# Split "questioned" into morphemes



## liquidator87

How would you split the word "questioned" into morphemes?

I cannot decide between:
1) quest-ion-ed
2) question-ed

Thanks in advance


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## PaulQ

I would say kwes-ch_uh_nd - ques-chund


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## Loob

Hello, liquidator87 - welcome to the forums.

I would say it has only two morphemes: *question*, plus the past-tense marker *-ed*.


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## Sobakus

Loob said:


> Hello, liquidator87 - welcome to the forums.
> 
> I would say it has only two morphemes: *question*, plus the past-tense marker *-ed*.



But _-ion_ is a separate suffix and there are other words with the root _quest-_, therefore it's two morphemes. As for kwes-chuhnd, this is syllabic, not morphemic division.


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## ewie

Sobakus said:


> there are other words with the root _quest-_


For example?


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## Sobakus

ewie said:


> For example?



Oh, come on, isn't _quest_ itself a word?


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## ewie

Well yes.  But _question _in English* isn't _quest + ion_ ~ it's just a word/morpheme in itself.  It's not like (for example) _realization_ which, in English, can still be broken down into _real > real/ize > real/iz/ation_.

_quest > quest/s > quest/ing
question > question/s > question/ed > question/ing > un/question/able _etc.

*Though it may have been that in Latin


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## Sobakus

I see what you mean, I guess it's a matter of historical vs. modern approach, especially in English which disregards the morphemic distinction even in native Germanic words to a large extent. Still, I don't think that having acquired a separate meaning automatically makes a word become a separate morpheme, at least it doesn't in languages like Russian or German.


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## JulianStuart

Sobakus said:


> I see what you mean, I guess it's a matter of historical vs. modern approach, especially in English which disregards the morphemic distinction even in native Germanic words to a large extent. Still, I don't think that having acquired a separate meaning automatically makes a word become a separate morpheme, at least it doesn't in languages like Russian or German.


Ah, but this is the English Only forum and what happens in other languages is potentially of interest, but technically off-topic.  However, you have highlighted the key question eek - how do you or we define morpheme for English words?


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## Sobakus

JulianStuart said:


> Ah, but this is the English Only forum and what happens in other languages is potentially of interest, but technically off-topic.  However, you have highlighted the key question eek - how do you or we define morpheme for English words?



I meantioned other languages because morpheme is a universal concept and therefore its behaviour in other languages should potentially translate to English. The rule of thumb I read somewhere sometime states that if removing the affixes leaves you with a non-existent word, the root includes the removed affixes, for ex. _petition_. This doesn't seem to be the case with _question_, though.


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## lucas-sp

Sobakus said:


> I meantioned other languages because morpheme is a universal concept and therefore its behaviour in other languages should potentially translate to English. The rule of thumb I read somewhere sometime states that if removing the affixes leaves you with a non-existent word, the root includes the removed affixes, for ex. _petition_. This doesn't seem to be the case with _question_, though.


I agree completely with Ewie. Question/ed is the right breakdown, because "quest" isn't one of the building blocks of the word "question."

To give another example, you can break the one word "real" into the prefix "re-" and the suffix "-al," but neither "re" or "al" is a morpheme making up the word "real." No, "real" is itself the morpheme.

A morpheme is the smallest possible semantic unit in _a given _language. What role similar morphemes play in other languages is irrelevant.

(I think this might be particularly confusing to foreign-language-speakers where "to question" is more explicitly "to go hunting after," that is, in languages where the "quest" is still a big part of a "question.")


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## Sobakus

lucas-sp said:


> I agree completely with Ewie. Question/ed is the right breakdown, because "quest" isn't one of the building blocks of the word "question."
> 
> To give another example, you can break the one word "real" into the prefix "re-" and the affix "-al," but neither "re" or "al" is a morpheme making up the word "real." No, "real" is itself the morpheme.
> 
> A morpheme is the smallest possible semantic unit in _a given _language. What role similar morphemes play in other languages is irrelevant.
> 
> (I think this might be particularly confusing to foreign-language-speakers where "to question" is more explicitly "to go hunting after," that is, in languages where the "quest" is still a big part of a "question.")



I'm afraid you're trying to dismember a word to see if its meaning is comprised of the sum of its parts (your analysis of _real_ really )) misses the mark since it doesn't contain a root). I'm afraid words don't always work that way. However, I see the point both *ewie* and you are trying to make, so now we need some sort of academic opinion on the matter. If I find something useful, I'll post it later.


