Shadow

Looking at the title and abstract, I wonder why this one is published on JEP:HPP

Are phonological representations of printed and spoken language isomorphic? Evidence from the restrictions on unattested onsets.
Pages 1288-1304
Berent, Iris
Are the phonological representations of printed and spoken words isomorphic? This question is addressed by investigating the restrictions on onsets. Cross-linguistic research suggests that onsets of rising sonority are preferred to sonority plateaus, which, in turn, are preferred to sonority falls (e.g., bnif, bdif, lbif). Of interest is whether these grammatical preferences constrain the recognition of auditory and printed words by speakers of English–a language in which such onsets are unattested. Five experiments compare phonological lexical decision responses to nonwords, including unattested onsets, through either aural or visual presentation. Results suggest that both hearers and readers are sensitive to the phonotactics of unattested onsets. However, the phonotactic generalizations of hearers and readers differ on their scope and source. Hearers differentiated all three types of onsets (e.g., bnif, bdif, and lbif), and their behavior implicated both grammatical and statistical constraints. In contrast, readers were able to differentiate only those structures similar to attested English onsets from dissimilar structures (i.e., bnif vs. bdif or lbif), and their preferences reflected statistical knowledge alone. These findings suggest that the phonological representations informing lexical decision to spoken and printed words are not isomorphic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)
 

A couple of recent articles on eye movements: 

Reading spaced and unspaced Chinese text: Evidence from eye movements.
Pages 1277-1287
Bai, Xuejun; Yan, Guoli; Liversedge, Simon P.; Zang, Chuanli; Rayner, Keith
 Native Chinese readers’ eye movements were monitored as they read text that did or did not demark word boundary information. In Experiment 1, sentences had 4 types of spacing: normal unspaced text, text with spaces between words, text with spaces between characters that yielded nonwords, and finally text with spaces between every character. The authors investigated whether the introduction of spaces into unspaced Chinese text facilitates reading and whether the word or, alternatively, the character is a unit of information that is of primary importance in Chinese reading. Global and local measures indicated that sentences with unfamiliar word spaced format were as easy to read as visually familiar unspaced text. Nonword spacing and a space between every character produced longer reading times. In Experiment 2, highlighting was used to create analogous conditions: normal Chinese text, highlighting that marked words, highlighting that yielded nonwords, and highlighting that marked each character. The data from both experiments clearly indicated that words, and not individual characters, are the unit of primary importance in Chinese reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)

and

Eye movements when reading transposed text: The importance of word-beginning letters.
Pages 1261-1276
White, Sarah J.; Johnson, Rebecca L.; Liversedge, Simon P.; Rayner, Keith
Participants’ eye movements were recorded as they read sentences with words containing transposed adjacent letters. Transpositions were either external (e.g., problme, rpoblem) or internal (e.g., porblem, probelm) and at either the beginning (e.g., rpoblem, porblem) or end (e.g., problme, probelm) of words. The results showed disruption for words with transposed letters compared to the normal baseline condition, and the greatest disruption was observed for word-initial transpositions. In Experiment 1, transpositions within low frequency words led to longer reading times than when letters were transposed within high frequency words. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the position of word-initial letters is most critical even when parafoveal preview of words to the right of fixation is unavailable. The findings have important implications for the roles of different letter positions in word recognition and the effects of parafoveal preview on word recognition processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)

A number of reports from The Primary Review are quite interesting.

May 16, 2008
Learning and Teaching in Primary Schools: processes and contexts
Press release: Teaching matters: the last three interim reports from the Primary Review start the countdown to the final report

Overview briefing document: Learning and Teaching in Primary Schools: processes and contexts

i) Research Survey 2/4: Learning and Teaching in Primary Schools: insights from TLRP (Mary James and Andrew Pollard)
2/4 briefing
2/4 report

ii) Research Survey 6/1: Primary Schools: the built environment (Karl Wall, Julie Dockrell and Nick Peacey)
6/1 briefing
6/1 report

iii) Research Suvey 9/2: Classes, Groups and Transitions: structures for teaching and learning (Peter Blatchford, Susan Hallam, Judith Ireson and Peter Kutnick, with Andrea Creech)
9/2 briefing
9/2 report

 January 18, 2008
Aims and Values in Primary Education: national and international perspectives
Press release: What is primary education for? Fundamental questions from the Primary Review’s latest research reports

Overview briefing document: Aims and Values in Primary Education

i) Research Survey 1/1: Aims as Policy in English Primary Education (John White)
1/1 briefing
1/1 report

ii)Research Survey 1/2: Aims and Values in Primary Education: England and other countries (Maha Shuayb and Sharon O’Donnell)
1/2 briefing
1/2 report

i) Research Survey 1/3: Aims for Primary Education: the changing national context (Stephen Machin and Sandra McNally)
1/3 briefing
1/3 report

i) Research Survey 1/4: Aims for Primary Education: changing global contexts (Hugh Lauder, John Lowe and Rita Chawla-Duggan)
1/4 briefing
1/4 report

Morphological and Orthographic Tools for English

Language Log: A new way of 寫ing Mandarin reports a trendy expression in IM/internet Chinese.

A paper by Jia Lou, "From English morpheme to symbol of Chinese netizenship: Exploring -ing in Chinese blogs", NWAV 34, 2005.

I am too removed from the speaker community to have any intuition. But I was struck by the following comment (emphasis added):

Update — John Cowan writes:

…

I’m not about to get into an argument on this topic, about which I know almost nothing. But Jerome L. Packard, The Morphology of Chinese, Cambridge University Press, 2000 (p. 71), lists six "grammatical affixes" ("the verbal aspect markers -le, -zhe and -guo; the resultative potential ‘infixes’ -de and bu- and the human noun plural suffix -men"). It’s true that this is roughly the same number of grammatical affixes as English — perhaps it’s even one more — but the basis of my feeble attempt at humor was the idea that Chinese is not an especially rich area for would-be importers of grammatical affixes.

