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Introduction
In this summary we shall not review the book chapter by chapter ,but rather the
focus will be on the main interests around which the book centres .The book is
mainly interested in (i)the idea that the study of meaning and context should be
central in linguistics ;(ii)work on phonology, particularly the development of a
model called Prosodic Analysis;(iii)the history of linguistics ,especially of
linguists from Britain and America.
To clearly put the main ideas and concepts relevant to the topics above ,we have
resorted to a number of reliable works.
The book has 16 papers written at different times as of 1934 through 1951.The
papers on meaning are four in number ;four on history of linguistics; eight on
phonology and its application to Indian and southern Asian languages.
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1.Firths Theory of Contextual Meaning
The foundation for Firthian Linguistics was laid by B. Malinowski whose
seminal article The Problem of Meaning in primitive languages (1923) attempted
to identify the interaction between culture and meaning. As an anthropologist and
ethnographer his concern was with discourse as it functions in a particular
situation. His research on the language and culture of the Trobriand Islanders led
him to the conclusion that one cannot understand the meaning of messages unless
one takes into account the situation in which they are uttered. He thereforeemphasized the importance of context of situation ,embedded within the total
culture ,and in his own descriptions he particularly focused on features that were
direct reflections or indications of that context of situation.
Firths ideas on meaning and context are fundamental to his conception of
language as he considered the analysis of the meaning of utterances to be the main
goal of linguistics ;he saw meaning as the cornerstone of linguistic theory :the
study of language is the study of linguistic meaning.
Moreover ,linguistic meaning could only be understood by appreciating the
intimate relationship between language and society .As Firth points out ,words are
not isolates which somehow have meaning in and by themselves ,as logicians and
some linguists would have us believe ; they have meaning because they function in
the particular society in which the speakers happen to live .Thus ,language is seen
not in terms of an individual mental activity or as an abstract construct divorced
from reality ,but as an integral part of the physical and social world in which we
live .Meanings are created in society:
As we know so little about mind and as our study is essentially social,
I shall cease to respect the duality of mind and body ,though and word,
and be satisfied with the whole man ,thinking and acting as a whole in
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association with his fellows. I do not therefore follow Ogden and Richards
in regarding meaning as relations in a hidden mental process ,but chiefly as
situational relations in a context of situation and in that kind of language
which disturbs the air and other peoples ears ,as modes of behavior
in relation to other elements in the context of situation.
(Firth,1957:19).
Firth adopts anti-mentalist views rejecting any kind of distinction between
langue and parole , as Saussure made before him, or competence and
performance, as Chomsky did after him , because ,for Firth ,language was not an
autonomous entity, not a phenomenon which reflects mental activity ,and not to bestudied as a mental system .Rather ,in keeping with the behaviourist and positivist
ideas of the contemporary intellectual environment ,Firth saw language as a set of
events which speakers uttered.
Firths strong concern for the bodily system ,personality ,and language through
life leads him to refuse the mental side , creating a fresh dualism where he wants
general linguistics to adopt a psychosomatic approach to mind and body taken
together and acting in specific living conditions .He applauds Malinowskis
warning : all mental states postulated as occurrences within the private
consciousness of man are outside the realm of science ;and there is nothing more
dangerous than to imagine that language is a process running parallel and exactly
corresponding to mental states. Hence, general linguistics must not study language
as an instrument of thought or an organ of mind. Firth says that we do not deny the
concept of mind ,but we have no methodology or technique for studying it and no
technical language for mentalistic treatment as Bloomfield did.
Firth is even reluctant to regard language as expressive or communicative lesthe imply it is an instrument of inner mental states ,thoughts ,or ideas ,which are
mysterious because not observable .Firth wants to regard language as a mode of
action .Language is a way of doing things and getting things done, of behaving
and making others behave in relation to surroundings and situations. Regarding
words as acts ,events, habits, Firth limits his inquiry to what is objective and
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observable in the group life. This rejects the common view that speech acts are
only interesting for linguists to gain access to the true object of study-their
underlying grammatical systems.
As utterances occur in real-life contexts ,Firth argued that their meaning derived
just as much from the particular situation in which they occurred as from the
string of sounds uttered. This integrationist idea, which mixes language with the
objects physically present during a conversation to ascertain the meaning involved
is known as Firths contextual theory of meaning or his theory of context of
situation, a phrase which he borrowed from Malinowski.
