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Many morphological resources are hitting the market these days. Several of them will provide bases and affixes alongside a "definition" before presenting examples like the following:
de + script + ive
The implication is that morphology is simply additive. However, there are several concerns with this presentation, and I want to investigate a word like restorative where the elements may already be obvious to you, but where the sum is greater than its parts.
As we investigate you'll see how a word's function is part of its "meaning." We'll also get clear about the difference between a morpheme and an element. After an examination of the term base, we get into a polysemous word that's been through a little Frenchifying. We'll look at two categories of semantic development: radiation and concatentation. Finally, we'll look at what angle brackets are signalling and why we should spell out the elements inside rather than pronounce them.
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Meaning
What is this word's meaning and how does the word function?
We always begin with meaning. And this is the first concern I have with the traditional presentation of morphology work. I have even seen this misconception among practitioners of scientific word study, treating meaning as a definition.
Sure, we often look up the definition in a tool like the Collins dictionary when first investigating. However, the meaning also refers to the word's value. Value includes its semantic meaning, but it also refers to its position in the system. Think of it like a chess piece. It's not just what it looks like, but also where it sits, how it moves, and what other pieces it relates to.
When we look at the entry for restorative, we learn it's something that "makes you feel healthier, stronger, or more cheerful" after a period of feeling the opposite.
Its position in the system, or function, is as an adjective. Look at its use in the following phrases:
- a restorative spa
- a restorative elixir
- restorative justice
The word may also function as a noun.
- She took a restorative to increase her energy throughout the day.
- A vacation would be the perfect restorative.
We must study all facets of "meaning" to truly know a word.
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Structure
What are the elements that make up this word's structure?
An element is a term for a written morpheme. Morphemes are actually psychological constructs; therefore, the word element differentiates their physical realization from the mental idea. For example, the idea of "past tense" shows in three different ways: the element <-ed>, the <-t> in slept, and the vowel in sang.
Many resources will also say a morpheme is "the smallest unit of meaning." Again, this framing suggests that each morpheme (or element) contains a definition, and that adding them together produces a cohesive definition for the word.
re + store/ + ate/ + ive
The slash marks are there to indicate a single, final, non-syllabic
The base of a word is the primary carrier of lexical meaning. In other words,
And if your students are like mine, they immediately think of that place where they get groceries. Or maybe a place at the mall. Target. Far from the definition of our word. So let's investigate a bit.
When we look up the entry for restorative in Etymonline, it tells us to see restore. Let's go to that entry instead.
There, we learn that this word is derived from the Latin verb restaurare, "repair; rebuild." And you may already be thinking of a relative, but hold that thought for just a bit.
The entry tells us that the restaurare or instaurare. In both words it carries a sense of "establish."
When these words entered French, the French adapted the word to match their own language. We jokingly refer to this as Frenchifying at times. The
re + store/ + ate/ + ive
In English, this word contains a free base, meaning a base that can stand alone as a word without affixes. When free, store is a polysemous word, meaning it has more than one meaning. Let's look at how those meanings developed.
The word store entered English around 1300, like many French words did after the Norman Conquest in 1066 and a second influx after 1200 from the Central Parisian dialect. The verbal sense of "supply; provide" seems to be the earlier sense. From that word, we have the nominal store, which indicates a "place for those supplies." Like the shops at the mall and Target that our students offered above.
We can refer to that type of semantic development as radiation. It works like the rays of a sun. The sense of "supply" in the center radiated out to the place where we hold those supplies. It also radiated out to putting aside these supplies. We store things up for a rainy day.
So, to restore is to build up those supplies again. The word restore developed like links in a chain, or concatenation. The meaning of supply extended into building up our health, something that isn't a physical supply. It then developed further into a psychological "well-being" sense in Modern English. Each link in the chain grows out of the one before it.
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Relatives
What are the word's relatives and history?
A word's family is centered on its base, here storm or story (which has a base storia).
Of course I have words from the verbal paradigm: stores, stored, storing. I also see storage and restore. We have compounds like bookstore and storeroom. We also have restoration, a noun form of our base. We can include storekeeper as well, a compound with an agent suffix.
Earlier, some of you might have thought of restaurant, given the original Latin spelling. If we think of food as being restorative, doesn't that make perfect sense. They share the same root, but have different bases. We also have instauration as another etymological relative. This word has a sense of "renewal."
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Graphemes
What can the pronunciation of the word teach us about the relationship of its graphemes and its phonology?
In scientific word study, we spell out the elements. I inform my students that the angle brackets are a cue for us to "spell out" what's inside, not pronounce it.
Inevitably, though, I have a student who will tell me they see a prefix in this word.
"What prefix?" I ask.
"/ri:/," they offer.
I'll gently remind them that we spell out elements when we refer to them. Elements do not have pronunciations until they are realized in a word. Some people might pronounce this word as /ri:stɔrətɪv/, but I think most of us pronounce it as /rəstɔrətɪv/ with a schwa for the vowel in the prefix. I'm aware of three different pronunciations for this element:
"Go retie your shoe." /ri:/
"The court reversed its decision." /rə/
"Put another record on." /rɛ/
If a student only thinks of this element as /ri:/, then they miss the prefix reverse or record.
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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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Begin exploring how words function in the system as part of your work with the first question. |
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What other polysemous words, like store, might be worth studying with your students? Have you considered current or reservation? That last one has different meanings depending on whether you are a Native American or at a restaurant. |
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By providing a large data set of words with the prefix , your students can begin exploring how the element functions in the word as well as how it might be pronounced. Is there a relationship between the two? (Big Idea #4) |
In one popular morphological resource, the following definitions for the "morphemes" in descriptive are:
de "down, off, away, from"
script "write"
ive "having the quality of"
So descriptive is "having the quality of writing down?"
Or is it "having the quality of writing off?"
See morphology is not additive. It is a system where the sum is greater than its parts. The word descriptive is part of a family where all of the words have a sense of "writing" or even "portraying" as carried in the base. However, its semantic development includes its contrastive identity with words like prescriptive. Prescriptive tells us what ought to be, but descriptive tells us what is.
To really understand a word, we have to look outside of the word, at the entire system, not just its elements, but its semantics, its syntactical function, its etymology, and its phonology.
I'm not telling you to ditch resources with these long lists of definitions for elements. In fact, you may be required to use them.
I'm asking you to use them judiciously. Do not ask students to memorize definitions of morphemes. Do not ask them to complete "word sums" and parrot back the additive meaning.
Do ask them to look at families. Are product and conduct related?
Do ask them to contrast meaning within the family. How does produce differ from reduce? That question alone will teach them more about "meanings" of
Do ask them to look to the wider system. Does the produce operate the same as the protect or provide?
This is scientific word study. Not looking at "rules and definitions" (prescriptive) but looking at the system and "what is" (descriptive).
I hope that was restorative.
Stay curious,
Brad
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PS. If you are reading this before midnight on Saturday, September 19th, there are still two spots left to join Connecting the D.O.T.S.: Integrating Scientific Word Study into Your Practice, the class I teach with Dr. Jennifer Petrich.
PPS. Do you find scientific word study restorative or stressful? Reply to this email and let me know. It's fine if you think it's stressful; it can be! Let's work through it and get better together.
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