schedule

1. 2025-09-09 generalities about the course; the short stressed vowels of English (i e a o ə u) and their spelling; the put–strut split
2. 2025-09-16 some minor letter-to-sound correspondences (many, pretty, wolf, bury, busy); the diphthongs (ij ej aj oj əw uw aw), the spelling of diphthongs; digraphs
3. 2025-09-23 “nondigraphs”; rhotic and nonrhotic accents of English, compensatory lengthening, the (first) nurse merger; the long vowel counterparts of short vowels, the long vowel counterparts of (some) diphthongs
4. 2025-09-30 the development of the system of long vowels, mergers (north–force, cure–force, cure–nurse) and a split (cure–poor); the distribution of vowels, a phonological categorization: checked, R, and free vowels; the vowels that occur in unstressed position (i ə u ij əw uw)
5. 2025-10-07 [test 1] the distribution of the vowels occurring in unstressed position; the Rhythm Rule, stress and accent
6. 2025-10-14 stress patterns, syncope and flapping as symptoms of stress; the distribution of yod after consonants, palatalization
7. 2025-10-21 palatalization; the distribution of nasal+plosive clusters; the distribution of clear and dark l
8. 2025-10-28 autumn break
9. 2025-11-04 carrot words, spelling disambiguated by word boundary: marry vs. starry; diphthongs before r (*ejr, *əwr, *ijr, *uwr vs ajr, awr (ojr)); graphic positions, consonant digraphs, X, stop+liquid clusters
10. 2025-11-11 [test 2] checked vowel in free graphic position: laxing endings, trisyllabic laxing, free-U laxing
11. 2025-11-18 CiV laxing, other vowel letters before CiV; the regularity of U; -ary, ery, -ory
12. 2025-11-25
13. 2025-12-02 [test 3] CiV again, U again, some words that do not conform to spelling regularities we identified
14. 2025-12-09 —