According to Firth, context of situation is a schematic construct that is applied
especially to repetitive events in the social process ,consisting of various levels of
analysis .These levels (for example ,phonetic , phonological ,grammatical, lexical ,
situational) are equally theoretical constructs and they consist of a consistent
framework of categories ,which are named in a restricted language in order to deal
with the distinguishable aspects of meaning. The context of situation is a
convenient abstraction at the social level of analysis and forms the basis of the
hierarchy of techniques for the statement of meanings. The statement of meaning
cannot be achieved by one analysis ,at one level ,in one fell swoop. Having made
the first abstraction and having treated the social process of speaking by applying
the set of categories grouped in the context of situation ,descriptive linguistics then
proceeds by a method rather like the dispersion of light into a spectrum.
Thus, descriptive linguistics is a sort of hierarchy of techniques by means of
which the meaning of linguistic events may be dispersed in a spectrum of
specialized statements. The technique of syntax is concerned with the word process
in the sentence .The technique of phonology states the phonematic and prosodic
processes within the word and sentence. The phonetician links all this with the
processes and features of utterance. The sentence must also have its relations with
the processes of the context of situation.
Since the statement of the meaning cannot be achieved at one fell swoop by one
analysis at one level ,Firth proposes to split up meaning or function into a series of
component functions ,or disperse meaning into modes. Each function will be
defined as the use of some language form or element in relation to some context .
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Meaning ,that is to say, is to be regarded as a complex of contextual relations ,and
phonetics ,grammar ,lexicography ,and semantics each handles its own
components of the complex in its appropriate context. The principal components of
the whole meaning are the phonetic function and the functions of lexical ,
morphological ,and syntactic items, and of the whole context of situation .Themethod by which the meaning is to be explicated requires that we split up the
organic whole into several levels ,just as light is dispersed through a spectrum.
In discussing his approach to meaning ,Firth often used the analogy of the
dispersion of light waves into a spectrum : just as white light is the fusion of a
number of colours of differing wavelengths ,linguistic meaning is the fusion of a
number of different modes of meaning. This fusion is impossible to analyze until
it is dispersed or deconstructed into various modes of meaning.
The first level of meaning is that of phonetics .At this level ,sounds have
function by virtue of (1) the places in which they occur (2)the contrast they show
with other sounds that could occur in the same place .Consider the following
example :
The English sound /b/ is found to occur in the following places :
(a)initially (bed, bid)
(b) Before any vowel
(c) Before a limited number of consonants (bleed ,bread)
(d)Never after a consonant.
But in terms of contrast ,it is found that (b) in word initial position can be
replaced by /p/ or /m/ in most of them and that :
(a)Given /p/ or /m/ , an /s/ could precede these sounds .(b)While /p/ and /m/ are articulated at the same place as /b/ ,there are contrasts
between them : both/b/ and /p/ are bilabial ,but /b/ and /p/ are usually non-
nasal and /m/ is non plosive and so on.
(c)/d/ is alveolar and contrasts differently with /b/ than with other sounds ,andso on .
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Such comparisons are carried on until the segmental units of the language
have been established by listing how the sounds function ,how they are
mutually substitutable ,how they contrast and so on .In this respect ,Firth
says:
The phonetic function of a form ,of a sound ,sound attribute ,or sound group is then its use in contra distinction from other
sounds ; the phonetic value or use of any sound is determined by its
place in the whole system .The phonetic or minor function of a sound
is shown by studying it in relation to the phonetic contexts in which it
occurs and in relation to other sounds which may replace it in those
contexts ,or, in other words ,in relation to the context of the whole pho-
nological system. A phonetic substitutioncounter has been termed a
phoneme.
The second level is the lexical , the level on which the meanings of words
can be considered .At this level words can be considered lexical substitution
counters. The meanings of the words can be stated in terms of collocation ,
or the company a word keeps.
The term collocation was first introduced by Firth ,who considered that
meaning by collocation is lexical meaning at the syntagmatic level. Meaning
by collocation is an abstraction at the syntagmatic level and is not directly
concerned with the conceptual or idea approach to the meaning of words.
