Morphology – eighth lecture
Writing systems and spelling in English
Writing systems
Today’s lecture is examining the relationship between the orthographic word and the phonological word. The orthographic word represents a lexeme in writing and the phonological word represents the same lexeme in speech. dog dog - orthographic
/dog/ - phonological
Therefore, writing is in fact a way of representing a word by means of visual symbols. There are several different systems of visual symbols used in the world today for the orthographic representation of lexemes (words). For the sake of our study we shall refer to the following three orthographic systems:
1.
Logographic
2.
Syllabary
3.
Alphabetic
The logographic writing system is based on visual symbols which represent meaningful units.
These units are not only words but morphemes as well and the pronunciation cannot be detected from the symbol at all. This means that every symbol must be studied separately both as a set of phonemes and a meaningful unit. An example of such a writing system would be the Chinese language. However, in English there are also a few comparable logographic symbols:
+ plus = equals & and $ dollar
The important thing about these symbols is that they as a whole represent a certain meaning whereby we cannot associate any part of the symbol to a specific sound. Arabic numbers also belong to this category. Many languages in the world use Arabic numbers and they are pronounced differently in each of the languages they are used but we all know, regardless of the pronounciation that “twenty” in English and “dvadeset” in Serbian mean exaclty the same thing – 20. Neither the figure ‘2’ nor ‘0’ do indicate the pronounciation of the symbols. We have to learn the pronounciation in the respective language. Therefore, languages based on a logographic writing system are specific and they do have some system of pronounciation, they must have it; it is just not obvious to someone who does not know the system.
In comparison to that, the syllabary is based on a set of syllables represented by certain symbols.
The native American Cherokee language and the Japanese with one of its part are syllabaries. Again there must be some system as far as phonetics and meaning are concerned; otherwise the pronunciation would be based on a chaotic choice of sounds.
Finally, the alphabetic writing system is by far the most comprehendable and the one used in most languages of the modern world. It is a phonologically based system meaning that a certain phoneme or set of phonemes is represented by a letter. Thus we refer to the alphabetic system as being phonemic . In an ideal alphabetic system there is a one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters. This is said to be the case of the Serbian language where there are 30 letters in the alphabet corresponding to 30 phonemes used in speech. However, there are some linguists who have tried to show that this is not true by pointing out that each vowel in Serbian may be stressed in four different ways (long upwards, short upwards, long downwards and short downwards) which doubtlessly indicates four different vowel realisations of each of the five vowels existing in Serbian.
Of course, this is just an attempt yet to be examined further. For the time being, the Serbian
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orthographic system is considered ideal which cannot be said about the English and many other
European languages.
Although there is no one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and letters in English, it is still considered phonemic. Most students of English would oppose this by saying that the English langauge is by far the most difficult one to acquire as far as spelling is concerned. Many native speakers of English would agree with this, there is no doubt about this. Long ago, in some remote past, at least that is something claimed by Sampson, English had a phonemic orthography in which words were pronounced the way they were written. But history as shown that different countries invaded the British isles and left behind much of their languages including the writing system which brought about this mess known as the English spelling. Yet, linguists, in their attempt to cure the desparation over the English orthography, claim that there are actually some rules for spelling and they are right.
The English spelling
In its essence, the English spelling is phonemic and, that is what they say, reasonably regular. The few defenders (crusadors) of the English orthography refer to a certain set of rules applying to some aspects of the English writing system. For almost 800 years, people all over the world have been struggling with the “regular” writing system of the English language and, if asked, they would never agree with the above statement that there are rules to help an exasperating learner of English adopt the spelling more easily.
Those in favour of the claim that the English spelling is a mess would no doubt cite the following examples: aisle eye cough key isle
I plough quay weather whether
And this is not the whole list. There are many more examples of this kind. There are even worse examples. For instance, the pronunciation of names and unfamiliar places is a scary movie of its own. There are a Steven and a Stephen, both with a /v/; the Yorkshire town Keighley is pronounced
/ki: ɵ li/ and not /ki:fli/, Alnwick is pronounced / ænik/ and not /ø:lwik/, Milngavie /milgai/ and not
/milngævi/ etc.
Yet, they claim there are rules and they boldly call them Spelling Rules
The phonological word is subject to various phonotactic constraints meaning that there are limitations to the way a certain word may be pronounced or written depending on the set of phonemes and symbols of course. For instance, the English language would never allow certain clusters of consonants either in speech or writing because in both cases they would be difficult to realize. There could be no word like gmatc, or ftizing, or tzkadny. Clearly, even the worst learner of
English would say these are no words of the English language.
