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For the Valentine's Day holiday, I thought passionate might be an interesting word to investigate. Could it be related to the free base pass?
Get ready for a look at the derivational suffixes, especially the suffixes <-ate> and <-ion>. We'll explore the machinery of Latin verbs and their principal parts. In addition, we will touch on deponent verbs and Vulgar Latin. We'll also take yet another look at palatalization.
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Meaning
What is this word's meaning and how does the word function?
In Modern English, when we think of the word passionate, we probably think of a "strong love," perhaps romantic; perhaps not. One can have a passionate feeling for nature, or their work, or a cause like women's rights or climate change.
Before we look at a dictionary, I will often ask a student what they think a word means in their own words. In many instances, a student will have a narrow definition, limited to one context. Perhaps they only think of passionate in the romantic sense. As the instructor, it is my responsibility to help them expand their scope of the word and how it could apply in many contexts, not just the romantic one.
The Longman dictionary provides many rich examples of varying contexts. A look at the entry there tells us that someone can have passionate beliefs about justice or passionate feelings for something like football or wildflowers.
We even see a few collocations. Collocations are the words with which our word will appear; it's the company our word likes to keep. In other words, what words do we see frequently appear in context with passionate?
passionate belief
passionate conviction
passionate commitment
passionate concern
passionate supporter
passionate defender
passionate speech
passionate plea
Very few of these actually have to do with "sexual love," as it says in the introduction.
The entry also tell us passionate functions as an adjective. We see in each of the collocations above that the adjective passionate can be used to modify, or describe, many nouns. In fact, the primary function of an adjective is to modify a noun.
Because graphemes and written elements are abstract, it's essential to anchor students in meaning first. Once they understand how the word functions from the first question, the structural questions make more sense.
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Structure
What are the elements that make up this word's structure?
A derivational suffix often communicates grammatical information to the reader. The derivational suffix <-ate> can be used to derive adjectives from a noun:
fortune/ + ate
passion + ate
Notice that I said "can." The suffix <-ate> may also be found on verbs like illuminate, perforate, and animate.
Also, what about the vacation and action? If so, my hypothesis is:
pass + ion + ate
In that case, we come back to the original question, is pass related to passionate?
We can check an etymological dictionary like Etymonline to see whether or not
The Etymonline entry for passionate tells us to see passion. This information alone confirms that we can analyze our word to passion + ate. At this entry, we also see a sense of this word related to anger and emotions.
At the entry for passion, we see that the word has a sense specifically of the sufferings of Christ. If we use the Follow the Froms strategy to read the entry we come to these earlier attestations
from Old French passion
from Late Latin passionem
from past-participle stem of Latin pati
The past-participle stem is often referring to the fourth principal part of a Latin verb. A past participle stem is the form used to describe something that already happened. The source of an English base is often either the infinitive, or second principal part of a Latin verb, or the past-participle, the fourth principal part of a Latin verb. The principal parts of a Latin verb may be found in Lat-Dict.
patior, pati, passus
This entry for pati only has three principal parts. In addition, the second principal part, pati, does not end in the traditional Latin infinitive suffixes of <-are>, <-ere> or <-ire>. I know I have come across a Latin deponent verb. We can recognize these verbs because they only have three parts. The third part is not present, so we can use those last two as the infinitive and the past participle, or "second and fourth" parts. We can also recognize a deponent verb, because the nominative form, or first principal part will often end in <-or> instead of <-o>. Additionally, if you are in Lat-Dict, you can see it tells you the voice is deponent.
For our purposes, we simply remove the Latin past participle suffix of <-us> to arrive at our English base of
pass + ion + ate
This base has a sense of "suffer; endure." When we are passionate for something, we suffer for it or we endure the emotions. The <-ion> is added to derive a noun from the verb. The <-ate> is added to derive an adjective from that noun.
pass
passion
passionate
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Relatives
What are the word's relatives and history?
But is this the same as the free base
For the verb pass, Etymonline's entry tells us it comes from Old French passer which comes from Vulgar Latin's passare. You might note the asterisk on that Vulgar Latin word. This indicates that the word is unattested in writing. Vulgar Latin was the Latin heard in the markets and seen in the graffiti on the wall. Much of it has been lost in written form. Linguists have reconstructed forms believed to have existed. The next from tells us that Vulgar Latin term is derived from the Latin passus, "step." It appears that our pass we use to indicate "moving something" is unrelated.
What about the pass that is in between mountains? No. That word is also from Latin passus, "step."
What about a pass to get into an event or concert? That pass appears to be derived from the verb pass as well.
Words we could put in a morphological matrix with passionate include compassion, passive, and passionately. From the second principal part, we have the etymological relatives patient and patience. We cannot include them in the matrix, because they have different spellings of the base. We can draw an etymological circle around our matrix, and put these two words inside because they share the same root, pati, if not the same base,
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Graphemes
What can the pronunciation of the word teach us about the relationship of its graphemes and its phonology?
Let's start by looking at the suffix <-ate> in this word. We pronounce this suffix with a schwa in passionate, but the suffix <-ate> is commonly pronounced this way.
Sometimes.
We also have the vowel pronounced fully in words like accelerate and appreciate.
What do you notice about these words: passionate, legitimate, and delicate that is different from accelerateand appreciate? Think about how they function.
And then think about the following words: separate, deliberate, elaborate. The suffix <-ate> can be pronounced both ways in those words depending on how the word is functioning in a sentence.
We can also use this word as an example of the suffix <-ion>. This noun-forming suffix is often erroneously taught as <-tion>, <-sion> and <-ssion>. Why would we complicate matters when a suffix <-ion> works nicely with these words? Besides, if we strip a supposed <-tion> from action, what base would we be left with? If we do this from our word, we are left with
This suffix also palatalizes, or "softens," the consonant that comes before it. Palatalization occurs when our tongue moves closer to the hard palate. In our word, the IPA symbols with students, although I think they are important for instructors to know. This is one IPA symbol I do use. So many of my students come to me using terminology like "the action, passion, or ocean. Therefore, I pronounce /ʃ/ when I'm teaching students and I may use the IPA symbol when referring to it. How is /ʃ/ spelled in the following words:
partial
musician
discussion
The palatalizes the preceding consonant. It is not a digraph Graphemes make up morphemes; and therefore, cannot cross a morphemic boundary. The in these words are either connecting vowel letters or part of the suffix. Therefore, they cannot be a "digraph" with a letter from a previous element.
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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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The meaning of passionate has drifted far from the shores of "suffering of Christ." What are other words that have drifted in meaning? |
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Perhaps your students would be interested in understanding the two pronunciations of <-ate>. |
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What are other multiple meaning words, like pass, that might be good to look at with your students? These words are sometimes known as polysemous. The semantics, or "meaning." (Big Idea #1) |
It's always striking to discover that passionate began with a sense of "suffering." I hope each of you haven't suffered too much while reading through this investigation. Thank you for your patience.
What are you doing with your students for Valentine's word study? I'd love to hear your great ideas!
Stay curious,
Brad
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P.S. Do you know a fellow teacher who'd geek out over these word facts? Forward this to them and encourage them to subscribe at this link where they'll get these investigations every Friday.
P.P.S. Would you like to know how I do these investigations with students? In the course I teach with Dr. Jen Petrich, Connecting the D.O.T.S.: Integrating Scientific Word Study into Your Practice, we both show our go-to words and the teaching strategies we use on a daily basis with our students. Join the interest list today, and we will notify you when are scheduling the next cohort!
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