orðastrúktur

Orðastrúktur is the study of the internal structure of words in Icelandic, focusing on how roots combine with prefixes and suffixes to form new units of meaning and to signal grammatical information. It covers the components of words, the rules that govern their formation, and the way different morphemes interact within a word.

In morphology, Icelandic words are built from stems that take inflectional and derivational affixes. A single word may thus contain a root, one or more derivational morphemes that change part of speech or meaning, and inflectional endings that encode grammar such as case, number, gender, tense, mood, and person. Morphemes are the minimal meaningful units; together they create a word’s structure and function.

Inflection and derivation are central aspects. Nouns are inflected for four cases (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive), two numbers (singular, plural), and three genders. Adjectives agree with the noun in gender, number, and case and may take strong or weak inflection depending on definiteness. Verbs conjugate for person and number in present and past tenses and participate in participial forms; many verbs also display irregularities or stem changes (ablaut) in some forms.

Word formation also relies on compounding, a productive process in Icelandic that combines two or more words to form new terms, often creating nuanced or specialized meanings. Prefixes and suffixes may alter meaning or grammatical category, expanding the lexicon efficiently.

See also: Icelandic grammar, Morphology, Compounding.