|
ROBERT ROBINSON'S ALPHABET AND SV.'.t:L.i., t']iH-
CEU:jli[Y ENGLISH PHCO'LTLCS
By
THOMAS CARLTON HARRISON
A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE COUNCIL OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
1978
A K NC-,'WLYJ, EDUGEM-EN TS
I should like to thank the members of my committee,
Dr. Jayne C. Harder, Dr. William J. Sullivan, Dr. Kevin
McCarthy, and Dr. William C. Childers, without whose aid
and encouragement this dissertation could not have been
completed. Thanks are due also to my wife and family, whose
patience and support made the task of writing much easier.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . . . . . . . . ii
LIST OF TABLES .. . . . . . . ... . iv
LIST OF FIGURES . . . . . . . . .
INTRODUCTION . . . . ... . . . .. 1
CHAPTER
I THE SOURCE OF THE ENGLISH SPELLING SYSTEM .. 5
Notes . . . . . . . . . . 47
II ALPHABETIC WRITING AND PHONOLOGICAL THEORY . .52
Notes . . . . . . . .. . 86
III IN DEFENSE OF THE PHONhIME .... . . ... . 90
Notes . . . . .. . . . . 106
IV PHONEMIC VOICE IN ENGLISH . . . . . 107
Notes . . . . .. . . . . . 115
V ROBINSON'S ALPHABET ... .. ... .. . 116
Notes . . . . . . . . . . 136
Robinson's Transcription of Barnfield's
Lady Pecunia . . . . . .. . . 138
CONCLUSION: ALPHABETIC WRITING AND THE PHONEME . .144
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . 146
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .. . . . . . . . 153
iii
'LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
1 Old English Consonant Spellings ..... .13
2 Old English Vowel and Diphthong Spellings 14
3 Long Vowels in 10E and eME . . . .. 17
4 Old French and Early Middle English Vowels 20
5 Middle English Vowel Spellings . . .. 35
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure
1 The Scheme of Stratificational Phonology .
2 French Nasalization . . . . . .
3 The Realization of English Obstruent
Phonemes . . . . . . . . .
4 The Tactics of Syllable Onset Clusters . .
5 The Tactics of Syllable Final Clusters . .
6 The Tactics of Syllable Onset Clusters and
Syllable Final Clusters Combined . . .
7 Robinson's Alphabet . . . . . .
8 The Second Stanza of Lady Pecunia . . .
Page
81
. 102
. 108
. 110
. 111
. 114
. 120
. 125
Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate Council
of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
ROBERT ROBINSON'S ALPHABET AND SEVL[-TEELNTH-
CENTURY ENGLISH PHONETICS
By
Thomas Carlton Harrison
December 1978
Chairman: Jayne C. Harder
Major Department: Linguistics
The first phonetic alphabet for English, published by
Robert Robinson in 1617, is analyzed, along with the forces
which led to its invention. The English spelling system,
generally considered to be the most irregular and inconsistent
of any in the world, was reaching its present state in the
seventeenth century. Robinson gives the irregularity of
the English spelling system as his reason for inventing an
auxiliary alphabet to help foreigners and children learn to
read English.
English spelling appears to be irregular for two
reasons: first, it contains genuine irregularities as the
result of borrowing words from other languages with their
spellings intact, so that English words reflect the spelling
systems of several languages; and, second, insofar as English
spelling is regular, it corresponds not to a phonetic or
phonemic level, but to the more abstract morphophonemic, or
vi
phonological level. The primary sources of English spelling
are Old English, French (from Modern French loan words as
well as from Old French or Anglo-Norman), and Latin. The
irregularity results from the translation of loan words
into English pronunciation with no accompanying change in
the spelling. Many apparent irregularities of English
spelling result from the fact that English spelling corres-
ponds to a deeper level of phonology than the pronunciation:
the use of the same vowel spelling in sane-sanity reflects
the morphophonemic similarity of the words. Generative and
stratificational phonology are similar in giving a consistent
representation of this level, although they differ in most
other respects.