One of the meanings of night is its collocability with dark and of dark
of course, collocation with night. Examples ofcollocation are the meaning
features attached to the names of the English months in March hare ,
August bankholiday , May week , April showers, April fool , and the
like.
The third level that Firth cited is the grammatical, which can be divided
into morphology and syntax. On the morphological level , we can examine
the paradigms into which words enter , since these also condition the
meanings of the members of the paradigm ,for example , the participle of a
verb once it has been contextualized , it has morphological meaning.
On the syntactic level of meaning , we deal with colligations , or
syntagmatic relations between grammatical categories .Syntactic meaning
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can be assessed for instance , by intonation (e.g. Board?) , or the phrase
Not on the board ! and also Not on the board? .These are two different
types of sentence , one a statement and the other a question. These are not
semantic but syntactical categories.
A fourth level is the situational , a level that corresponds more closely to
what others have called a level of meaning .If we contextualize the word in a
particular social situation , in which speaker A asks speaker B , Board stiff?,
the utterance receives what Firth calls a semantic function.
The central concept of the whole semantics considered in this way is the
context of situation .In that context are the human participant or participants
what they say , and what is going on .Situations themselves take their
meaning from the context of culture .And it is for this situational andcultural study that Firth reserves the term semantics.
Firth repeatedly emphasized that to make statements of meaning in terms
of linguistics , we may accept the language event as a whole and then deal
with it at various levels , sometimes in a descending order , beginning with
context of situation and proceeding through syntax and vocabulary to
phonology ,and at other times in the opposite order as illustrated above.
The technique which Firth has sketched is an empirical rather than a
theoretical analysis of meaning. It can be described as a serial
contextualization of our facts , context within context, each one being a
function ,an organ of the bigger context and all contexts finding a place in
what may be called the context of culture .It avoids many of the difficulties
which arise if meaning is regarded chiefly as a mental relation or historical
process.
Although Firth borrowed the concept of context of situation from
Malinowski as one level in his hierarchical system of meaning interpretation
there is one very important difference between the ways in which
Malinowski and Firth saw context. Whereas Malinowski was interested in
the actual existing features of context ,Firth saw the context of situation as
an abstract frame of reference which the linguist invents. The linguist
decides which features are going to be important for the analysis of language
in context .All in all ,Firth was very much adherent of what was at the time
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called the hocus pocus view of linguistic analysis: linguistic categories are
constructs imposed on language in the hope of getting a better understanding
of what is going on .Such constructs do not exist independent of their
creator. This implies that every notion or term in linguistics including his
own are only analytical tools which can and should be changed wheneverthis is felt to be necessary.
Malinowskis context of situation is a bit of the social process which can
be considered a part and in which a speech event is central and makes all the
difference ,such as a drill sergeants welcome utterance on the square ,Stand
at ease !.The context of situation for Malinowski is an ordered series of
events considered as in rebus.
Firths view was , and still is , that context of situation is best used as a
suitable schematic construct to apply to language events ,and it is a group ofrelated categories at a different level from grammatical categories but rather
of the same abstract nature. A context of situation for linguistic work brings
into relation the following categories:
A.The relevant features of participants : persons, personalities.(i)The verbal action of the participants.
(ii)The non-verbal action of the participants.
B. The relevant objects.
C. The effect of the verbal action.
According to Firth , contexts of situation and types of language function can
then be grouped and classified .A very rough parallel to this sort of context can be
found in language manuals providing the learner with a picture of a railway station
and the operative words for travelling by train. It is very rough. But it is parallel
with the grammatical rules ,and is based on the repetitive routine of initiated
persons in the society under description.
It follows that meaning in language is not a single sort of relation , but involves
a set of multiple and various relations holding between the utterance and its parts
and the relevant features and components of the environment ,both cultural and
physical ,and forming part of the more extensive system of interpersonal relations
involved in the existence of human societies.