Chinese actually has been a pretty active importer of grammatical commodities throughout its history. In terms of affixes, the -化 （roughly -ize, as in 现代化 [modernize]，计算机化 [computerize]) was borrowed from Japanese along with a whole bunch of others (one that I still have trouble with: -中, as in 热卖中). Some of these should be counted as re-patriation, because the morphemes were first borrowed to Japanese from Chinese. But nonetheless, the particular usages, particularly the grammaticalization of these morphemes, were novel and useful enough to be worth copying.

Why -ing? Why not -ed, -ish, or anyother oddities of English? Other than that netizens live their lifes in the present, I’d suggest that -ing is phonologically well-formed in Chinese, whereas other affixes such as -ed are not (Standard Chinese only allow two consonant codas -n and -ng, and in Pekingnese -r). Apparently -ing has not spread to speaking yet, but when it does, it should perhaps be written as "-英", which (a) is pronounced exactly as "-ing", first tone, (b) means English or British, and (c) as a native morpheme its meaning is vague enough to be grammaticalized for a completely different role.

This, of course, will be perceived as an unfair trade practice by the US. So my next suggestion is for the Congress to authorize whoever takes over the Whitehouse next year to start a secrete negotiation with the Chinese government over the export of "MAY", which is a very precious little grammatical word. Chinese arguably lacks a precise counterpart of "may", which may cause all kinds of international impasses. The sticking point will be whether it will be officially transliterated as "-美", "-没", or "-霉", all of which sounds exactly like "may". The first one, of course, means "beauty", and also is the abbreviation of "美国, The US of America", lit. "The Beautiful Country". This is clearly where the national interest lies.  The 2nd choice means "null, nothing, all gone". And you don’t want to know the last.

Completely unrelated: years back I read a paper — must have been written by a Chinese engineer of sort — arguing that Chinese was faulty because it doesn’t have an equivalent of "WHICH" to introduce restrictive relative clauses. His solution was to import "which", written as "唯其". Nobody picked it up, of course. The Congress would never approve a plan to export "witches" to China, would it? End of digression.

The Loom : Farewell, Seymour Benzer

As the geneticist Guido Pontecorvo wrote in 1958, "The analogy of the genetic material with a written message is a useful commonplace. The important change is that we now think of the message as being in handwritten English rather than in Chinese." In Chinese, words are single pictograms. In English, words are not the fundamental unit–they are made from letters. Likewise, genes are made up of nucleotides of DNA. That may seem like an obvious truth today, but only thanks to Benzer.

UK beat the US in admitting failure of reading reform … that would have been a catchy news article title. The truth is, neither government will admit anything. Billions of pounds or dollars were spent and little is gained. That’s all.  

Ten years of bold education boasts now look sadly hollow | Guardian daily comment | Guardian Unlimited

The conclusions of the first three reports should make those running education policy stop and think. They demonstrate that the initial sharp rise in primary school test results between 1995 and 2000 is now understood to be largely a result of teaching to the tests, and not to a dramatic improvement in learning. They point out that the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and the government’s own Statistics Commission accepted the rises were overstated, only for the DCSF to reject the findings. The review also finds that the primary curriculum has narrowed in response to the testing; that statutory tests make it harder, not easier, to judge pupils’ progress; that there have been rises in test-induced stress among pupils; that the results of the tests are unreliable in up to a third of cases; and that the gap between the highest and lowest achievers in Britain is wider than in many other countries. The reports conclude there has been a genuine, although modest, improvement in children’s numeracy. It cannot say the same about literacy. Some £500m has been spent so far on running the national literacy hour. Yet the review concludes that standards of reading have been "more or less static since the 1950s". The National Literacy Strategy has had "a barely noticeable effect" on reading ability, yet since it has been introduced there has been a substantial fall in children’s enjoyment of reading. Meanwhile the literacy levels of the poorest children are further behind their peers than anywhere in Europe.

Ok, I need some help with English.

I desperately wish to affectionately express my appreciations to GNU AWK, a wonderfully simple yet life-savingly useful little program for text file processing.  Now you see the pattern of my personal a-dver-buse, and hence my question above.

No, I don’t mean to say "the lovely, useful little program". The program itself is not lovely — it’s just an ugly, syntactically haphazard, command-line-only EXE file on my computer. (Hey, did I just use "-ly" 3-in-a-roll, if you count "only" as "on-ly"?) It’s only the using-it part that is particularly pleasing.

No, I don’t mean to say "the lovingly useful little program" either. I don’t love it. I am just happy using it.  

"Lovely" is one of those strange adjectives that ends with the typical adverbial inflection "-ly". "Ugly" is another. There are (or is?) a bunch of them, and someone probably has a list somewhere.

Oddly enough, "lovely" did have an adverbial useage, some point in the past. It’s gone, out of the minds of most English speakers that are still alive (not "lively", which is another "-ly" adjective).

lovely - Definitions from Dictionary.com

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This love·ly      /ˈlʌvli/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[luhv-lee] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation adjective, -li·er, -li·est, noun, plural -lies, adverb

–adjective

1.	charmingly or exquisitely beautiful: a lovely flower.

2.	having a beauty that appeals to the heart or mind as well as to the eye, as a person or a face.

3.	delightful; highly pleasing: to have a lovely time.

4.	of a great moral or spiritual beauty: a lovely character.

–noun

5.	Informal. a beautiful woman, esp. a show girl.

6.	any person or thing that is pleasing, highly satisfying, or the like: Every car in the new line is a lovely.

–adverb

7.	Nonstandard. very well; splendidly.

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[Origin: bef. 900; ME luvelich, OE luflīc amiable. See love, -ly]

In his recent post The Ginormous question of language and creativitivity, revisited yet again… Kevin refuted the idea that the Chinese writing system deprives its people of X, where X in question this time was creativity. Kevin suggests that much of the neologistic creativity in English happens at the morphological level (c.f., this year’s Top 10 New words Merriam-Webster’s site). Chinese characters, which generally correspond to morphemes, is as good a medium as any other language/orthography for word plays.  John B gave a great example in the comment,

The Chinese make up an enormous amount of slang — they just do it in different ways. 疯购 (shopaholic, a play on 疯狗, rapid dog), for instance, is one of my current favorites.

