I included some material on the s/c contrast between verbs and nouns in an English morphology paper I did a few years ago.  Eric John Dobson's English pronunciation 1500-1700 (Clarendon Press 1968) demonstrated that up into the 17th c. the c/s orthographic contrast reflected a fortis/lenis pronunciation contrast (voiceless/voiced in more popular but inaccurate terms).  The contrast was productive and was reflected in spellings like abuce/abuse, sence/sense, cloce/close, tence/tense, chooce/choose, refuce/refuse, enterprice/enterprise.  The spelling convention pretty much disappeared by 1700, with just a few forms persisting.  I remember being taught in my Lutheran parochial school to spell licence and license differently for the noun and the verb, also for defence and defense.  Interestingly, the OED lists both forms for each word in the entry for the verb but lists them in the order given above. Quotations in the definitions indicate that, at least for these two words, spelling and word class did not line up consistently.

Herb


-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain
Sent: 2009-08-18 16:13
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: If I were the language god...

Ed,

Point well taken!  The problem with your objection to "traveler" and "modeler" has to do with the stress, which I believe was pointed out in a post on this list not very long ago.  The actual pronunciation of 'prophecy'/ 'prophesy', 'advice'/ 'advise', and 'device'/ 'devise' is different on this side of the ocean (and I believe there too).  These would be sources of confusion in the other direction.  

Bruce


-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Edmond Wright
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 1:14 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: If I were the language god...

> The trouble with 'fonetik' spelling is, of course, is indicated by what Seth
Katz says about the Southerner's 'peen' for 'pen', for the result would be that
everyone would write their own accent.  I find it difficult enough as it is to
understand what Glaswegians from the suburb in Glasgow known as the Gorbals are
saying.  Similarly I have been having great trouble with the black Baltimorese
in 'The Wire', which is now on British TV.  At least if somebody from there
writes a letter in standard spelling, there is no problem, but I would be faced
with a pointless effort of translation if spelling were to be purely phonetic.
There are some sounds in that Scottish dialect and presumable Baltimorese that
are not found anywhere else, so one would have to be an expert phonetician to
know what the IPA symbols for them stood for.

Standard orthography thus contributes to worldwide understanding.  It also
has the merit of making a visual link which helps with meanings:  if
'graph', 'photography' and 'photographical' were written phonetically, the
etymological stem GRAPH would be hidden, as would its association with
'graphite', 'epigram', 'telegraph', 'geography', 'biography',   etc., as
well as 'GRAMMAR'!  The origin is a root which meant 'to scratch' or 'carve'
as of a letter in clay, stone, or wood -- indeed 'carve' comes from the same
root.

Incidentally, I have always found the supposedly phonetic American spellings
not very helpful.  The fact that in British English we spell the verb
'practise' with an S and the noun 'practice' with a C is a useful visual
distinction in writing, matched in 'license'/ 'licence', 'prophecy'/
'prophesy', 'advice'/ 'advise', and 'device'/ 'devise'.  The removal of an L
from 'traveller' to produce 'traveler' has also puzzled me -- for why not
then 'teler' for 'teller', 'dweler' for 'dweller', and, a fortiori, 'speler'
for 'speller'?

Edmond


Dr. Edmond Wright
3 Boathouse Court
Trafalgar Road
Cambridge
CB4 1DU
England

Email: [log in to unmask]
Website: http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/elw33/
Phone [00 44] (0)1223 350256


> 
> Without a doubt, fonetik spelling :)
> 
> Bob Miller
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Wollin, Edith
> Sent: Mon 8/17/2009 3:22 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: If I were the language god...
>  
> I would not lose the pronoun for "we two"; I don't remember what it was
> anymore, but I loved it. It feels so intimate and separates we two from
> all of the "other" we's. There are also times when it would clear up
> confusion. I can't quite figure out why we let it drop.
> 
> Edith Wollin
> 
>  
> 
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dick Veit
> Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 10:40 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: If I were the language god...
> 
>  
> 
> As grammarians, we try to examine, understand, explain, and teach about
> the English language as we find it. In rare unguarded moments, however,
> in the privacy of our studies, some of us might indulge ourselves in
> prescriptivist fantasies about how we would change our language if we
> had that supernatural power. In these waning days of summer break,
> perhaps some ATEGers might care to join me in such illicit speculation.
> 
> If you were the language god and could go back a thousand years to
> reshape the evolution of the English language, what might you change?
> Syntax, phonology, orthography, and punctuation are all fair game.
> 
> Of course our first thoughts might be to regularize the irregular. Get
> rid of all the oddball verb inflections and make it: we seeked, we
> taked, we swimmed, we goed, we doed, we beed. In spelling, the
> absurdities to clean up are legion: there's tough/cough/bough/dough and
> threw/through/coup/flew/slough/who/shoe, as well as limitless more
> orthographic craziness
> <http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/media/poems.php> . In punctuation,
> we might want to put the comma and period after the close-quote mark
> where they logically belong: You say "bucket", but I say "pail".
> 
> But that's all tame stuff. Anything more radical?
> 
> I think I'd change it so that plural and possesive nouns had different
> inflections. Currently dogs, dog's, and dogs'' sound exactly alike. I'll
> decree that the new plural inflection is -en, so that plurals are now
> doggen, catten, horsen, oxen, and grammarianen. Now it's easy to
> distinguish between doggen, dog's, and doggen's. In fact, the
> apostrophes are now superfluous, so doggen, dogs, and doggens. Much
> better.
> 
> So what would you change if you were the language god?
> 
> Dick Veit
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