Cynthia M. Vakareliyska: Lithuanian root list

Abstract

Lithuanian root list by Cynthia Vakareliyska is a welcome publication, in that probably for the first time in English, it presents the basic elements of Lithuanian word formation, i.e., roots and affixal morphemes with their variants, in a systematic and fairly comprehensive fashion. The book consists of a short introduction (1–6) outlining the purposes of the root list, describing the most common phonological and morphophonemic rules affecting the shape of morphemes as well as the methodology of presentation of the material. The central part of the book is the root list itself (7–64), containing about 2,000 Lithuanian roots and root variants in alphabetical order. There follows a comprehensive list of the common derivational affixes (65–85) arranged according to the part-of-speech (noun, adjective, verb) they derive, including both suffixes and prefixes with their basic meanings or functions and, importantly, information about the accentuation of the respective derivatives. The book closes with a concise glossary of linguistic terms for nonlinguists (86–90) and a short list of references (91).