There was a period of time after the oracle bone script when  new characters were constantly created for new morphemes in the Chinese languages. Creativity, however, quickly lead to decaptivations. One of the first things the First Emprior did was to clean up the numerous orthographies in various states, and he — his minister Li Si — achieved this by burning books and burrying scholars alive. But I guess this is not what Rob Gifford meant by lacking of creativity.

The Chinese characters become relatively fixed in the next 2 thousand years or so. I don’t mean to suggest new characters were not created — in fact, just the contrary. The primary linguistic creativity, however, has shifted from inventing mono-syllabic morphemes to bi-syllabic morphemes and words.  That is, the number of characters had become relatively stable, whereas compound words graduatlly became the predominate phonological forms of words. 

Creativies with characters never died out completely. In fact, the turn of last century saw a renewed character creativity when Western chemestry was introduced to China. There you have a whole bunch of morphemes that never existed in the language. And you bet, new characters were created for them. The alternative — phonetic translation using existing characters — was tried and failed. We are left with 40+ new characters for names of basic elements and a whole bunch more for organic chemestry terms. Luckly, this surge of orthographic creativity didn’t go too far. Newer loan words tend to have multi-syllabic phonetic or semantic translations.

One can still find examples, albeit few in number, of intra-syllabic/morphemeic creativities in Chinese. 甭 (beng2) merges 不 (bu4 or bu2, "not") and 用 (yong4, "to use; to need"), and means literally 不用 ("not necessary"). Similarly, 孬 (nao1) is a combination of 不 (bu4, "no, or not") and 好 (hao3 "good"), and you guessed what it means. Both probably originated in dialects: 甭 is frequently used in Beijinese; 孬 is probably used in Henan or the vicinity. There are probably more examples like these in Chinese. 

Speaking of English neologisms, it appears that the rule governing these sub-morphemic mergers is not unlike that of Chinese compounding. Whether it is ginormous, confuzzled, or chillax, you mix parts of two synonyms (or near synonyms in a particular context) together, which mutually reinforce the meaning of both and the new word. This is essentially how losts of Chinese di-syllabic words are made — combining synonyms or antonyms. Given the ginormous homophone problems in the Chinese language at the morphemic level, you need the reinforcement of the two elements to convey what you mean. Psychologically this involves forward and backward priming from partial words. Maybe others can shed light on the phonological constraints involved here.

Flaps is notoriously hard in spelling. Becky Treiman and others have shown that young children (at some point during their literacy development) tend to spell as they hear the sounds, such as <*SDAR> for <STAR>. Does Eddington suggest here that children actually have an "underlying" lexical representation of /t/ in STAR? How would that come about — before one learns to spell?

Duke doesn’t seem to have online access to this journal, but fortunately the author posted a draft online.

Flaps and other variants of /t/ in American English: Allophonic distribution without constraints, rules, or abstractions

Flaps and other variants of /t/ in American English: Allophonic distribution without constraints, rules, or abstractions

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Author(s): David Eddington
doi: 10.1515/COG.2007.002
View PDF article (248 K)		View PDF with links (252 K)

Abstract text

The distribution of the flap allophone [] of American English, along with the other allophones of /t/,[t^h,t⁼, , t] has been accounted for in various formal frameworks by assuming a number of different abstract mechanisms and entities. The desirability or usefulness of these formalisms is not at issue in the present paper. Instead, a computationally explicit model of categorization is used (Skousen 1989, 1992) in order to account for the distribution of the allophones of /t/ without recourse to such formalisms. The simulations that were carried out suggest that they are not needed because analogy to surface apparent variables such as phones and word boundaries is sufficient to predict allophony.

In analogy, the particular allophone of /t/ (i.e. [, t^h, t⁼, , t]) that appears in a given context is determined on the basis of similarity to stored exemplars in the mental lexicon. From an acquisitional standpoint, categorization by analogy to stored exemplars dispenses with the need for rule induction although it does suggest that speakers group functionally related sounds into mental categories, a process that is influenced to a great deal by orthography.

Analogy also explains the stochastic nature of linguistic performance. In the present study, 3,719 tokens of the allophones of the phoneme /t/ were extracted from the TIMIT corpus and constitute the database from which analogs were chosen. The variables used included the three phones or boundaries on either side of /t/, and the stress of the syllables preceding and following /t/. The model proves quite successful in predicting the correct allophone, and the errors made are generally possible alternative pronunciations (e.g. moun[]ain, moun[t^h]ain). The success rate changes little when only small sub-samples of the database are incorporated. In addition, exemplar-modeling is found to be quite robust because even when a feature such as stress is eliminated, (a feature which is critical in most rule approaches), allophony is still highly predictable.

I skimmed through the paper. I have to say I am a littel disappointed. The crux is that one can determine the allophone of /t/ in a particular context by comparing it to other contexts in your vocabulary (in this stimulation study, cases from a corpus with multiple speakers). And you can do it reasonably well — 65% overall, but it’s hard to compare with rule-based benchmarks, as the author argues.

How do you get the rest of the /t/ correctly? By comparing to the rest of the rest of the contexts? How is this different from a pure lexical account — i.e., you say "lader" for <later> because that’s how you remembered it? 

In some (hopefully not too cynical) ways any theory involving underlying representations and rules/constraints are just long-winded ways to account for surface similarities. But the hope is that these theoretical apparatus will help to clean up the messy surface data. I think this paper has not convinced me that they are unnecessary. 

And how does this analogy-based account explain orthographic influences?  

Ok, nothing is more basic than the word "basic", right?

But why can’t you say "basic-er?"

The rule I learned from my highschool English class — mind you, that was 20 years ago in China — was that 1-syllable adjectives must take "-er", and 2-syllable adj. can take either "-er" or "more X"; anything above that the only option is "more X". I have since learned to give up many prescrive rules I learned, but this one has been serving me well. Until when I start to think about it, that is.

