Analyzing a Structured Word Inquiry:
Learning from an investigation of the relationship between <democracy> and <democratic>
Following the Trail (What’s with the numbers?)
This document marks the trail of an as yet unresolved scientific
investigation seeking to understand the relationship between
<democracy> and <democratic>.
As you follow the trail, I occasionally step out of the story to point to
basic concepts and principles I draw on for this and any
investigation. As well, I sometimes include numbers as markers to
possible tangents for further study of those underlying concepts and
principles. Those ‘side trails’ are found this a separate but related
downloadable document. Numbers signal the part of that document
with the relevant information for further study.
Getting Started with Productive Guiding Questions
When you get stuck on a spelling question, I recommend following
the prompts of the “Stuck on a Spelling?” reference chart below.
Stuck on a Spelling?
My son Sklyer recently came home with a small list of
words from school that I wanted to investigate with him.
The word <democratic> grabbed my attention.
What does it mean?
I had investigated the word <democracy> before. I knew it
was a compound. If my memory was correct, it had one
bound base that went back to a root with the denotation
of "people" and another bound base that grows from a
root denoting "power". I always liked that the word
<democracy> literally denotes “power of the people”. With
that memory as a prompt, I was keen to investigate
<democratic> and <democracy> with Skyler.
How is it built?
Almost immediately we ran into a surprising (interesting!)
bump in my investigation...
To get started we made an initial analysis of
<democracy> with this word sum:
Investigate with these questions...
1. What does the word mean?
2. How is it built?
• Can you identify any bases or affixes with a word sum?
3. What other related words can you think of?
• Morphological relations: Can the Word Searcher help you
find words that could join your word on a matrix?
• Etymological relations: Can a word origin dictionary (e.g.
Etymonline) help you?
4. What are the sounds that matter?
• What grapheme/phoneme correspondences can you find
that fit in your hypothesized morphemes?
demo + cracy → democracy
• Morphological Relations?
But how does this analysis allow for a link between the
second bases of <democratic> and <democracy> that
seem so clearly related?
demo + cracy → democracy
demo + cratic → democratic
?
Hmmm...
www.WordWorksKingston.com
1
From this initial analysis I didn’t see an obvious way
<cracy> and <cratic> could be structurally linked even
though the meaning link was so compelling.
Following the next point on the “Stuck on a Spelling?”
chart helps remind us of a potentially productive question
to act if we don’t know what else to do at this point.
• Etymological Relations?
The etymological information for <democratic> on the
Oxford pointed me to <democracy>, so I have evidence
these words are etymologically related. Oxford tells me
that they share this origin:
ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from French démocratie,
via late Latin fromGreek dēmokratia, from dēmos ‘the
people’ + -kratia ‘power, rule’.
A pause to asses my understanding so far
Oxford confirmed my hypothesis for <democracy> as a
compound for something like "people power.” However, I
remained confused about how (or if) the second base
element of this word “power, rule” is also in <democratic>.
At this point I had two hypotheses to describe the
relationship between <democracy> and <democratic>:
1. They are just members of the same etymological
family.
2. They are members of the same orthographic
morphological family (part of the same matrix).
To me, the fact that my Oxford confirmed the first
hypothesis is freeing. I am intrigued by the challenge of
seeing if there are word sums that link these words with a
common a base element. If I don’t find evidence of a
common base, I am quite happy with the already
established fact that the similarities in the spelling and
meaning of these words can be explained through their
etymological relationship.
(See #1 on this document for more details and resources
on the concepts/principles addressed here.)
Experimenting with word sums
A suggestion for any morphological investigation:
Don’t hypothesize word structure in your head -guide your thinking with possible word sums.
We miss important cues to word structure if we don’t
written word sums to guide our thinking.
Indeed it was looking at my initial word sums and trying to
see how they might relate that helped me see some
possible suffixes I hadn’t considered in this word before:
demo + cratic --> democratic
demo + cracy --> democracy
From these word sums I saw that <democratic> must be
built on the stem <democrat> with an <-ic> suffix, so I
showed that structure with the following word sum...
demo + crat + ic → democratic
With this word sum, I suddenly saw the possibility that
<crat> was not a base, but instead a stem containing the
suffix <-at>. That analysis would look like this:
demo + cr + at + ic → democratic
www.WordWorksKingston.com
2
I knew I was investigating new territory here as this word
sum implies a bound base spelled <cr> that I had never
considered before. However, seeing this word sum next
to the one I for <democracy> grabbed my attention.
demo + cr + at + ic → democratic
demo + cracy --> democracy
If <cr> were a base, it would link these two words! For
<democracy> it would leave a plausible suffix <-acy>.
demo + cr + at + ic → democratic
It is true that every spoken syllable needs at least one
vowel letter to represent it, but syllables have nothing to
do with morphemes. And as Carol Chomsky (1970)
reminds us, morphemes don’t even have a pronunciation
until they are in a word. So there is no scientific reason to
reject <cr> as a base element.
