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of Old-germanic, but also Old-french words; fifthly, by the preservation of Germanic strong flexional forms, as well as by the interchange of strong and weak forms. Halliwell, in his collection of archaic and provincial words, has exhibited 51,027 forms of words, and numerous comparisons of words of various dialects are gradually offering more and more support to research.

The present popular dialects are divided, as they were by Verstegan (in his Restitution in 1634) into three groups; the Western, the Southern and the Northern. In the fourteenth century Halliwell fancies there were a Southern, a Middle and a Northern Group, of which the Southern at present remains only in the West.

The Western group is most sharply expressed in the counties of Dorset, a part of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall; less so in Wiltshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire, and in Gloucestershire, the present dialect whereof is still similar to that of old Robert of Gloucester. Apart from their peculiar vocabulary, these dialects are seemingly characterized by the lengthening of the vowels, the broadening of the diphthongs, the softening of s into z and f into, as also by suppressed pronunciation without the full opening of the mouth.

The so called Southern dialects may be divided into three branches. One begins with Kent, wherewith is allied Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire on the one hand, and Essex on the other, so that the dialects pass partly into the Western and partly into the East-anglian. The East-anglian form the second branch, which shews itself most decidedly in Norfolk and Suffolk, but to which also Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, and, as cognate, Leicestershire and Rutlandshire are attached. These dialects are thin and have something of singsong, whence the Suffolk "whining", and form a sharp contrast to the full-toned northern dialects. The midland dialects are to be regarded as the third branch, as, that of Herefordshire, Warwickshire and Northamptonshire, also at present that of Nottinghamshire, where the northern dialect was formerly native. They form the transition to the northern dialects.

The Northern group, which we may call the Northumbrian, exhibits itself most decidedly in the dialects of Northumberland, Durham and the North Riding of Yorkshire, and in Cumberland and Westmoreland. Broad, full-toned, guttural and passing into the Scottish, it is hardest in Northumberland and most monotonous in Durham. In Lincolnshire, where a northern dialect is divided from a southern one by the river Witham, the latter resembles the Eastanglian. The dialect of Lancashire recedes in the West from that of Yorkshire, but, like this, favours the a sound instead of o and ou, and puts the o sound in the place of ea and oi, and hardens the final g and d into k and t. These dialects, the most remote from the literary English, have enjoyed the most especial lexicographic_research. b. The Scotch language, or the speech of the Scottish lowlands, which has maintained its Germanic character with the greatest fidelity, is distinguished from the English by a broader vocalization, especially by the frequent employment of the obscure a instead of o, of ai instead of oa and o, the preservation of the guttural ch,

English gh, and the more frequent retention of the original g and. k, likewise the frequent rejection of the final l, of d after n at the end of a word, likewise of g in the termination ing. It often exchanges the participial termination ed for it, preserves many archaic forms and is distinguished by the employment of particular derivative terminations, such as the ukie, from ock: The Scotch language kept pace with the English as a literary dialect till the sixteenth century; but from that time the English outstripped it. Queen Elizabeth no longer understood the Scotch letters of Mary Stuart in the same age when it seemed to the publisher of Chaucer (Speght), in 1602, needful to subjoin a glossary of Chaucer's obscure words, which had not appeared necessary in the editions of 1542 and 1561, notwithstanding Spencer's Shepheardes Calendar in 1579 needed a glossary by reason of its "Chaucerisms". With the union of the two kingdoms in 1603, the removal of the court to England and the neglect of the Scotch by the upper ranks, the language lost its literary dignity and subsided into a mere popular dialect. It raised itself indeed, particulary with the commencement of the eighteenth century, (Allan Ramsay born 1686) in popular poetry into a certain finish in a narrow department; without, however, again acquiring the importance of a language of varied cultivation. In its stationariness the Scotch, originally very close to the English, has preserved many materials of speech which have been abandoned in English. The Scotch has hitherto become more the subject of lexicographical than of scientific grammatical research.

The forms of English in the countries which have received it from its original home are hardly to he considered English dialects in the strict sense, although there it receives a provincial cast in the mouth of the people. The English of North America, for instance, which, like the speech of all colonies, has to keep up its intimate connection with the mother country chiefly through the language of books, is gradually diverging in pronunciation. It retains words already obsolete in England, elevates particular English provincialisms into expressions of universal currency, assigns new and peculiar expressions to many old words, and takes up many words from the American languages. The language of conversation in the colonies suffers everywhere from similar defects, but the general physiognomy of the tongue remains the same.

Linguistic varieties, such as the thieves' language of England, the "flash" or "cant" of thieves and beggars, likewise the mob language of the populace of great cities, a mixed language of divers dialects and, partly, of arbitrary formations, wherein words are employed with new and peculiar meanings, (slang words and phrases) do not come under review as dialects. The pronunciation of the common people of the great towns, such as that of the cockney speakers of London, has also no dialectic nature, properly speaking; like as the perversion of the vocalization and the guttural tinge to the dentals and to r, except at the end of a syllable, with the Irishman is to be ascribed to the influence of the Celtic, which also imparts a particular quality to the pronunciation of Wales.

PART I.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE WORD.

Grammar, or the doctrine of language, treats of the laws of speech, and, in the first place, of the Word, as its fundamental constituent, with respect to its matter and its form, in prosody, or the doctrine of sounds, and morphology, or the doctrine of forms, and then of the combination of words in speech, in syntax, or the doctrine of the joining of words and sentences.

FIRST SECTION.

PROSODY, OR, THE DOCTRINE OF SOUNDS.

