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{ Soft Palate depressed,

(nasal)

C Back of Tongue, (con­ tracting oral passage.) O Front of da ( do. ) Ü Point of do. ( do. ) O Lips, ( do. )

UfO Ü3s® B]x I DQCCPQSisre üfO .

llù 8 }Ü 0 Ü O l0f. 3lC0f I2i5 83s 3lCDüf. B f ü } B }Ü O lS. 1 33%m IQÜDtCDÜ. 1 GlB Ü3s2i50 OIO. X ü [ 3 Ü [3f6ù5 B x e a XCD IQÜDLCDüIS ÜIQ. X B f e üîD -B fQ . ü f ü a i B f iB fa fim o .

8}CDfe 8iœa?i5 CD} D[CD. 3?: ÜICDO ÜJS Di CffiCCD. ü } a f 8 X ÜQ3x Q}2i5 ÜDfCDr ÜCD}. B fü f WfO a f s f s X D}DCD} DIOQ. l a XCi5 X CDlQCDIQ 3ICDÜ. DC D}ÜOlaS^ XCD I03XCÛÜ. XQ2i5XSXcD XO CDXOÜO D3s8. a}CDO BX ü} 3X02.50.

Alexander Melville Bell’s Visible Speech (from English Visible Speech in Twelve Lessons, 1895, pp. vi and 38).

Differences apart, Lodwick's alphabetic array had much in common with the

present IPA and, indeed with the "Organic Alphabet" of Passy and Jones, published as a supplement to Le Maître Phonétique in November 1907 (see, for example, COLLINS & MEES 1999:51-53 for a further discussion of this). Lodwick's primitives (plosives) occupied the first ranks or lines of the matrix (the highest rank) and arranged below in columnar fashion at each place of articulation were the various derivatives, the remaining manner types ranked by degree of oral stricture. This ranking is at variance with a later and more explicit attempt by Pike to rank speech sounds:

Rank of articulators constitutes a descending series: oral closure, oral fricative stricture, oral frictionless stricture, nasal stricture, pharyngeal (or glottal) stricture...

[PIKE 1943:107-8]

Unlike Lodwick's alphabet and current IPA practice. Pike's rank scale foreshadows later twentieth century phenologists' ranking of sounds in the sonority hierarchy - see, for example, SELKIRK 1984, HOGG & McCULLY 1987, HARRIS 1994). Lodwick only ranked for sonority within the plosive and fricative strictures (voiced sounds ranking highest and voiceless ones lowest). His vertical array does not move consistently from least sonorous to most sonorous sounds, exhibiting a typical IPA ordering of sounds based on degree of oral stricture (plosive, nasal, fricative...). What is of interest is that he did attempt to reflect ranking of some kind and that in part this seems to have been motivated by sonority rather than just degree of stricture.

Development o f phonetic alphabets continued and overt formalization of these began when Paul Passy started to use transcription in the production of the journal of The Phonetic Association o f English Teachers, Dhe Fonètik Tîtcer.

The alphabet he used became the focus of discussions during 1886 to 1888, the outcome of which was agreement on an intemational set of values for phonetic

transcription. Contributors to this debate included Passy himself, Klinghardt, Jespersen, Storm, Sweet, Viètor (and possibly also Ellis) covering English, French, German and Scandinavian views. The system which they agreed and

published in 1889 was already very close to the system in use today. Jones tells us:

6i isenjol fiitjoz ov auor alfobit wo [...] definitli istablijt bai 1893.

[JONES 1935:47]

Regular review and development of this alphabet continues even today, of course, but an agreed set of internationally accessible symbols was already in place by the late nineteenth/early twentieth century.

Among other insights which were again far ahead of his time, Lodwick also made provision for certain suprasegmental and prosodic features. These involved not just rhythmic stress, but also more pragmatic, attitudinally based prosodies like intonational irony and emphasis.

Unfortunately, for my present purpose, beyond outlining the pedagogic insights referred to above (coping with orthographic interference in symbolisation, whole-syllable reading, etc.) Lodwick gives no hint as to how the practical transcription techniques he devised were to be transmitted (taught to/leamt by others).

One must assume that the expectation was that the system would be transmitted

on the basis o f the written "instructions" embodied in the accompanying articulatory accounts, parallelling in a way the written accounts of some twenty centuries earlier in the Greek and Roman traditions and earlier than that in

ancient India (see ALLEN 1953) and in the Arab world (see SEMAAN 1963/1977). The need for accurate oral transmission, particularly o f religious texts where how things were pronounced was of paramount importance for efficacy, was a strong motivation for detailed and accurate articulatory description for these phoneticians and as a result "...more is known certainly

about the pronunciation o f the Sanskrit that they described (the ritual and the sacred texts) than about any other ancient language" [ROBINS 1967:141].