My first thought was that this msut be a phonological thing, but then, I can be "sicker" than you are, and my skin can be "thicker" than yours. Hmm… So I looked up dictionary.com: 

basic

Notice that none of the 1- or 2-syllable adjectives can have the -er form for comparative. I don’t think you can say

• * I play a key-er role than you do.
• * The kidney is vital-er than the heart.
• * His position is central-er than mine.

But looking at the second cluster of synonyms:

Sure enough, you can have be bald-er, blunt-er, cold-er, so on and so forth. This implies that whatever rule that is blocking "basic-er", it is not about semantics or "abstractness", because at lease one prominent sense of "basic" belongs to the "-er" group.

Why oh why is it, that you can say it’s simpler but not it’s basic-er?

I can only begin but not finish Johnson’s Preface to the Dictionary.

Re the unfortunate soul; are we any better?

[2] Among these unhappy mortals is the writer of dictionaries; whom mankind have considered, not as the pupil, but the slave of science, the pionier of literature, doomed only to remove rubbish and clear obstructions from the paths of Learning and Genius, who press forward to conquest and glory, without bestowing a smile on the humble drudge that facilitates their progress. Every other authour may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompence has been yet granted to very few.

Now this is THE mostly quoted from this preface

[4] When I took the first survey of my undertaking, I found our speech copious without order, and energetick without rules: wherever I turned my view, there was perplexity to be disentangled, and confusion to be regulated; choice was to be made out of boundless variety, without any established principle of selection; adulterations were to be detected, without a settled test of purity; and modes of expression to be rejected or received, without the suffrages of any writers of classical reputation or acknowledged authority.

Re inconsistencies and how to deal with them 

 

[6] In adjusting the Orthography, which has been to this time unsettled and fortuitous, I found it necessary to distinguish those irregularities that are inherent in our tongue, and perhaps coeval with it, from others which the ignorance or negligence of later writers has produced. Every language has its anomalies, which, though inconvenient, and in themselves once unnecessary, must be tolerated among the imperfections of human things, and which require only to be registred; that they may not be increased, and ascertained, that they may not be confounded: but every language has likewise its improprieties and absurdities, which it is the duty of the lexicographer to correct or proscribe.

 

Re the vague sensitivity when men first used letters 

 

[7] As language was at its beginning merely oral, all words of necessary or common use were spoken before they were written; and while they were unfixed by any visible signs, must have been spoken with great diversity, as we now observe those who cannot read to catch sounds imperfectly, and utter them negligently. When this wild and barbarous jargon was first reduced to an alphabet, every penman endeavoured to express, as he could, the sounds which he was accustomed to pronounce or to receive, and vitiated in writing such words as were already vitiated in speech. The powers of the letters, when they were applied to a new language, must have been vague and unsettled, and therefore different hands would exhibit the same sound by different combinations.

 

Re considerations with vowels 

[10] This uncertainty is most frequent in the vowels, which are so capriciously pronounced, and so differently modified, by accident or affectation, not only in every province, but in every mouth, that to them, as is well known to etymologists, little regard is to be shewn in the deduction of one language from another.

[11] Such defects are not errours in orthography, but spots of barbarity impressed so deep in the English language, that criticism can never wash them away; these, therefore, must be permitted to remain untouched: but many words have likewise been altered by accident, or depraved by ignorance, as the pronunciation of the vulgar has been weakly followed; and some still continue to be variously written, as authours differ in their care or skill: of these it was proper to enquire the true orthography, which I have always considered as depending on their derivation, and have therefore referred them to their original languages: thus I write enchant, enchantment, enchanter, after the French, and incantation after the Latin; thus entire is chosen rather than intire, because it passed to us not from the Latin integer, but from the French entier.

Here’s possibly the compromise that shouldn’t have been made:

[12] Of many words it is difficult to say whether they were immediately received from the Latin or the French, since at the time when we had dominions in France, we had Latin service in our churches. It is, however, my opinion, that the French generally supplied us; for we have few Latin words, among the terms of domestick use, which are not French; but many French, which are very remote from Latin.

[13] Even in words of which the derivation is apparent, I have been often obliged to sacrifice uniformity to custom; thus I write, in compliance with a numberless majority, convey and inveigh, deceit and receipt, fancy and phantom; sometimes the derivative varies from the primitive, as explain and explanation, repeat and repetition.

Re change 

[16] In this part of the work, where caprice has long wantoned without controul, and vanity sought praise by petty reformation, I have endeavoured to proceed with a scholar’s reverence for antiquity, and a grammarian’s regard to the genius of our tongue. I have attempted few alterations, and among those few, perhaps the greater part is from the modern to the ancient practice; and I hope I may be allowed to recommend to those, whose thoughts have been, perhaps, employed too anxiously on verbal singularities, not to disturb, upon narrow views, or for minute propriety, the orthography of their fathers. It has been asserted, that for the law to be known, is of more importance than to be right. Change, says Hooker, is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better. There is in constancy and stability a general and lasting advantage, which will always overbalance the slow improvements of gradual correction. Much less ought our written language to comply with the corruptions of oral utterance, or copy that which every variation of time or place makes different from itself, and imitate those changes, which will again be changed, while imitation is employed in observing them.

[17] This recommendation of steadiness and uniformity does not proceed from an opinion, that particular combinations of letters have much influence on human happiness; or that truth may not be successfully taught by modes of spelling fanciful and erroneous: I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.

more later; stay tuned … or in my case, stay awake.

Excerpts from Johnson’s Plan of an English Dictionary, with emphases added.

After a long self-doubt — self pitty some times — Johnson arrived at the first substantive issue: What is this a dictionary of?

In the first attempt to methodise my ideas I found a difficulty, which extended itself to the whole work. It was not easy to determine by what rule of distinction the words of this dictionary were to be chosen. The chief intent of it is to preserve the purity, and ascertain the meaning of our English idiom; and this seems to require nothing more than that our language be considered, so far as it is our own; that the words and phrases used in the general intercourse of life, or found in the works of those whom we commonly style polite writers, be selected, without including the terms of particular professions; since, with the arts to which they relate, they are generally derived from other nations, and are very often the same in all the languages of this part of the world. This is, perhaps, the exact and pure idea of a grammatical dictionary; but in lexicography, as in other arts, naked science is too delicate for the purposes of life. The value of a work must be estimated by its use; it is not enough that a dictionary delights the critick, unless, at the same time, it instructs the learner; as it is to little purpose that an engine amuses the philosopher by the subtilty of its mechanism, if it requires so much knowledge in its application as to be of no advantage to the common workman.