In his alphabet and transcriptions of English, Robinson
suggests the notions of an abstract phoneme for English and
of phonemic voice. Although the phoneme has been rejected
by generative linguistics, it can be redefined without the
procedural bias of American structural linguistics so that
it is acceptable to post-Chomskyan linguistics. The more
abstract phonemic is in fact a necessary part of stratifi-
cational linguistics. Phonemic voice occurs in English in
obstruent clusters. The separation of phonemic voice from
the obstruent clusters is accompanied by neutralization of
the morphons (or morphophonemes) underlying the phonemes,
which results in the presence of archiphoenemes for the
obstruents of English.
vii
Robinson actually uses aspiration to indicate devoicing
in his alphabet and transcriptions. He uses what is in
effect a devoicing phoneme at the same level of abstraction
i
and with the same accompanying neutralization as occur in
the analysis of English obstruents with phonemic voice.
Robinson's treatment of phonemic devoicing, or aspiration,
has problems involving the sonants involved in English consonant
clusters and consistency of application as devoicing; the
same symbol is used for devoicing and initial [u]. When he
errs, Robinson generally errs on the side of oversimplifica-
tion, using too few symbols rather than too many. His
apparent intention is to create an alphabet and system of
transcription that correspond to an abstract phonemic level
like that of stratificational or Prague school linguistics.
In terms of the relationship of alphabetic spelling
to phonological theory, the presence of a phonemic as well
as a morphophonemic level makes the proponents of the theory
less likely to declare a single orthographic principle than
the proponents of theories which have only one consistent
level.
r
Uairman
viii
*INTRODUCTION
This is a dissertation in the history of linquistics.
It had its genesis in a combination of interests--history
of the English language, phonological theory, and the
relationship of sound and spelling in English. The early
Modern English period offers ample opportunity for all these
interests. In fact, it seems to combine them at every turn,
for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries produced the
first spelling reformers and the first phoneticians in
English; phonetics was usually the outcome of proposals for
spelling reform. John Cheke, Thomas Smith, John Hart, and
William Bullokar combine to form a group of spelling
reformers covering the last half of the sixteenth century.
Robert Robinson, whose alphabet (1617) is the first
auxiliary phonetic alphabet for English (not intended to
replace standard orthography), is placed at the end of this
line by Dobson (1968), although Robinson is not a spelling
reformer. Robinson writes with apparent awareness of the
general feeling for spelling reform; his alphabet, he
says, is to make up for the defects of standard English
orthography.
The impetus for spelling reform in English comes
from the reform in the pronunciation of classical and
Homeric Greek in the universities, usually associated with
1
the name of Erasmus. Greek had long been taught with the
pronunciation of contemporary Greek, but Erasmus and other
classical scholars, including John Cheke and Thomas Smith
at Cambridge, argued for a pronunciation nearer that indi-
cated by the spelling of Greek. In the conservative aca-
demic pronunciation, for example, the vowel letters I L, I,
and the digraphs oc and oL, were pronounced with the value
of Italian i. The Erasmian pronunciation postulated three
distinct vowels and two diphthongs (Cheke, 1555). The
chancellor of Cambridge, Stephen Gardiner, issued an edict
in 1542 forbidding the use of the new pronunciation by
teachers or students. There followed an exchange of letters
between Cheke and Smith, and Gardiner. Cheke finally left
England for the continent, and took his own letters and
Gardiner's (including the edict of 1542). He published
them all at Basel in 1555, under the title De pronuntiatione
linguae Graecae (Drerup, 1930: 93-95). Cheke and Smith are
exceptionally important because they figure prominently in
the controversy over Greek, and they began the tradition
of spelling reform in English.
Although Robinson nowhere mentions any predecessors
in phonetics, his alphabet itself suggests his knowledge of
Greek, and he apparently matriculated at Cambridge in 1615,
sixty years after Cheke's publication of his letters.
Robinson must then have been aware of the controversy and
must have seen the results of the ultimate success of the
Erasmian pronunciation of Greek (see Chapter V). Robinson
seems to fit at the end of a tradition which was at the
same time the first movement for English spelling reform
and the first English school of phonetics.
