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I have some hypotheses for English graphotactics:

  1. 〈w〉 and 〈y〉 are optional positional variants (i.e. allographs) of 〈u〉 and 〈i〉, respectively, in digraphs that correspond with diphthongs or vowels: 〈aw〉 ≈ 〈au〉, 〈ew〉 ≈ 〈eu〉, 〈ow〉 ≈ 〈ou〉; 〈ay〉 ≈ 〈ai〉, 〈ey〉 ≈ 〈ei〉, 〈oy〉 ≈ 〈oi〉, 〈uy〉 ≈ 〈ui〉. They are the preferred allograph at the end of morphemes.
  2. 〈y〉 is a required positional variant of 〈i〉 at the end of native words, but digraph 〈ie〉 may be a possible alternate.
  3. Final 〈y〉 in a stem gets replaced by 〈i〉 when a inflection suffix follows unless it is part of a digraph: fly > flies/*flys/*flis but boy > boys/*boies/*bois.
  4. The apostrophe 〈’〉 is used to visually separate the possessive suffix 〈s〉 from proper names – i.e. words with initial capital – to ensure that #3 does not apply, so names have a constant representation.
  5. #4 is not necessary for pronouns, hence 〈its〉, 〈hers〉, 〈his〉 instead of *〈it’s〉, *〈her’s〉, *〈he’s〉. #4 is applied to other nouns as well, though.
  6. In vowel digraphs, round-top letters 〈a〉, 〈e〉 and 〈o〉 are preferred for first/left position whereas flat-top letters 〈i〉/〈y〉 and 〈u〉/〈w〉 are preferred for second/right position.

Are there any graphemic analyses of English that support these observations, especially #4?

I’m only aware of a bachelor thesis in German by Marlene Franke from 2008 which isn’t available online. It’s likely based on theories and work done by Fuhrhop/Buchmann (e.g. 2011: The length hierarchy and the graphematic syllable DOI: 10.1075/wll.14.2.05fuh) and Primus (e.g. foundational 2004: A featural analysis of the Modern Roman Alphabet), who support #6 at least.

Note that #4 is (usually) not extended to the only other possible suffix which is also an 〈s〉, i.e. the plural marker: all the Jennys and Billys.

