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Editorial Reviews
Product Description
About the Author
In this study of the English language as it is spelled in America, D. W. Cummings demonstrates that behind the apparent disorder of spelling in American English lies a self-regulating and self-reorganizing system that is responsive to four kinds of imperative: phonetic, semantic, etymological, and systemic. Cummings offers a systematic theory of orthography and applies this theory to the American English vocabulary with numerous examples. Cummings also describes the explication of written words into their elements, particles, and processes, and he sets out the tactical and procedural rules that control the distribution and sequencing of vowels and consonants. In the largest section of the book, he provides an exhaustive description of the major and minor correspondences between the sounds of American English words and their spellings. An essential reference work, American English Spelling moves beyond questions of how words are spelled to an understanding of why they are spelled as they are.
About the Author
D. W. Cummings is emeritus professor of English at Central Washington University. He can be contacted through his website, www.dwcummings.com.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
More than four hundred years ago in Elizabeth London, Richard Mulcaster, headmaster of the Merchant-Taylors' School, published his spelling text, The Elementarie. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
duplicative addition, twinning rule, conservative analogy, head vowel, connate group, other minor spellings, terminative bases, known holdouts, growing visual bias, more regular variant, etymological demand, phonetic demand, major spellings, mixed convergence, shortening rules, doublet constraint, most important spelling, consonant doublets, other simple boundaries, short vowel spelled, stressed short vowel, doublet rule, minim letters, asterisked words, strings shortened Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Old English, Middle English, American English, Third Syllable Rule,
More than four hundred years ago in Elizabeth London, Richard Mulcaster, headmaster of the Merchant-Taylors' School, published his spelling text, The Elementarie. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
duplicative addition, twinning rule, conservative analogy, head vowel, connate group, other minor spellings, terminative bases, known holdouts, growing visual bias, more regular variant, etymological demand, phonetic demand, major spellings, mixed convergence, shortening rules, doublet constraint, most important spelling, consonant doublets, other simple boundaries, short vowel spelled, stressed short vowel, doublet rule, minim letters, asterisked words, strings shortened Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Old English, Middle English, American English, Third Syllable Rule,