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I was reading a middle school historical fiction book, The Thieves of Ostia, to prepare for future sessions with a student. I paused at the following sentence:
"They watched in fascination as he leapt six feet to the next tree."
I knew my student would probably know what fascination was, but they would probably stumble over the spelling. There was that interesting fascinate have a base that surprises me with numerous relatives? After all, previous investigations for profligate and distinctive ended up having a base for several common words we didn't think of as related like conflict and instinct respectively.
As we investigate this word, we will learn the importance of the first question, as well as a teaching activity you can use. We'll notice a common suffixal construction and examine a purpose of suffixes. We will do a deep dive into inflectional suffixes and contrast them with derivational suffixes. Finally, we will clarify our understanding of digraphs, potentially avoiding a troublesome conversation.
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Meaning
What is this word's meaning and how does the word function?
Almost all of my investigations with students begin with something we are reading and writing. I want my students to become curious about the words they are reading, and they need practice in context.
"They watched in fascination as he leapt six feet to the next tree."
I might ask, "How would you feel watching someone leap six feet from one tree to another?" They might come up with words like interested or a phrase like wondering how he did that. Both of these line up with the definition in the Collins dictionary that says fascination is "being greatly interested or delighted by something."
I want my students to understand the nuance of the meanings of the word, so I will present several situations and then ask them, "If you would have fascination, say 'I would have fascination;' if you would not, then say, 'I would not have fascination.' " No matter the response, I want them to have practice pronouncing and using the word.
- You're at the library, and you discover a hidden door behind a bookshelf.
- You're watching a science experiment where the teacher dips a flower into a liquid and then shatters the flower like glass.
- For homework, your teacher tells you to copy dictionary definitions for your vocabulary words.
In the first two instances, they might have fascination. In the last example, they would probably not have fascination. Copying dictionary definitions is not only pointless and boring, but it's a dead-end for learning vocabulary.
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Structure
What are the elements that make up this word's structure?
We've seen the suffix <-ion> in countless nouns before, so my student will immediately be able to give me:
fascinate/ + ion
as a hypothesis for this word's structure. They would know they have to replace that before adding a suffix that began with a vowel like <-ion>, so we actually put a slash mark through the
My student has also worked with the suffixal construction
fascin + ate + ion
The suffix <-ate> can be added to a base to provide a verbal form. Then we add the suffix <-ion> to modify our verb into a noun. Suffixes often carry grammatical senses.
At that point, though, we would both be unsure if the hypothetical base
An etymological resource will provide us with the word's diachronic journey, or journey through time. At the entry for fascinate, we work backwards through the diachronic journey of fascinate.
from French fasciner
from Latin fascinatus,
past participle fascinatus
from fascinum/fascinus "charm; enchantment"
The journey then goes cold, as the entry tells us that word is of uncertain origin.
We now have enough information to confirm that
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Relatives
What are the word's relatives and history?
Unlike our look at distinctive and profligate, this investigation into the relatives of fascinate doesn't yield a large family. We could have suspected this when the historical trail in the Etymonline entry grew cold.
However, we have several candidates for our morphological matrix. The morphological matrix is a display of a word family. Word families are words that share a base and a root, or structure and meaning, as Pete Bowers says.
To obtain relatives for a matrix, we can use inflectional suffixes.
The verbal paradigm gives us fascinates, fascinated, and fascinating. If you remember conjugating verbs in Spanish or French class, then you've interacted with verbal paradigms before. It's the system of all conjugated variants after you add their inflectional suffixes. Some verbs also include a form with the suffix <-en> like eats, eating, and eaten. We employ the verbal inflectional suffixes to show tense.
The noun form fascination can be made plural to give us fascinations. The plural suffix <-(e)s> is an inflectional suffix for nouns. Nouns also can have an inflectional suffix to show possession.
The inflectional suffixes for adjectives show comparison, <-er> and <-est>. However, we do not use these suffixes for fascinating. Instead we say more or most fascinating.
We can also use derivational suffixes to obtain relatives for our matrix.
We can add <-or> to obtain fascinator, a garment worn on women's heads. This attire came into vogue in the mid-19th century before fading away at the turn of the century. The style was brought back in the latter part of the 20th century and can often be seen worn by the Royal Family or at the Kentucky Derby.
We can derive an adverb from an adjective by affixing <-ly>. Therefore, we can add fascinatingly to our matrix if we want. The suffix <-ly> is a derivational suffix because we have derived a new word class. Inflectional suffixes do not give us new word classes. Fascinate to fascinated or fascinating still gives us verbs.
Now let's look at what the graphemes can help us understand about the base and the word.
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Graphemes
What can the pronunciation of the word teach us about the relationship of its graphemes and its phonology?
There are two interesting observations to make about the relationship between the word's graphemes and its pronunciation. The first is about a pattern I've noticed with the pronunciation of the suffix <-ate>. That suffix can be found on verbs like fascinate, but it can also be found on adjectives like immediate. I'll leave you to discover this pattern.
Let's go back to that digraph
Get out of the water.
It's a "chicken and egg" philosophical question. There are numerous words in the English language where a digraph science and adolescent. The digraph can also spell [tʃ] in words like conscience. The fact I refer to it in these words as a digraph should give you your answer about which one is spelling [s].
Both.
Digraphs, by definition, are two consecutive letters that are working together to perform the same job. Here, the job is spelling [s]. The grapheme is not a and a
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Next Steps
What concepts from this investigation can we explore next to learn more about the English orthographic system?
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Think of playing the "Making Choices" game the next time you are working with a word's meaning. Varying the contexts they appear in helps the students see more uses for the words they are learning. |
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Look at the suffixes you and your students have studied thus far. What grammatical senses, or meanings, do they carry? Can they carry more than one? |
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Along that same vein, I encourage you to think about the question I posed about the suffix <-ate> earlier and its pronunciations. |
Once I've investigated a word from a student's reading, I circle back around to put it back in context.
"Now that we know fascination had something to do with witchcraft and enchantment, do you see why someone leaping from tree to tree would be fascinating?"
We can then create new sentences using our family:
- The children watched fascinatingly as the man leapt six feet from tree to tree.
- The children were fascinated as they watched the man leap from tree to tree.
- Watching people do incredible things is one of my fascinations.
The first question anchors us in the word's semantics, its form, and its function. I see lots of people online fascinated by word matrices and word sums. However, after we study all the sublexical elements and graphemes, we want our students to use the words they are learning, fitting them back into their supralexical parts, like phrases, clauses, sentences, and paragraphs in order to make meaning in the world. So while word sums and matrices are some cool tools, don't be so quick to breeze past the anchor of the first question.
Stay curious,
Brad
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P.S. Do you know someone who needs help differentiating inflectional and derivational suffixes? Send this newsletter to them! And if they want to learn more, they can always take a look at some other samples and subscribe at this link.
P.P.S. Not all derivational suffixes change a word's class. The word red is an adjective. When we affix <-ish> to obtain reddish, we still have an adjective. Similarly, a neighbor is a noun, as is a neighborhood.
P.P.P.S. Time is running out to join the course I teach, Connecting the D.O.T.S.: Integrating Scientific Word Study into Your Practice. My co-instructor, Dr. Jennifer Petrich, and I teach students daily and have a wealth of information to share about practicing investigations with students. Register at this link!
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