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2. Firthian Prosodic Analysis (FPA)
J. R. Firth distanced himself away from the English tradition of Sweet and
Jones and tried to take English phonology away from its preoccupation with
phonetic description and segmental transcription .Firth argues:
Sweet himself bequeathed to the phoneticians coming after him
the problems of synthesis which still continue to vex us. Most
phoneticians and even the new phonologists have continued to
elaborate the analysis of words, some in general phonetic terms,
others in phonological terms based on theories of opposition,
alternances ,and distinctive differentiations or substitutions. Such
studies I should describe as paradigmatic and monosystemic in
principle. (Firth,1957:121)
Firth made a number of criticisms about phonemic phonology :
(1)The emphasis on the distinction between system and structure is misleading .These are not independent but interdependent :different formulations of a
system require different structural rules.
(2)Trubetzkoys systems of archiphonemes and of phonemes destroyconfidence in the notion of one phonemic system and hence in that of the
phoneme itself.(3)To treat all phonological phenomena in terms of phonemes assigns
inappropriate places in a transcribed linear sequence to essentially dynamic
features.
(4)A sequence of segmental phonemes can misrepresent phonetic data ,forexample when Arabic [ s:r] he marched and [sa:r ] are phonemicised as
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(5)It is misleading to regard the vocabulary of English and some otherlanguages as a set of items all obeying the same phonological rules.
(6)Not to admit a knowledge of grammar not only results in the invention ofjuncture phonemes , but makes it impossible to state in the phonology ofEnglish that (i) all word-final sequences of voiced plosive plus alveolar
fricative are either singular verbs or plural nouns (/rbz/ rubs,/ribz/ ribs);
(ii)word-final sequences of nasal plus fricative or plosive are homorganic
(/ten/ tenth ,/mp/ thump,/sIk/sink) ;(iii)word-initial // occurs in only a
tiny set of grammatically important words such as this ,the , then , there ,
though.
Firths prosodic approach to the study of phonological systems of language is
summarized as follows by Firth himself in his paper Sounds and
Prosodies(1948)pp.121-138,where he purely rejected phonemic analysis as
practiced by leading phonologists at the time (such as Trubetzkoy and
Bloomfield).He says:
By using the common symbols c and v instead of the specific
symbols for phonematic consonant and vowel units ,we gene-
ralize syllabic structure in a new order of abstraction eliminating
the specific paradigmatic consonant and vowel systems as such ,
and enabling the syntagmatic word structure of syllables with all
their attributes to be stated systematically . Similarly we may
abstract those features which mark word or syllable initials and
word or syllable finals or word junctions from the word , piece ,or
sentence , and regard them syntagmatically as prosodies , distinct
from the phonematic constituents which are referred to as units of
the consonant and vowel systems.
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Firth gives as an example ofword junction the sentence (question) Is she?,
which ,he says ,is phonetically transcribed as /i /.Here the orthographic space
between the two words is replaced by the junction sequence . Such a sequence
in spoken English is abstracted as a prosody and is generalized beyond the
phonematic level as fi ,where the symbols fand i stand for the word final andword initial ,respectively .It must be emphasized that the sequence fi which is
a mark of word junction in spoken English is considered in Firthian terms a
prosodic feature ,over and above the abstract phonematic units.
Many types of sound can be treated as prosodies .For instance ,the weak
vowel, i.e, the schwa // in English ,the glottal stop in Arabic and aitch or the
pulmonic onset ,the so-called intrusive r,the liquids l , r , n and the semi-vowels
w, y.
The schwa // in English is often associated with the prosodies of English words
and junctions. It differs from the phonematic units of other English vowels in that
the schwa never carries strong stress .As Firth says: Unlike the phonematic units ,
it does not bear any strong stress .Its occurrence marks a weak syllable including
weak forms such as wz , kn, .
The schwa plays a significant prosodic function in English .Consider ,for
instance, the phrase Black and white where the conjunction and is normally
rendered as a weak form variously pronounced as /nd ,n , n/.Arab speakers of
English as a foreign language do not differentiate between the weak and the strong
form. They misuse the prosodic function of the schwa. They render the conjunction
and with a full front ,nearly open vowel quality ,/nd/and furthermore , associate
strong stress with it.
In one of its prosodic functions , the schwa in English might be regarded as a
pro-syllable .As Firth puts it , However obscure or neutral or unstressed , it is
essential in a bitter for me to distinguish it from a bit for me.The former phrase
contains an extra syllable ,though being weak , whose exponent is the schwa of the
second syllable in bitter .This is what is meant by the pro-syllable prosodic
function of the schwa in English.
