a- words
Apart from its
use as an article, a occurs frequently in English. It can
mean ‘(for) each/every’ in:
three times a week (i.e. every week)
$1 a dozen (i.e. for each dozen)
A- occurs as a prefix with a range of meanings. It can precede body parts and a
number of common nouns to indicate direction or location:
abreast ahead aside abed abroad aloft
A number of a+body parts are now only
used figuratively in the standard language:
He was taken aback. (i.e. surprised)
There was something afoot. (i.e. going
on) It is found in a set of nautical
items indicating position:
abaft aboard astern
condition:
adrift afloat
aground
or a desire to establish
contact:
ahoy
Prefix a- is also found in a number of words indicating a state or
process:
ajar alive atingle
The a- form in these words derives from Old English. It is no longer productive as a prefix and although
many a- words such as:
aloud aloof
asleep
are commonly used, many others
such as:
ablush aflame aflutter
are found mainly in literature.
There is also an a-/an- prefix
which derives from Greek a-/an-meaning
‘not’ or ‘without’ and which is still productive. It occurs in such words as:
amoral asocial
asymmetrical
The an- form is the prefix used before vowels:
anaemic
anarchy anastigmatic
See: affix,
wake.
abbreviations
Abbreviations are appropriate
in scholarly articles and footnotes (VP =verb phrase, cf.=confer=compare) and
in documents where their use will not cause confusion. Elsewhere, abbreviations
should be used sparingly.
Many abbreviations consist of the initial letters of the significant
words in a phrase, for example BBC (British
Broadcasting Corporation), FBI (Federal
Bureau of Investigation). In speech, the main stress normally falls on the last
letter of the abbreviation. Sometimes the letters used can combine to form new
words or acronyms, for example NATO (North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation).
The titles Dr, Mr, Mrs, Messrs are
always abbreviated when used with names. (Ms
is not strictly an abbreviation but a blend of Mrs and Miss.) Other
standard abbreviations are a.m. and p.m., BC and AD, Jr. (e.g. James Smith Jr.),
and those for large organisations (e.g. CBI=Confederation
of British Industry or TUC=Trades
Union Congress). In formal writing, titles indicating high rank are given in
full (President, Prime Minister,
Reverend) but they may be abbreviated or clipped in informal writing
especially when used with initials or first names (e.g. Professor Smith, Prof. J.A.Smith).
Abbreviations may vary in different countries or in different
institutions. A Bachelor of Arts degree, for example, is referred to as a B.A. in the UK and in many universities
in the USA but as an A.B. in Harvard.
Generally, contemporary UK usage avoids the use of full stops after
abbreviations unless ambiguities would occur (as with a.m. becoming indistinguishable from am). In the USA, a full stop is usual after a lower case letter (Fr., Lat.). Latin abbreviations (such
as c.= circa, e.g.=exempli gratia and
i.e.=id est) tend to take full stops throughout the English-speaking
world. Only one full stop is necessary after an abbreviation which occurs at
the end of a sentence:
His name was
Dai Jones Jr.
The article
used before an abbreviation is determined by the pronunciation of the first
letter (a UFO=unidentified flying
object, an M.A.=Master of Arts).
The plural forms of abbreviations are occasionally specialised (MSS =manuscripts, pp=pages, SS=saints), but
they generally take lower case ‘s’ (JPs=Justices
of the Peace, MPs=Members of
Parliament).
The
description above is concerned with abbreviations in written and formal styles.
Certain
abbreviations can also occur in informal speech and writing. Among these are:
BFN (Bye for now)
BLT (Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato) TCB
(Taking Care of Business) TLC (Tender
Loving Care)
See: acronym,
apostrophe, Bible, clipping, footnotes.
-able, -ible
In spoken
English there is little or no difference in pronunciation between the suffixes - able and -ible and this
fact adds to the uncertainty many people feel about spelling. Etymology is
of little help. It is true that many -able
endings derive from the Latin suffix
-abilis, whereas -ible endings are from -ibilis.
