THE TERMS WE USE

An apology is in order for the whimsical manner of speaking that we grammarians use, not only in the classroom and in private discussion, but frequently even in published material. When we say, for example, that English @ is sometimes a voiced sound and sometimes voiceless, it may not be clear to the uninitiated that this apparently meaningless statement is only our peculiar way of saying that there are two interdental spirants, one voiced and the other voiceless. It is our preoccupation with the conventional orthographic representation of these sounds that leads us to take the written symbols a s the point of departure for our statement about the sounds. It might be argued that in order to be completely scientific in talking abouf a language we ought to revamp our modes of expression to say exactly what we mean. And probably all would agree that considerable care in this regard should be exercised in the deliberate formulation of phonetic and grammatical propositions. But in everyday discourse it is difficult and not particularly necessary to avoid our customary figures of speech in the interests of strict accuracy. As long a s the hidden implications of our informal statements can be readily inferred, we permit ourselves to use a number of metaphorical turns of phrase. It is our usual practice to refer to the articles in English as "a, a", and the." And in usin this formula, we realize a re all included. Obviously, we say both a and a" because these forms a re distinguished in spelling; but we do not say both [ 6il and [sa], because these forms a re not distinguished in spelling, even though they are actually a s distinct a s 5 and an. If our audience is aware of the variations in form of the articles, we can use the conventional formula "a, a", and the" with the tacit implication that all involved forms a re included. Another example, used more often by laymen than grammarians, is the expression "dropping the g." We can readily that The forms T, a, e n , an, 6i, B