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forgotten the structured way in which they were taught to read and write.
CORRESPONDENCES
In a strictly alphabetic system, there would be no divergence. You would find a regular one-to-one correspondence between
each phoneme and its spelling. This is certainly not so for correspondences in English. The nearest we get to it is perhaps
/h/a", as in hat. Even this assumes that we are dealing with the of who, the of shop, the of think,
etc. as independent complex units of spelling. In so far as we can describe English spelling conventions as a set of
correspondences, we are using correspondence rules .
Some correspondences are restricted to particular contexts. Since -doubling occurs after a short stressed vowel, we can
find a word spelt but never one spelt *. Another correspondence rule for a particular context is:
a" before final (design, paradigm)
Correspondence rules
People seem reluctant to call such statements rules . But if you set out to write computer programs to turn written words
into phonemes (text-to-speech) or phonemes into written text (speech-to-text), you would be writing CORRESPONDENCE
RULES like these. The public, however, takes correspondence rules for granted and looks to memorable little jingles to
safeguard against common errors.
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REFERENCE RULES
EXERCISE
11.1 Ask people to give you one or two examples of spelling rules that they are familiar with. Write down exactly what your
informants say and test the rules to see if they are fully explicit. If you applied the rules mechanically, would they work?
Discussion
The results of such an enquiry are fairly predictable. You will probably be offered:
1 before except after , referring to field, receive,
or perhaps:
2 alter to before adding , referring to orgy, orgies, deny, denies.
Reference rules
These can be called REFERENCE RULES, since they are memorable and you have them to refer to when you are hesitant
about a particular spelling.
The more closely one looks at rule (1), the more peculiar it seems. It helps to decide between in believe, etc. and
in deceive, etc. These and spellings of are a visual switching round (metathesis) of each other.
The rule does not, however, apply to phonemes other than . Although seize , seizure are exceptions to the rule, heifer
with /e/a" or rein, vein with have nothing to do with it. The letters are not a usual spelling of the
phoneme /e/ (in spite of friend) or of . The variable pair either and neither, which usually have . in BrE and in
AmE, are outside the rule. In AmE leisure with is an exception; in BrE with /e/ it is outside the scope of the rule. The
rule is quite unreliable with names: Dalgleish, Feilden, Keith, Leigh, Monteith, MacNeice, Neil, Reid, etc.
A more adequate, but less memorable wording of rule (1) would be:
In spelling an invariable with the letters and , the goes before the except after .
Graphotactic rules
This rule can also be classified as a GRAPHOTACTIC RULE (or letter-distribution rule ) which restricts possible letter
sequences. Not all such rules are easily stated as quotable reference rules. For instance, it is part of your competence as a
speller to know that words do not end in , , , or a single unless they are distinctly foreign, as in raj,
Iraq, guru, fez, or slang, as in spiv, baz. True as this may be, it is hardly quotable as a reference rule.
Graphotactic rules may have explanatory value in laying bare some of the general design principles. There is the so-called
short word rule , which provides a minimum bulk of three letters for lexical
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words as opposed to function words (p. 76). The rules for -marking of long vowels and -doubling as a marking of
short vowels have graphotactic complications. They depend on whether the vowel in question is spelt by one or more letters:
we have but not *, but not * (p. 18).
Let us return to our search for other quotable reference rules. One rule you are likely to be offered is (2). It reminds you
that the plural of army, penny, sky, is armies, pennies, skies, not *, etc. and that you have the verb form envies,
marries, relies, not *, etc. Here, too, you have to be careful of the wording of the rule. The should not be
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