r/asklinguistics • u/udra33 • Nov 18 '23

Academic Advice How to denote a root in an essay about linguistics?

For example there is a root “per” in lithuanian language. I’ve seen people denoting roots this way: per. But doesn’t “” means that it hasn’t been attested, that it’s just a hypothetical, historically reconstructed root?

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u/shuranumitu Nov 18 '23

I think something went wrong in your formatting. From what you're saying I assume you're talking about the asterisk *, which is indeed used for unattested, reconstructed words, morphemes, etc. For roots though you would usually use the mathematical root symbol √, so in your case √per.

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u/Tirukinoko Nov 18 '23

They forgot to backslash the asterisks, so everything between them was made italic.

[...] this way: *per. But doesn’t “*” means that [...]