Notes on: Albrow, K.H., The English Writing System: notes towards a description, Longman 1972 |
Note this page is rather slow and inefficient to get the IPA symbols reliably in graphics |
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| egg, asparagus, porridge, escalope, chips, lamb, peas, beer, spaghetti, beef, salad, gelatine, potato, vegetable, gem, greens, lasagne, artichoke, cabbage, Balti, brandy, duck, bread, water |
What
labels would you give to the three groups? |
System 1 The basic system
Grammatical items
two letter grammatical words possible: be we he so no me
three letter lexical words possible: bee, wee, heehee, sow, know, see
initial <th> in grammatical words: / 
/: this
[alt rule: avoid complex Vs in monosyllables: the, a, who, why]
suffixation (polysyllables):
plural <s> when not syllabic /s/ or /z/; otherwise <es>
/iz/
past <ed> /t/ /d/: irregulars problem: paid, lent etc
<ing> keeps <y>; swaying, paying; deletes <e>: wasting
Surnames
initial capital: Cook
final doubling: Ladd, Mann
<e> instead of doubling: Lowe, Moore,
Locke
System 2 ‘Romance’ spellings
System 3 Exotic spellings
Small groups of recent borrowings.
Comparisons
Uses of <e> (Albrow p.30-31)
1 dummy vocalic <e> in gate etc
2 dummy consonantal in live, leave
3 lexical following <s> in house
4 final <e> in <dge>: hedge
5 <e> in grammatical suffixes: ed er est etc
6 <e> in surnames: Moore
