Editing Distributed morphology (section)

===Formative list: category-neutral roots===
The formative list, sometimes called the lexicon (this term will be avoided here) in Distributed Morphology includes all the bundles of semantic and sometimes syntactic features that can enter the syntactic computation. These are interpretable or uninterpretable features (such as [+/- animate], [+/- count], etc.) which are manipulated in syntax through syntactic operations. These bundles of features do not have any phonological content; phonological content is assigned to them only at spell-out, that is after all syntactic operations are over. The Formative List in Distributed Morphology differs, thus, from the Lexicon in traditional generative grammar, which includes the lexical items (such as words and [[morphemes]]) in a language.

As its name would suggest, the Formative List contains what are known as formatives, or roots. In Distributed Morphology, roots are proposed to be [[Root (linguistics)#Category-neutral roots|category-neutral]] and undergo categorization by functional elements.<ref name="Alexiadou2017">{{cite journal |last1=Alexiadou |first1=Artemis |last2=Lohndal |first2=Terje |title=The structural configurations of root categorization |journal=Labels and Roots |date=25 September 2017 |pages=203–232 |doi=10.1515/9781501502118-009|hdl=10037/20009 |isbn=9781501502118 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> Roots have no grammatical categories in and of themselves, and merely represent the bundle of semantic features to be exponed. The notation for roots in Distributed Morphology generally uses a square root symbol, with an arbitrary number or with the [[Orthography|orthographic]] representation of the root.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Embick |first1=David |title=The Motivation for Roots in Distributed Morphology |journal=Annual Review of Linguistics |date=14 January 2021 |volume=7 |pages=69–88 |doi=10.1146/annurev-linguistics-040620-061341|s2cid=226331586 |doi-access=free }}</ref> For example, ''love'', without a grammatical category, could be expressed as √362 or as √LOVE.

Researchers adopting the Distributed Morphology approach agree that roots must be categorized by functional elements. There are multiple ways that this can be done. The following lists four possible routes.<ref name = Alexiadou2017 />
# Roots are merged as [[Complement (linguistics)|complements]] to the functional elements that categorize them.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bobaljik |first1=Jonathan David |last2=Harley |first2=Heidi |title=Suppletion is local |date=22 June 2017 |volume=1 |doi=10.1093/oso/9780198778264.003.0007}}</ref>
# Roots are merged as [[Grammatical modifier|modifiers]] to the functional elements that categorize them.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=De Belder |first1=Marijke |title=The Root and Nothing but the Root: Primary Compounds in Dutch |journal=Syntax |date=June 2017 |volume=20 |issue=2 |pages=138–169 |doi=10.1111/synt.12133}}</ref>
# Some roots are merged as modifiers and others as complements to the function elements that categorize them.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Embick |first1=David |title=On the Structure of Resultative Participles in English |journal=Linguistic Inquiry |date=July 2004 |volume=35 |issue=3 |pages=355–392 |doi=10.1162/0024389041402634|s2cid=33115196 }}</ref>
# Roots are inserted post-syntactically and do not merge with complements or modifiers.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Belder |first1=Marijke De |last2=Craenenbroeck |first2=Jeroen van |title=How to Merge a Root |journal=Linguistic Inquiry |date=October 2015 |volume=46 |issue=4 |pages=625–655 |doi=10.1162/ling_a_00196|s2cid=57565134 |url=https://lirias.kuleuven.be/handle/123456789/632478 |url-access=subscription }}</ref>
As of 2020, there is no consensus on which approach most accurately describes the structural configuration of root categorization.