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## JulianStuart

Sobakus said:


> I'm afraid you're trying to dismember a word to see if its meaning is comprised of the sum of its parts (your analysis of _real_ really )) misses the mark since it doesn't contain a root). I'm afraid words don't always work that way.


I think the "re- -al" example illustrates that point very well   Both re- and -al are what you referred to as affixes.  The point lucas was making was that they are not always affixes, by analogy to the way "quest" is not always a root - although it may have been during the evolution of the word.  Thus question is no longer, in English, related to its original root word so it has (morphed into ) become a non-divisible morpheme in its own right.


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## Sobakus

JulianStuart said:


> I think the "re- -al" example illustrates that point very well   Both re- and -al are what you referred to as affixes.  The point lucas was making was that they are not always affixes, by analogy to the way "quest" is not always a root - although it may have been during the evolution of the word.  Thus question is no longer, in English, related to its original root word so it has (morphed into ) become a non-divisible morpheme in its own right.



Re is not an affix in this case, it was the root in Latin  What you need is to separate the suffix _-al_, make sure that the remaining thing is not a word in any way, and apply my rule of thumb that I gave in post #10. I'm not sure what to do with such obviously related prefixed words as require, inquire, acquire though...


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## Sobakus

That's it, now I see what the problem is: most English speakers don't really understand the concept of a morpheme, and more precisely, of a root morpheme, too well.

You see, the root is not a separate word that another word is derived from, it's the part common to both of them after removing all the affixes. It carries the basic semantic meaning. What you guys were referring to as morpheme (read: the _root_) is actually called _base_.

A root can be free or bound. A free root can be a separate word, a bound one cannot. -quire- in require, inquire, acquire is a bound root. Quest is a free root. A root cannot include other morphemes, which makes the root _question_ impossible (it would contain the suffix -ion). And a word certainly doesn't become a new root after having acquired a meaning significantly different from that of its root.

By the way, that actually makes re- the root of the world _realisation_.

For further reading, see:
http://www.ehow.com/info_8726950_difference-root-word-base-word.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_(linguistics)

p.s.: please disregard my rule of thumb, it's probably for the base


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## JulianStuart

> A root cannot include other morphemes, which makes the root _question_  impossible (it would contain the suffix -ion). And a word certainly  doesn't become a new root after having acquired a meaning significantly  different from that of its root.



All this technical stuff, just like in my scientific field of biochemistry, revolves around (arbitrary) definitions or approaches.  The word "question" may not be a root, it has what might be considrered a suffix, but if you remove any of it, you lose its semantic meaning - doesn't that make it a morpheme - the smallest piece that carries the word's semantic meaning (based on lucas's "A morpheme is the smallest possible semantic unit in _a given _language.")?

Perhaps the short cut to this dicsussion is for you to provide the definition you are using for the word morpheme?


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## lucas-sp

JulianStuart said:


> The word "question" may not be a root, it has what might be considrered a suffix, but if you remove any of it, you lose its semantic meaning - doesn't that make it a morpheme - the smallest piece that carries the word's semantic meaning


Yes. And no.

Looking at "question" over and over has made me think of "quest" as a morpheme - the same as in "request," "inquest," etc., all situations where it has the sense of "asking." I do still think it's a different morpheme than the morpheme "quest" in the word "quest" (like a knight's quest), where it has the sense of searching after. Of course those two meanings are semantically related, but not as tightly as they can be in other languages.

There are certainly morphemes that "include" affixes, and morphemes that are problematically divided. The classic situation is "uncouth" - it's very difficult to claim that "couth" is a morpheme when it doesn't function as a morpheme in any English word besides "uncouth." So "couth" doesn't really have any semantic value on its own; the word "uncouth" is only one morpheme - even though it so clearly "includes" the prefix "un-". ("Question" comes to English from French, where "question" is actually one of these difficult words; "ion" is a French morpheme but "quest" is not. Food for thought...)

Knowing etymologies can help us find morphemes and roots, but in the end it's irrelevant. I don't think that you can claim that "salad" and "sausage" share a morpheme in English, even though they clearly come from the same etymological root.

And to wrap all this up: we ask ESL students to do these "identify the morpheme!" exercises because English just has too many vocabulary words, and English words get very long, very fast with all the Latin-style suffixes we can add to them. Knowing how to recognize various basic morphemes and how they work helps learners understand new words, and solidify their understanding of the words they already know. Pedagogically, I wouldn't necessarily want a student to associate "quest" and "question," because English speakers don't think about their meanings in the same way - I would want to emphasize that they were different semantic units with different characteristics.


