Ambiguity in spelling: singer

[David Bowie]

In the thread "dot-calm",
"Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU> wrote:

> Ben lists minimal pairs:

> Uh-huh. Search far enough down into the tail and you can find them. Adding
> in as many more as you can find, and taking out the ones you feel you have
> to gloss or source, for how many of the remaining pairs do you really think
> both members are represented in the usage vocabulary, or even the
> recognition vocabulary, of 95% of the English-speaking population?

<snip>

> Yes, the suffix
> is productive, but how much does that count for? -- Apply that same suffix
> to "singe" and write the resulting word (I'll put it near the end of this
> message to give you time to puzzle it out if you want to try). I've actually
> seen it in an ad, the name of a tool for working with fabric, but it took me
> some brain work to decipher it; that spelling should not be considered in
> formulating the regular rules for spelling English.

<snip>

The "singer" complaint seems unfair to me--confusion through spelling
occurs (cf. <read>), but in spoken language the difference between [rid]
and [rEd], or [sINr] and [sIndZr] is completely transparent.

--
David Bowie                               University of Central Florida
     Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
     house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
     chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.

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