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

I can't find the original of this thread, but anyway....
Marcus Smith wrote:
>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.
I can understand how a child (up to age 10/11-- as is the case here IIRC)
might write "should of", if he/she has not yet been taught the forms and
intricacies of the English perfect tenses, nor had a lot of exposure to the
written word.   Comparable to a toddler interpreting "cheese" as a plural,
and asking Mommy for "a chee".

Lord only knows how English grammar is taught these days...but surely by
high school/college, even the semi-attentive student will have learned that
['Sud@v] et al. is a contraction of "should have...".

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

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