In the prosodic analysis of a language , phonological structures consist of
phonematic units and prosodies .
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Phonematic units are segmental abstractions at the phonnological level and have
exponents in the phonic substance , just as grammatical units , which are
abstractions at the morphological level or syntactic level , also have their
exponents in the phonic substance.
Phonematic units are divided into consonants and vowels .A phonematic unit ,
as the name suggests , both resembles and differs from a phoneme in the usual
definition .While phonematic units are generally represented in general phonetic
terms , they should not be equated with such symbols. The phoneme is a unit
defined through its ability to distinguish one lexical item from another ,and part of
its definition is the specification of features of a phonetic event .The difference
between a phoneme and a phonematic unit is a prosody ; stated for a lexical item:
phonemeprosody = phonematic unit
Prosodies are abstracted from the utterance or sentence (sentence prosodies) and
from parts thereof , but always with reference to a given structure ;and the relevant
phonetic data may be assigned to such different categories of prosody as sentence
prosodies ,sentence part prosodies, word prosodies ,syllable prosodies ,and syllable
part prosodies. Where more than one phonematic unit or prosody is referable to a
single structural position ,these constitute a system. Systems are thus set up to state
the structural possibilities of a language at the phonological level .Some examples
may help to explain:
A prosody of lip rounding can be abstracted from the English word food/fu:d/
to the effect that the lips take a rounded posture from the onset of articulating this
word to the end of it .Using the system of abstract phonematic units (c and v) and
the prosody of Rounding (+R),a more abstract representation of the word food
can now be rendered as
Or if vowel length (+L) is also abstracted as a prosody ,the word can be
represented
In contrast , the word feed /fi:d/ can be represented as:
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Prosodic features are also evident in English morphophonemics .Consider , the
prosody of [+voice] and [-voice] in nouns (plurality and the possessive case)and
verbs (3
rd
person singular and past tense )as illustrated below:
book books /buks/
where in the plural form a prosodic feature of [-voice] extends over the last two
consonantal units .On the other hand ,the pair:
fig figs /figz/
exhibits a prosodic feature of [+voice] extending over the last two consonants.
Similarly in the third person singular of lexical verbs the feature of voiceexhibits like patterns , consider:
He looks /luks/ [- voice]
He digs /digz/ [+voice]
The English regular past tense is also subject to such voice contrasts:
to look looked /lukt/ [-voice]
to kiss kissed /kist/ [-voice]
to hug hugged /hgd/ [+ voice]
to please pleased /pli:zd/ [+ voice]
The /d/ segment has different phonological and morphological functions in word
final position:
board /bo:d/
bored /bo:d/
In the former it is just an original phonematic unit ; in the latter it is a past
tense signal .This contrast is not operational word-initially or medially .As Firth
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says almost any type of sound may have prosodic function, and the same sound
may have to be noticed both as a consonant or vowel unit and as a prosody.
Each sequence , phonematic and prosodic , is itself made up of systems and
structures ; that is to say , of paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations .For Firth , theterm system is recognized as reflections of paradigmatic oppositions (a set of
phonemes in opposition to each other is a system ),and structure as reflections of
syntagmatic relations (syllables are one kind of structure; words are another).
For Firth , a system and a structure are complementary :a structure is formed by
elements in syntagmatic relation at a particular level of analysis ,while a system is
made up of the mutually exclusive paradigmatic options that come into play at a
particular place in a structure a system is a set of choices available at a given
place in the phonological structure .This relationship has been illustrated by thefollowing diagram:
S
y
s
S t r u c t u r e
e
m
According to Firth , phoneme analysis in all its forms gives undue weight to the
contrastive or paradigmatic aspect of phonology and neglects the syntagmatic
aspect. As Sommerstein says, The aim of prosodic phonology is , among other
things , to integrate the syntagmatic and paradigmatic statements in a single unifieddescription .Thus , an important role is given to phonological features
characteristic of a unit of structure (e.g syllable , word , syllable-part ,word-
partetc) rather than to just one segment (i.e, vowel or consonant).Such features
include stress , length , pitch , nasalization , vowel harmony ,etc. Any feature
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extending over more than one segment is abstracted from the phonological system
of a language and considered a prosody.
