The Misspelling <definate>

Reason for misspelling

The student who wrote this misspelling has a pretty good understanding of English word structure. She knew for example that there was a suffix <-ate> and she could run off a list of words to prove that this suffix existed such as : <communicate>, <dominate>, <celebrate>

Her pronunciation of the word itself was interesting and gave some clues to her spelling. She spoke the word with only two spoken syllables. When asked how she knew that the letter after the <f> was an <i>, she explained that <*definate> came from the word <define>. Her explanation for the pronunciation of the final syllable was that it was the same as in the word <definitely>. Transcripts of both her pronunciations are included.

I concluded that this misspelling came about because the student thought that the pronunciation of the final syllable sounded like the name <Nat>. In her understanding there was only one suffix that she could use <-ate> and this reasoning was the result of an erroneous belief that spelling is about sound.

Proving the Correct Spelling

Helping this writer to find the correct spelling was quite straightforward. First of all we determined where the error lay. We marked the space for the unknown letter with a question mark.

We then collected other words from the same family that used this structure: <infinite> didn’t really help much but it was the word <finite> that identified the correct vowel letter as both of the letters <i> were representing the name of the letter.

We were then able to confirm the correct spelling and construct a word sum that clearly identified <fine> as the base element and <-ite> as a suffix.

To finish we collected other words that used the suffix <-ite> and noted that if there was a prefix to the word the suffix was unstressed, if there was no prefix then the stress for the word often fell on the letter <i> in the suffix. Is there a pattern here? or an opportunity for further investigation?