RE: how orthography is — but not should be — determined:

When all the words are selected and arranged, the first part of the work to be considered is the orthography, which was long vague and uncertain; which at last, when its fluctuation ceased, was in many cases settled but by accident; and in which, according to your Lordship’s observation, there is still great uncertainty among the best criticks: nor is it easy to state a rule by which we may decide between custom and reason, or between the equiponderant authorities of writers alike eminent for judgment and accuracy.

RE: etymology vs. alphabetic principle, the tension of the English orthography, as echoed by Venezky, Chomsky, and virtually all other scholars of English language. Sounds like Dr. Johnson was not the first to realize this. 

The great orthographical contest has long subsisted between etymology and pronunciation. It has been demanded, on one hand, that men should write as they speak; but, as it has been shown that this conformity never was attained in any language, and that it is not more easy to persuade men to agree exactly in speaking than in writing, it may be asked, with equal propriety, why men do not rather speak as they write. In France, where this controversy was at its greatest height, neither party, however ardent, durst adhere steadily to their own rule; the etymologist was often forced to spell with the people; and the advocate for the authority of pronunciation found it sometimes deviating capriciously from the received use of writing, that he was constrained to comply with the rule of his adversaries, lest he should lose the end by the means, and be left alone by following the crowd.

When a question of orthography is dubious, that practice has, in my opinion, a claim to preference which preserves the greatest number of radical letters, or seems most to comply with the general custom of our language. But the chief rule which I propose to follow is, to make no innovation without a reason sufficient to balance the inconvenience of change; and such reasons I do not expect often to find. All change is of itself an evil, which ought not to be hazarded but for evident advantage; and as inconstancy is in every case a mark of weakness, it will add nothing to the reputation of our tongue. There are, indeed, some who despise the inconveniencies of confusion, who seem to take pleasure in departing from custom, and to think alteration desirable for its own sake; and the reformation of our orthography, which these writers have attempted, should not pass without its due honours, but that I suppose they hold singularity its own reward, or may dread the fascination of lavish praise.

RE: GPC inconsistencies:

But still it is more necessary to fix the pronunciation of monosyllables, by placing with them words of correspondent sound, that one may guard the other against the danger of that variation, which, to some of the most common, has already happened; so that the words wound and wind, as they are now frequently pronounced, will not rhyme to sound and mind. It is to be remarked, that many words written alike are differently pronounced, as flow, and brow: which may be thus registered, flow, woe; brow, now; or of which the exemplification may be generally given by a distich: thus the words tear, or lacerate and tear, the water of the eye, have the same letters, but may be distinguished thus, tear, dare; tear, peer.

RE: etymology, word relations, and the inclusiveness of English: 

When the orthography and pronunciation are adjusted, the etymology or derivation is next to be considered, and the words are to be distinguished according to the different classes, whether simple, as day, light, or compound, as day-light; whether primitive, as, to act, or derivative, as action, actionable; active, activity. This will much facilitate the attainment of our language, which now stands in our dictionaries a confused heap of words without dependence, and without relation.

When this part of the work is performed, it will be necessary to inquire how our primitives are to be deduced from foreign languages, which may be often very successfully performed by the assistance of our own etymologists. This search will give occasion to many curious disquisitions, and sometimes, perhaps, to conjectures, which to readers unacquainted with this kind of study, cannot but appear improbable and capricious. But it may be reasonably imagined, that what is so much in the power of men as language, will very often be capriciously conducted. Nor are these disquisitions and conjectures to be considered altogether as wanton sports of wit, or vain shows of learning; our language is well known not to be primitive or self-originated, but to have adopted words of every generation, and, either for the supply of its necessities, or the increase of its copiousness, to have received additions from very distant regions; so that in search of the progenitors of our speech, we may wander from the tropick to the frozen zone, and find some in the valleys of Palestine, and some upon the rocks of Norway.

RE: origin of some phrasal verbs: 

Beside the derivation of particular words, there is likewise an etymology of phrases. Expressions are often taken from other languages; some apparently, as to run a risk, courir un risque; and some even when we do not seem to borrow their words; thus, to bring about, or accomplish, appears an English phrase, but in reality our native word about has no such import, and is only a French expression, of which we have an example in the common phrase venir à bout d’une affaire.

RE: derivational considerations

When the etymology is thus adjusted, the analogy of our language is next to be considered; when we have discovered whence our words are derived, we are to examine by what rules they are governed, and how they are inflected through their various terminations. The terminations of the English are few, but those few have hitherto remained unregarded by the writers of our dictionaries. Our substantives are declined only by the plural termination, our adjectives admit no variation but in the degrees of comparison, and our verbs are conjugated by auxiliary words, and are only changed in the preter tense.

Our inflections, therefore, are by no means constant, but admit of numberless irregularities, which in this Dictionary will be diligently noted. Thus fox makes in the plural foxes, but ox makes oxen. Sheep is the same in both numbers. Adjectives are sometimes compared by changing the last syllable, as proud, prouder, proudest; and sometimes by particles prefixed, as ambitious, more ambitious, most ambitious. The forms of our verbs are subject to great variety; some end their preter tense in ed, as I love, I loved, I have loved; which may be called the regular form, and is followed by most of our verbs of southern original. But many depart from this rule, without agreeing in any other, as I shake, I shook, I have shaken or shook, as it is sometimes written in poetry; I make, I made, I have made; I bring, I brought; I wring, I wrung; and many others, which, as they cannot be reduced to rules, must be learned from the dictionary rather than the grammar.

RE: Why syntax is bad; The same argument as the bolded one is made for Chinese. Many Chinese people claim Chinese does not have a grammar.

