Mark E. Shoulson wrote:

>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> >Regarding Sampson, "What's good is not new, and what's new is not good."
> >
> >
> Like they say in the papers, "if it's news to you, it's news to us." At
> the time when I read the book, it was something I had not yet heard.

Yes, he has a tendency to not use footnotes.

> >English spelling is widely regarded as quasi-logographic (giving rise to
> >the "whole word" method of Leaving Every Child Behind), and it most
> >certainly is not "horrendously inconsistent" or "in no wise a system"!
> >
> >
> There are some deeply-buried consistencies that are hard to tease out,
> certainly. Sami is Finnish, so he's used to a nearly all-phonemic
> spelling system, and he also has a tendency to get polemical...

They're not deeply buried, and they're not hard to tease out -- even
Halle managed to do it. And, of course, the whole literature on
orthography, including Wijk, Venetzky, Cummings, and Crowley. [are those
two the exact names?]
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...