Last edited: Feb 28, I agree completely with Ewie. A morpheme is the smallest possible semantic unit in a given language. What role similar morphemes play in other languages is irrelevant. I think this might be particularly confusing to foreign-language-speakers where "to question" is more explicitly "to go hunting after," that is, in languages where the "quest" is still a big part of a "question.
I'm afraid you're trying to dismember a word to see if its meaning is comprised of the sum of its parts your analysis of real really misses the mark since it doesn't contain a root. I'm afraid words don't always work that way. I think the "re- -al" example illustrates that point very well Both re- and -al are what you referred to as affixes.
The point lucas was making was that they are not always affixes, by analogy to the way "quest" is not always a root - although it may have been during the evolution of the word. Thus question is no longer, in English, related to its original root word so it has morphed into become a non-divisible morpheme in its own right. That's it, now I see what the problem is: most English speakers don't really understand the concept of a morpheme, and more precisely, of a root morpheme, too well.
You see, the root is not a separate word that another word is derived from, it's the part common to both of them after removing all the affixes. It carries the basic semantic meaning. What you guys were referring to as morpheme read: the root is actually called base.
A root can be free or bound. A free root can be a separate word, a bound one cannot. Quest is a free root. A root cannot include other morphemes, which makes the root question impossible it would contain the suffix -ion.
And a word certainly doesn't become a new root after having acquired a meaning significantly different from that of its root. By the way, that actually makes re- the root of the world realisation. The word "question" may not be a root, it has what might be considrered a suffix, but if you remove any of it, you lose its semantic meaning - doesn't that make it a morpheme - the smallest piece that carries the word's semantic meaning.
All this technical stuff, just like in my scientific field of biochemistry, revolves around arbitrary definitions or approaches. The word "question" may not be a root, it has what might be considrered a suffix, but if you remove any of it, you lose its semantic meaning - doesn't that make it a morpheme - the smallest piece that carries the word's semantic meaning based on lucas's "A morpheme is the smallest possible semantic unit in a given language.
Perhaps the short cut to this dicsussion is for you to provide the definition you are using for the word morpheme?
And no. Looking at "question" over and over has made me think of "quest" as a morpheme - the same as in "request," "inquest," etc. Of course those two meanings are semantically related, but not as tightly as they can be in other languages.
There are certainly morphemes that "include" affixes, and morphemes that are problematically divided. The classic situation is "uncouth" - it's very difficult to claim that "couth" is a morpheme when it doesn't function as a morpheme in any English word besides "uncouth. Food for thought SevenDays Senior Member Spanish. A morpheme isn't just the smallest unit in a word that has meaning ; it's also about the smallest unit that has a grammatical function.
In "questioned," -ed is an inflectional morpheme suffix that marks past time, and -ion is a derivational morpheme suffix that creates the word "question" from the word "quest," regardless of the meaning of "quest" ask or seek. In other words, -ed is involved in tense-making, and -ion in noun-making, two grammatical functions. There may be other ways of doing morphological analysis, but, to answer the OP, you can certainly make an argument that questioned can be split as quest - ion - ed.
From the Oxford English Dictionary: morpheme Grammar The lowest unit of language that can convey meaning. You cannot break a morpheme down into anything smaller that has a meaning.
Many simple words are morphemes. Actually, that wasn't my point, that's why I have to disagree with you, wandle. Morphemes can only be established on the basis of a single language. There is no morpheme you identified as -t- in the English word, even though there was in Latin.
You cannot break down the word quest any further, there is no word with the root ques. However, all the other morphemes are there, they were borrowed from French and Latin and have since become an integral part of the language. If we take 'inquisition', it seems to me we must analyse it into in-quis-it-ion. Here, '-quis-' is another form of 'ques-' having the same meaning , and '-it-' is another form of 't' again with the same meaning.
