This 10th collection of students’ pearls of wisdom, laboriously digitised from hand-written papers, demonstrates once again how students new to the study of language speculate about grammar after having imperfectly absorbed what their teachers think they have taught them.

Test question

Set A	Set B
black	blacken
wide	widen
white	whiten
deep	deepen

Answers

• ‘en’ is added to a word in set A to become those in set B.

• The words in list B are formed by adding an ‘en’ from list A. The words in list A are transformed from Adj to verb which is in list B.

• black → blacken: a switch in simple tense to past participle.

• A word becomes black in colour when blacken is added to it.

• A river may be widen because of soil erosion.

• The word formation rule in white → whiten is called blocking. White is an adjective and whiten is an adverb.

• The words in set A are used to describe a condition in the sentences. The resulting verb in set B tends to describe the action of a new state of the object.

• The singer deepen his voice to sound sexier.

More to come...

	The Linguistic Big Bounce—Dyman Freeson
	Just Friend?—Helga Langenase & R. Lola Rennt
	SpecGram Vol CLX, No 2 Contents