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Abstract

The concepts of “base”, “canonical pattern” and “weight” have attracted the interest of orientalists, as components organizing Arabic morphology . They claimed that the concept of “base” covers the concept of “root”, which seemed to apply smoothly to Semitic languages, since it can be used to organize sounds in the lexicon, in terms of meanings and sound sequences. Though it shows an abstract character, this concept aspect. Hence its abstractness does not discard its linguistic reality. It constitutes component serving as part and parcel of the language system. As such, it does not refer to a historical (diachronic) process; that is the proto-root from which words have been do not share the same root. On the other hand, the concept of “root” is differentiated from the concept of “canonical pattern”. While the root represents the words sharing consonants, the canonical pattern represents the words sharing the form, structure as well as similarity in meaning and grammatical use. The canonical pattern, like the root, serves as an indicator in terms of its composition, since there is the form of aspect and the general meaning or shared grammatical value. Hence, there are two patterns: root pattern and aspect pattern, interrelated to organize the entire set of lexical items.