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Once you've been studying words scientifically for a while, you'll often spot a word in the wild and begin analyzing it into its elements. Listening to a podcast, I came across this word and the hypothesized analysis ensued. I know what it means for something to be contaminated, but is it possible that it is related to tame, the base in my initial hypothesis? Only a true investigation will help us figure this out.
Have you worked with semantic gradients? We'll look a little closer at how in the investigation. We'll also take a look at the and diminutive suffixes. Find out why we have assimilated prefixes. Let's discover when to use a word sum and explore Old English as well.
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Meaning
What is this word's meaning and how does the word function?
We first anchor our understanding in meaning. Many of my students have a phonological deficit, and the abstract nature of phonemes just doesn't have as strong a hold when storing orthographic representations. When we start with meaning, then there is something to hold onto.
In the Collins Dictionary, my preferred dictionary for student-friendly definitions, it tells me that something contaminated is made "impure, dirty, or harmful." Contamination is the noun form of that verb.
Sometimes, to make an anchor stronger, I will find an image or show a picture to my remote students. If I'm in person, I might actually show a clean glass of water and then tell them I'm going to contaminate it by putting dirt in it. Images and physical examples can go a long way to helping students understand the meaning of the word.
Another activity to anchor this abstract noun is semantic gradients. To prepare for this activity, gather a data set of synonyms the student is already familiar with, such as polluted, infect, stain, or corrupt. For this semantic gradient, we might have one end be more and one end be less. Students place these synonyms along the gradient from "least contaminated" to "most contaminated." There isn't typically a "right answer;" it's more about the discussion that ensues and the connection to other words.
Before we leave that Collins entry behind, I want to note that there is linguistic definition of contamination:
an alternation in a linguistic form due to the influence of a related form, as the replacement in English of earlier femelle with female through the influence of male.
The word femelle was inherited from Latin by way of Old French. It has the same diminutive suffix we see in words from Latin like patella, which is a "small pan." In modern English, it is the word for the knee cap which resembles the shape of a small pan. A diminutive suffix is used for a smaller version of the base. There are other diminutive suffixes in English, such as the <-ling> on duckling and the <-ule> on globule and module.
Other English words include the numbers four and five. It is thought the /f/ is due to contamination from the following number. It's thought the word dream, which meant "joy," was contaminated by an Old Norse word draumr. If you know blends like smog or motel, then you know examples of deliberate contamination in linguistics.
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Structure
What are the elements that make up this word's structure?
But let's get back to the structure of the word and the hypothesis I laid out in the introduction:
con + tame/ + in + ate/ + ion
I believe this word to have a suffixal construction as we discussed in last week's investigation for abolition, the <-ation> composed of the suffixes <-ate> and <-ion>. The <-ate> suffix denotes the word as verbal, contaminate. The <-ion> says we can use the complete word as a noun.
On the other end, I'm proposing a prefix . This prefix from Latin usually lends a sense of "together" to the base it is coupled with. If I think of tame and "taming together," that doesn't seem close to the modern definition of contamination. However, morphology is not a clean recipe where we can always just add up the parts and obtain a definition. It is a system, where often the sum is greater than its parts.
And I still have a question about one of those "parts" in my hypothesis. What is the
Let's take a glance at Etymonline to see.
Our word came to us in the early 15th century, the beginnings of the Modern English period. When it first arrived, it meant "infection." It says it is from the past participle stem of a Latin verb contaminare, which originally meant "bring into contact" and developed into "defile; corrupt." Think back to that clear glass of water making contact with the dirt and then becoming "defiled."
The entry goes on to say this verb is from an assimilated form of com + base of tangere, a Latin verb for "touch." I know contaminare and tangere are verbs, because they end with the infinitive suffixes <-are> and <-ere> in Latin. There is also <-ire> which we see with dormire, "sleep."
An assimilated form is a form that matches phonologically with the following element. Here, the prefix has become
con + tamin + ate/ + ion
Word sums are synchronic, meaning they reflect the current period of English. They would not reflect diachronic, or historical, processes. They would reflect processes that occur in modern-day assembly, such as the suffixing conventions, like when we replace the make to create making or double the consonant in sad to make sadder.
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Relatives
What are the word's relatives and history?
We have to settle the question of a potential relationship to tame first. When I look up tame in Etymonline, the entry says this word entered the language much earlier, in 1200, Middle English. It is from "oblique" forms of Old English tom, tam, "domesticated." Old English had many cases and conjugations as Latin did. Over the years, many of these fell away. Oblique was one of them. The oblique case is the case for objects in grammar.
There appears to be no relationship between contamination and tame.
There don't appear to be many morphological relatives for contaminate we can put in the matrix. We can say something is uncontaminated or decontaminated. We can also include contaminable or contaminator.
For etymological relatives, we can look at other words derived from that Latin verb tangere or even the ancestors of that word. We have examples like tactile, tangent, tangible, intact, contact, integrity, entire, attain, task, and even tax.
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Graphemes
What can the pronunciation of the word teach us about the relationship of its graphemes and its phonology?
One of the reasons I first went looking for something different and stumbled upon studying words scientifically was because my students were having trouble "decoding" polysyllabic words. I diligently taught them syllable division and syllable types. My best students would have looked at contamination and separated out the first syllable:
con
And said /kɑn/.
Not exactly. See, syllable division didn't really help my students because of the schwa. It was either closed and short or open and long. Later, someone shared the "schwa syllable" with me, but it was too late by then. I had moved on. To something better.
Students I work with now can usually spot the prefix
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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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Have you and your students tried semantic gradients as a way of looking at synonyms? |
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There are other assimilated forms for this prefix, and there are other assimilated prefixes to study. (Big Idea #4) |
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Which words came to us during the period of Old English? How can you tell a word might be from that time period? (Big Idea #6) |
When you get right down to it, contamination just meant touch, though perhaps in a form we don't want. We can have a hypothesis that a word is composed of certain elements or that there is a base related to tame, but sometimes when we look at the evidence, it doesn't survive contact.
Stay curious,
Brad
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PS. I have some really great word sorts dealing with assimilated prefixes already done for you in the Share Resources section of Creating English Orthographers (CEO), my subscription-based community. Check it out here: Subscribe to CEO!
PPS. Perhaps the best example of contamination is the could. See the word should is related to shall, and the word would is related to will, so it's natural they would contain an could is related to can without an could is now spelled with an
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