Pre-Anniversary vs Anniversary “lish” and “lition”

In Pre-Annivesary, abolish and abolition are written abolez and abolz, whereas in Anniversary they are written abolz and abolez, respectively. Why the change? Also, why bother distinguishing between them? One is a verb while the other is a noun. How could we confuse them?


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  1. I can't answer the question, but as an opinionated individual, I'll give an opinion.

    The question why they are different makes sense to me. Why should they be? Anyway, if they are to be different, the Anni version seems to me to be better thought out, since abolition is accented on the third syllable, whereas abolish has a schwa there.

    Sometimes there seems to be a sort of ad hoc quality to the things shorthand authors do. But the English language is big, after all, and not everything can be tidied up easily.

    1. While I am not familiar with Pre-Anni or Anni, I would come to the same conclusion as lvw for abolition based on the Shorthand Manual for Simplified. In section 378, it says that when the letter t, d, n, or m is followed by -ition or -ation, the circle is omitted. This at least implies that the vowel is not automatically omitted after the letter l.

      The spelling of abolish in Anniversary is also consistent with the spelling of words ending in -ish in Simplified (abolish, polish, finish).

      While this does not answer the question as to why these changes were made in the first place, the changes in Anni are consistent with the usage and rule in the next version, Simplified.

    2. Paul, take a look at the Anni Dictionary on page vii, "THE ENDING TION."

      I can't think of any other examples where the verb ends in "ish" and the noun ends in "ition," so there may not be an exact parallel.

      As to why there's a difference? Ease of transcription would be my best guess.

    3. Gregg student is probably right that ease of thanscription is the reason the outlines are different. The Anni versions are continued not only in GSS, but also in DJ. I don't have a Series 90 dictionary at hand right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if they also appear there.

      So the real question is why they are exchanged from Preanni to Anni. My guess is that the Preanni forms are "ad hoc" ones, and Anni straightened things out.

      As for the comment in the Anni Dictionary, I don't quite get what it means. It says, "So many words end with the suffix tion, in its various spellings, that in forming derivatives a shorthand outline is considered to end with the final letter of a word if he word ends with the suffix tion. By doing so, that great class of words may be written in accordance with such rules as those in paragraphs 76 and 59(2) of the Anniversary Manual." Paragraphs 76 and 59(2) are about when to join or disjoin -er and -ed.
      I suppose, from the examples at the end of the comment about -tion, that Gregg meant that the sh was to be considered the final letter, and the endings -er and -ed are to be joined (as indeed they are). But the comment seems rather opaque to me.

  2. Well, here I am monopolizing the thread of messages.

    I meant above that "demolish" and "demolition" follow the same pattern in Gregg Shorthand (Anni and after) as "abolish" and "abolition". "Demolish" is like "abolish" in Preanni, but "demolition" is not in the Preanni dictionary.

    1. Great example with "demolish"! I missed that one the BYU Corpus site.

      This looks like part of a standardization of certain rules going into Anni. Some of the changes were based on decades of feedback from stenographers in the field.

      And although many of us still reincorporate rules that were dropped in transition, I think a lot of the changes were for the better.

      Examples would include words like "touch" and "teach," which were both written as t-ch in Pre-anni. The e vowel was added to "teach" in Anni. There was a chance, however infrequent, of confusion between the two.

    2. I think you're right about the standardization. Maybe that should have been carried further. For instance, "admonish" and "admonition" are spelled the same way in Anni and also in DJ and S90 (and I expect in GSS too). This is due, of course, to the rule about -tion after a straight-line consonant. Maybe that rule was developed to prevent the line from curving if the a in -ation or the e in -ition was written.

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