Schedule (sk-/sh-?) etc. etc.

[Lynne Murphy]

>
> >Rest assured that plenty of Americans say 'I couldn't care less', and most
> >(I hope all) American English teachers correct 'I could care less' when
> >they come across it.
>
> Why? It represents a natural and predictable reduction of a sequence
> containing
> /dntk/, not exactly an ordinary English sequence.

Well, in writing the phonological reduction is not quite relevant--we don't
spell phonetically in English most of the time.

But even in writing, the 'naturalness' of phonological reduction is not a
good excuse for leaving out semantically relevant information.  On this
logic, it would be permissible to pronounce "I could carry that" when you
mean "I couldn't carry it".

As Hans Hock was fond of saying in my historical lx class, phonological
reduction has to be balanced with semantic preservation, else all languages
would evolve toward expressing everything as "uh" (for lack of a schwa on
my keyboard).

Lynne M