Words having been hitherto considered as separate and unconnected, are now to be likewise examined as they are ranged in their various relations to others by the rules of syntax or construction, to which I do not know that any regard has been yet shown in English dictionaries, and in which the grammarians can give little assistance. The syntax of this language is too inconstant to be reduced to rules, and can be only learned by the distinct consideration of particular words as they are used by the best authors. Thus, we say, according to the present modes of speech, The soldier died of his wounds, and the sailor perished with hunger; and every man acquainted with our language would be offended with a change of these particles, which yet seem originally assigned by chance, there being no reason to be drawn from grammar why a man may not, with equal propriety, be said to die with a wound or perish of hunger.

RE:  to make love

When the construction of a word is explained, it is necessary to pursue it through its train of phraseology, through those forms where it is used in a manner peculiar to our language, or in senses not to be comprised in the general explanations; as from the verb make arise these phrases, to make love, to make an end, to make way; as, he made way for his followers, the ship made way before the wind; to make a bed, to make merry, to make a mock, to make presents, to make a doubt, to make out an assertion, to make good a breach, to make good a cause, to make nothing of an attempt, to make lamentation, to make a merit, and many others which will occur in reading with that view, and which only their frequency hinders from being generally remarked.

Finally, the vision

This, my Lord, is my idea of an English dictionary; a dictionary by which the pronunciation of our language may be fixed, and its attainment facilitated; by which its purity may be preserved, its use ascertained, and its duration lengthened. And though, perhaps, to correct the language of nations by books of grammar, and amend their manners by discourses of morality, may be tasks equally difficult, yet, as it is unavoidable to wish, it is natural likewise to hope, that your Lordship’s patronage may not be wholly lost; that it may contribute to the preservation of ancient, and the improvement of modern writers; that it may promote the reformation of those translators, who, for want of understanding the characteristical difference of tongues, have formed a chaotick dialect of heterogeneous phrases; and awaken to the care of purer diction some men of genius, whose attention to argument makes them negligent of style, or whose rapid imagination, like the Peruvian torrents, when it brings down gold, mingles it with sand.

the (familiar) fear 

When I survey the Plan which I have laid before you, I cannot, my Lord, but confess, that I am frighted at its extent, and, like the soldiers of Cæsar, look on Britain as a new world, which it is almost madness to invade. But I hope, that though I should not complete the conquest, I shall, at least, discover the coast, civilize part of the inhabitants, and make it easy for some other adventurer to proceed further, to reduce them wholly to subjection, and settle them under laws.

and the hope

We are taught by the great Roman orator, that every man should propose to himself the highest degree of excellence, but that he may stop with honour at the second or third: though, therefore, my performance should fall below the excellence of other dictionaries, I may obtain, at least, the praise of having endeavoured well; nor shall I think it any reproach to my diligence, that I have retired without a triumph, from a contest with united academies, and long successions of learned compilers. I cannot hope, in the warmest moments, to preserve so much caution through so long a work, as not often to sink into negligence, or to obtain so much knowledge of all its parts, as not frequently to fail by ignorance. I expect that sometimes the desire of accuracy will urge me to superfluities, and sometimes the fear of prolixity betray me to omissions; that in the extent of such variety, I shall be often bewildered, and, in the mazes of such intricacy, be frequently entangled; that in one part refinement will be subtilized beyond exactness, and evidence dilated in another beyond perspicuity. Yet I do not despair of approbation from those who, knowing the uncertainty of conjecture, the scantiness of knowledge, the fallibility of memory, and the unsteadiness of attention, can compare the causes of errour with the means of avoiding it, and the extent of art with the capacity of man: and whatever be the event of my endeavours, I shall not easily regret an attempt, which has procured me the honour of appearing thus publickly.

I have to say that after my reading of it, I disagree with Crystal, who describes Johnson as a prescriptive at this stage. I felt Johnson was consistent in that he was generally conservative with regard to spelling changes. Purist or not, Johson did achieved his goal of fixing — at least slowing down — the drift of pronunciation of spoken English.

Jack Lynch has a collection of texts from Samuel Johnson. Of interests to me are:

A Plan of an English Dictionary

Preface to the Dictionary

Crystal (Cambridge Encyc of English, p. 74) mentioned that Johnson began with a prescriptive vision of the dictionary (in the Plan) but ended with a descriptive approach (Preface).

In searching for Noah Webser’s "The American Spelling Book" I was directed to this site Nineteenth-Century American Children & What They Read

Among the many treasures there is Webster’s enomoursly popular speller, said to have sold a million copies a year in the 1850s, when the total US population was 23 million (Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, p. 80). Here’s the book in totality, with scanned images and OCR-ed text in HTML. I wish they’d been more sophisticated with PDF or other technologies, though.

 The American Spelling Book, by Noah Webster ([1783] 1800?; 306kb)

Noah Webster was the man of words in early 19th-century America. Compiler of a dictionary which has become the standard for American English, he also compiled The American Spelling Book, which was the basic textbook for young readers in early 19th-century America. Before publication of this book in 1783, many schools used Thomas Dilworth’s A New Guide to the English Tongue. Webster’s book, with its polysyllabic words broken into individual syllables and its precepts and fables, became the favorite. Revised several times by Webster, as the "blue-backed speller" it taught generations of Americans how to read and how to spell.

The copy available here probably was printed in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1800. Unfortunately, it’s missing its frontispiece (a possibly libelous portrait of Noah Webster) and the bottom part of its title page. It’s available both as a transcription and as page images. Framed allows the viewer to see both the transcription and the pages images at once. Unframed allows the viewer to read the transcription, which has links to the images

1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading

PREFATORY NOTE.

_In presenting this, the seventh book of the "1001 Question and Answer Series," we feel that a great want is partially met. It is evident, from the number of inquiries made for such a book, that the works devoted to the subject of Orthography are very limited._

_We are also aware that the Authors of the different Grammars devote such a limited space to the subject of Orthoepy and technical Orthography, that both Teacher and Pupil turn away from the subject in disgust._

_In preparing this list of questions and answers we have consulted the best authority of the present day, and believe we have gone over the ground in such a way that it will meet the approval of all interested._

_The questions and answers on Reading we trust will add to the interest of the book, and only hope that it will be received with as gracious a welcome and hearty approval as the rest of the series._

B.A.H. APRIL, 1888.