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## Sobakus

JulianStuart said:


> All this technical stuff, just like in my scientific field of biochemistry, revolves around (arbitrary) definitions or approaches.  The word "question" may not be a root, it has what might be considrered a suffix, but if you remove any of it, you lose its semantic meaning - doesn't that make it a morpheme - the smallest piece that carries the word's semantic meaning (based on lucas's "A morpheme is the smallest possible semantic unit in _a given _language.")?
> 
> Perhaps the short cut to this dicsussion is for you to provide the definition you are using for the word morpheme?





lucas-sp said:


> Yes. And no.
> Looking at "question" over and over has made me think of "quest" as a morpheme - the same as in "request," "inquest," etc., all situations where it has the sense of "asking." I do still think it's a different morpheme than the morpheme "quest" in the word "quest" (like a knight's quest), where it has the sense of searching after. Of course those two meanings are semantically related, but not as tightly as they can be in other languages.




You're both mixing lexical and semantic meaning. Semantic meaning is contained within morphemes, as the definition suggests (however it can also be contained in words, sentences and even texts). It is inferred by comparing each and every word with a given morpheme to extract the basic building blocks of meaning such as movement, animal, hot, bright, negative and so on (called seme). Semantic meaning always stays with the morpheme, however different parts of it can become actualised in different grammatical, lexical, syntactical environments to produce the whole array of lexical meanings that different words containing it express. Removing or adding a suffix from or to the word _question_ makes another word with a different lexical meaning, that includes, but is not the sum of, the semantic meanings of its morphemes. It does not change the meanings of those morphemes, they are constant. It does not have to include the lexical meaning of a word it's derived from, that meaning is unique to every word.



lucas-sp said:


> There are certainly morphemes that "include" affixes, and morphemes that are problematically divided. The classic situation is "uncouth" - it's very difficult to claim that "couth" is a morpheme when it doesn't function as a morpheme in any English word besides "uncouth." So "couth" doesn't really have any semantic value on its own; the word "uncouth" is only one morpheme - even though it so clearly "includes" the prefix "un-".



What you're talking about is a classic example of an unparied word (c.f. cranberry morpheme as well).

Yes, it is a morpheme. Un- is another morpheme, it's what gives the word that negative meaning.

And this:


> ("Question" comes to English from French, where "question" is actually one of these difficult words; "ion" is a French morpheme but "quest" is not. Food for thought...)


I have already explained. It's called bound morpheme.

This might be difficult to understand because in English there's so many free morphemes that can be a word on their own, so you're led to believe a morpheme should be a separate word.

There are no separate words "un", "re", "s", "ing", yet they _are_ morphemes. The same works for root morphemes as well.

The words _salad_ and _sausage_ do not share a morpheme because you cannot divide them any further into pieces that carry any semantic meaning. They can only be divided into syllables, sounds and so on that don't carry any semantic meaning. That is what meant by "the smallest possible semantic unit". That is why they represent two distinct roots. Knowing their etymologies doesn't help us in any way.

Wow, writing and editing this post was a blast


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## SevenDays

A morpheme isn't just the smallest unit in a word that has _meaning_; it's also about the smallest unit that has a grammatical function. In "questioned," *-ed* is an inflectional morpheme (suffix) that marks past time, and *-ion* is a derivational morpheme (suffix) that creates the word "question" from the word "quest," regardless of the meaning of "quest" (_ask_ or _seek_). -ed and -ion are bound morphemes; they can only appear as part of larger words. In other words, -ed is involved in tense-making, and -ion in noun-making, two grammatical functions. There may be other ways of doing morphological analysis, but, to answer the OP, you can certainly make an argument that _questioned_ can be split as *quest*-*ion*-*ed*. 
Cheers


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## wandle

From the Oxford English Dictionary:


> *morpheme*
> _Grammar_
> The lowest unit of language that can convey meaning. You cannot break a morpheme down into anything smaller that has a meaning. Many simple words are morphemes. For example: *child, shed, walk *
> 
> Some words consist of two or more morphemes: *child+ren, child+ish, walk+s, walk+ing *
> *ren, ish, s, ing* all convey some meaning, even though none of them is a word in its own right.
> 
> If we try to break them down any further we just end up with letters or sounds:  *r+e+n, i+s+h*
> None of these conveys meaning on its own.


Clearly, in the phrase 'anything smaller that has a meaning' the OED includes both semantic and grammatical meaning.

