firth abu raya

7/31/2019 Firth Abu Raya

1/23

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.


2/23

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


3/23

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


4/23

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 .


5/23

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 .


6/23

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


7/23

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


8/23

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.


9/23

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


10/23

(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.


11/23

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 .


12/23

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:


13/23

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


14/23

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


15/23

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.


16/23

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.


17/23

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.


18/23

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.


19/23

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 .


20/23

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


21/23

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.


22/23

University of Baghdad

College of Arts

English Department


23/23

firth abu raya

Documents