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I was reading the book Math for English Majors and started thinking about a post I wrote discussing members of the scientific word study community that have a proclivity for math. When you've been at this a while, you do a quick analysis in your head, peeling off familiar prefixes and suffixes. Sometimes, you are left with an interesting base that prompts an investigation to see what other members of the family exist.
In our investigation of proclivity, we'll explore plurals and how its definition may be confused. We'll uncover a suffixal construction you've probably seen before along with a look at how the default connecting vowel letter will help with the spelling. We see how one PIE root gives us roots from Greek, Latin, and earlier forms of English that we still see in Modern English. Finally we return to within-word stress and schwa, one of our most common causes of misspellings.
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Meaning
What is this word's meaning and how does the word function?
When you have a proclivity towards something, you "behave in a particular way or like a particular thing" according to the entry in the online Collins dictionary. This is my favorite resource for student-friendly definitions. It also suggests the connotation that these are often "bad" ways or things. Certainly, I was teasing my colleagues when I mentioned they have a proclivity for math. They are quite blessed with word study as well.
Collins also tells us that proclivity is a countable noun. Nouns are words that can be counted. Words that can be counted can be pluralized. Plural means "not one." You can have two proclivities, but you can also have zero proclivities, and you could have negative two proclivities, theoretically. Plural isn't "more than one," but "not one."
And look at the way we form the plural, given that proclivity ends in turkey, we simply use the form of the plural suffix.
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Structure
What are the elements that make up this word's structure?
The first affix I thought I could peel off is produce or progress.
pro + clivity
You may also recognize the suffixal construction suffixal construction is a common combination of several elements that occurs after a base. This construction is composed of connecting vowel letter with the suffix safety and casualty. We see this activity and sanity.
pro + cliv + i + ty
If these were the elements, then I need to add a final
pro + clive/ + i + ty
A base that ends with a CVC pattern will double the final consonant before adding the next element. The slash mark in my expression indicates the
In the Online Etymology Dictionary entry for proclivity, I first learn this word came to us in the 1590s from French or directly from Latin. The Latin came from the root proclivis, which could be analyzed from clivus, "slope." When I remove the suffix to obtain the English base from a Latin root, I'm left with
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Relatives
What are the word's relatives and history?
In that same entry, you can click on the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root to find relatives. Don't worry if you're not familiar with PIE roots; they are the ancestors of many words in English and European languages. Some of the words at the PIE root's entry will also include the base, such as declivity. This word could go in a matrix together with proclivity.
Other words took different journeys from the PIE root and would be included in an etymological circle around that matrix. Several of these words have a incline, decline, and clinic. Others have a enclitic and proclitic. Others include client and climate. They also include lean, lid, and ladder. These words had origins in English, whereas the others had Latin and Greek origins.
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Graphemes
What can the pronunciation of the word teach us about the relationship of its graphemes and its phonology?
In my experience, within-word stress is one of the biggest troubles people have with spelling. In unstressed syllables, the vowel quality is often reduced. This reduced form is usually a schwa. Many vowel graphemes can spell the schwa in a word. In this instance, we have several places where schwa may occur.
In the British pronunciation, the first schwa may be in the prefix. Americans tend to pronounce the first syllable as [proʊ], with a sound most of us easily recognize as spelled by
Nevertheless, we all pronounce the connecting vowel letter as a schwa. If we can recall that it is a connecting vowel letter, we are more likely to remember to spell it with an . An is the default connecting vowel letter in Latin. Once students are familiar with the suffixal construction
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Next Steps
What can we learn next about the English orthographic system?
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You could study how to form plurals with nouns that end in |
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You could study the prefix and its variant pronunciations. |
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You could study the wider etymological family and determine which of the relatives are from the English, Latin, or Greek derivations. |
Which one of these paths would help your students the most right now? There are numerous plural forms and several suffixing conventions associated with which ones to use. Let me know which rabbit holes you're now going down. I'm always interested to hearing what proclivities these word investigation sparks have generated!
Stay curious,
Brad
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Join the community!
P.S. Another suffixal construction that is common is
P.P.S. Other words we've investigated with suffixal constructions are celebrity, humidity, and surgical among others. If you're ready for the complete archive of over 150 word investigations, join the community at the link under my picture above.
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