AbstractThis volume brings together chapters that discuss the nature of roots, the core elements of word meaning. It looks not only at their syntax, but also their phonology, semantics, and morpho-phonological role (or lack thereof), insofar as these do turn out to bear on their interaction with syntax. To what degree these roots carry syntactic and/or semantic information has been the subject of much research. Some of the key questions which this book looks to address are: Do roots have any meaning at all in isolation, or is all meaning associated with constituents larger than roots? If the root has no syntactic category, what are its properties? Do roots have phonology in isolation?