The Theory and Practice of Misspelling : a Linguistic Analysis
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South Dakota State University Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange Electronic Theses and Dissertations 1984 The Theory and Practice of Misspelling : A Linguistic Analysis Judy Frasch Worman Follow this and additional works at: https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/etd Recommended Citation Worman, Judy Frasch, "The Theory and Practice of Misspelling : A Linguistic Analysis" (1984). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 4246. https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/etd/4246 This Thesis - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MISSPELLING: A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS By JUDY FRASCH WORMAN A thesis submi tted in partial fulfillment of the requi rements for the degree Master of Arts Maj or in En gl ish South Dakota State University 1984 THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MISSPELLING: A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS This thesis is approved as a creditable and independent investigation by a candidate for the degree, Master of Arts, and is acceptable for meeting the thesis requirements for this degree. Acceptance of this thesis does not imply that the conclusions reached by the candidate are necessarily the conclusions of the major department. �hn Taylor Oate hesis Adviser Paul Wither1ngton Date Major Adviser Ruth Alexander 'D� Head, English Department ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis is dedicated to those who were instrumental in helping me achieve another goal in life: My thesis adviser, Dr. John Taylor, who taught me Linguistics, guided my progress carefully, and inspired me with self-confidence. My husband, Jim, who lovingly chided me: "You will do it, and you wi 11 1 � ke ; t!" My four sons, John, Joe, Jeff, and Jim, who humorously questioned: 11You•re getting your what degree?" My mother, Margaret Frasch, who remains forever amazed at her daughter's academic achievements. My mother- and father-in:..law, Helen and Alfred, who steadfastly maintained: "You•1 1 get your degree; it's just a matter of time ... My son• s fiance, Susan Roberts, who encouraged me by remarking: "You, too, will get there from here!" Last but not least, Jinx, my all-American, who provided companionship during those long walks together. JFW TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION . 1 CHAPTER 1 - ANTICIPATION AND PERSEVERATION . 10 CHAPTER 2 - METATHESIS . 23 CHAPTER 3 - BLENDS • . 38 CHAPTER 4 - TIP OF THE TONGUE. 52 CHAPTER 5 - MALAPROPISMS • 69 CHAPTER 6 - CONVERGENCE. 85 CONCLUSION . • 107 GLOSSARY . • . 114 WORKS CITED. 121 1 INTRODUCT ION Background I have always enjoyed a healthy interest in words, their etymologiess and spellings as far back as the seventh grade when I entered and was fifth runner-up in the Lehigh Val ley Spelling Bee as a representative from Our Lady Help of Christians School in Al l entown , Pennsylvania. I was always fascinated with-words, and was continual ly pul ling ·out the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in order to look up the etymologies and meanings of certain words that I had heard on tel e vi sion or seen in print. "Li nguisti cs" was a word unfamiliar to me. until col l ege when I enrol led in my fi rst course. It was there that I discovered ·that phono 1 ogy, morpho 1 ogy , syntax, and semantics , which · had always hel d my interest but had remained nameless, final ly became grouped under one heading. Sister Mercedess one of my high school Engl ish teachers , never called what she wa s teaching 11 L ingui sti cs" ; she merely taught her ninth graders which phonetic sounds represent which · letter(s) of the a 1 phabet, stressed the use of a dictionary /thesaurus to enhance our word power, and attempted to illustrate how etymology can be a good guide to remembering the spelling of certain .. foreign" or "polysyl labic.. words. As I think back now , she always approached teaching optimi stical ly (and prescri ptively) , and one of her positive state ments with which she impressed her students concerning the necessity of cogent writing (and which she had us commi t to memory) is the Latin 2 proverb 11Verba volent, scri pta manent, 11 or 11The spoken wo rd fl ies away, the written wo rd remains... I found my self unconsciously impres sing this upon my Freshman Composition students duri ng the semesters I taught witho ut connecting that fact unti l now . As a gra duate teaching assi stant instructing a freshman writing course , I found teaching both rewarding and challenging. The satisfacti on that I derived from helping students improve thei r writing skills is immeasurable. Moreover, I found grading themes quite a learning experience. It taught me not to look solely at errors in . granmar and syntax as mere .. dumb11 . mi stakes which were