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.
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Editorial Reviews
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"A book which anyone interested in writing systems, especially English writing, should own... I have two copies of it now and I am sure that they will quickly become... dog-eared and annotated." - Mark Aronoff, Language "One of the most comprehensive books on the subject that you will find... a work intended for the serious student/scholar of American English, its spelling, and its formation." - American Reference Books Annual "One needs to be reminded that English orthography does, in the main, make sense; there is an underlying structure to which most words adhere. In American English Spelling, D. W. Cummings updates Jespersen and other grammarians, elucidating the rules of English orthography in meticulous detail... It can be browsed with much profit, or used as a reference to answer specific questions." - Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics"
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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5.0 out of 5 stars
Great resource for teachers,
This review is from: American English Spelling: An Informal Description (Paperback)
I bought this book in the 90s and I still use it constantly . This book would benefit any teacher who feels underprepared in teaching orthographic spelling patterns and the rationale for each pattern. The first ten chapters provide the various rules for spelling: suffix rules, silent e (split vowel digraph), doubling middle position consonants (hopping vs hoping), plus many more. The remaining chapters provide spelling patterns according to each vowel or consonant sound. It's a great reference source.
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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, Old French, Early Modern English, Stress Frontshift Rule, Short Word Rule, Great Vowel Shift, Principle of Preferred Regularity, Old Norse, British English, Norman French, Mixed Voicing Rule, The Simple Fricatives, Strings Instances, The Diphthongs, Simple Boundary Rule, Complex Boundaries Instances, Middle Ages, Norman Conquest, Richard Mulcaster, Samuel Johnson, The Complex Long, Triplet Rule New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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, Old French, Early Modern English, Stress Frontshift Rule, Short Word Rule, Great Vowel Shift, Principle of Preferred Regularity, Old Norse, British English, Norman French, Mixed Voicing Rule, The Simple Fricatives, Strings Instances, The Diphthongs, Simple Boundary Rule, Complex Boundaries Instances, Middle Ages, Norman Conquest, Richard Mulcaster, Samuel Johnson, The Complex Long, Triplet Rule New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 88
books:
See all 88 books this book cites
4
books
cite this book:
- The Sound Pattern of English by Noam Chomsky on 6 pages
- English Language (Opus Books) by Logan Pearsall Smith in Front Matter, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Language and Literacy: The Sociolinguistics of Reading and Writing (Routledge Direct Editions) by Michael Stubbs in Front Matter, page 462, and Back Matter
- On Interpretation by Aristotle on page 16, and Back Matter
- Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
See all 88 books this book cites
- Essential Introductory Linguistics by Grover Hudson on page 383
- The English Writing System (Arnold Publication) by Vivian Cook in Back Matter
- A Computational Theory of Writing Systems (Studies in Natural Language Processing) by Richard Sproat in Back Matter
- English Spelling (Language Workbooks) by Edward Carney in Back Matter
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