Thanks for this information.  
I think that when people say "always" or "never" I doubt them.  
That's probably just as well.


-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "STAHLKE, HERBERT F" <[log in to unmask]>
>
> Jan,
> 
> The statement isn't far from true.  Etymologically, -tion is a compound
> suffix, combining the Latin participial suffix -t and the Latin
> nominalizing suffix -ion-.  In English, which suffix a word has is
> pretty much of function of that word's etymology, and there is no
> difference in meaning between them.
> 
> As to whether there are verbs in -ion or -tion, there are.  Three that
> come to mind immediately are "fashion", "ration," and "station."  Given
> the ease with which English grammar shifts nouns to verbs, giving rise
> even to the somewhat overstated maxim "Every noun can be verbed," I
> wouldn't be surprised to find a lot more instances.  "Fashion," by the
> way, was borrowed from French in the 15th c.  French had inherited it
> from Latin "factio," genitive "factionis," and had lost the <i> from
> it's spelling before English borrowed the word.  This suggests that by
> the time English borrowed the word, French grammar no longer treated it
> as containing a suffix.  The <i> in the English form may represent an
> analogy to the spelling of other words ending in the same phonetic
> syllable.  That letter appears first in the 16th c. and the <-shi->
> spelling doesn't appear till the 17th.
> 
> Etymology, by the way, is a tricky and precise historical discipline,
> and etymology works on specific words rather than on classes of words.
> The fact that -t-ion- was a productive derivation in Latin doesn't mean
> that it necessarily remains so in the languages that borrow it.
> Languages tend to borrow words as whole units without the morphology
> they may have in the source language.  So -tion and -ion forms shouldn't
> be expected to behave consistently in English.
> 
> Herb
> 
> I teach middle school.  One of the teachers in my district (not my
> building) said that all words that end in -tion are nouns.  I never
> heard that before, but I thought of all the words I could that end in
> -tion.  I think he might be right.
> 
> Then I thought maybe all words that end in just -ion are nouns.  Am I
> right?  Maybe this information will help my students, but I don't want
> to tell them something wrong.
> 
> If all words that end is -ion are nouns, can someone tell me why?  Is
> there some history about those words?
> Thanks!
> Jan
> 
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