Firths notions of system and structure are based on the structuralist notions of
paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations. However ,in contrast to Saussure ,Firth didnot regard these notions as being applicable to the language as a whole.
Another aspect of prosodic analysis to observe is its separation of linguistic
levels ,especially phonetics and phonology .For Firth , phonology and phonetics
describe different things and are different but related levels of abstraction with
their own formal languages .Furthermore , phonematic units and prosodies are not
assumed to have obvious phonetic content , and must be connected by statements
of exponency explaining how a particular piece of phonological structure maps
onto the phonetics. With such assumptions , Firth was able to combine an abstractphonology with detailed phonetic description.
One of the principal features of prosodic analysis is that it is polysystemic. This
means that one of its fundamental trends is that at different places in structure ,
different phonological relations hold. For Firth, a given language is polysystemic
in that it involves a plurality of systems.
Firths polysystematicity means that phonologists are free to recognize a
phonological system in any piece of linguistic structure , rather than needing toprovide a coherent account of the whole phonological system of a language. There
is no necessary expectation that the same phonological entities and systems should
be relevant in , for example, both syllable onsets and syllable rhymes, function
words and lexical words , Noun Phrases, Adverb Phrases.
Firthian prosodic analysis recognizes a number of systems of prosodies
operating at various points in structure(e.g. at the levels of consonant clusters , of
syllables , of words , etc.) which determine the pronunciation of a given form in
interaction with phonematic units that represent whatever information is left whenall the co-occurrence restrictions between adjacent segments have been abstracted
as prosodies .One result of this is that utterances are represented as having a
phonological hierarchical structure , in addition to the syntactic hierarchical
structure which are widely recognized as possessing.
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Prosodic analysis has been characterized as polysystemic in contrast to
monosystemic phonemic analysis .It contrasts with phonemic analysis not only in
the recognition of two basic phonological entities ,prosody and phonematic unit,
rather than one , but in other respects. Phonemic analysis is general throughout a
language , and a sound segment assigned to a phoneme in one environment is heldto belong to the same phoneme everywhere else. Phonemic systems are established
without reliance on grammatical distinctions (e.g. between nouns and verbs or
roots and affixes ).They are moreover , based on the structural places of
differentiation.
Prosodic analysis admits the possibility of different grammatical elements being
subjected to different phonological analyses .grammatical elements such as words ,
as well as phonological elements such as syllables , are open to treatment as
structures from which prosodies may be abstracted. Moreover , prosodic
phonology envisages the setting up of separate systems of contrastive phonematic
units and prosodies at different places in phonological structures without
necessarily identifying the units in one system with those in another. In the English
case of plosive consonants after /s/ in initial position in the syllable , prosodic
analysis does not need to identify the three consonantal phonematic units in this
position with either the distinctively voiced three or the distinctively voiceless
three that are found in syllable initial position.
3.The History of Linguistics
Firth was well aware of developments in linguistics in Europe and America.
He cared for the history of linguistics as part of the study of language.
At first , Firth dealt with the contributions Americans made to the subjects of
orthography and orthoepy of the common language ,to grammar , and to
lexicography in Websters American Dictionary of the English Language in
1828.
Noah Webster , the educator and lexicographer , wrote an essay on The
Reforming of Spelling .He demanded that Americans reform the abuses and faults
which produce innumerable inconveniences in the acquisition and use of language,
and introduce order and regularity into the orthography of the American Tongue.
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He pointed out that the basic advantage of this reform is that it makes a difference
between the English orthograpgy and the American .
Benjamin Franklin proposed an entirely new alphabet and mode of spelling .he
devised six new letters including one for the vowel in um , un ; as in umbrage,unto , etc., and as in er, and the letter (ng)ing , in repeating , among.In 1786
Franklin turned to Webster and offered to give him the types for experiment .But
Webster wished to effect reform without a single new character by means of a few
trifling alterations of the present characters and retrenching a few extra letters , the
most of which are corruptions of the original words.