For starters, let us examine the spelling of the phoneme /g/. The most obvious and common spelling of this sound is of gourse the letter g which may be found mainly at the beginning of words.
However, the phoneme /g/ at the beginning of the word ghost is represented by gh which again when at the end of, for instance enough , tough or rough is pronounced as /f/. Yet another confusing occurrence is the phoneme /f/ which is supposed to be represented with the letter f . This story may go on forever leading us further into chaos. These seem to be enough arguments proving the mess called English spelling.
Unfortunately, there are some rules which we, much as we might hate it, have to accept. In fact there is a regularity as far as the /g/ and /f/ confusion is concerned:
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gh = /g/ before a vowel: ghost, ghoul (/gu:l/ - an evil spirit that opens graves and eats the dead bodies in them), ghetto, aghast (filled with horror and surprise when you see or hear sth) gh = /f/ after a vowel: enough, tough, rough, cough
The complication is that there are exceptions to these rules where in a small number of words the gh following a vowel is not pronounced at all: caught, taught, bought, sought, light, right, night, tight, plough, bough /bau/, though, through
Words with gh pronounced as /g/ originated in the Dutch language ( a result of their control over the
British isles in the past) and words with gh not pronounced at all is a result of the change of the
Scottish pronunciation of och and loch . Thus words like night and light , former prounced as /nixt/ and /lixt/ were changed into /nait/ and /lait/. The spelling was not revised which is why we have to bother with this abnormality today.
Another example of spelling rules is the phenomenon called the doubling of consonants. Every syllable containing a short root vowel and ending in a consonant, when undergoing a change, such as inflection or derivation where we add something to the syllable, must double the final consonant in order to preserve the short vowel. Otherwise, the vowel would turn into a long one or into a diphtong. hit + ing = hitting chat + ed = chatted big + er = bigger
This rule applies to longer words as well ehen the last syllable contains the short stressed vowel: compel + ing = compelling worship + er = worshipper
In American English, the double ll in words, such as controlling, travelling, compelling has been dropped.
Again there are exceptions, but not so many. If a word, for instance ends with a c and is immediately preceded by a short vowel, we do not apply the double consonant rule entirely, we adopt it ck which is, in fact, a tradition adopted from the German language: panic + ing = panicking
One argument in favour of this double consonant story is the following: only content words, that is lexical words, can double the final consonant whereas function words, that is, grammatical words, cannot. This is due to the generally applicable rule that all content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) must be spelt with at least three letters while function words may consist of even only one single letter.
I, a, to, in – function words
BUT ad, od, as, eg, bo, se in order to be content words must have at least one more letter: add, odd, ass, egg, boo, see.
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The correspondence between the spelling and pronunciation of vowels
This area has been bothering not only linguists. Vowels – as phonemes – have a very far stretching spelling pattern system and vice versa, the vowel letters are pronounced in many different ways.
But
Or
Or apple /’æp ə l/ advantage / ə ’dva:nti ʤ
/ village /’vili car /ka:/ ʤ
/
Again the reasons for this inconsistency may be found in the history of the British isles.
At first, the Romans and the latin language, together with its alphabet, did not have enough letters to represent the different sounds in the English language. The situation has remained the same until the present day. We know that the English alphabet has only 26 letters but 44 phonemes (we are referring to the Received Pronunciation variant – RP). This obviously indicates that there are not enough letters for all the sounds which is why some sounds need a certain combination of letters or some letters are used for more than one sound.
A second cause for this inconsistency is the heritage of the Norman conquest. Before the conquest, for instance, /kw/ was spelt cw but the French changed it into qu . Another thing the French were not happy about was the letter u when in between m , n or v because they all looked the same when written down so they changed it into o , such as in love, sun, come.
Third, vowels kept undergoing tremendous changes during the development of the English language. Thus certain long vowels, in order to be represented as long, were now represented with a double vowel while the Middle English convention was to put a macron (a little line) above the long vowel. The French, again the French, changed the /u/ sound spelling by applying the French ou.
Later this ou evolved and sometimes we even pronounce it /au/, such as in mouse.
Again this is just an attempt of the English to preserve at least something of the original word. Some changes had to be accepted and some were simply changed into something everybody could live with.