But of course, I did not yet have enough evidence to
conclude that this is the base.
(See #2 on this document for more background on twoletter, vowelless bases.)
I was pretty sure sure that I had encountered an <-acy>
suffix before, but I couldn’t think of any words as proof off
the top of my head.
Back to <democracy> and <democratic>
Without the background knowledge addressed in above
(and expanded on in #2), it is likely that I would have
either missed considering the possibility of a <cr> base,
or dismissed it out of hand.
Collect data with the Word Searcher
A search of “acy$” for final <acy> on the Word Searcher
yields words like <primacy> which can be analyzed
<prime/ + acy> and <advocacy> which can be analyzed
<ad + voce/ + acy> (see more on the base <voce> here.)
I still had a problem though. The bound base <cr>
seemed plausible structurally, but did the Greek root ‘kratia’ really support this hypothesis? My knowledge of
how to draw on Greek to inform understanding of English
morphology is week. I’m getting better in Latin (see #2),
but these things take time!
With this evidence I felt confident that there is an <-acy>
suffix in the world. My word sum passes the structure
test. It is structurally plausible.
So while I was excited about the possibility that my
hypothesis might hold up, I realized that I need more help
working with Greek to be confident in my conclusion.
Could <cr> really be a base element?
Consider this definition of a “base element” from the 2008
6th edition of David Crystal’s basic linguistic reference “A
dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics”
At that point I left <cr> as a hypothesis for the second
base in these words and went on to inspect the first base.
demo + cr + acy → democracy
“[T]he part of a word remaining when all affixes have
been removed” (p. 50).
demo + cr + at + ic → democratic
demo + cr + acy → democracy
Is <demo> really a base, or is it complex?
www.WordWorksKingston.com
3
I have learned from Real Spelling that <-o-> is a common
connecting vowel letter in words of Greek origin.
Guidance from colleagues!
To test if there is an <-o-> connecting vowel letter in
<demo> I looked for words related in meaning that used
the spelling <dem> without the <o>, or a or with <deme>.
The search “dem[^o]” on the Word Searcher collects
words with the letter sequence <dem> that is not followed
by an <o>.
Among the words that came up were <demagogue> and
<pandemic>. A quick check of their word origin confirmed
these words share the Greek base ‘demos’ for “people”.
I seemed to still be on the right trail!
I didn’t find any words in my list with evidence for a base
BEWARE!
This matrix contains errors that are
addressed later in this document.
On Connecting Vowel Letters and “Combining Forms”
The tutorial films on connecting vowel letters and
“combining forms” Morphology Album of the Real Spelling
Gallery convey crucial background knowledge for analysis of these
and countless other words.
Beware of the assumption that this level of linguistic content is
only for teachers of older students, I recently drew on this content
in a Grade 2 class in Chicago!
with a <deme>. So with this analysis Skyler and I
constructed the following word matrix to represent our
current thinking:
At this point, I decided it was time to share this initial
analysis with some friends who I knew would be keen to
help me catch any errors in my thinking.
Can you find some of them?
From Gail in San Francisco:
This is interesting. And I guess there'd be an <-at> for
<diplomat> and an <-ate> for <diplomate>.
I have never thought of <cr> , Pete. That's interesting.
I haven't found evidence for <a+gogue>. Do you need a
word where <gogue> is not preceded by <a>?
Should <graph> be bold?
www.WordWorksKingston.com
4
for errors in your thinking. These emails highlighted some
obvious and not-so-obvious errors in my first analysis. I
had more confidence in my analysis of the <cr> base
since that hypothesis had received no challenge yet.
Do you need <-at> instead of <-ate> because of
<democrat>?
Gail
From Aviva in Nashville:
I learned so much from poking around to explore your
question, Pete. I had never thought about <cr> either, but
the evidence does support your finding about its status as
a bound base.
Following up on Gail's observation that <gogue> seems
always to be preceded by <a>: for instance,
demagogue (n.) 1640s, from Greek demagogos "popular leader," also
"leader of the mob," from demos "people" (see demotic)
+ agogos "leader," from agein "to lead" (see act(n.)).
Often a term of disparagement since the time of its first
use, in Athens, 5c. B.C.E. Form perhaps influenced by
French demagogue (mid-14c.)
So in Greek, the <a> looks to have been part of the
etymon. Similar to Latin <agere>.