Lindley Murray made an early transatlantic contribution to the teaching of the
English language , that is , the English grammar, in 1784, for the use of some
teachers who were not satisfied with nay of the existing grammars .In 1808 animproved edition in two volumes was published as more suitable for libraries. In
this edition , Murray paid a careful attention to the prosodic features of
pronunciation and made an original explanation of the concepts of case and mood
in English .He is described as the first modern grammarian to treat auxiliary
verbs like have , be , will , do as sentence operators. His section on Accent or the
stress of the voice is extremely competent for that time. Finally ,Murrays grammar
was built on a Latin model.
Further emphasis of the Atlantic conception arises from a study of the leading
personalities ; John Pickering (1777-1846), Peter Stephen Du Ponceau (1760-
1844) and James Smithson , the founder of the Smithsonian Institution which
stimulated and fostered linguistic research in American Indian and exotic
languages .
Pickering devoted himself to linguistics and learning languages. He compiled
Greek Lexicon regarded by some as the best Greek-English Dictionary; he was the
leading authority of his day on the North American Indians , the first to publish a
collection of Americanisms.
Du Ponceau also promoted the study of the American Indian languages .His
most interesting work is A Dissertation on the Nature and Character of the
ChineseSystem of Writing published for the American Philosophical Society in
1838.
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Modern descriptive linguistics in America also owes a great deal to the
Smithsonian Institution which lined linguistics with ethnology and promoted
research by issuing questionnaires and by publications.
The close association of missions with the development of linguistics is aconstant feature of the history of the subject. First the Propaganda Fide in
Europe , and in America the work of Dr. Kenneth Pike and his colleagues for the
mission fields and linguistics.
The American Indian work was a good background for filed linguistics .The
Americans report a Fijian Vocabulary (1811), early work on Berber by Newman
(1846), On Yoruba by Bowen (1858) and on the dialects of the Gabun, on
Swahili, as well as a first attempt at reducing the Karen dialects of writing.
A great deal of early work suffered because of phonetic incompetence .There is
no doubt that Sir William Jones and Sanskrit were the sources of stimulus for new
developments in general linguistics and phonetics both in Europe and America.
One of the greatest vehicles of this enlightment is William Dwight Whitney.In
1861 he presented a highly competent criticism of Lepsiuss Standard Alphabet in
which there is some phonetic theory. Whitney realized the effect of the Roman
alphabet on American theories; he objected to the division of the spoken alphabet
into the two distinct classes of vowels and consonants ;he came very near to the
theory of cardinal vowels ;he severely criticizes Lepsiuss treatment of vowels .He
serialized sibilants followed later by Sweet.
The study of phonetics in all its branches has continued to be a feature of
Atlantic linguistics ,especially in England ,America and Scandinavia. There was an
American link with A. J. Ellis and Melville Bell in Samuel Haldeman who had a
sound knowledge of phonetic technique and right ideas on the recording of
phonetic observations.
The Bells are the best symbol of Atlantic phonetics since they linked upScotland , England ,Ireland , Canada , and the United States by their own work,
and the world by telephone. The Visible Speech of the Bell telephone Laboratories
is a reminder of the Visible Speech of 1867 by Melville Bell.
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The development of American Indian linguistics remains the characteristic
American contribution .The work of Boas and Sapir , later development by
Bloomfield , all contribute to the position held by American scholarship in
Linguistics .
Then ,Firth makes a review to the weighty contributions of English linguists ,
grammarians , phoneticians , and orthographers including short hand inventors
since the time of Elizabeth I or since Alfrics Latin grammar in English.
Firth cites such pioneers as Thomas More ,Thomas Wilson (1553), Thomas
Smith (1568), John Hart (1569), William Bullokar (1580), Timothe Bright (1588),
Alexander Hume , Charles Butler (1634),Cave Beck(1657), John Wilkins (1668),
William Holder (1669), John Wallas ,George Dalgarno, Elisha Coles
(1692),Thomas Gurney, John Byron , William Blanchard , Isaac Pitman ,WilliamJones ,Walter Haddon , Richard Temple (1899), Joseph Wright, the Bell family ,
and above all Henry Sweet whom Firth describes as our pioneer leader , and
greatest philologist , one of the cleverest thinkers on language.
