(2. is not required to be handed in.)
2. There is more than one way of doing these things involving the rebus principle.
a. tearing. Use a picture of a cup of tea plus a ring. Or you could even get by with a picture of a torn piece of paper or cloth plus a picture of a ring.
b. icicle. ëEyeí plus ësomebody bicyclingí. Or whatever.
c. bareback. ëBearí plus ësomebodyís backí.
d. cookies. Picture of a dove making a ëcooí sound plus a picture of a bunch of keys. Donít like that? OK. Picture of a cook plus somebody taking a nap (= ëeaseí).
5. The basic principle here is that at least some of English spelling is done according
to the ëmorphophonemic principleí. i.e. ëfunnyí spellings often result from the fact
that other words morphologically related to a word have a sound that is silent in
the original word.
a. ëI amí. Nothing you could add to ëamí will produced any sound other than [m]. But if you add -ic to ëiambí you get ëiambicí with a [b], hence ëiambí is a good morphophonemic spelling of that word.
b. The -oose of ëgooseí and the -uce of ëproduceí rhyme, but thereís ëproductioní and ëproductí, so the use of -c- to spell an [s] that changes its form in morphological transformation makes sense morphophemically.
c. ëcomplicateí with a [t], but the [sh] in ëfashioní never alternates.
d. ënoí is always [no]; ëknowí [no] has a [k] in ëacknowledgeí.
f. hymn/hymnal, but ëhimí is invariant.
6. Same deal as #5: the principle of morphophonemic spelling in English.
a. ëlongí ends phonetically not in [g] but the velar nasal
[ ]. But spelling ëlongí with a g makes morphophonemic sense because ëlongerí has a [g] phonetically.
b. Spelling ëchildrení with an ëií reinforces its identification with ëchildí, even though there is a diphthong in ëchildí. Ditto line/lineal. We would hate chayld/chuldren.
c. Spelling ëresoundí [rizawnd] with ësí reinforces identification with ësoundí, which has an [s].
d. The [s] of ëcentí never changes; the [k] of ëmysticí changes to [s] in ëmysticismí.
e. The ëbí of ëbombí [bam] shows up in words like bombardier, bombardment.
f. The regular plural in English has three differet forms (allomorphs): {s z z]. Spelling them all ësí emphasizes that the are morphologically one ñ the plural.
g. design/designate.
h. There are lots of alternations between [i] and [I]: serene/serenity, obscene/obscenity, Irene/irenic. So keeping a uniform spelling with ëeí underlines that the words are related. This morphological connection would be broken if, as many spelling reformers have proposed, we would change the spellings to reflect more closely the phonetic, e.g. ësereaní versus ëserenityí.
9.
| Cherokee |
7 |
| Chinese |
6 |
| ìGermanî |
9 |
| Greek |
2 |
| Hebrew |
4 |
| Icelandic |
8 |
| Japanese |
1 |
| Korean |
10 |
| Russian |
3 |
| Twi |
5 |