Similarly, an unstressed syllable usually does not contain a strong vowel. Such as syllable contains the schwa /
ə
/. Again this is useful knowledge when supposed to decide about the doubling of consonants, for instance.
A strange occurrence is also the final letter e . One might wonder why we have to remember it when it serves no obvious purpose. However, the final letter e in fact signifies that the vowel preceding it is either a long one or a diphtong, such as in nice, rose, rude, scene. Of course, there are exceptions: come, love, dove.
Morphological and lexical signposting in the spelling
English spelling generally ignores the different allomorphs of one and the same morpheme although there might be differences in pronunciation. or or
-ed may be pronounced as /d/, /t/ or /id/ third person singular –s as /s/, /z/ or /iz/ plural –s may be pronounced as /s/, /z/ or /iz/
However, the spelling does not change in most of these cases. Even in the case when the letter i changes into y if preceded by a consonant when forming the plural of nouns or adding the third person singular –s, the spelling is more or less indicating the function of the ending. The spelling in this instances has a signposting role because it is consistent to what it is supposed to represent.
Another morphological job performed by spelling is in the case of borrowed words where the spelling of some foreign words is particular in order to retain the foreignness of the borrowed
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words. For instance, English words (excluding names and trade names) do not end in the letters i, u or v . Instead of i the letter y is used and when a word ends in u or v the letter e is added. pity nutty naughty true blue glue shove live glove
(to push sb/sth in a rough way)
This rule does not apply to words of foreign origin: okapi tutu ski gnu yeti guru kiwi emu
(okapi - an African animal that belongs to the same family as the giraffe, but is smaller with a dark body and white lines across its legs tutu - a ballet dancer’s skirt made of many layers of material. Tutus may be either short and stiff, sticking out from the waist, or long and bell-shaped gnu - a large antelope with curved horns)
Similarly, words from Indian languages, such as khaki khalifa khalsa are easily recognized.
Or, words from Greek origin, such as gnome gnostic psychology pneumonia
As far as lexical signposting is concerned, spelling may indicate semantic relationships between orthographic words. This is especially good to know when words, belonging to the same semantic group, have a different pronunciation. For example,
Or sign sane signify sanity significant sanitize
In reading, the spelling may help us work out the meaning of a derivative of a word we already know because we recognize the similarity in spelling.
And, finally, the spelling of certain words helps us distinguish between homophones, that is, words that sound the same but are written differently and have different meanings. its – it’s whose – who’s there – their
A possible spelling reform
There are many reasons for a reform of the English spelling, the most obvious of which might be to simplify the complicated system. However, much as the complication is something bothering not only foreign students of English, there are far more reasons against a spelling reform. Some of the most compelling reasons might be the following:
1.
Too many people would have to learn the new spelling. It is estimated that over 350 million people speak English a their mother tongue and 1,000-1,5000 million people use it as a
Lingua Franca.
2.
The number of dialects and accents is countless which makes it objectively impossible to even think of reforming the spelling of so many people.
3.
If even taken into consideration, which variation of English should become the one to reform? Is it the RP, the American English and which variation of American English?
4.
Moreover, the time needed for such an endeavor is unfathomable.
5.
And what about the dissatisfaction of those opposing this idea?
6.
Millions of books written in English would have to be published again. For more than 500 years, knowledge has been printed in English with the existing spelling applied and if we were to republish all that, it would take years to perform such a task.
In one word, a new spelling would be completely impractical.
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Exercises:
1.
Give examples of how the following vowels of the English language may be spelt:
/a/, /a:/
/e/, / ə/, /ɜ:/
/æ/
/i/, /i:/
/o/, /o:/
/u/, /u:/
/si:/
2.
What are the spellings of the following homophones:
/ai/
/bai/
/tu:/
/pi:s/
/sait/
/rait/
3.
Read the joke and explain what the misunderstanding is about:
An Italian guest at a hotel calls the reception desk:
Please, I don’t have any / ʃ it/ on my bed.
But, sir, why would you need any / ʃ it/ on your bed?
-
I can’t sleep without any / ʃ it/ on my bed. Please, bring me some.
-
I’m afraid we can’t get you any / ʃ it/ for your bed. Is there anything else we could do for you?
What kind of a hotel is this?
4.
Look at the following words used in the language of mobile phone texting. What do the messages mean? What happened to the spelling?
C U 2nite
Let’s meet @ 8 be waiting 4 U @ the restaurant tnks and the same 2 U 2 nxt time we meet @ nite xcuse me 4 being L8
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