written by students with below-average intel ligence out of careless ness or haste, a 1 though there were those kinds as we 11 . On the contra ry, it chall enged me to use all my resources to inspect errors analytically and more critically in an attempt to discover why and how they were made. My curiosity was a roused because I sensed a much deeper source to the spelling problem than just ordinary carelessness or stupidity. I began wondering about the workings of the students • minds as they 11invented" new words and "created .. innova tive spel lings , and thus, an idea for a master•s thesis was born . Methodo logy The freshmen at South Dakota State Uni versi ty are primari ly students who have 1 i ved thei r entire 1 i ves in sma11 agri cul tura 1 conmunities. They are nei ther stupid nor unintel ligent but merely inexperienced in writing fo rmal exposition. Many of them come from 3 towns wi th populati ons under one-thousand and high schoo1 graduating classes of twenty-five to fifty. Thei r pri mary means of communi cation ( up until they enrolled in col l ege) wa s through speech. Because they rarely wri te, they feel very uncomfortable about learning to wri te effectively. For the most part, these inexperi enced wri ters are bright but unable to express themselves orthographically. There were some who , in spite of their limited lingui sti c knowledge, excel led fa r beyond what would normally be expected of them. The majority, though, were inexperienced writers who wrote as they spoke because they were simply unaware of those basic differences which separate speech from wri ting. These were the students from whom I co 11 ected mi sspe11 ed words to be used ul timately as data fo r my thesis. I col l ected and typed on individual index cards over fi ve hundred errors from whi ch I sel ected representative samples based on Chomsky's "clear case princi ple . .. These unusual spellings and hyper corrections are attempts by conscientious students to master the 1 anguage in wri tten fonn. Furthennore , in an attempt to wri te mo re "educated" words, the inexperienced wri ter goes beyond correctness and produces an "innovati ve�· word or phrase. Noam Chomsky , in his book entitl ed Syntactic Structures , defines what he means by the "cl ear case principle" : The fundamental aim in linguisti c analysis of a language L is to separate the 'grammatical ' sequences which are sen tences of L from the 'ungrammati cal ' sequences which are not 4 sentences of L and to study the structure of the grammati cal sequences. The grammar of L will thus be a device that generates all of the grammati cal sequences of L and none of the ungrammati ca 1 ones.. • The graOITlar is set up in the simpl est way so that it includes the clear sentences and excl udes the clear non-sentences •..• A certain number of clear cases , then, wi ll provide us with a criteri on of adequacy for any parti cular grammar. (13-14) I selected only those errors from freshmen who were native Ameri cans, excl uding the errors of any�fo reign students I had in classes. These particular student errors were col l ected during the 1981 -82 , as well as the 1983-84 , academic year. I chose only the 11Clear case11 errors that directly demonstra te the theory of erro r analysis I wi sh to develop. The othe r unused errors from each catego ry are listed in the Appendix at the end of each chapter. Not only did I choose the 11Clear cases .. that exhibit clear syntax, but I also chose examples that exhibit clear semantics. This is known as the .. construal pri nci ple... Just as Chomsky bel i eves that the gramma r under analysis shoul d be 11Sentences11 and not .. non sentences,.. Fi 11mor e goes one step further and states that not only should the examples under analysis be grammati cal ly 11Clear11 sentences, but also semantically 11Clear11 as wel l. In his article entitled 110n Generati vity11 in the book by the title, Goa ls of Linguistic Theory, Fi llmore explains what he means by the .. construal pri nci ple11 : 5 Figurative speech [is a string of words] where what is of interest is the structural type which the speaker/ [wri ter] wants the hearer/ [readerl to perceive as a framework upon which the hearer•s; [reader•s] •construing• abiliti es can impose some sort of i nterpretation-...ho pefully the intended . interpretation .• .. Somebody whose lexi con contains only the literal interpretation of the noun [bitch] but who is observed to use it neverthe 1 ess when referring to human beings has made a creati ve extension of the scope of the word tha t is accounted for by reference to the knowl edge that participants in our civilization use attri butions to human beings of nonhuman anima 1 P.roperti es for pej oration ; somebo dy who does not use the word when referri ng to female dogs 1 acks the ori gina 1 sense and has a 1 exi ca 1 entry for bitch with the pejorati ve sense bui lt in rather than acquired by a construal principle.