I should have thought there was a presumption that a word's root was a morpheme, since it is separately identifiable and has meaning.
This confronts us with the issue of derivation from another language. 'Salad' comes from French 'salade', formed from the Latin root 'sal' (salt) and the French verbal noun termination '-ade' (as in cannonade). Each of those is clearly a morpheme. 'Sausage' also is built up from 'sal', 's' (equivalent to 't' in 'question') and the noun termination '-age', also seen in 'bandage' etc.   

On this basis, we can identify four morphemes in 'questioned': *ques-t-ion-ed*.
Here, 'ques-' represents the Latin root 'quaer-', (also seen in 'quer-y'; in 'questioned', the 'r' has changed to 's' because of the following 't'), '-t-' is the supine stem element used in forming perfect tenses: we see it in English in 'leapt', 'spelt', etc., '-ion' is from the Latin noun termination representing verbal action, and '-ed' is the alternative form of the '-t-' element used in forming past tenses.

If it is objected that this relies on derivations from other languages, I would agree with *Sobakus*' point that morphemes are not confined to a single language: both meanings and units of meaning are shared among languages of the same family. The key is that the minimal unit has meaning: not that it has the same meaning or the same area of use.


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## Sobakus

Actually, that wasn't my point, that's why I have to disagree with you, *wandle*. Morphemes can only be established on the basis of a single language. There is no morpheme you identified as _-t-_ in the English word, even though there was in Latin. You cannot break down the word _quest_ any further, there is no word with the root _ques_. In English _-t_ is an allomorph of the past tense verbal marker _-ed/-d/-t_, and this is not a verbal form. However, all the other morphemes are there, they were borrowed from French and Latin and have since become an integral part of the language.


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## wandle

If we take 'inquisition', it seems to me we must analyse it into *in-quis-it-ion*.
Here, '-quis-' is another form of 'ques-' (having the same meaning), and '-it-' is another form of 't' (again with the same meaning).


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## Sobakus

wandle said:


> If we take 'inquisition', it seems to me we must analyse it into *in-quis-it-ion*.
> Here, '-quis-' is another form of 'ques-' (having the same meaning), and '-it-' is another form of 't' (again with the same meaning).



Neither -t- nor -it- have any semantic or grammatical meaning whatsoever in the English word (apart from the one I mentioned). The suffixes here are either -it(e)- (as in composite) and -ion-, or a single suffix -ition-, depending on how you look at it. The -t- here sertainly isn't a variant of -ed, and whether to consider _quis_ a variant of _quest_ in English seems a complicated issue requiring more analysis. In any case, one should not distinguish morphemes based on etymology or other languages, as you suggested.


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## wandle

Sobakus said:


> Neither -t- nor -it- have any semantic or grammatical meaning whatsoever in the English word (apart from the one I mentioned).


Pardon me, but that is the meaning I mentioned first and which I am still referring to. 
Where a form or meaning is shared between languages, it is not a question of basing one upon another but of recognising what they have in common.
There is clearly a stem '-quire-' in English, which appears in 'acquire', 'inquire', 'require' etc.
This is another form (an allomorph with changed vowel) of the stem 'quer-' in the word 'query'. 
'Ques-' in 'question' is another form again, with 'r' changed to 's', as mentioned earlier.


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## Sobakus

wandle said:


> Pardon me, but that is the meaning I mentioned first and which I am still referring to.
> Where a form or meaning is shared between languages, it is not a question of basing one upon another but of recognising what they have in common.
> There is clearly a stem '-quire-' in English, which appears in 'acquire', 'inquire', 'require' etc.
> This is another form (an allomorph with changed vowel) of the stem 'quer-' in the word 'query'.
> 'Ques-' in 'question' is another form again, with 'r' changed to 's', as mentioned earlier.



"A supine stem element"? I'm sorry but there's no supine in English, nor is there a separate supine stem or any supine meaning to the word _quest_. I even doubt it was a separate suffix in Latin, for starters.

The stem -quire- is certainly there, but in English the only root gradation is ablaut (the so-called irregular verbs), whereas -quire-, -quer-, -ques- are simply fossilised forms inhereted from French or Latin. There is no system they fit into in English, no rule to explain their usage. They might have inherited certain semantic meanings of the corresponding Latin root, however, it is no obvious fact that they are a single semantic entity. Sharing a common etymology is no excuse, otherwise we would have to file shirt and skirt, steer and starboard, borough and burger under the same root.


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## wandle

wandle said:


> '-t-' is the supine stem element used in forming perfect tenses: we see it in English in 'leapt', 'spelt', etc.,
> ...
> and '-ed' is the alternative form of the '-t-' element used in forming past tenses.