Such information only puts the problem back one language. There is,
unfortunately, no easy set of rules, although the more recent the compound word
the more likely is the suffix to be -able:
permute—permutable televise—televisable
because -ible is no longer productive as a morpheme and because -able is meaningful not only as a
morpheme but also as a word that allows compounds to be rephrased:
permutable—able to be permuted televisable—able to be televised
The following
information will help to prevent spelling errors.
1 -able can be added to many verbs to form
adjectives:
laugh—laughable interpret—interpretable think—thinkable
and negative
adjectives may be formed by prefixing un-:
unflappable unsinkable unworkable
Where the verb
ends with a consonant+e, as in like or
shake, the ‘e’ is dropped before - able and, incidentally, before all
suffixes beginning with a vowel. A number of words such as likable/likeable have two acceptable forms, the former more widely
used in the USA, the latter in the UK. It is probable that the form without ‘e’
will become accepted worldwide. Where variants are possible, however, we
provide them in 6 below. The only exceptions to this rule are words whose base forms end in -ce, -ee or -ge:
pronounceable agreeable gaugeable
2 Where the
base form ends in a vowel+y, the ‘y’ is retained:
buyable
enjoyable
sayable
and where the
base form ends in a consonant+y, the ‘y’ is changed to ‘i’:
deny—deniable petrify—petrifiable vary—variable
The exceptions
to this rule are:
flyable
fryable
neither of which is widely used.
3 Where the
base form of a polysyllabic word ends in -ate,
the -ate was originally dropped
before -able was added:
alienate—alienable calculate—calculable, incalculable
demonstrate—demonstrable
This rule does not apply to
monosyllabic words: date—datable
or to disyllabic words:
dilate—dilatable vacate—vacatable
In recent coinages
and frequently in speech, -atable forms
occur:
infiltrate—infiltratable inundate—inundatable
4
Base forms ending in a single consonant
usually double the consonant before adding -
able:
forgettable
battable (of a ground capable
of being batted on) This rule only applies to one verb ending in -er, thus:
conferrable
All the others
have -erable: preferable
referable
transferable
5 -ible endings occur in a fixed number of words deriving
from Latin, such as:
audible
destructible
tangible
It is no longer a living suffix,
and often we find dyads occurring
with -ible in the Latin- derived (and
usually formal) word and -able attached
to the more frequently used verb:
credible—believable edible—eatable risible—laughable
A useful though not infallible
rule is that when we delete -able we
are usually left with a recognisable verb. This is not true when we delete -ible (cf. ed-, cred-, ris-).
6
The following lists give the recommended
spellings of words that people often worry about.
(a) -able
abominable
accountable adaptable adorable advisable agreeable alienable amiable appreciable approachable arguable assessable
available believable bribable bridgeable
calculable capable changeable chargeable conceivable conferrable
consolable curable datable debatable definable
demonstrable desirable despicable dissolvable drivable durable educable equable excitable excusable expendable finable foreseeable
forgettable forgivable gettable givable hirable immovable immutable impalpable
impassable impeccable implacable impressionable
indefatigable indescribable indispensable inflatable inimitable insufferable irreplaceable
justifiable knowledgeable losable malleable manageable
measurable noticeable operable peaceable
penetrable perishable permeable pleasurable
preferable pronounceable readable reconcilable regrettable reliable removable reputable
serviceable suitable tolerable transferable
undeniable unexceptionable unknowable unmistakable
(b) -able/eable
likable/likeable
lovable/loveable salable/saleable sizable/sizeable usable/useable
(c) -ible
accessible admissible audible avertible
combustible compatible comprehensible contemptible
contractible controvertible convertible defensible destructible digestible discernible divisible edible eligible fallible feasible flexible forcible gullible illegible incorrigible incredible indelible indigestible intangible irascible irresistible legible
negligible ostensible perceptible permissible plausible possible responsible reversible risible susceptible tangible unintelligible
visible
See: morpheme,
spelling.
abstract
An abstract is a summary of a thesis/dissertation or scholarly article. It
provides essential information on the claims, the development of the argument, the evidence used and the
conclusions reached and should be intelligible to a person who has not read the
original.
Abstracts of articles generally contain no more than 200 words, and
theses are usually abstracted in approximately 300 words. An abstract should be
concise and specific, normally consisting of one coherent paragraph for an
article and a number of paragraphs, each representing a major line of
development, in a thesis. It is usual in abstracts relating to the Arts for the
active voice to be used; abstracts
relating to the Sciences often prefer the passive
voice.