Interestingly, this oral tradition is still as significant today in the Muslim faith where correct pronunciation is of great importance when reading aloud from the Qur'an, etc., and a substantial literature is devoted to the phonetics of this exercise, the art of 'tajwid' (meaning 'recitation of the Qur'an'). One contemporary English language publication in this field, ABDUL-FATTAH, HUSSANIN & SALEH 1989, is essentially a textbook of the phonetics of classical Arabic containing sound-by-sound articulatory descriptions with vocal tract drawings (albeit o f rather variable accuracy) for the consonants (for example ABDUL-FATTAH, HUSSANIN & SALEH 1989:39, see Figure 2.5

Sample oftextfrom TaJwii-ul~Qur*m) preceded by a chapter on speech organs

and articulation, descriptions (rather less phonetic) o f the vowels and quite a lot of detail about connected speech (emphasis, pausing, gemination, elision, 'silent' letters, etc.). The book, dedicated "To all non-Arabic speaking Muslims who sincerely wish to recite the Holy Qur'an just as it was revealed to the Holy Prophet, peace be upon him" explains:

[...] a great many rules of recitation, as laid out in the Arabic literature, were descriptive rather than prescriptive. For instance, some such rules described, in terms coined by early Arab scholars, the changes in pronunciation of certain letters when they occur in sequence. These changes can be analyzed now more accurately and in greater depth in the light of modem phonetic findings.

Figure 2.5 Sample o f text from TaJwH-ul-Qur'an

T H E / u ^ / S O U N D , [ 4 1

One of the main differences between the and ^ sounds is that the former is veiarized, while the latter is not. Apart from this, the description o f the position taken by the speech organs when uttering is the same as for J . Thus, the breath is trap­ ped for a short time behind a closure made by the contact o f the tip and back of the ton­ gue with the gums of the upper front teeth and the teeth ridge respectively. A t the same rime, the back of the tongue is raised to be closely applied to the concave surface of the soft palate, hence the term "veiarized’ (Fig. 21). When the closure is suddenly released, voiced air is expelled out through a speech tract now modified by the raised position of the back of the tongue.

< Fig 21

A tolerable English approximation of the sound is perhaps the d in dot; for the d to sound even closer to our , put the lips in a more rounded position and make sure that the blade of the tongue, rather than its tip, is initially in contact with the teeth ridge, and that the back of the tongue is raised to touch the back of the roof of the mouth. The resulting utterance can be transliterated in Arabic as .

The introduction advises students that "The Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, said 'Allah likes the Qur'an to be recited just as it was revealed'" [ABDUL- FATTAH, HUSSANIN & SALEH 1989:1] and that although seven different versions of the text were originally revealed in order to accommodate dialectal differences of the seven major tribal or regional variants prevalent at the time "It is worth mentioning, however, that there was no major dialectal disparity at the time; variations in recitation were, therefore, confined to a finite number o f words or conditions." [ABDUL-FATTAH, HUSSANIN & SALEH 1989:3] Nevertheless, tajwîd (meaning technically "giving the letters the full measure o f their necessary articulatory qualities and duly observing the consequent pronunciation rules such as prolongation, merging, conversions, etc." [ABDUL- FATTAH, HUSSAMN & SALEH 1989:2]) developed, based on articulatory phonetic descriptions, enabling the spoken form to be transmitted across the years with minimal deviation from at least one original.

2.1.2 The London School

Against the background outlined above, various more contemporary local traditions or schools of phonetics developed.

In 1877, Henry Sweet wrote in the preface to his Handbook o f Phonetics that "England may boast a flourishing phonetic school of its own" [SWEET 1877:7] which, in 1884 in 'The Practical Study of Language' (a paper delivered to the Philological Society) he referred to explicitly as "The English School o f Phonetics" [SWEET 1884:7]. This phrase was later to be taken up by Firth as the title o f his own address to the Society in 1946. The aim of Firth's paper was to give "a brief account of the origins and reaches of our notable work in this branch of linguistics and of the share the Society had in its encouragement and propagation to show how very English it is, and to emphasize above all things, continuity in that quality over a long period" [FIRTH 1946:93].

