Bill, I agree completely. My observation is quite different from yours, and
I high-jacked your topic to drop my tangential curiosity on ATEG. Sorry
about that!

I DO know what you mean though; I'm not sure what to make of it most of the
time. I often chalk it up to processing issues because so many of my
students seem to struggle with cognitive overload when it comes to the
writing process. For so many reasons, they speed write, trying to force the
core content of their ideas (which they first twist and gnarl into bulky,
stilted constructions that they think I expect) onto the page before they
"lose" the thought completely. Perhaps some of the grammatical nuts and
bolts are getting lost along the way. In any case, I agree with you that
these occurrences are not always dialect-based and are a written, not
spoken, phenomenon.

John Alexander

On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 6:23 PM, Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

>  John,
>
>
>
> People who don’t make an “X vs. X-ly” distinction in writing also don’t, as
> you point out, make it in speech either. That’s more what I think of as an
> effect of normal language change; people are writing what they actually say,
> whether or not a usage guide would approve of it. The students who are
> dropping the –ing suffixes do say it. It’s almost as if they’re classing it
> with expression such as “umm…” or the “like” that’s, like, used to, like,
> mark, like, hesitation.
>
>
>
> Bill Spruiell
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:
> [log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of *John Dews-Alexander
> *Sent:* Thursday, May 14, 2009 6:58 PM
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* Re: Suffix-dropping
>
>
>
> I've been amazed at the loss of the derivational suffix -ly that routinely
> marks adverbs.
>
> Bill's talking about inflectional suffixes, I know, but I couldn't help
> mentioning the loss of -ly.
>
> I'm not one to cling to language bits that are rusting out and
> disappearing, but it really took me by surprise that -ly is not a productive
> part of the language for many speakers.
>
> If you focus on it and really listen to current language usage on
> television (both scripted and unscripted), in radio, and with the people you
> encounter, you'll notice it too.
>
> John Alexander
>
> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 5:41 PM, Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> I’ve read a ton of student papers over the past two weeks, and based on
> this batch and those from the last couple of years, I’m starting to get the
> impression that a greater percentage of my students every year are dropping
> inflectional suffixes (plurals, tense-markers) and finding it difficult to
> notice the omissions when proofreading (I haven’t been formally counting, so
> I could be mistaking something I’ve just noticed for a trend, though).  I’ve
> always seen some of this in examples where the suffix isn’t audible in
> normal speech, particularly  if the suffix is well on the way to being a
> kind of fossil in the particular expression(e.g. “ice tea” – you can’t hear
> the realization of the {-ed} suffix before [t], and “iced” in that
> expression is probably a unitary adjective rather than a participle for most
> speakers who do use the –ed in writing). That’s absolutely normal, and over
> time the suffix-less form can become the norm (“ice cream” used to be “iced
> cream”).
>
>
>
> What I’m seeing, though, are forms like “I was read this book” or “These
> short story are….”; they’re in papers written by native English-speakers who
> don’t speak any of the dialects that would normally drop those suffixes, and
> the same students do use the suffixes in speech (it’s exactly the reverse of
> the usual situation, in which students don’t know they have to write bits
> that they don’t say). If I draw attention to a line in which there’s a
> missing –ing, etc., the students frequently **can’t** see anything unusual
> about it; their usual reaction is to look at it for a minute, then get rid
> of a comma (if there is one) or add one (if there isn’t).  It’s that
> inability to notice the “gap” that I’m particularly intrigued by. If I read
> the section out loud, they immediately notice the omission (and I then tell
> them that they need to coerce friends into reading papers out loud for them
> as a coping strategy). It’s not a language issue at all; it’s just an
> orthographic one.
>
>
>
> I know similar effects can be associated with mild forms of dyslexia, but I
> find it hard to believe that fully 15 - 25% of the student population is
> even mildly dyslexic.   I realize this is starting to sound like a variant
> of “Geezer Rant #325A; Those Darn Kids Won’t Write Right” but I’m curious
> about whether anyone else is noticing similar patterns, or whether this has
> been common all along and I’ve somehow managed not to notice it (which,
> given the rest of this post, would be rather amusing for everyone but me…).
>
>
>
> ---- Bill Spruiell
>
> Dept. of English
>
> Central Michigan University
>
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