schedule

1. 2026-09-08 generalities about the course; the short stressed vowels of English (i e a o ə u) and their spelling; the lot–cloth and put–strut splits
2. 2026-09-15 some departures form the common equivalents (want words, love words), some minor letter-to-sound correspondences (many, pretty, wolf, bury, busy); the diphthongs (ij ej aj oj əw uw aw), the spelling of diphthongs; some digraphs
3. 2026-09-22 more digraphs; 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. 2026-09-29 [test 1] the development of the system of long vowels, mergers (north–force, cure–force, cure–nurse) and a split (cure–poor), two sources of long vowels, compensatory lengthening, smoothing, the distribution of vowels
5. 2026-10-06 examples for the distribution of vowels; word final is does not always look word final (fear#s, happi#ness, carri#ed); the vowels that occur in unstressed position (i ə u ij əw uw), the distribution of the vowels occurring in unstressed position
6. 2026-10-13 the Rhythm Rule: swapping stress prominence, stress patterns (Early Stress Requirement: *#ww), syncope and glide loss as symptoms of stress; the distribution of yod after consonants
7. 2026-10-20 palatalization; the distribution of nasal+plosive clusters; the distribution of clear and dark l
8. 2026-10-27 autumn break
9. 2026-11-03 [test 2] carrot words, spelling disambiguated by word boundary: marry vs. starry; diphthongs before r (*ejr, *əwr, *ijr, *uwr vs ajr, awr (ojr))
10. 2026-11-10
11. 2026-11-17
12. 2026-11-24
13. 2026-12-01 [test 3]
14. 2026-12-08