See: précis.
Academy
This word goes
back to Greek, where it indicates the Platonic school of philosophy. It is now
often used to refer to an institute of learning or to the French Academy, l’Académie Française. This is an
association of scholars and writers concerned with maintaining the standards,
purity and eloquence of the French language. It was the Académie Française which in the late 1970s criticised the adoption
of English items such as:
le shopping le weekend
The Académie Française has considerable
prestige but there is little evidence that its pronouncements have limited the
use of English words in the speech of the young.
No such academy exists for the regulation of English, although several
authoritative bodies have tried to introduce formal controls. The Royal
Society, for example, was established in 1660 and it encouraged its members,
scientists and writers alike, to develop ‘a close naked, natural way of
speaking; positive expressions, clear senses, a native easiness’.
The USA too had its informal
‘academicians’. Webster, for example, helped modify spelling conventions,
preferring -or to -our in words such as colour and the simplification of endings
in words such as catalogue and programme, giving catalog and program.
Today one may claim that the media, especially in the quality press and
in the authoritative statements of radio and television, function like an
academy in that they arbitrate on what is acceptable and they influence the
entire population, encouraging a modification towards network norms.
See: network norms, purist, Standard English.
accent
An accent relates to a person’s pronunciation. Everyone who speaks has
an accent but people often think of the accent which approximates to the
prestigious network norms as being
‘clearest’, ‘most intelligible’, ‘best’, even ‘accentless’. Unlike French,
which has an Académie to arbitrate on
pronunciation, the English language has never had a single spoken standard.
Nevertheless, the notion of a socially prestigious accent goes back at least as
far as the sixteenth century, when grammarians began to suggest that the most
acceptable form of pronunciation was that used by educated speakers in London
and at the Court. (The term accent is
often popularly confused with dialect.
It is, however, perfectly possible to speak the standard language with a
regional accent.)
As far as the UK is concerned, the most prestigious accent is RP (Received Pronunciation). This variety
was characterised in the mid-nineteenth century by A.J.Ellis and in the
twentieth century by Daniel Jones. RP was originally an educated regional
accent but it became the accent of social position and privilege—the accent
used by educated speakers in the southeast of England, in Oxford, Cambridge and
the public schools such as Eton and Harrow. In the 1930s it was adopted by the
BBC as the accent for news broadcasts. In this way, RP came to be associated
with the ‘right way’ of speaking, and through its use in education and the
media it has exerted an influence on all speech in the UK. In the early part of
this century, it was impossible to hold a post of any seniority in the army,
government or law unless one’s speech approximated to RP. It was against this
background that G.B.Shaw wrote Pygmalion:
…for the encouragement of people
troubled with accents that cut them off from all high employment…
(Preface to 1912 edition)
Nowadays in the
UK there is more tolerance towards regionally-marked accents, but RP continues
to be the most prestigious accent and the one still used by the media for all
official pronouncements.
The position is somewhat analagous in the USA, where the accents used
by the regional networks exert an influence on listeners. However, there seems
to be more tolerance of regionally marked accents in the USA than in the UK and
it would probably be true to generalise that in the UK an accent other than RP
connotes first class and then regional differences; in the USA an accent which
differs from the network norms would probably connote first regional and then
class or ethnic differences.
Each country in which English is a mother tongue or an official
language has its own pronunciation norms which are dealt with under separate
headings. The most significant difference between varieties of English,
however, often relates to the pronunciation of ‘r’.
See: dialect, pronunciation, rhotic.
accent marks
Most of the accent marks in English are on words or
names borrowed from other languages:
Acute — exposé
Bar (indicates long vowel) — 
Breve (indicates short vowel) — 
Cedilla — façade
Circumflex — maître d’hotel Dieresis (indicates a syllable) — naïve (2 syllables)
Grave — à la mode
Tilde — mañana
Wedge (indicates consonant change)
Umlaut (indicates change of vowel)
— Černak, Doležel
— Göttingen
(Umlaut is often shown by inserting an ‘e’ as in Goettingen.)
