Allan Rae wrote:
>
> Chomsky (notice the medial -m-) and Pink are grammarians, not
> orthographers, so it would be quite unusual to hear either of these
> gentlemen comment on the latter. The rules for English pronunciation are
> like the British constitution - not written, but real and binding
> nevertheless. A writer is simply not entitled to take a letter and declare
> that he now wishes the rest of us to pronounce it a new way.
Chomsky did in fact co-author a book on English phonology, _The Sound
System of English_, if I remember rightly. It was, however, largely
untrue, consisting as it did of an attempt to discover a systematic
order in an essentially disorderly system.
> It will be seen, then, that a very small set of rules handles the
> correct pronunciation of all English words. As you say, these rules are
> intimately tied to the history of the word, but this only highlights the
> application of the rule-set, and hardly negates it.
A small set? As someone who teaches non-native speakers, I can assure
you that while there are rules, they are numerous and inconsistent.
> Notwithstanding, final -x in words which are not directly borrowed from
> other languages IS uniformly pronounced -ks, and hence the above
> 'exceptions' turn out not to be exceptions at all, but ignorance of basic
> guidelines.
There I would agree, unless we count hackerese as a language which can
be borrowed from ;-)
> > There are probably no examples of a letter that is always uniformly
> > pronounced in English.
>
> On the contrary, words are grouped in regular patterns which DETERMINE
> their pronunciation; the only room for manoeuvre is regionalism, which
> does not apply on the internet.
When the rules determining patterns become complex enough, the result is
sufficiently chaotic to resemble a rule-less state. Look at the pattern
-ough, for example.
>
> > Basically it is not worth persuing this debate much further.
Probably, but it's like an itch you just can't stop scratching.
Robin
