neutral. Yeah. The root employee becomes
the noun employment or the verb to employ. The
root character becomes the noun character or
the The root itself is just raw conceptual potential
waiting to be activated by its environment. It's
wild, but let's look at Hebrew again to see how
this blank slate idea functions inside a skeleton
framework. Take the Hebrew root in, shin -mem.
None. This root carries the general category
neutral concept of a greasy, fatty material.
Yes, and according to the linguist Maya Arad,
that consonantal root is only turned into a specific
word due to pattern morphology. Pattern morphology.
Right. Pattern morphology is the specific mold
of vowels you pour the skeleton into. If you
pour in into a verbal mold, it gets assigned
verbal features. poured into a noun mold, it
gets noun features. So depending on the vowel
pattern you apply to shun, you get shunmen for
oil, shunmen for cream, shunmen for fat, and
shunmen for to grow fat. Exactly. They all vary
semantically, but they all clearly stem from
that exact same neutral concept of greasiness.
So what does this all mean for how a human brain
is actually wired? This raises an important question
about language acquisition. How does a toddler
learn to think? based on the root system they
are born into. Yeah. Maya Arad argues that this
creates two totally different types of cognitive
workloads. Think about a toddler learning English.
When they are categorizing the world, They're
basically building totally disconnected boxes
in their mind. Because the words look and sound
completely different. Exactly. The word cream
has absolutely zero phonetic or visual connection
to the word fat. The child just has to memorize
that these are two completely separate roots
for two separate things. Their brain is categorized
into highly specific isolated units. But a Hebrew
speaking child is learning that the world is
deeply interconnected. They don't memorize isolated
boxes. They learn one single root. shum, and
from that one conceptual thread they can unravel
the concepts of cream, fat, and oil. It's amazing.
It implies that the underlying mechanics of a
language literally dictate the pattern recognition
required of native speakers from early childhood.
The English speaker's brain is heavily categorized.
The Hebrew speaker's brain is deeply networked.
And researchers Alexia Dew and Lon Dahl advance
the claim that languages exist on a typological
scale in this regard. It's not just categorized
English on one side and networked Hebrew on the
other. Greek, for example, sits right in the
middle between the English method and the Hebrew
method. Greek is a fascinating bridge between
these two architectural styles. In Greek, roots
generally cannot stand alone like the English
word run. They're bound. They need affixes to
become real words. But Greek doesn't use the
vowel interlocking skeleton system of Hebrew
either. A Greek root is a solid block, but it
remains grammatically blank until an inflectional
ending is snapped onto it. So it's a hybrid.
Yeah, it blends the solid concatenative block
building of English with the strict category
neutral dependency seen in Semitic languages.
It just completely changes how you view the words
coming out of your own mouth. We started this
deep dive talking about invisible architecture.
We've journeyed from the solid, standalone Lego
blocks of English -free roots. We've uncovered
the bound, trapped roots acting as genetic scaffolding,
like erupt and interrupt. We examined the mathematical,
invisible skeletons of Arabic and Hebrew, where
abstract consonants act as the structural rebar
for entire webs of vocabulary. And finally, we
landed on the reality of category -neutral roots,
these blank slates that have no idea as a noun
or a verb until the sentence they are in commands
them to take a shape, completely altering the
cognitive workload of a child learning to speak.
We take an impossibly complex world and reduce
it down to a handful of irreducible concepts,
and then we build infinite universes of meaning
out of them. It's happening all the time, right
beneath the surface. The next time you effortlessly
use the word wardrobe to describe both the piece
of furniture and the act of outfitting an actor,
or the next time you hear a wildly different
language being spoken, take a second. Appreciate
the invisible linguistic engineering that your
brain is executing in milliseconds. It really
is an engineering marvel. It totally is. I want
to leave you, the listener, with one final thought
to mull over. We talked about how those ancient
Semitic roots act as conceptual anchors. how
the single Hebrew idea of largeness, GDL, spawned
the modern words for tower, size, and magnifier.
It makes you wonder, if you had x -ray vision
for your own vocabulary, what would you find?
How many of our modern, highly complex technological
ideas are secretly just ancient, abstract concepts
wearing a new grammatical structure? What invisible
linguistic architecture is shaping your reality
right now?