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English spelling: Beyond the rules of spelling shun-words

Responding to Michael Bulley's critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2020

Blasius Achiri-Taboh
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Extract

As is well known, English spelling is a major problem even to native speakers. In Achiri-Taboh (2018a), I present arguments for a synchronic base-word-based rule for the spelling of shun-words, given the notoriously troubling variation in the spelling of their ending as underlined here in words like fraction, dictation, equation, and persuasion (with a t-form) and extension, collision, and expression (with an s-form). My (2018a) rule is summarized as follows:

  1. (1) The Base-Word-Based (BWB) rule for spelling ‘shun’:

    Use -tion everywhere except when X (X = any of the 7 conditions)

See Achiri-Taboh (2018a) for the 7 conditions.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Today , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , December 2021 , pp. 246 - 248
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

Achiri-Taboh, B. 2018a. ‘English spelling: Adding /ʃǝn/ (or /ʒǝn/) to base-words and changing from -tion to -sion: Alleviating the yoke of memorization for English spellers.’ English Today, 34(3), 36–42. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078417000591.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Achiri-Taboh, B. 2018b. ‘Rules of English spelling and the choice to use t or s in shun-words: A wink at anglophone Cameroonian students.’ English Linguistics Research, 7(2), 37–45. doi:10.5430/elr.v7n2p37CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Achiri-Taboh, B. 2020. ‘The spelling gap in English: Economy of rules and resolution of puzzles.’ In Huertas-Abril, C.-A. and Gómez-Parra, M. E. (eds.), International Approaches to Bridging the Language Gap. Hershey, Pa: IGI Global, pp. 234–250.10.4018/978-1-7998-1219-7.ch014CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bulley, Michael. In press. ‘English spelling: Where do -tion and -sion come from? A reply to the spelling rules of Blasius Achiri-Taboh.’ English Today.Google Scholar
Yip, Moira. 1987. ‘English vowel epenthesis.’ Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 5, 463–484.10.1007/BF00138986CrossRefGoogle Scholar