Sir Thomas Smith , Secretary to Queen Elizabeth I, was mainly interested in
problems of spelling and pronunciation. The following are examples of Sir Thomas
Smiths spellings :
ces cheese
carite charity
kac catch
Roger Ascham ,Sir John Cheke, Provost of Kings ,Walter Haddon ,The
Latinists, were all friends of his and formed a coterie which did much to mould the
course of the Renaissance in England on its pedagogic side .All the coterie
believed in the strength and worth of the native English character. They wished to
make learning accessible in the vernacular to Englishmen , and the use of Englishaccessible to the foreign .
John Hart, Chester Heralt had a book published in (1509).He spent 20 years
studying the spelling for five hundred years back ,that is ,to the eleventh century .
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Alexander Hume ,a distinguished Scottish schoolmaster, wrote a book of the
orthography and congruities of the Britain Tongue. He held the view that grammar
is built on good spelling ,and begs His Majesty James I to reform the grammar.
The works of William Bullokar published between 1580 and 1586 present manyfeatures : description of the pronunciation , problems of transcription , use of
superfluous letters , new grammar , the names of the letters.
Timothe Bright , to whom the invention of the technique of shorthand is
attributed , had a book on shorthand entitled Charactery in which he discussed
five main topics : the widening of the linguistic horizons , the study of exotic
alphabets , the linguistic endeavours of the missions, the movement for a universal
language , and world English.
George Dalgarno , a rationalist , produced an alphabet for the Deaf and Dumb as
well.
Then in the 18th
century , we had Thomas Gurney , Byron , Blanchard , and
Taylor. They all had interest in Charactery , Universal Alphabets ,Spelling Reform
and Shorthand .And in the 19th
century we had the great Isaac Pitman one of the
makers of the English School of Phonetics.
Charles Buttler , author of the English Grammar , linked the studies of grammar ,
music , and gymnastics, believing that the exercise of the limbs and the ordering of
the voice in speech and song were complementary.
William Holder ,Doctor of Divinity and Fellow of the Royal Society ,invented at
least two vowel symbols still in common use .His bookThe Elements of Speech
published in 1669 is one of the most interesting in the early history of phonetics.
He gives an excellent account of the organs of speech .
Elisha Coles , a schoolmaster , a teacher of the Tongue of the foreigner ,and
author of The Complete English Schoolmaster written for children and forforeigners.
Sir William Jones is one of the makers of The English School of phonetics ,
usually described as The Orientalist. He felt the great need of a proper use of the
roman alphabet in Oriental studies .He produced a special dissertation on The
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Orthography of Asiatic Words in Roman Letters. His chart of symbols for the
transliteration of the Devanagari, with the addition of letters for Arabic and Persian
is the first presentation of what may be called a phonetic alphabet on such a scale .
Sir William Joness contribution to the study of spelling , transcription andtransliteration , together with his wise observations on phonetics, was the
inspiration for a great deal of work in England , Germany and America.
Henry Sweet ,according to Firth is our pioneer leader , and greatest philologist,
one of the cleverest thinkers on language .Phonetic study in the modern sense was
pioneered by Sweet (1845-1912).Sweets phonetics was practical as well as
academic ;he was concerned with systemizing phonetic transcription in connection
with problems of spelling reform. Sweet in his book Handbook of Phonetics
publishedin 1877 wrote :England may now boast a flourishing phonetic school ofits own .The title The English School of Phonetics is a phrase taken from Sweets
paper to the Philological Society on The practical Study of Language in
1884.Accordingly ,Sweet is considered the founder of the English school on
phonetics.
Firth ,within the framework of history of linguistics ,traces back the modern
phoneme theory .Firth points out that the phoneme idea is Polish and Russian in
origin.
Baudouin de Courtenay, a Polish linguist ,gives the early history of the term
phoneme ;he takes it back to one of his pupils ,Kruszewski.So the proposal to
employ the term phoneme comes from Kruszewski.
Kruszewski extended the term phoneme to include sound alternances associated
with changes of morphological categories. It is to Kruszewski we owe the distinct
use of the terms sound, phone , and phoneme.
But the phoneme idea as Firth holds must be regarded as implicit in the work
of all phoneticians and orthographists who have employed broad transcription. It is
implicit in Sweets Broad Romic which dates back to about the same time as
Kruszewski.It appears in Jespersens phonetics and also in de Saussures Course of
General Linguistics.
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University of Baghdad
College of Arts
English Department
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