Thanks,`Anbrutal. I have had instruction on the essential difference between root, stem and base from a reference grammar that I refer to from time to time (Allen & Greenough's). The authors there use the term "stem building", but without a great deal of exposition, in what is a brief treatment. That is understandable, as it is a reference grammar, not a text on morphology. So, the process of what those authors refer to as "stem building", the ways that may happen, remain unclear to me. I have the impression that the stems and coordinate bases of Latin words do somehow increase with both the derivation and inflection of words, for what else can be meant by saying that stems are "built"?
The present stem of mussāre is mussā-...There's no one stem (often there's not even one root, e.g. Ablaut), and suffixation doesn't change the stem, it's formed to one or another of these stems - the question is only which, and where does it end and the suffix begin. It also results in a new stem.
I found myself pondering what you mean by the comments above, and have made some investigations. After examining some conjugation tables, I seem to discern (hopefully correctly) that groupings of verb tenses (present, imperfect-future, perfect-supine) seem to have what can be bescribed as their own stems, with the present stem the "basic" stem of the group. If this is right, I am led to the believe that stems vary with inflection, which means that stems vary with inflectional suffixation (with the use of inflectional suffixes), which process produces a set of "inflectional stems". I suspect that this is what you were referring to in saying: "There's no one stem." It seems to me, though, that "stem building" also occurs in Latin with derivational suffixation (with the use of derivational suffixes), and I suspect that this is what you were referring to when you said that: "...It also results in a new stem." Am I thinking correctly about that? If my analysis is correct, then it seems to me that derivational suffixation has the ability to create a new present-tense stem, which stem provides a basis for regular (or occasionally irregular, for instance when a verbal conjugation is irregular) inflection which yields a new set of inflectional word stems. Inflectional suffixation and derivational suffixation, then, seem to work in concert in the process of "stem building", with derivational suffixation creating new basic (nominative case or present-tense) stems, and inflectional suffixation yielding various inflectional stems from a given present stem. Does that sound right at all?
An example which seems to provide evidence for stem building through suffixation from a noun root is given by
animus/anima and their derivatives in the following manner.
Animus/anima (stem
anim-?) +
-osus >
animosus with
animos- as its derivationally "built" nominative stem
, and then
animos(us) +
-itas >
animositas with the nominative stem
animosit-. In this, we progress from present nominative noun stem
anim- to present nominative adjectival stem
animos- to present nominative noun stem
animosit-.
Our friendly verb
musso and it's derivatives seem to evidence the foregoing thoughts regarding stem building as an effect of both derivation and inflection as they pertain to Latin verbs. The present stem of
musso is, I think,
mussa-, and the verb seems to have a set of inflectional stems as I have described above.
Musso yields the nominal derivative
mussatio. The Etymology of this is, as you have indicated, generally construed as
mussat(us) +
-io, with the derivation occurring from the perfect-supine stem
mussat-. It seems to me, however, that
mussatio can be reanalyzed as the present stem
mussa- +
-tio; the result in both cases is the same: a third declension deverbal abstract noun.
Musso also yields, by derivational suffixation, the frequentative verb
mussito (<
muss(o) +
-ito). If my thinking is correct, and the derivation by suffixation with
-ito creates a new set of verbal inflectional stems, including new present stem
mussita- and new perfect-supine stem
mussitat-. That seems to be evidenced by the fact of the derivation of
mussitatio as follows:
mussitatio <
mussitat(us) +
-io, reanalyzable as present stem
mussita +
-tio.
I wonder if I am barking up the right tree here. I usually like to try to read the etymologies of Latin words as I come across them, both to help with remembering the word as useful vocabulary, an in order to understand the words and the language better. In so doing, I am continually encountering terms like "root", "concieved root form", "stem", and "base". I have thus far accepted the etymologies without any understanding of what these terms mean, but I now realize that in so doing, I have never truly understood the etymologies themselves. I have yet to find a comprehensive treatment of these terms and processes, which I assume would be found within a study of Latin morphology. In the absence of such a study, however, is my thinking on this topic even in the right ballpark?