To get a taste of the Q&A:

SUBSTITUTES.

1. _What is a Substitute?_
A letter representing a sound usually represented by another.

2. _What are Equivalent letters?_
Letters representing the same sound.

3. _What properties do Substitutes assume?_
The properties of the letter whose sound it represents.

4. _How many Substitutes has a long?_
Four.

5. _What are they?_
_E_ in tete; _ei_ in feint; _ey_ in they; and _ao_ in gaol.

6. _How many Substitutes has a middle?_
Two.

7. _What are they?_
_E_ in there; and _ei_ in heir.

8. _How many Substitutes has a broad?_
Two.

9. _What are they?_
_O_ in cord; and _ou_ in sought.

10. _How many Substitutes has e long?_
Three.

11. _What are they?_
_I_ in marine; _ie_ in fiend; and _ay_ in quay.

Internet Archive has a number of books on spelling and orthography of English.

Internet Archive Search: spelling AND subject:"English language — Orthography and spelling"

 English spelling and spelling reform - Lounsbury, Thomas Raynesford, 1838-1915
Includes indexes
Keywords: English language — Orthography and spelling; Spelling reform

 

Proposals for a simplified spelling of the English language - Rippmann, Walter, 1869-
26
Keywords: Spelling reform

 

 

A defence of phonetic spelling : drawn from a history of the English alphabet and orthography, with a remedy for their defects - Latham, R. G. (Robert Gordon), 1812-1888
Includes bibliographical references
Keywords: Spelling reform; Phonetic spelling

A tract on the present state of English pronunciation - Bridges, Robert, 1844-1930
Includes bibliographical references
Keywords: English language — Pronunciation; Spelling reform

 

 

The pronunciation of English reduced to rules by means of a system of marks applied to the ordinary spelling - Craigie, William A. (William Alexander), Sir, 1867-1957
26
Keywords: English language — Pronunciation

 

 

Irish spelling; a lecture delivered under the title "Is Irish to be strangled?" as the inaugural address of the Society for the simplification of the spelling of Irish on the 15th of November, 1910 - Bergin, Osborn, 1873-1950
Keywords: Irish language — Orthography and spelling

 

 

Chambers’ primer, or, First book for children - Chambers, Reuben.
Keywords: Language and languages; Primers (Instructional books); Orthography and spelling; Publishers’ paper bindings (Binding); Textbooks; Juvenile literature

 

 The spelling of English by Porto Rican pupils - St. John, Charles Webster
Keywords: English language — Orthography and spelling

  Orthography, orthoepy, and punctuation, embodying the essential facts of the English language, with concise rules for punctuation and the use of capital letters; a text-book and book of reference for schools, colleges, and private students - Winchell, Samuel Robertson, 18431926

The last one is particularly interesting as it does treat punctuations. In the preface he also mentioned some earlier work in punctuations that had since lost. 

Here are a couple of non-English ones:

Origem, e orthographia da lingoa portugueza. Obra util, e necessaria, assim para bem escrever a linga portugueza, como a Latina, e quaesquer outras que da Latina tem origem: com hum tractado dos pontos das clausulas. Nova ed., corr. e emendada, conforme a de 1784 - Nunez do Lião, Duarte, d. 1608
26

Observations sur l’orthographe ou ortografie française, suivies d’une historie de la réforme orthographique depuis le XVe siècle jusqu’à nos jours - Didot, Ambroise Firmin, 1790-1876
26

Fortunately all these books are free of copyright and are available in Djvu.

I don’t know how it did it, but today gMail inspected an email conversation between me and my graduate student and decided we needed to see speech threapists about the problem of /r/. So it provided the following link in its ads section.

SayItRight.org > The Entire World of R

What is The Entire World of R™?  The Entire World of R™ is a proven research-based program for evaluating and treating the difficult /r/ phoneme.  The program comprises a complete suite of products designed to meet your specific /r/ remediation needs. If you are reading this, then you already know that /r/ is a difficult, elusive and frustrating sound to treat.  According a recent survey of over 100 speech-language pathologists (SLP), /r/ is of the most difficult tasks on their caseloads.  The reasons they gave; lack of good training and lack of a comprehensive strategy…until now.  The Entire World of R™ approach is to evaluate and treat /r/ phonologically based on word position and individual sound.  Phonetically, /r/ has 8 distinct vocalic variations: /ar/, /air/, /ear/, /ire/, /or/, /er/, /rl/, and prevocalic /r/.  Separated further by initial, medial and final word positions, there are 21 different types of /r/. The ability to separate the /r/ into its most basic phonetic components and word positions is the key for successful remediation. No other remediation program targets the basic components of /r/ like The Entire World of R™.

The truth is, gMail’s guess was actually not too far off. We were indeed discussing phonemes and spelling rules. I didn’t know there is a whole /r/-me of /r/ researchers out there. Looks like I do need to make an appointment with a speech therapist at some point.

Consonant length - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In English phonology, consonant length is not distinctive. For instance, ‘baggage’ is pronounced /bægɪdʒ/, not /bæggɪdʒ/ or /bægːɪdʒ/. Phonetic gemination occurs marginally.

It occurs between words when the last consonant in a given word and the first consonant in the following word are either fricatives, nasal sounds and plosives. For instance :

• calm man [kɑː’mːæn]
• this saddle [ðɪ’sːædl]
• black coat [blæ’kːəʊt]

With affricates, however, this does not occur. For instance :

• orange juice [ˈɒɾɪndʒ dʒuːs]

In some dialects it is also found when the suffix -ly follows a root ending in -l or -ll, for example :

• solely [səʊllɪ]

In most instances, the absence of this doubling does not affect the meaning, though it may confuse the listener momentarily. Notable examples where the doubling does affect the meaning are the pairs "unaimed" [ʌn’eɪmd] versus "unnamed" [ʌ’nːeɪmd], and "holy" [həʊlɪ] versus "wholly" [həʊlːɪ] (the latter two sounding identical in many areas however).