I. THE WORD, ACCORDING TO ITS INGREDIENTS.

THE ALPHABET.

The English alphabet, the totality of its phonetic signs, has, under the influence of Norman French, instead of the gradually expiring Anglosaxon, become the same as the Romance. It contains at present the following signs, according to the usual succession:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

a b c d e f g hijklmnopq r s t u v w x y z

Their names are expressed by the following english designations: ai, bee, cee, dee, ee, ef, jee, aitch, i or eye, jay, kay, el, em, en, o, pee, cue, ar, ess, tee, u or you, vee, double u, eks, wy, zed. These phonetic signs represent, either singly or combined, as ch, sh, gh, th, the various sounds of speech; combined letters also serve to represent simple vocal sounds, as ee, ie, ea, &c. The letters y and w at the end of a word, serve as consonants, else as vowels, although w only in conjunction with other vowels.

THE VOWELS IN GENERAL.

The vowel is the simple sound, which, without the cooperation of the moveable instruments of speech, proceeds out of the larynx through the more or less enlarged cavity of the mouth. Where two simple vowel-sounds flow together, there arises a double-sound, or diphthong, whose first or second constituent has the preponderance in pronunciation.

English presents more than any other tongue the striking phenomenon that the simple vowel-sound is represented by more than one vowel sign; diphthongs, on the contrary, by a simple sign; and totally different sounds are also often denoted by the same vowel

signs. These contradictions in orthography are partly the result of adhesion to a written language no longer according with modern pronunciation, partly also of the crossing of the Germanic and the French orthography, although the Germanic tinge remained of decided influence even in the French and other constituents of the language, so that we still find the general phonetic shades of the language in the Lowdutch and Scandinavian dialects of the present day.

Triphthongs, or three vowels flowing together, are unknown to English: In such words as buoy, u is either cast out or passes into the half consonant w.

Such combinations of vowels as ea are falsely called diphthongs in English and such as eau triphthongs:

English, like Anglosaxon, distinguishes short and long vowels, and gives even to vowels originally French the full value of the Germanic length.

In partial illustration of the modern English orthography the Anglosaxon vocalization may serve. a (ä), e (ë), i, o, u and y (this allied to u and falsily confounded with i) serve to represent short vowel sounds: the diphthongs ea ((ie and eo (io, ie) are to be regarded as half-lengths. The long vowels are â, œ, ê, î, ô, û, î; diphthongs ed and eó (ió) along with which ei, eu, ie, oe and oi sometimes appear, mostly in Anglian dialects.

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Instead of long vowels, reduplications of vowels are also found, which Old English still frequently shews (for instance hii heo, in Robert of Gloucester) but which Modern English, with the exception of ee, oo (and even the latter shortened) has abandoned, although even in Old English the extensions ee, ea, are frequently denoted by a simple e. The Old English vocalization also frequently departs otherwise from the modern English, as will be pointed out below in the exposition of the origin of the sounds.

Considered phonetically, the decided vocalization of Modern English is divided into twelve vowels (of which six long ones stand opposed to six short ones) and four diphthongs.

To these may also be joined, as a final vowel sound, the obscured sound of glibly spoken vowels in the unaccented syllable, which modern English Phoneticians denote by uh, and which does not lie on the scale of vowels from i to u, with greater or less enlargement of the cavity of the mouth, but arises from the mere opening of the mouth accompanied by the expulsion of a sound. This sound however nowise corresponds to all obscurations of sound. The shades of sound arising from the contact of those vowels with consonants are not taken into consideration. Neither are those combinations in which the unaccented e and i before other vowels pass into the consonant y, and, in union with preceding consonants, produce a partial sibilant, reckoned among diphthongs. Special and rare combinations, especially in foreign words, have also been passed over.

The phonetic system above touched upon, with its notation by letters, is represented in the following table. The sound is denoted by letters borrowed from other Germanic tongues.

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Long vowels.

ē, ea, ee, i, ie, rarely ei, ey, ay,
(in quay) Highdutch I or ie
ā, ai, ay, ea, ei, ey rarely e (cf. ere)
Highdutch ẽ, ee

ă, au (before n) Highdutch a
â, au, aw, ou, rarely oa (broad)
Lowdutch â, swedish å

ō, oa, oe, oo, ou, ow rarely ew
(sew) Highdutch ō
ū, ue, ui, o, oo, ou, ew rarely oe
(shoe) Highdutch ū

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As with the treatment of the primitive vowels in writing, their pronunciation has likewise the most consistency and decision in the accented syllable, whereas the unaccented syllables, from which that receiving a subordinate accent forms of course an exception, have suffered more or less obscuration of vocalization. The difficulty of apprehending and representing these dimmings explains the diversity in the views of orthoepists about such sounds and their notation by signs.

THE PRONUNCIATION OF THE VOWELS AND DIPHTHONGS IN DETAIL.

In the employment of the same simple or combined vowels for different sounds, as also of different vowels signs for the same sounds, we annex the discussion of the pronunciation to the series of phonetic signs i, y, e, a, o, u, by representing, with each of these, its combinations according to their phonetic value. In the first place we discuss the sounds in the accented, and then in the unaccented syllable. With regard to the temporal duration of the sound, we distinguish long and short syllables in the seat of accent, while, in the unaccented syllable, length, more or less weakened, may even be made shortness, and shortness may be suppressed into glib shortness, apart from the complete silence of the vowel.

With the seat of accent the quantity, and therefore also the phonetic tinge of the vowel, stand in the most intimate connection; but, along with these, the final sound of the syllable in general cooperates

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