ABSTRACT
The grammarian must be ever on his guard to avoid the pitfalls into which the ordinary spelling is apt to lead him. Let me give a. few very elementary instances. The ending for the plural of substantives and for the third person singular of the present tense of verbs is in writing the same -s in such words as ends, locks, rises, but in reality we have three different endings, as seen when we transcribe them phonetically [endz, loks, raiziz]. Similarly the written ending -ed covers three different spoken endings in sailed, locked, ended, phonetically [seild, lokt, endid]. In the written language it looks as if the preterits paid and said were formed in the same wa.y, but differently from stayed, but in reality paid and stayed are formed regularly [peid, steid], whereas said is irregular as having its vowel shortened [sed]. Where the written language recognizes only one word there, the spoken language distinguishes two both as to sound and signification (and grammatical import), as seen in the sentence" There [~a] were many people there [1~E"·a]." Quantity, stress, and intonation, which are very inadequately, if at all, indicated in the usual spelling, play important parts in the grammar of the spoken language, and thus we are in many ways reminded of the important truth that grammar should deal in the first instance with sounds and only secondarily with letters.