In other words, I maintain the identity of these forms as translingual allomorphs. This '-t-' termination appears in various forms in Latin, German and English. While it is native to (and very common in) Latin it is also native to (and very common in) Germanic languages and I know no reason to give priority to either. It is the same phenomenon.

I see '-quire-', 'quer-' and 'ques-' as allomorphs which follow regular patterns of transformation with an underlying semantic identity.


> Sharing a common etymology is no excuse, otherwise we would have to file shirt and skirt, steer and starboard, borough and burger under the same root.


Those words are certainly related, but they do not seem to me to be relevant here.


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## se16teddy

Surely those who are arguing that_ quest_ in _question_ is an morpheme must also explain how_ ion_ in _question_ is a morpheme? Surely a word can't consist of a morpheme *plus* a meaningless bunch of sounds added just for fun? What is the meaning of _ion_?


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## Myridon

se16teddy said:


> What is the meaning of _ion_?


From the Word Reference dictionary:





> *-ion*  suffix forming nouns
> 
> indicating an action, process, or state: creation,  objection


When we see a word ending in -ion, it means something to us.  We can guess that osculation is the noun for the action of osculating even if we don't know the word "osculate".  On the other hand, "question" is not the act of "questing" which is the source of this current argument.   It is a morpheme in "osculation" but not in "question."


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## lucas-sp

Forget Latin. Forget French. We can only be interested in contemporary English here. And meaning _is_ function; that's how "-ion" has a meaning - it serves a purpose. So if an explanation goes in a direction that makes it stop being useful, we might need to discard it.

There are two possible answers:

1. "Question" has two morphemes: "quest" as in request, inquest, etc. and "ion" as in action, creation, etc.; its meaning is created through the addition of a suffix to a root
2. "Question" has one morpheme: its meaning is fundamentally different from that created through the addition of the suffix "-ion" to the root "quest"; the two (perhaps originally) distinct morphemes have become fused over time

As a teacher, I would accept both of these answers because they both show an understanding of the term "morpheme" and the difficulties relating to its use, as well as a good grasp of the English language.

My desire is to point out that "question" has, to my native speaker's mind, a value that cannot be reduced to its component parts; obviously every word is somewhat different from the sum of its morphemes, but this difference seems particularly apt - there's a "quest" of "questing" and a "quest" of "questioning," and although they look the same, they behave differently. For that reason, in a word like "questioned," it seems to me like the smallest possible units are "question" and "ed." Once you break "question" down, you start changing the meaning.

Just because two morphemes look the same doesn't mean that they are the same. For example, "ion" is a different morpheme in phrases like "creation," "ionize," and "Plato's _Ion_." I think we could also say that there are two morphemes that look like "quest": one of seeking and one of asking.


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## lucas-sp

I'm also very confused by the argument that we have to accept "quest" as a morpheme in "question," but not "saus" as a morpheme in "sausage," particularly in light of their etymologies. We have the morpheme-looking "-age" suffix, plus the "saus-" root that, arguably, is identifiable in "sauce."

The reason we don't think of "sausage" as having two morphemes is that the meaning "a dried stick of meat" is so different from what it would mean as "sauce + age," viz., "the result of an action of saucing." (Of course this is what "sausage" has meant, historically speaking.) 

This is exactly what the one-morpheme people are saying: that it's not helpful to think of "question" as having two morphemes since it is so different from what it would mean as "quest + ing."

Now, I'm not sure if I completely agree with this argument any more, since there does seem to be a version of the "quest" morpheme related to asking or inquiring, but...


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## Sobakus

wandle said:


> In other words, I maintain the identity of these forms as translingual allomorphs.


I'm afraid this forum is no place for ground-breaking scientific theories.


lucas-sp said:


> This is exactly what the one-morpheme people are saying: that it's not helpful to think of "question" as having two morphemes since it is so different from what it would mean as "quest + ing."



Let me clarify something: you're still not seeing the difference between a root and a word. The word _question_ is not formed from the word _quest_. It is formed from the *root*_ -quest-_. The word _quest_ is formed from the root _-quest-_ as well, it includes some of its meanings, but not others. The semantic meaning of a root includes the whole array of meanings the words including it express. A word equals a root if only one word with said root exists and has no affixes.

Seriously, I'm really surprised that the notion of a morpheme is so alien to English speakers, because in highly inflected I-E languages most words are formed by combining a root with a prefix. You would do well to see what those German prefixes can do to the basic meaning of a word, it would give you at least some perspective to base your opinions on. And yes, I understand you may feel your own special language is entitled to have its own definition of morpheme, but a linguistic universal is a linguistic universal, you just can't do anything about it.


