Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- The origins of language
- Animals and human language
- The development of writing
- The sounds of language
- The sound patterns of language
- Words and word-formation processes
- Morphology
- Phrases and sentences : grammar
- Syntax
- Semantics
- Pragmatics
- Discourse analysis
- Language and the brain
- First language acquisition
- Second language acquisition/learning
- Gestures and sign languages
- Language history and change
- Language and regional variation
- Language and social variation
- Language and culture
- Appendix: Suggested answers to study questions
- Glossary
- References
- Index
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The sounds of language
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- The origins of language
- Animals and human language
- The development of writing
- The sounds of language
- The sound patterns of language
- Words and word-formation processes
- Morphology
- Phrases and sentences : grammar
- Syntax
- Semantics
- Pragmatics
- Discourse analysis
- Language and the brain
- First language acquisition
- Second language acquisition/learning
- Gestures and sign languages
- Language history and change
- Language and regional variation
- Language and social variation
- Language and culture
- Appendix: Suggested answers to study questions
- Glossary
- References
- Index
Summary
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble but not you
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word,
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead –
For goodness sake don't call it ‘deed’!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
T. S. W. quoted in Mackay (1970)Imagine the manager of a small restaurant, a man who has always had trouble with the spelling of unusual words, writing out a sign which he puts in the front window, advertising that they have a new seagh. You see the sign and you decide to ask what kind of new thing this is. When you hear the pronunciation, you recognize the word usually written as chef. How did he arrive at that other spelling? Well, it's very simple, he says. Take the first sound of the word sure, the middle sound of the word dead, and the final sound of the word laugh. Isn't that a seagh?
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- The Study of Language , pp. 29 - 42Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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