should've (was: Re: x > f sound change)

John Cowan wrote:
>Nik Taylor scripsit:
>
> > I was merely disagreeing that it was seen as actually being the same as
> > "of", I think the spelling is used because "of" is the only word in
> > English pronounced /@(v)/.
>
>But there are people who, when asked to repeat what they have said
>more clearly, will say /ai SUd @v gOn/ and not /ai SUd h&v gOn/,
>which says that they have reanalyzed /Sudv/ as containing "of".
I must agree with Nik's reply to this message. People have not reanalyzed
/SUd@v/ as containing "of", but containing the morpheme [@v] which is
homophonous to "of". There is absolutely no evidence that this new clitic
is the same thing as the preposition. In fact, the evidence weighs against
such an interpretation. For example, English doesn't use prepositional
particles with modals. The fact that people write them to same only means
that they sound the same. It makes as much sense to me to say that plural
-s (dogs), possessive -'s (John's), and 3rd person singular present -s
(walks) are the same thing.



Marcus Smith

Unfortunately, or luckily,
no language is tyrannically consistent.
All grammars leak.
                -- Edward Sapir

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