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## Loob

Sobakus said:


> Seriously, I'm really surprised that the notion of a morpheme is so alien to English speakers


The notion of "morpheme" is not alien to English-speakers.

I stick with my view: "questioned" consists of two morphemes, just like "cautioned". The _quest_ in "inquest" is a morpheme; the _quest_ in "question" isn't.

One of the things that this thread goes to show is that division into morphemes isn't straightforward.


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## JulianStuart

The notion of a morpheme is not at all strange.  It is the "rules" that might allow everyone to agree unequivocally how to identify them that is the problem.  _Definition of terms_ is not a linguistic universal, even if some of the items in such a description may be 

I have to confess that these heated discussions (like those surrounding syllabification or even some scientific or technical terminology), where strong assertions are based on definitions used by one party that are not necessarily agreed to by other parties, frequently give me a headache  It is often the case that the encounter is between people using the very precise definitions from the specialized terminology in their field and those who use the word more casually.  The former try to insist that everyone adhere to their precision while those outside that particular field are often not persuaded.   I usually end up reaching for the morph*ine* for my headache


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## Loob

JulianStuart said:


> I usually end up reaching for the morph*ine* for my headache


Me too, Julian


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## JustKate

Me three! 

The *concept* of morphemes is quite clear - it's when you try to take that concept and apply it that you find out the difference between theory and practice. What seems so clear in - to use an example from the Oxford Dictionaries website - _incoming_ is considerably less clear in _questioned_. It seems clear to me that _questioned_ has just two, but...?


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## Loob

lucas-sp said:


> There are two possible answers:
> 
> 1. "Question" has two morphemes: "quest" as in request, inquest, etc. and "ion" as in action, creation, etc.; its meaning is created through the addition of a suffix to a root
> 2. "Question" has one morpheme: its meaning is fundamentally different from that created through the addition of the suffix "-ion" to the root "quest"; the two (perhaps originally) distinct morphemes have become fused over time
> 
> As a teacher, I would accept both of these answers because they both show an understanding of the term "morpheme" and the difficulties relating to its use, as well as a good grasp of the English language.


This seems to me to be an excellent answer to the OP's original question.


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## Giorgio Spizzi

English _Question_ is one of a large family of English words that go back to the Latin verb _quaerere_ 'seek, ask.'
Its past participle _quaestus_ formed the basis of a noun, _quaestio_, which, via Middle French, has become English _question_.
An earlier form of the past participle was _quaesitus_, and its feminine vesion _quaesita_ eventually passed into English via Old French as _quest_.

My conviction is that present-day English _questioned_ contains one lexeme, _question_, and a grammatical morpheme, _ed_.

Best.

GS


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## lucas-sp

Sobakus said:


> I'm really surprised that the notion of a morpheme is so alien to English speakers, because in highly inflected I-E languages most words are formed by combining a root with a prefix. You would do well to see what those German prefixes can do to the basic meaning of a word, it would give you at least some perspective to base your opinions on. And yes, I understand you may feel your own special language is entitled to have its own definition of morpheme...


That's a little unfair, Sobakus. I think many of us (well, more than one of us) actually know quite a bit about German, among other languages. And many of us are also familiar with "morpheme" both as a linguistic term and - as I suspect it is meant here - as a term used in ESL classes. These are different definitions and uses. And again, we want our suggestions to be as practical as possible, and to reveal as much about the language _as it is used_.

I think you're confusing a native English speaker's reluctance to break "question" up into two morphemes with an ignorance about how morphemes work. We are very good with morphemes in English, and we immediately see how "decomposing" is four morphemes, or "repopulated" is four. We see the units of meaning and how they fit together and build an overall meaning. And we aren't confused when it turns out "pos-" isn't a word, or "popul-" isn't a word.

What perhaps you would do well to notice is that many English speakers _don't_ feel like they can break "question" up in this way. That's some empirical evidence right there that "question" is one morpheme. And that's what would be most helpful for an ESL student (and, I think, a linguist who was studying contemporary English; once history is involved then I can see reasons to think of "quest" as a morpheme in "question").

Don't assume that just because definitions in linguistics are universally applicable that they will apply everywhere _in the same way_. Just because "question" breaks down one way in Latin or German doesn't mean it will break down that way in English.


