Re: Grammar in HS (Was: Re: Argument Structures)

"H. S. Teoh" wrote:

> And of course, we also had to learn English (to various degrees of
> competency, depending on the school), so imagine my shock when I came to
> N. America and discovered that apparently students here aren't even taught
> English phonetics (don't even mention grammar), they are just taught to
> follow the "gut feeling" they get when they see a word.
This is not at all my experience of learning English grammar all the way
from elementary through highschool.  We may not have learned about
English phonetics or phonology, but we did go through quite rigorous
courses about syntax.  Not to the level of college courses, certainly,
but we had to learn all about restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses, phrases
compound, complex, etc.  In other words, what everyone *should* learn.

> (This, IMNSHO, is
> probably why the schwa sound is becoming increasingly prevalent in spoken
> English.
Phonological developments have most often nothing to do with institutional
education systems.  The schwa has been there for a long, long time.

> I honestly won't be
> surprised that sometime in the future, the vowels in unstressed syllables
> won't even be written out anymore, since it makes no difference to the
> pronunciation.
Sure they will.  What are phonetically realized as schwas are often
morphophonemic variants of other vowels.  For example, look at

    telegraph        ['t_hEl@gr&f]
    telegraphic     [t_hEl@'gr&fIk]
    telegraphy      [t_hE'lEgr@fi]

If you know the ways in which a given suffix changes accentuation, then
you can predict very regularly what the pronunciation should be
underlyingly, and thus how to spell it.

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Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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