October 2, 2006
My students were working with the word courageous and they noticed the final e didn't get dropped. What is the reason for this?
Mr. Lonergan
Mr. Lonergan
posted by Mr. Lonergan | 5:33 PM
About Me
- Name: Mr. Lonergan
Born in Ottawa, On. and moved to Sault Ste. Marie, On. I am currently living in Napanee, On. with my wife Melissa and my dog Dana.
1 Comments:
Hey Mr. Lonergan,
(Excuse the use of capital letters - this format wouldn't let me use
brackets to separate words and letters)
Although the word COURAGEOUS is missing from your question, you mentioned ot
me the other day that is is the word your student wisely noticed.
Thise one confused me when I first ran into it too. This is one of those
cases where two orthographic conventions run into each other and they can't
both be followed, so whichever is less important has to be ignored. A key
point is that this is not a random "spelling exception" but simply a
following of a more important convention. Your students probably ran into
this idea with the word sum AGREE+ ED-- *AGREEED-- AGREED. There is a
suffixing convention that only final, single, silent E's are dropped by
vowel suffixes. The word agree does not end with a single, or silent E so it
is not dropped by the vowel suffix -E. However, this runs up against the
spelling law that no English word can have the same letter three times in a
row. To conventions run into each other, and only one can 'win'. Since the
'three letter rule' is considered a spelling law, and never broken, we
simply rewrite the word with only two letter E's. (Those of you on the Real
Spelling podcasts can check a great movie describing this process).
Your student's questio about COURAGEOUS also runs into to pattenrs that
can't both be followed. If you went ahead and only followed the suffixing
patterns, you would get this word sum:
COURAGE/ + OUS-- *COURAGOUS
The -OUS vowel suffix drops the final, single, silent E. However, there is a
pattern about when the letter (or I could say 'grapheme') G can represent
the 'hard' sound /g/ or the soft /j/. It can only be pronounced /g/ if it is
not follwed by the letters E, I or Y. If we followed the typical suffixing
patterns, the spelling COURAGOUS could not represent the pronunciation we
know as the word COURAGEOUS. Since spelling has to represent the meaning of
the word we know, in this case the patterns that govern which letters
(graphemes) can represent which 'sounds' (phonemes), we have to ignore the
typical suffixing patterns. Notice that if I build the word ENCOURAGING on
the base COURAGE, the I of the -ING suffix allows the correct pronunciation
of the G grapheme, and so I can drop the E as usual.
It's useful to know about the E, I and Y pattern as it applies to when we
can use C as well. If the letter C is followed by E, I, or Y, it has to be
soft, otherwise it is 'hard' /k/. Thus we have CAT but KITTEN. You see the
problem if we spelled a baby cat *CITTEN!
There are great Real Spelling themes on these patterns for those teachers
out there with the good fortune to have them.
Sorry to students who happened upon this message. I got carried away and
started writing more detail than maybe you needed, but that's OK.
Cheers,
Mr. B.
PS I've always intended to ask Melvyn about this pattern, because it appears
like this is a case where a 'sound' (phonological) pattern is trumping a
morphological (bases, prefixes and suffixes) pattern for the purpose of
representing meaning.
Perhaps we'll get to ask him about it when he comes to town November 25 - 29
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