I asked my daughter to say "orange juice" quickly, and she said "oran-juice". she was giggling as she did this, but she clearly thought it was an ok shortening. Meanwhile, I’ve heard a lot of people on the radio talking about "ill-legal" immigrants.  

NPR : The ‘Literary’ Legacy of Lord Timothy Dexter

Diversions

The ‘Literary’ Legacy of Lord Timothy Dexter

 

Weekend Edition Saturday, January 22, 2005 · Jan. 22 is "Lord" Timothy Dexter’s birthday. The self-proclaimed royal was an early American eccentric. His 1802 memoir A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, or Plain Truths in a Homespun Dress is entirely misspelled and contains no punctuation. Literary historian Paul Collins discusses Lord Timothy’s lasting appeal.

As the story goes — and in fact, too — Lord Timothy had the following response to critics in his 2nd edition of the Pickle book:

“fouder mister printer the Nowing ones complane of my book the fust edition had no stops I put in A Nuf here and thay may peper and solt it as they plese”

 

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

……………. ……………. …………….. ………………. ……………..

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

_{. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .}

^{. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .}

…………………………! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !………………………..

…………………………….. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! …………………………..

…………………………………. ! ! ! ! ! ! ……………………………….

………………………………………!……………………………………..

_{. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .}

^{, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,}

……………????????????????????????……………

Is Lord Timothy’s spelling really chaotic? Or was he simply using his own sense and — nowingly — ignored the convention? With the transliteraction on the internet it would be an interesting little project to figure out what his OT constraints were.  

Geoffrey Chaucer ’s spelling has been described as inconsistent, particularly with regard to the final -e. The question in my mind is, in a time when there was no standardized spelling (??) or dictionary and spelling was to transcribe the language, if Chaucer and his contemporaries’ spelling can somehow be described by a constraint-based model.

 
Chaucer: Illustration from Cassell’s History of England, circa 1902.

The idea is roughly the following:

• The writer thinks of a word
• among all potential spellings, choose the one that is optimal in the sense of minimizing costs of violating constraints, defined below.

Nothing earthbreaking, but it does states that spelling is neither a look-up process or a rule-based decision.

As a first approximation, the types of constraints in my mind should be purely phonological, as there were no explicit, conventional spelling rules at this point. I imagine a "spelling OT" that takes (arguable) the surface phonology as input, generate all potential spellings, and winnow them down through a set of markedness constraints (including grapheme-phoneme) to a singular (potentially probabilistic) winning spelling that best approximates the input.

In this framework there is no faithfulness from letters to sounds as far as the phonological module is concerned. The only Faithfulness is between the input and the phonological value of the spelt word. Whatever governs the letter-sound mapping are cognitive, epenthetical, and outside of the domian of phonology.

The key, then, is to specify the spelling-specific constraints which does 2 things:

1. assign graphemes phonological values
2. generate phonological values of the orthographic word

The nature of the first task is not completely clear at this moment — whether it is best understood as a special set of Faithfulness constraints, or better, Correspondence constraints (e.g., Cor("m", at initial; /m/, at onset)), or a set of markedness constraints (e.g., LetterM:"m" should sound like /m/). Either way, more complex "spelling patterns" may be observed by the system and thus added. Lexical constraints may also be implemented as one-of-a-kind constraints, althought that’s sort of an overkill.

Regardless how the Grapheme-Phoneme mapping happens, it happens. So for any particular spelling, there is a "preferred" reading, based on whatever GPC grammar/lexical information one happens to have. Whether or not this phonology is fully surfaced — syllabified and corrected for language-spcific phonotatics — remains to be seen.

I can imagine two models that in some sense correspond to different spelling processes.

• The first is surface phonology –> orthography –> surface phonology, which corresponds to the "sounding aloud" experience in spelling an unfamiliar word. The surface phonology is highlighted but not the underlying form; spellings are judged based on their being "sounding right."
• Alternatively, Underlying form –>othography–>underlying would mean that the author begins with the underlying representation, and wanted the orthography to somehow match the underlying phonology (and possibly morphology) rather than the surface. This would describe more scholarly spelling practices, perhaps.

And it is quite possible that English spelling may be a quasi-regular system that is best moded with a probabilistic model than an OT. But the present framework is meant to be a general model for spelling, which is often much more simpler than English.

The implementation of the GPC module is less important than the overall framework, which casts spelling as a process of optimization grounded on the basis of how the phonological system works. A statistical learning approach without a priori constraints on the phonology tell us little about how a new cognitive task is acheved by using an old system. Connectionism models, for example, often assume that phonemes can be strung together, and orthographic and phonological variation happen for no reasons (as noise or irregularities). The hope of the present approach is to shine some light on how we crack into an old module to make it do new tricks.  

Ok, here are number of resources on Chaucer’s English:

• Harvard’s Chaucer page (1999) links to a searchable database of Chaucer’s work. 
• Also there is a page on teaching yourself to speak like Chaucer, where there is a discussion on the role of "-e".
• For readings of Chaucer, check out Chaucer’s metapage. and the Chaucer’s Studio Recording from BYU.
• A list of common Chaucer vocabulary here.

96. BATESON, F.W. "Could Chaucer Spell?" Essays in Criticism 25 (1975):2-24.

Attributes much of Chaucer’s metrical richness and his variant spellings to his oral delivery. Spelling and elision indicate the poet’s willingness to modify "superficial syllables" with more natural stresses. The G text of Prologue to Legend of Good Women seems to best record Chaucer’s mature spelling habits. Compare to Samuels (entry 105).

105. SAMUELS, M.L. "Chaucer’s Spelling." In Middle English Studies: Presented to Norman Davis in Honour of his Seventieth Birthday. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983, pp. 17-37.

Through comparison with the Gower manuscripts, demonstrates that the spelling of Chaucerian manuscripts Hengwrt and Ellesmere is scribal rather than authorial, and argues that the manuscript of Equatorie of the Planets reflects Chaucer’s own spelling. Uses rhymes and dialectical evidence, corroborating them with parallels from manuscripts of Boece and Treatise on the Astrolabe. Compare to Bateson (entry 96).