On Tuesday 23 August 2005 22:44, Dylan wrote:
You're gonna have to learn to live with that one I'm afraid. Because the de-stressed form of /HAVE/ is phonetcally identical to the de-stressed form of /OF/ children acquiring English as a first language will learn them as the same lexical item in certain syntactic environments. One of these is "aspectual auxilliary following modal" so it's going to become a feature of Standard English and there's absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Innit, eh?
Never. Only if I can force them to be consistent and say "Of you done that?" I know that "have" sounds the same as "of" in the contraction "would've", but that doesn't detract one iota from the fact that it makes no sense whatsoever. If children learn it, they'll have to unlearn it. As children they also learn to spell many words that they later get corrected. It's what school is all about. I know it is a living language, but some things are too silly for words And some things never change. Leicester still ain't called Lester, is it. And it doesn't get more phonetically identical than that. Innit? No' 'alf