Based on this correspondence, I had a number of
corrections to make.
<graph>
Clearly <graph> is a base, and thus needs to be typed
with a capital in the Mini-Matrix-Maker to signal that it
needs to be put in bold.
<a + gogue> or <agogue>
This was a nice catch by Aviva and Gail. Seeing ‘agein’
with the <a> in the Greek root did not offer any support to
my hypothesis of an <-a-> connector vowel in this word.
Following the principle at the top of page 4, I can’t
conclude this deeper analysis without evidence.
<-at> instead of <-ate>
A careless mistake by me since I know the word
<democrat>. The <-at> suffix is less common. I made a
mental not to understand the <-at> suffix better later.
And then Gail again..
Yes, interesting point about <-agogue>. Which means, of
course, it should be a base and in bold on your matrix!
Which I should have realized because of <synagogue>!
<dem> or <deme>?
There was a whole other string of this conversation in
which another friend, Gina Cooke (from LEX), showed
evidence that the base in question had to be <deme>. In
fact this turns out not even to be a bound base! To my
surprise there is a base word <deme>.
Revisiting my initial hypotheses with the benefit of a
scholarly community
I can’t overemphasize the importance of developing a
learning community that you can count on to identify look
From my Mactionary:
deme |dim|
noun
www.WordWorksKingston.com
5
1 a political division of Attica in ancient Greece.
ORIGIN from Greek dēmos ‘township’; sense 2 is an
extended use dating from the 1930s.
Ha! I had actually conducted a “standard search” in the
Word Searcher for <deme>, but came up only with
<academe> which turned out to be unrelated. With Gina’s
evidence, I decided to test the “Free BSD” search option
that includes a much larger bank of words. The very first
hit was <deme>. Not a bad reminder to make best use of
these tools!
Presenting revised findings with matrices
Along with the string of the conversation that helped me
correct my analysis of the first base of <democracy> and
<democrate>, Gail produced this matrix from the MiniMatrix-Maker with <cr> as the central base.
Yet another alternative hypothesis
After assembling all this evidence, I shared it with the
“Old Grouch” at Real Spelling to see if he has some
insights to share that might help clarify this investigation.
He reminded me of a tutorial film that he created on the
spelling of <democracy>. That film was sparked by an
investigation of a student in Zurich that I had been
fortunate enough to get to work with some time ago.
Go to the “Word Studies”
album of the Real Spelling
Gallery and look for the
tutorial film”Power to the
People” to see yet another
analysis of this word.
I revised our original matrix with the needed
corrections identified by my colleagues.
You will see that the Old
Grouch has an interesting
and different analysis than I have presented here.
What can I conclude?
So after all of this, what can I conclude?
www.WordWorksKingston.com
6
As indicated earlier, one safe conclusion I can draw from
my reading of the evidence available so far is that
<democracy> and <democratic> are etymologically
related.
Key guiding principle of structured word inquiry I am
invoking here:
Never draw a conclusion for your students that is
deeper than you can demonstrate.
(See #3 in this document for more on this principle.)
The Old Grouch and I have offered two hypotheses for
orthographic morphological relations, but I can’t claim to
understand the details and implications of each analysis
yet that I can claim a scientific conclusion about the
morphological relationship between these words.
And I’m totally fine with that!
I’ve learned a great deal along the way, and I have new
interesting questions to guide further learning. And I’m
more of a question collector than an answer collector.
I hope that walking through this investigation with all its
tangents and details helps you gain understanding and
motivation to take find interesting questions to explore
with your students -- whether or not you find “the answer”.
Share your thoughts and analyses on Real Spellers!
Post Script:
My friend Gail Venable who helped me enormously to try
and bring some order to this complex representation sent
a short note in along with a some of her final suggestions
that I think are quite crucial.
Consider her final thoughts here:
For the record, although I made that <cr> matrix, I'm not
100% happy with it. I'm just not sure that the Greek
origins support <cr> as the base. And your only <-acy>
evidence is from Latin. Until I know more Greek, I’d rather
not go deeper than <cracy> and <crat>. So I like what
you said at the end about different analyses.
Interestingly the more I worked through my own analysis,
the less confident I felt in my case for the deeper
analysis. If <-acy> turns out to only be a suffix from Latin,
then I have even more reason to abandon my hypothesis
of a <cr> base until and unless I have better evidence.
At this point, I judge that the evidence points to two bound
bases <cracy> and <crat> that grow from the same Root.
Old Grouch’s video suggest that they are twins, but I don’t
know enough about Greek to be able to identify twins
from Greek origin confidently.
I’m open to hear any further thoughts in the comments
sections of the Real Spellers post!
www.WordWorksKingston.com
7