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## SevenDays

And if the OP really wants to impress (or _confuse_) the teacher (if there is a teacher involved in this), add this one to the two the OP proposed (which I don't believe has been mentioned yet):
_*ques*-*tion*-*ed*_, where the morpheme *-tion-* turns the root (from Latin) *ques-* into "question," which is then put in past tense by the morpheme *-ed*.
But, after all this, perhaps the OP is the one who's really confused.
But I second what Loob said: _division into morphemes isn't straightforward. 
_Cheers


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## Sobakus

lucas-sp said:


> What perhaps you would do well to notice is that many English speakers _don't_ feel like they can break "question" up in this way. That's some empirical evidence right there that "question" is one morpheme. And that's what would be most helpful for an ESL student (and, I think, a linguist who was studying contemporary English; once history is involved then I can see reasons to think of "quest" as a morpheme in "question").



I do notice that and I feel exactly the same way. However, I also feel the same way about a huge load of words in other languages, including my native one: wait, is this the root? Wait, does this word even has anything in common with that one? However, morphemic division is done in this exact way: breaking the word down until no meaningful component can be separated from it.

But in practice, and especially in such heavy-borrowing languages as English, morphemes aren't very useful. What most of the people in this thread see as a single meaningful entity is called a _stem_. A stem is the word minus its inflectional affixes (person, number, tense markers). Thus, the stem of the word _questioned_ is _question_. However, this also makes _unquestionable_ the stem of the word _unquestionable_. By all means, break the word down in this way, however mixing these two approaches isn't an option.


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## wandle

Sobakus said:


> I'm afraid this forum is no place for ground-breaking scientific theories.


Yet I still see the connections and continuities of meaning which I mentioned between the components of one language and another within the same family. One cannot 'unsee' a perception or insight after experiencing it.  (An insight might be mistaken, of course, but that has not been shown.)


Sobakus said:


> However, morphemic division is done in this exact way: breaking the word down until no meaningful component can be separated from it.


Evidently some people see meaning where others do not. This applies to a number of contributors here, which does make it difficult to establish what a morpheme is.


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## natkretep

Coming in late, but I'm also going to say that _questioned _has two morphemes.

My basis for saying this is that _question_ is derived from Anglo-Norman or French _​questionner_ as a whole, and on that basis, English _q__uestion _cannot be analysed further. We shouldn't be going down the path of Old French or Latin.


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## se16teddy

Myridon said:


> Whenwe see a word ending in -ion, it means something to us. We can guess thatosculation is the noun for the action of osculating even if we don't know theword "osculate". On the other hand, "question" is not theact of "questing" which is the source of this current argument.





Myridon said:


> It is a morpheme in "osculation"but not in "question."


So maybe the word "question"can be divided into two morphemes quest+ion when it is used in this sense fromthe OED:

*III 4 b. *_*spec.*_* The application of torture as part of a judicial examination. Usu. with definite article. Now *_*hist.*_* and *_*arch...*_

_a_1538 A. Abell _Roit or Quheill of Tyme_ f. 57v,Mony wes tane..& put to pane & questioun to schaw the doaris of that.
1583 W. Cecil _Executionof Iustice_ sig. Bii, No one was called to any capitall or bloody question upon matters of religion.
Quest =enquiry
Ion =act of doing something
Question= act of pursuing an enquiry by torture.


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## Sobakus

wandle said:


> Yet I still see the connections and continuities of meaning which I mentioned between the components of one language and another within the same family. One cannot 'unsee' a perception or insight after experiencing it.  (An insight might be mistaken, of course, but that has not been shown.)


Your insight is most probably right, but it doesn't change the fact that all structural elements of a language work solely within the framework of that language. This is the basic principle of linguistics.


> Evidently some people see meaning where others do not. This applies to a number of contributors here, which does make it difficult to establish what a morpheme is.


What morpheme is has been established somewhere in 19th century, I believe. The fact that some contributors try to re-establish it can only be evident of the fact that they are unfamiliar with, or poorly understand, the established definition in the first place.


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## JulianStuart

Sobakus said:


> I see what you mean, I guess it's a matter of historical vs. modern approach, especially in English which disregards the morphemic distinction even in native Germanic words to a large extent.





Sobakus said:


> What morpheme is has been established somewhere in 19th century, I believe. The fact that some contributors try to re-establish it can only be evident of the fact that they are unfamiliar with, or poorly understand, the established definition in the first place.


Perhaps you are referring to the 19th century as the historical approach and the other contributors are using the modern approach - hence the discussion?


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## wandle

Sobakus said:


> Your insight is most probably right, but it doesn't change the fact that all structural elements of a language work solely within the framework of that language. This is the basic principle of linguistics.