Conventionally
we do not indicate accent marks in French when upper case letters are used:
Ecole Normale MAGAZIN D’ELEVES
but with
German words the umlaut is required even with capitals.
Once a
borrowed word becomes an accepted part of the vocabulary of English, the accent
mark tends to be dropped as in cortege<
cortège, detente<détente, Haiti (2 syllables)<Haïti, role<rôle and tete-a-tete<tête-à-tête.
The dieresis and the hyphen have in the past been used to mark a
syllable break between vowels. Nowadays, the dieresis is rarely found and the
use of the hyphen is declining:
coöperative, co-operative, cooperative reëstablish, re-establish,
reestablish
Accent marks
have some special uses in verse. The grave is sometimes used to mark stress on
a syllable that is normally unstressed, thus producing a regular metrical
pattern:
Accursèd
Faustus, where is mercy now?
Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
More
idiosyncratically, the poet G.M.Hopkins uses accent marks to distinguish
particular stressed syllables when the normal orthography cannot signal their status adequately:
Márgarét, áre
you grieving? Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
‘Spring
and Fall’ See: borrowing, -ed forms,
foreign words in English.
acquisition of language
Linguists,
educationists and psychologists have all attempted to explain how it is that a
normal child who is chronologically and emotionally immature, whose motor
skills are relatively undeveloped and whose responses to time, space and
measurements are imprecise, is capable of acquiring the language or languages
of his environment. To add to the achievement, we have to acknowledge that the
mother tongue is acquired without any formal teaching, in a relatively short
time (most children have a good command of the language(s) of their environment
by the time they are four) and, stranger still perhaps, although no two
children are exposed to identical language input, all children in the same
speech community emerge speaking essentially the same language.
To explain this phenomenon scholars have come up with two competing
theories which, for simplicity, can be referred to as the Behaviourist and the Species-Specific
schools.
The behaviourist viewpoint had its first comprehensive treatment in
B.F.Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (1957).
The essential thesis here is that children acquire the language of their
environments in very much the same way as dogs learn to beg for bones. The
behaviour is rewarded and socially sanctioned. According to Skinnerians,
children imitate the sounds, intonation patterns, words and structures that
they hear around them and then by a process of ‘generalisation’ they create new
and acceptable patterns based on the old ones. There is considerable support
for Skinner’s views in the evidence of children’s early speech and from the
fact that speakers continue to expand their use of language by means of
imitation, stimulation and the promise of reward. Such views cannot, however,
satisfactorily account for everything in the acquisition process.
From about the age of 18 months there is an ‘explosion’ in the amount
of speech children use, and much of it cannot be explained in terms of
imitation. With English- speakers, for example, it is not uncommon for a child
to learn see and saw by imitation, but then produce forms such as seed and sawed. It is almost as if the child has worked out that many verbs
change from present to past by the addition of ‘-ed’ and so is trying to
regularise see. In this way, the
child moves from a list to a system. Similarly, irregular
plurals like men often become
mans. Children do not learn these
forms: they create them, as they do patterns for negation and interrogation.
Because such linguistic behaviour seems to come from the children and not from
an outside source many scholars believe that the human ability to acquire
language is species specific. This means that human beings are genetically
programmed to acquire language and they will talk automatically at a certain
time just as they will walk automatically at a certain time, if they are given the right environment. The last proviso is
important: a child is not a miniature talker but a potential talker in the same
way that an acorn is a potential oak tree. Children do not develop into
language users if they are denied the right conditions and environment.
One fact which lends weight to the species-specific argument is the
regularity and similarity of the onset of speech in all normal children. Eric
Lenneberg called the developmental stages ‘maturational milestones’ and the
following stages seem to be universal:
Birth to 3
months — crying, gurgling, non-speech noises
3 to 6 months — babbling
6 to 12
months — intonational babbling 12 to 18 months — words, set phrases
18 to 24
months — rapid increase of vocabulary, rudimentary grammar 24 to 36 months —
inflections, transformations
36 to 60
months — good approximation to adult norms
Although there
are a number of similarities between a child’s acquisition of his first
language and an adult’s acquisition of a second or foreign language,
second-language learning does not follow an identical pattern.
