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 h i j k l m n o p q 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 ëa ((ie and eo (io, ie) are to be regarded as half-lengths. The long vowels are â, œ, ê, î, ô, û, ŷ; diphthongs ed and eó (ió) along with which ei, eu, ié, oe and oi sometimes appear, mostly in Anglian dialects. = Instead of long vowels, reduplications of vowels are also found, which Old English still frequently shews (for instance hi 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. Short vowels. 1. Ĭ, y rarely ui, ie, ee (been) Highdutch Ĭ 2. ě, ea; i and y before r rarely ie, ai (said) a (ate) Highdutch ě Long vowels. ē, ea, ee, i, ie, rarely ei, ey, ay, 3. ǎ Highdutch betwixt ǎ and ĕä, au (before n) Highdutch ā 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 essentially in the determination of its quantity. The subordinate accent commonly operates analogously to the chief accent. The close syllable, that is, the syllable ending in a consonant, with a simple vowel, presents itself in every seat of accent as predominantly shortness, and the same is true of the unaccented syllable. But the syllable with a final consonant, followed by a mute e (organic or unorganic) is in general long, which however is only in a limited measure true of the unaccented syllable. The exceptions are chiefly syllables with a final and r, more rarely m and n. The open syllable on the contrary, that is, the syllable ending with a vowel, is long in words in which the accent falls on the ultimate or sole syllable (perispomena), as well as in those that have the accent on the penultimate (properispomena); whereas the antepenultimate accented syllables give words with a short accented syllable (proparoxytones). In this last position u, however, forms an exception; as do e, a and o in the case when the succeding final consonant is followed by a double vowel (in derivative syllables) whose first is an i or e (as ian, ial, iaous, ean, eous, eor, &c.) mostly remain long also in the antepenultimate syllable, whereas this is not the case with i. Since, in the double syllables indicated, e and i have the inclination to blend as semi consonants with the following vowel, words of this sort are mostly to be regarded as properispomena. What is true of the vowel of the antepenultimate has also application to any syllable situate still further back, when it receives the accent. Another series of exceptions is formed by those penultimate open syllables (mostly with i, e, a) which remain short. In all accented syllables the vowel preceding another vowel is wont to be long. This lengthening usually remains in the unaccented syllable also; but, in a syllable originally unaccented, a vowel before another vowel is short. -- Conformably with these general views, a change in the quantity of the vowel frequently shews itself in derivations, in which the accented syllable remaining open is encumbered with final syllables: compare hero heroine, condîgn - condignity, profâne profanity, austere austerity, tŷrant tyranny, abdoabdominal, foreknow-foreknowledge; as also when the accent is pushed forwards or backwards from the original long syllable, the length often shortens: compare inspîre - inspiration, disciple discipline, admîre ádmirable. men Yet a fixed principle is not carried out here. The apprehension of the short vowel as the vowel of the close syllable has led to the phonetic peculiarity that, where the open syllable is sharpened, or short, the pronunciation draws the initial consonant of the following syllable immediately on to the vowel (Attraction) and, as it were doubles it, like as writing also after a short vowel frequently doubled consonants originally single (compare waggon with wagon; Anglosax: vägen; addice Anglosax: adesse; matter French matière) and in derivations from oxytones the single consonant is doubled: wit witty; begin beginner; abet abettor: on which account orthoepists, to denote the division of syllables for pronunciation, put the accentual mark for shortness after what is, properly speaking, an initial consonant: compare sat in. I, Y. These two phonetic signs, though often of very different origin, are essentially shared between the sounds of the Highdutch Ĭ (seldom I) and the Highdutch diphthong ai or ei, as the Old- and Middle Highdutch long i is often represented as ei in modern High a) in the close syllable: thin, fringe, shrill, filch, milk, mist, did, fit, stinking, industry, incapacity.*) Except «. here the accented syllables pronounced as the diphthongs, ei with silent gh (in gh, ght,): nîgh, thîgh, tîgh, high; blight, plight, fight, fright, Wight &c.; with silent g (in ign): malîgn, condîgn, sign, assign; with silent c (in ct): indict; with mute s in îsle, îsland, and viscount, mostly with their derivatives, in which the consonant remains mute and the accent does not advance. Compare on the other hand condignity, malignant, ássignation, ássignée, of which only the last retains the silent g notwithstanding the entrance of the i, as in sévennight, which is pronounced seńnit: further, in roots with a final nd, like bînd, fînd, blînd, kînd &c., to which is added nt pînt, and those with ld: mîld child, wîld, in whose derivatives however i appears instead of î: compare wilderness, children and the compound kindred. According to Smart childe is sounded with a short ĭ, according to others with i. Here also an exception is formed by wind ventus, with its derivatives, as distinguished from wînd (with î) with its derivatives, from which however windlass deviates, and also rescind, together with all derived from the Latin scindere. Gild and guild, build, in which u is not sounded, have also a short ĭ: ei is lastly heard in climb and Christ, yet not in the deri vatives from Christ, as christen, christian &c. and not even in the compound Christmas (pronounced crismas). f. Another exception also is formed by the syllable ir with a consonant after it, unless a second r, as in mirror, immediately follows it. In this syllable i passes over into the more obscure sound of ő like é and borders therefore on the sound u before r. The reason lies in the final guttural letter. Here belong sir, fir, chirp, gird, girt, skirt, mirth, birch, girl, firm. Some pretend to find the sound in bird, first, flirt, thirst deeper and more obscure. Even educated Londoners moreover pronounce the i in the most familiar words, as sir, bird, dirt &c. as sur, burd, durt &c. Before double r the sound remains, even in derivatives, as stirres &c.; and in squirrel it is commonly heard. In Sírrah some In words in which a principal and a subordinate accent are to be observed we denote the principal accent by ", the subordinate by ', the latter only if the vowel upon which the subordinate accent falls has not a mark of quantity. |