Crissov
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    +1 for the enjoyable question, but one minor remark. Shouldn't observations and analyses that support your hypotheses be supplied by the person bringing the hypothesis, and would the correct question, from the point of view of falsification, not be to supply evidence against the hypothesis? (how come I cont three +1s in the comments but only one on the question? Any politicians in the room?) – oerkelens Oct 30 '14 at 10:43
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    Wikipedia has a section about the history of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_possessive#History. It apparently derives from Old English using -es as one of the genitice suffixes, and later the e got contracted away with the apostrophe. – Barmar Oct 30 '14 at 17:48
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    @Barmar I think graphotactics should be analyzed synchronicly. – Crissov Nov 10 '14 at 19:19
  • Why do you limit #4 to "proper names". Does it not apply to all nouns? – mikeagg Nov 12 '14 at 11:18
  • @mikeagg It’s probably not strictly necessary. However, proper nouns are often used with the possessive and rarely put into plural, while it’s roughly the other way around for common nouns. The suffixed morph +s is basically the same for all of these. – Crissov Nov 12 '14 at 12:31
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    In an orthographic system like English, which is so extremely conservative and does such a piss-poor job of representing the language it’s meant to represent, there is simply no way of analysing graphotactics synchronically. There are far too many historical convolutions for any of the rules (except perhaps #2 and #5) to be anything near consistent. Especially #1 is full of exceptions: trawl, renown vs. haul, noun; oyster vs. hoi polloi; etc. And what of the vacillation between -’ and -’s as the possessive marker after sibilants (boys’ vs. Jesus’ vs. Jesus’s)? – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 12 '14 at 12:49
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    @JanusBahsJacquet Spelling, a major part of orthography, is the selection of (usually exactly) one option out of the variant space described by graphotactic and graphemic rulesets. Admittedly, the rules as shown in the question are not strictly marked for which level they apply to – they should be in an academic paper. Your objection to #1 is a non-sequitur nevertheless since it’s about optional allographs, which is made more concrete by rules like #2. -oi# is highly marked as foreign, -oi- is not. That vacillation you note is a rule that not every English orthography agrees upon. – Crissov Nov 12 '14 at 13:45
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    Then I don't quite understand why the question title deals with the reason for the apostrophe. The reason there is an apostrophe is purely historical and not related to graphotaxis at all; there is no graphotactic constraint to disallow non-pronominal possessives without apostrophes; it's a purely orthographic convention. The possessive is not an inflectional suffix, so an apostrophe is not necessary to prevent changes like -y -> -ie- (which, incidentally, is subject to a complex set of constraints itself). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 12 '14 at 14:26
  • I concur with Janus Bahs Jacquet, that the answers to these questions are to be found in a diachronic analysis of writing conventions. A synchronic study assumes that the options have been freely floating out there and have coalesced for some present-day reasons, when they are usually relics and fossils. – TimR Nov 16 '14 at 11:51
  • With respect to spelling, spelling has not always been normalized. There were more than two dozen ways to spell the Old English word for "sister". – TimR Nov 16 '14 at 11:54
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    @TRomano Living language is always in a state of flux, reaching for a final state it will never reach. That’s no different for orthography. So if you refute the synchronic approach for spelling, you deny it to any kind of linguistic analysis. If JanusBahsJacquet was right that “there is no graphotactic constraint” then there should be literature to support that point, which is basically what I’m looking for. – Crissov Nov 17 '14 at 10:50
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    @Crissov: you are incorrect to think that contemporary orthography and language operate by the same principles. Language changes rapidly whereas modern orthography is resistant to change. On the other hand, a synchronic analysis of ancient handwritten texts, produced before spelling had been normalized, makes more sense, but even there one would want to support the analysis with diachronic analysis where possible. In ancient texts orthography can encode dialect pronunciation; and variations in the spacing between phrases and clauses can encode parsing rhythms and metrical caesurae. – TimR Nov 17 '14 at 12:04
  • @TRomano You should indeed compare similar things, like oral and literal grammar or orthography and pronunciation, and even if processes fluctuate stronger in one medium the principles are still the same (except where an accepted authority decrees spelling, which is not the case for English). Anyhow, this has grown into a (more general) discussion which is not what Stack Exchange is for, so I will stop here. I still hope for an actual answer. – Crissov Nov 17 '14 at 12:47
  • @Crissov: and I will stop here merely to question your statement: "...except where an accepted authority decrees spelling, which is not the case for English". I did not realize you were proposing to study the spelling of semi-literates. – TimR Nov 17 '14 at 14:13
