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English -sion, -tion nouns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Felicia Harben Trager
Felicia Harben Trager*
Affiliation:
University of Buffalo
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Extract

This study presents a partial analysis of nouns ending in orthographic -sion, -tion (or -ion) and morphophonemic variations between these nouns and related stems. It deals with an area traditionally called derivation.

The frame of reference is that of Trager and Smith, Outline of English Structure, supplemented by subsequent revisions and additions to the general theory developed by the authors in their teaching. For the purposes of this study the morphemic analysis will be limited to “postmorphemes,” i.e., morphemes occurring at the end of the word. Everything which precedes the postmorpheme(s) will be called the “stem” and will not be further segmented. The “stem” may occur elsewhere as an independent word (mutation: mutate) or in composition with different postmorpheme(s) (ambition: ambitious). The following special symbols will be used: √ … “morphemes”; √ … “allomorphs”; √ …/ “morphophonemes”; ∽ “varies with.” In three cases (Y, T, S) a small capital letter is used as a morphophonemic symbol; these are denned below.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , Spring 1962 , pp. 86 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1962

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References

1 Based on an original study submitted as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts at the University of Buffalo in 1959. Suggestions and comments made by George L. Trager and Charles A. Ferguson have been extremely valuable to the author in the preparation of the present version.

2 Meaning as such will not be discussed. Decisions on relatedness of stems are based on simple inspection; only a very few cases seemed questionable.

That -sion, -tion is a noun formant is taken as a given. It may be noted as a matter of interest that this group of nouns often has related verb forms(e.g. action: act; classification: classify; mutation: mutate). However, the counterpart of discretion is the adjective discreet and the counterpart of tension, tense, may be either an adjective or verb. There are also words such as nation and ambition which have no independently occurring counterparts.

3 For other treatments of English derivation see Bloomfield, Leonard, Language (New York, 1933), pp. 164–165 Google ScholarPubMed; 209–226; 237–246; Bloch, Bernard and Trager, George L., Outline of Linguistic Analysis (Baltimore, 1942), pp. 64–66 Google Scholar; Nida, Eugene A., Morphology: The Descriptive Analysis of Words (Ann Arbor, 1949), pp. 98–102 Google Scholar; Hill, Archibald A., Introduction to Linguistic Structures (New York, 1958), pp. 166–172 Google Scholar; Hockett, Charles F., A Course in Modern Linguistics (New York, 1958), pp. 240 245 Google Scholar.

4 Trager, George L. Cf., “French Morphology: Verb Inflection,” Lang. 31 (1955), pp. 511–529 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Listed here in decreasing order of frequency with /š/ accounting for about 90 per cent of the occurrences.

6 The √-t- and √-s- are not always clearly separable in some stems, however; whether they should be analysed as separate morphemes in such pairs as act: action and possess: possession or in stems which do not occur as words is a question not resolved here, since the treatment of the final /t/ or /s/ is not affected by this question.

7 All three show an allomorph that has the vowel /ə/ or /ɨ/ under weak stress in related words without √-y-ən, e.g. sedative, definitive, diminutive.

8 Stresses shift in a similar way on the phrase level as well. Technically, for example, television /télɨ+vìžən/ (or said with /′ +Λ/) must be considered a phrase in which only one primary stress is retained over the two parts. Perhaps a better term for such a construction would be “phrase-word.” There are only a very few such phrase-words with √-Y-ən.