 This reads more like an imposed academic classification than a reflection of objective reality, particularly in regard to living things like languages, which are related in families and evolve like living things, retaining some features in common while changing others.


> What morpheme is has been established somewhere in 19th century, I believe. The fact that some contributors try to re-establish it can only be evident of the fact that they are unfamiliar with, or poorly understand, the established definition in the first place.


The question is less the definition of 'morpheme', more the application of the terms 'meaning' and 'meaningful' as used in defining it.

The following definitions have been offered in this thread:

_A morpheme is the smallest possible semantic unit in a given language. _(*lucas-sp*)

_However, morphemic division is done in this exact way: breaking the word down until no meaningful component can be separated from it._ (*Sobakus*)

_The lowest unit of language that can convey meaning._(OED)
The examples given with this definition show that 'meaning' is not confined to semantic content, but also includes grammatical function.

I still see a clear meaning in each of the four elements in 'questioned': *ques-t-ion-ed*.

The validity of *-t-* as a morpheme has been disputed. It seems clear, however, that it has an identifiable grammatical meaning in English. If you already know the verb 'impose' and the noun 'imposition' formed from it, and then meet for the first time the word 'impost', you can deduce from knowledge of English alone that this noun also expresses the idea of something 'imposed'. It might even dawn on you, if you bear in mind the similarity of 'leapt' and 'leaped' and other such pairs, that there is a remarkable similarity between 'impost' and 'imposed'.


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## irinet

Basically, the polimorphematic word under your analysis is a Latin borrowing. Why not seeing, consequently, analysing it as such?! What I mean here is to think about it from a diachronical perspective. The only contribution that English has on changing and making this content word grow was the adding of specific bound morphemes (or functional stems) like, 'cion' (Middle English), 'ed', 'ing'.
It seems to me that 'quest', 'query' and 'question' (semantically related with the meaning of 'ask') share the same base/root 'que' (from the Latin lemmas, 'quaestus', 'quaerere'); the Latin  grapheme 'ae' pronounced 'e' have been borrowed, I should better say, it has survived as the phoneme 'e'. The result is, of course what we read and write now, the grapheme 'e' in the base 'que'. 'Tion' can also be a Latin suffix (originally 'tio') under the influence of Middle English ('cion'), in its turn influenced by Middle French('tion'), as someone previously  mentioned in this thread. If I had to go deeper, I would dare say that the word has been borrowed as such from the neighbourhood:  the French 'question' which contains the root morpheme 'que' = 'what'. But I cannot say if this is or is not a working hypothesis because I am not sure as to how, when, or why the respective borrowing occured.
So, couldn't we have the Latin root morpheme 'ques' and two bound morphemes ('tion' + 'ed')? More than that, if I am not mistaken, the word 'ques-tion' is a two-syllable word. Would it be more (etymology perhaps) beyond the word splitting common rules?
Also, there are a couple of 'ques' s in English words (Latin polimorphematic borrowings) 'questor' (we have this one in my language, too) deliquesce',  'sequester' etc.


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## Loob

Sobakus said:


> [...]I see the point both *ewie* and you are trying to make, so now we need some sort of academic opinion on the matter. If I find something useful, I'll post it later.


Did you find the academic opinion you were looking for on the breakdown of "questioned", Sobakus?


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## Sobakus

Loob said:


> Did you find the academic opinion you were looking for on the breakdown of "questioned", Sobakus?


Yes I did, and I even gave a couple of links in this post. It's best to start reading at the wikipedia page for morpheme, however. If you feel in any way uncertain, you can check this root chart and some more explanations on the same website.


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## Loob

Sobakus said:


> Yes I did, and I even gave a couple of links in this post. It's best to start reading at the wikipedia page for morpheme, however. If you feel in any way uncertain, you can check this root chart and some more explanations on the same website.


I'm afraid your second link doesn't work for me.  As to the links in the earlier post, I don't see anything that focuses specifically on "questioned".  The concepts here are not difficult; the difficulty, sometimes, is applying them in practice.

EDIT: second link now working.  But again I don't see that a suffix definition of _-ion_: Noun: condition or action helps us with "questioned".


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## Cagey

This thread has wandered from the specific question asked by a particular poster.  Several people have made suggestions that respond to the original question, but unless we know what definition of 'morpheme' the original poster had been told to use, and how it was supposed to be applied, we cannot do more than speculate. The original poster has not returned to answer the question for themselves. 

Establishing a definition ourselves leads to discussion of general issues that are beyond the scope of the English Only forum. 

This thread is closed. 

Thank you to everyone who participated, 

Cagey, moderator.


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