The word preposition. I am trying to break down a series of words into their constituent morphemes and am having trouble with the word 'preposition'. I can obviously see that the 'pre-' is a morpheme in itself. However for 'position' it seems to me that there are a few possibilities. Would it be pos + ition (my first instinct)? Or posit + ion? Posi + tion? Pos + it + ion?
If your instinct tells you one over the others, please explain why? I know that -ition is a suffix, but have read somewhere else that it is made of the affixes -ite and -ion. Are -ite and -ion seperate morphemes also then? Or is '-ition' one morpheme? I know that 'pos-' is a morpheme therefore it's just a case of whether to seperate the '-ition'.
Hopefully someone knows the answer to my question and can explain it to me. Many thanks in advance.
EDIT: I just wanted other peoples' take on it, as the answer I've come up with is pre + pos + ition but I'm pretty sure that's not right.