Neither -t- nor -it- have any semantic or grammatical meaning whatsoever in the English word apart from the one I mentioned. Pardon me, but that is the meaning I mentioned first and which I am still referring to. Where a form or meaning is shared between languages, it is not a question of basing one upon another but of recognising what they have in common. There is clearly a stem '-quire-' in English, which appears in 'acquire', 'inquire', 'require' etc. This is another form an allomorph with changed vowel of the stem 'quer-' in the word 'query'.
Sharing a common etymology is no excuse, otherwise we would have to file shirt and skirt, steer and starboard, borough and burger under the same root. Surely those who are arguing that quest in question is an morpheme must also explain how ion in question is a morpheme? Surely a word can't consist of a morpheme plus a meaningless bunch of sounds added just for fun? What is the meaning of ion?
Myridon Senior Member Texas. Forget Latin. Forget French. We can only be interested in contemporary English here. And meaning is function; that's how "-ion" has a meaning - it serves a purpose. So if an explanation goes in a direction that makes it stop being useful, we might need to discard it.
There are two possible answers: 1. My desire is to point out that "question" has, to my native speaker's mind, a value that cannot be reduced to its component parts; obviously every word is somewhat different from the sum of its morphemes, but this difference seems particularly apt - there's a "quest" of "questing" and a "quest" of "questioning," and although they look the same, they behave differently. For that reason, in a word like "questioned," it seems to me like the smallest possible units are "question" and "ed.
Just because two morphemes look the same doesn't mean that they are the same. For example, "ion" is a different morpheme in phrases like "creation," "ionize," and "Plato's Ion.
I'm also very confused by the argument that we have to accept "quest" as a morpheme in "question," but not "saus" as a morpheme in "sausage," particularly in light of their etymologies.
We have the morpheme-looking "-age" suffix, plus the "saus-" root that, arguably, is identifiable in "sauce. In other words, I maintain the identity of these forms as translingual allomorphs. Seriously, I'm really surprised that the notion of a morpheme is so alien to English speakers. The notion of a morpheme is not at all strange. It is the "rules" that might allow everyone to agree unequivocally how to identify them that is the problem.
Definition of terms is not a linguistic universal, even if some of the items in such a description may be I have to confess that these heated discussions like those surrounding syllabification or even some scientific or technical terminology , where strong assertions are based on definitions used by one party that are not necessarily agreed to by other parties, frequently give me a headache It is often the case that the encounter is between people using the very precise definitions from the specialized terminology in their field and those who use the word more casually.
The former try to insist that everyone adhere to their precision while those outside that particular field are often not persuaded. I usually end up reaching for the morph ine for my headache. Me three! The concept of morphemes is quite clear - it's when you try to take that concept and apply it that you find out the difference between theory and practice.
What seems so clear in - to use an example from the Oxford Dictionaries website - incoming is considerably less clear in questioned. It seems clear to me that questioned has just two, but? Giorgio Spizzi Senior Member Italian. English Question is one of a large family of English words that go back to the Latin verb quaerere 'seek, ask.
An earlier form of the past participle was quaesitus , and its feminine vesion quaesita eventually passed into English via Old French as quest. The second set was immediately canceled, and everyone was warned to take caution and head home. Good news, in an epidemic as unpredictable as this one, must be met with caution. While the caution that the fragility of this situation calls for cannot be overstated, neither can the successes made thus far.
But Soult was possessed of a crafty caution which seldom if ever allowed his ambition to hinder the success his ability deserved. They show to the full the secret of the Marshal's success as a soldier, the blending of ardour with method and dash with caution.
In successive letters he reiterates the caution to beware of surprise and treason, and his anxiety for constant news. With all the fiery enthusiasm of the Gael, he possessed to an unusual degree the caution of the Lowland Scot. Silence cried, but this time in full tones that paid no tribute to caution. New Word List Word List. Save This Word! The way he challenges your remarks is a caution. See synonyms for caution on Thesaurus.
See antonyms for caution on Thesaurus. We could talk until we're blue in the face about this quiz on words for the color "blue," but we think you should take the quiz and find out if you're a whiz at these colorful terms.
0コメント