  • @TRomano Huh? I was just saying that you cannot study, say, French orthography the same way as the English ones, because the Académie Française has been actively skewing the outcome of a natural invisible-hand process for centuries. – Crissov Nov 17 '14 at 14:29
  • @Crissov: Dictionaries with "accepted spellings" and educational institutions have been doing the same for English. There is no "invisible hand" nowadays for English orthography. Once upon a time there was such a hand, but that was centuries ago. – TimR Nov 17 '14 at 14:33
  • "Note that #4 is (usually) not extended to the only other possible suffix which is also an 〈s〉, i.e. the plural marker". Historically less true than it is today, there were once a great many more cases where one might use an apostrophe in making a plural. I mention them at http://english.stackexchange.com/a/104235/15770 – Jon Hanna Dec 05 '14 at 13:45
  • Note the modern move considered acceptable by some to drop apostrophes where true possession / ownership is not present, only association: "The dogs' home is, coincidentally, only half a minute away from the dogs home." / "We bought most of the children's clothing in the childrens clothing department at Horrid[']s." – Edwin Ashworth Dec 16 '14 at 15:23
  • This question makes my eyes hurt – Mynamite Dec 17 '14 at 18:22
  • (1-3) are just statements in orthographic terms of the phonetic facts that /y/ is phonetically a short non-nuclear [i], ditto /w/ and [u]. Nothing new there. (6) is ridiculous in naming the letter shape as the cause for the digraphs, when it's simply the fact that low vowels (which are sometimes represented with round tops in lower case) are where diphthongs start, and high vowels are where they end. The shape of the letters is quite irrelevant (and depends on typeface and case, which is hardly ideal) to the generalizations. – John Lawler Dec 25 '14 at 03:45
  • As for (4) and (5), the first thing to say is that if you have a generalization that immediately has to have a big exception stated, you don't have a generalization at all, but merely a mild correlation. If it's a rule, it applies; provided the conditions are stated correctly. Second, there is no reason to believe that apostrophe's originated with proper names, and certainly that is a very minor part of their range of usage in modern English. – John Lawler Dec 25 '14 at 03:48
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    @JohnLawler I am not pulling the relevance of shape out of thin air. Please read _A featureless analysis of the modern roman alphabet _ by Primus or subsequent works. Phonetics has nothing to do with (1–3). – Crissov Dec 26 '14 at 01:09
  • Of course not. Everybody knows the roman alphabet developed without any reference to the pronunciation of the languages it represents; those languages exist only in their writings. – John Lawler Dec 26 '14 at 03:49
  • English has a phoneme /w/ (which is restricted to onsets if I remember correctly), but not /y/. Did you mean graphemes and ? (1–3) are very specific to English orthography, other orthographies have different conventions, in German for instance can only be read as a vowel when it is not followed or preceded by another nucleus letter and is blocked from medial position altogether. – Crissov Dec 26 '14 at 06:42
  • American English has /w/ and /y/. This is pronunciation we're talking about, not notational conventions. – John Lawler Dec 28 '14 at 22:45
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    @JohnLawler Can you cite any work that describes a coherent and consistent model for English graphotactics that depends on phonology (and morphology, e.g. for apostrophes)? As far as I know, all approaches trying this for any naturally developing orthography fail big time, therefore I’m looking for ones that are independent of phonology (as much as possible). The hypotheses I posted would be a small part thereof. PS: featural was auto-“corrected” to featureless in an earlier comment. – Crissov Dec 30 '14 at 17:45
  • I'd say the comments aren't so much low-quality as fractious. – David Garner Mar 03 '15 at 14:31
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    There are no coherent models that account for modern English use of apostrophes. There are several different and contradictory models that are in use simultaneously, producing widespread "misuse" by various standards -- everybody agrees on this -- but no agreement on which uses are the "correct" ones, as judged by actual usage. – John Lawler Oct 07 '15 at 00:02

1 Answers1

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The apostrophe is used to indicate something is missing.

So in don't the letter o is missing.

The usage is still the same for possessives: James' indicates the -es is missing from the end the word — Jameses being the correct pronunciation in this case. Similarly with Fred's except we no longer say Fredes. This happens because old English used the Germanic suffix -es to indicate possession.

The situation gets more complex for plural entities. English uses the French suffix -s to indicate plurality. There is an obvious clash with the -es possessive suffix made even more painful by the fact that this is normally rendered as a plain -s.

  • The boy's home — the boy is home
  • The boy's home — the home belonging to this boy
  • The boys' home — the home belonging to those boys
  • Or even The boys' home account — the account belonging to an institution housing boys
sjy
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James Anderson
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    That’s the classic interpretation that relies on phonologic information to explain the apostrophe, and it’s even diachronic. I was showing that you can explain it synchronically without resorting to phonology (but morphology) and I was basically asking if someone has already come up with a more complete set of independent graphotactic rules for English. – Crissov Apr 24 '15 at 07:35