Identifying Spanish Word Roots

Why Identify Spanish Word Roots?

The highly inflected morphology of Spanish can significantly affect the post-inflected root word/stem. The word root identification convention, vertical bar "|", was developed in order to credit Spanish-speakers for exhibiting use of morphological forms as well as to avoid over-inflation of the number of different words (NDW) used. If a child produces a variety of inflected forms of the same word within a transcript (e.g., "es", "son", "eran", "éramos"), each production is coded to identify the root word (e.g., "es|ser"). The child would be given credit morphologically for producing different words, but each inflected form would be considered an inflected variation of the same root word, "ser".

Use the Vertical Bar to Identify the Word Roots

Use the vertical bar when you want to identify a different word root than the one that was spoken. Be sure that the vertical bar and the root word directly follow the word used with no spaces between. For example,

Root identification instructs SALT to consider the word immediately preceding the "|" symbol as the word that was actually said (i.e., "había" and "tenía"), and the word immediately following to be the root word (i.e., "haber" and "tener").

Auxiliary Verbs

When a verb is used as an auxiliary, precede the root identification with "aux", (e.g., "auxestar", "auxandar", "auxsalir"). For example,

In the first utterance, "está" is used as a main verb and identified as a form of "estar". In the second utterance, "estaba" is used as an auxiliary verb and identified as a form of "auxestar".

Diminutives

In Spanish, diminutives are bound morphemes that change the meaning of a word by indicating diminution. Diminutives in true form are suffixes attached to an object and are used in reference to something of a larger size. Following is a list of known diminutive suffixes: -ete, -eta, -ico, - ica , -ito, -ita, -illo, -illa, -uco, -uca, -ucho, -ucha, -uelo, -uela

The use of diminutives may be so pervasive in some Spanish dialects that the morphological inflection of the diminutive may no longer indicate diminution. In order to prevent potential mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLUm) inflation for speakers who use a high frequency of diminutives without strictly indicating diminution, it was decided that diminutives (i.e., perrito, casita) should not be counted as bound morphemes. Instead, diminutives are coded as main body words derived from the corresponding root words. Therefore, coding for diminutives follows the root identification convention. For example,

Superlatives

Superlative forms, suffixes indicating that an object is larger than a referent, are not as pervasive in the Spanish language as are diminutives. Some common superlative suffixes include: -ote, -ota, -ísimo, -ísima. Like diminutives, coding for superlatives follows the root identification convention. For example,

Using the Root Identification Files to Help Identify Word Roots

Although you can type in the vertical bars and root forms manually, SALT contains lookup files of words and their corresponding word roots which may be used to simplify the identification process. These root identification files (RIFs) are used to automatically identify a different word root than the one that was produced. All words not identified with the vertical bar are looked up in the RIF file. If not found, that word is ignored. If only one choice is found, the word is automatically identified. If a word contains more than one root option, the user is presented with a list of choices to select from. Depending on the word, the identified root is either attached to the word using the vertical bar convention (e.g., era --> era|ser) or it replaces the word as in this plural bound morpheme example (e.g., ranas --> rana/s). If the selected choice is the same as the word (e.g., casa), then two vertical bars are added to the end of the word (e.g., casa --> casa||) indicating that the root did not change. The two vertical bars, however, indicate that the choice was made. The RIFs may be edited to suit your purposes. Note: the active RIFs are selected using the "Language Settings" option in the Setup menu. There are two Spanish RIFs:

1. "Spanish Verbs" which contains a complete list of over 469,000 verbs. The only verbs intentionally left out of the file are "las", "la", "les", "le", "lo", "una", and "uno" due to their word form overlap with specific articles and pronouns. You should use this automation feature to identify all the verbs in your transcript.
2. "Spanish Nouns and Clitics" which contains approximately 1,300 of the words used most often to retell the Frog, Where Are You? story. Because this is not a complete list, you should identify the plurals, diminutives, superlatives, and bound pronominal clitics as you are typing your transcript. This file may then be used to catch those you miss.