Triradicalism is a secondary development of historical Semitic

This brief contribution will historically contextualise the set of descriptive notions which are commonly used in literature when referring to the Semitic morphological arrangement. With close reference to the Akkadian verbal repertoire, the present is conceived as a preliminary basis for future fuller investigations on the historical status of the Semitic root structure (with reference to its components and its configuration), and the morpho-phonological processes generating the surface forms. The following will point out the secondary role of triradicalism, with special emphasis on verb formation (and derivation) within Semitic. On the basis of my doctoral work concerning the Akkadian verbal structure, I will also suggest that the root-and pattern approach tends to blur the agglutinating background of the Semitic verbal morphology. Therefore, the verb historically consists of a base – combining consonants and vowels alike – to which every grammatical morpheme is ‘agglutinated’ one by one for conveyingone single function.