As previously explained, taproots form the foundation of sentences in Classical Dryadic. They are made up of two parts that are mandatory to form a sentence in Dryadic: tense and integrity. There are two separate sets of tenses used for taproots, proximal/specific tense and distal/general tense. The former is corresponds to certain times of day and frames a sentence as happening either right now or temporarily, in the near future, or in the near past. The latter, on the other hands, i based on the seasons or time of year and frames a sentence as happening as a general habit or truth that is either on-going, took place in the past, or will take place in the future. These tense morphemes, however, are relative to the time of day or time of year at which the conversation is taking place. For example, if it is summer, then the morpheme for ‘summer’ would mark the present tense, the morpheme for ‘autumn’ would mark the future tense, and the morpheme for ‘spring’ would mark the past tense. Likewise, if the time of day is midday, the the morpheme for ‘day’ would mark the present tense, the morpheme for ‘dusk’ would mark the future tense, and the morpheme for ‘dawn’ would mark the past tense. Each tense morpheme must be suffixed with either -s or -l indicating the sentence is either incremental (has internal structure, happens in increments, or has cumulative reference) or holistic (is viewed as a whole with no internal structure, or has quantized reference.) These tense-integrity combinations form the basis of the root system and are shown in the table below:
| Proximal Tense | Distal Tense | |||||
| Incremental | Holistic | Incremental | Holistic | |||
| Dawn | xaas | xazee | Spring | aas | aree | |
| Day | eres | edee | Summer | loos | lozee | |
| Dusk | zuus | zulii | Autumn | aes | agee | |
| Night | yeis | yegii | Winter | ziris | zidii | |
The negation suffix -i/e can be added to these tense-integrity combinations to produce the following forms for negating sentences:
| Proximal Tense | Distal Tense | |||||
| Incremental | Holistic | Incremental | Holistic | |||
| Dawn | xasse | xaale | Spring | arze | arre | |
| Day | etse | ette | Summer | losse | loole | |
| Dusk | zuuzi | zulli | Autumn | akse | aele | |
| Night | yeksi | yeili | Winter | zitsi | zitti | |