Firth begins by listing the various aims and interests of English phoneticians, basing his categories for the greater part on headings from JONES’ 1938 pamphlet 'The Aims of Phonetics'. (Practical) phonetic skills were identified as

being indispensable in:

• helping learners of foreign languages acquire a good pronunciation;

• assisting in the study of the mother tongue and of standards of pronunciation;

• determination and remediation of speech defects; • devising orthographies for hitherto unwritten languages;

• assisting in the development of other types of alphabets

(shorthands, codes, etc.); • comparative linguistics; • historical linguistics; • dialectology;

and adding specifically, in addition to the first of these, a ninth application: • "English for foreigners".

This last had found its beginnings in France at the end of the nineteenth century:

for 0 jo:r o; tu: pri:si:dig 1886, a smoil gruip ov

frentj* tiitjoz hod him iksperimentig wiô juizig fonetik transkripjon in 6o praktikol tiitjig ov igglij, ond hod faund it o valjuobl eid fo helpig 6eo pjuiplz tu okwaior o gud pronAnsieiJn

[JONES 1935a:44]

Jones seems to think it likely that the inspiration for this was provided by Henry Sweet: "ai sospekt 6ot 6ei most hov got ôeor inspireijn from ôi oilredi

feimos igglij founitijn HENRY SWEET" [JONES 1935:44]. The French at

English (founded by Paul Passy in 1886 and mentioned above) to whose journal,

Dhe Fonètik Tîtcer, Sweet contributed from time to time.

Sweet him self alludes to this group when he attributes the idea o f phonetic dictation exercises to Jean Passy, brother of the more famous Paul (see SWEET 1899/1964:46). In 1894, Jean Passy contributed an article to the Le Maître Phonétique entitled l a dikte fonetik'. Laying another of the foundations on

which the Jonesian model was soon to be built, Jean Passy wrote:

la dikte fonetik [...] kSisist, kom s3 no 1- eidik, dn-yn dikte ko l-eleiv trSiskri, e ko-1 meitro koriî3 'no o: pwe:dvy-d 1-ortograf, mez-a solqi-d 1-

analhz de: so. 3n-obli;3 e:si l-ele:v a ekute, a diri:3e

sôn-atŒsjo syr la pron3:sja;sjo dy meitr, a opserve; on-egzers s3n-ore:j, sa fakylte d-anali:z.

sosi e de:3a boiku. l-opserva:sJ3 e poteitro la

kalite la ply-nesese:r pur l-akizisJ3 de: 15:g. fo:t d- opserve, 3-n set-Ü3eneral 'ni komd 3 pari 'ni komô

3 'dœvre parle. 3 k3:tiny-d k3:fjd:s la move:z rutin k-3n-a aporte-d Je: swa; e nuz-d kone:s3,vony d- d:glote:r u d-almaji, ki, apre 'si: mwa, 'œn-d, 'd0:z-

d, 'vê:t-d pote:tro, bomo lœr progre a yn en3:sja:sj3 de 'p0 ply kurd:t de: 'me:m defo. d k3:trenjd l-ele:v

a opserve, d-1 forsdt-a ekute, d l-obli:3d a fikse 'tut

s3n-atd:sJ3 syr l-anali:z de: s3, la dikte fonetik et-de de: m ejœr mwajë do kori:3e set rutin do l-ore:j e-d

1-espri.

[PASSY, J. 1894:34-35]

In the following pages, Jean Passy describes techniques of dictation and the purposes behind it. He introduces the concept of the nonsense word ("combinations of sounds devoid of meaning") as a means of assisting the learner to recognise a sound for its own sake and to distinguish confusibles [pp

36-37]. Further, he describes the value of dictation in connection with sandhi

(assimilations and "syntactic reductions" or weak forms) [p 37]. He adds (in a footnote) that of course: "la dikte fonetik n-e do posiblo k-avek dez-ele;v

ki koneis lolfabe fonetik" [PASSY, J. 1894:35].

Reference to this same article is also made by Jones himself:

The 'ear-training exercise' was, I believe, first invented by Jean Passy, the brother of Paul Passy. See his article La dictée phonétique in Le Maître Phonétique, Feb.,

1894 (particularly pp 36, 37).

