Posing the productive questions

All valid orthographic investigation must begin with morphological analysis. The reason is fundamental.

Morphology is the defining and delimiting component of the conceptual hierarchy; orthographic units are contained within, and do not cross or straddle, morphological boundaries.

 We begin by ensuring that we investigate this spelling element by element.

• In the spelling < love > there are no possible prefixes or suffixes.
• The word is not a compound.
• It is, therefore, a single element.

We can now proceed to determine the orthographic phonology of this base.

Phonological analysis

Phonological analysis first identifies an element’s component phonemes. The spelling < love > represents the pronunciation / lᴧv / whose analysis as three single-phone phonemes is straightforward.

Assigning the ‘default’ grapheme corresponding to each phoneme gives the phonological representation < luv > that only partially corresponds to the standard spelling < love >.

The questions that need to be resolved can be represented like this.

First, we will establish the justification for the non-phonological final < e >