[JONES 1918/1960:4]

As we have seen. Sweet and his contemporary Ellis were both instrumental in the development of a practical (that is, usable) intemational phonetic alphabet, persuading their continental colleagues that it was preferable to use letter shapes from the roman alphabet as basic symbol shapes - preferable, that is, to the more abstract derived forms coined by Lodwick and others referred to above. In the first instance, this alphabet was to be for use in Dhe Fonètik Tîtcer - a fact which underlines just how important the interest in English for foreigners was on both sides of the Channel (see SWEET 1886). Indeed, as Firth points out (see FIRTH 1946:95) a great part o f their lives' work was devoted to the formal description of English for both native students and for foreigners by not only Sweet and Ellis but also Wright, Wyld, Ripman, Palmer and, of course, Jones himself.

Centres for formal training in phonetics at the turn of the century, however, were still largely in mainland Europe. Many of the English practitioners of this period took great pride in the fact that they were substantially self-taught - this was the case for the two Bells, and Sweet and Wright both also claimed this

status (although both, like Jones who was originally taught by Tilly in Marburg (see JONES 1948), had studied some phonetics in Germany). In Germany, specialists included Viëtor and the Australian expatriate, Tilly. Both were originally in Marburg but at different institutions (although Tilly subsequently moved to Berlin and, after the first world war, to America wdiere he became Professor of Phonetics at Columbia University). Jones, who considered Tilly as one o f the great benefactors to the cause o f modem education, referring in the obituary notice he wrote on the occasion of Tilly's death in 1935 to the latter's pioneering (and often unpopular) use of the 'direct method' and teaching along 'reform lines', explains that it was Tilly "hui foist introdjuist mi: to fonetiks;

ai ou him on inkalkjulobl det ov gratitjuid" [JONES 1935b:63].

In France, Paul Passy dominated the scene, based in Paris. (Jones, interestingly, studied in both countries and it was on Passy's recommendation that he eventually revived the lapsed course in French phonetics at University College London in 1907 [JONES 1948:127].)

These centres, then, constituted the first so-called Schools o f Phonetics in the present century. In Britain, it was only a matter of time before, under the very positive leadership of Daniel Jones, Sweet's English School came to be known as the London School or the London tradition of phonetics. The most comprehensive accounts of the London School are Jones's own [JONES 1935a, 1938 and 1948] together with the more recent biographic appraisal The Real

Professor Higgins. The Life and Career o f Daniel Jones [COLLINS & MEES

1999].

Firth wrote "I think the emphasis on 'practical' is a very constant feature of the work of the English School, certainly during the nineteenth century..." [FIRTH 1946:96]. The focus of interest and activity during the twentieth century in

London has certainly carried on this tradition. Right from the start, practical phonetics played a central part in phonetics courses. Writing for the Zeitschrift fu r Phonetik und allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft in 1948, outlining the

development of phonetics as a discipline in the University of London (particularly University College London), Jones described how the very first part that phonetics played in the University was a supporting role to major language courses. He writes "The School of Phonetics [...] may be said to have started in 1903, when Dr E.R. Edwards was invited to give evening lectures at University College on phonetics applied to French [...] about the same time Dr R.A. Williams, the Reader in German at University College, was asked to lecture on general phonetics with special references to English and German." [JONES 1948:127] As has already been mentioned, Jones had been a pupil of the French phonetician Passy and when appointed to a lectureship in University College in 1907, one of his first duties was to revive the French phonetics course which had lapsed when Dr Edwards took up other employment. Shortly after his (Jones's) arrival. Dr Williams too left the staff and Jones took over the general, German and English phonetics as well. Within the space of three years he was actively engaged on research into the phonetics of languages as varied as Italian, Spanish, Hindustani, Cantonese, Russian, Tswana and Sinhalese in addition to the three major European languages with which it had all begun. He wrote "Phonetics began to 'catch on', and a demand soon arose for [...] instruction in the phonetics of languages other than English, French and German, including some non-European languages." [JONES 1948:128]

It is perhaps of interest to note how closely this reflects Sweet's own view of the role and status of the subject, which he disclosed in a letter to the Vice- Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 1902. The text is quoted by Firth:

while at the same time it is the foundation of all study of language, whether theoretical or practical.

[SWEET in FIRTH 1946:96]

Notwithstanding this virtual downgrading of the subject to a sort of glorified

service discipline, thanks to further enthusiastic and effective evangelising on Sweet’s part and the reputedly excellent teaching o f phonetics by the early masters such as Walter Ripman (for details see Chapter 4 below). Professor Wilhelm Viètor and Paul Passy [JONES 1948:127-8], the study of phonetics was

popular fi*om the start and by 1908-1909 there was (in addition to the work