The English spelling system has the reputation of
being among the most inconsistent and unphonetic in the
world, and it evidently owes some of its present reputation
to early Modern English. In fact, the English spelling
system had reached its present state by the end of the
early Modern period. The questions present themselves:
how inconsistent is the English spelling system, and how
did it arrive at its present state of inconsistency? In
Chapter I, I shall attempt to answer these questions.
In this chapter, I shall trace the development of the
English spelling system from its beginnings in the Old
English period through the French influence on Middle
English and the Latinizing of the early Renaissance, the
influences that gave English the variety of alternate spell-
ings that it contained in early Modern English.
In Chapter II, I shall deal with the relationship
between alphabetic writing and the two dominant American
theories of phonology--generative and stratificational
phonology--along with their predecessors, American struc-
turalism and Prague school phonology. This chapter will
be a comparison of the two theories as they relate to
English orthography.
In Chapter III, I shall examine the theoretical
status of the phoneme in generative theory, which generally
rejects it, and stratificational theory, which accepts it.
The phoneme as defined by stratificational phonology is the
basis for Chapter IV, and I shall analyze the notion of
phonemic voice in English obstruent clusters.
Robinson's transcriptions indicate that he used the
term aspiration to indicate something like the modern
concept of phonemic voice in consonants and consonant
clusters. In Chapter V, I shall analyze Robinson's alpha-
bet and transcriptions; and in Chapter VI, I shall examine
Robinson's system of phonology, based on the evidence we
have.
Finally, I shall give consideration to the effects
of an essentially descriptive phonology like that of
Robinson or of the stratification linguists on the notion
of the relationship between phonology and spelling.
CHAPTER I
THE SOURCES OF THE ENGLISH SPELLING SYSTEM
In this chapter I shall examine the development of
English spelling and try to explain why the orthographic
system of English in the early Modern English period
prompted the first attempts at spelling reform in English.
There were clear causes for these attempts other than the
irregularity of the spelling, for example, the impetus for
reform arising from the controversy over the pronunciation
of classical Greek mentioned in the Introduction.
The early spelling reformers all considered the
ideal spelling system to be phonetic or phonemic. King
(1969: 213) comments that "spelling reformers seem to make
the best autonomous phonemicists." Although the notion
that spelling should reflect etymology was plainly being
put into practice during the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries in the Latinization of the spelling of words
like nation (Middle English nacion), the notion does not
appear in the writings of orthoepists until the eighteenth
century (Elphinston, 1795). The earliest spelling
reformers in English, Sir John Cheke and Sir Thomas Smith,
however, being classical scholars, must have been aware that
Latinization was one of the contributing factors in the
irregularity of English spelling. This awareness was
5
undoubtedly one of the factors which motivated Cheke's
desire (Cheke, 1561) to avoid foreign words in writing
English.
Considered as a phonetic representation, English
spelling has been irregular since the Middle English period,
but it has been irregular in two different senses. Middle
English spelling was more or less phonetic in the sense
that the same sound tended to be spelled in the same way
whenever it occurred, although there were often variant
spellings of the same sound, as in the spelling of the
word peace below. A given spelling generally indicated
the same sound wherever it occurred. In Modern English,
spelling has come to represent the same word with the same
letters whenever it occurs (see Jespersen, 1909, 1:3). In
Middle English pes, pees, and pais all represented the
same word, 'peace'; e, ee, and ai all represented long
open [e:]. In Modern English the influence of printing
and etymology have combined to change the system so that
a particular word is spelled the same way every time it
occurs, although a different word with the same sound might
be spelled differently. The vowels of wait and name have
been identical since the seventeenth century, but their
spellings have been frozen, so that they are always kept
separate orthographically.
A number of influences can be found in the makeup of
Middle and Modern English spelling. The foundation of
English spelling was, of course, laid in the Old English
period when the alphabet of the Roman missionaries was
combined with the Irish alphabet to represent Old English
phonology. Old English spelling seems to have been quite
regular, but the Norman Conquest brought with it an enor-
mous number of loan words, their French spellings intact,
which added variant spellings for many sounds of English
(for instance, the ai spelling for [e:] in pais, 'peace,'
above). French influence was responsible for a number of
changes in the spelling system of English, changes which
affected native words as well as loan words, such as the
use of u to represent the vowel [y] and sch, rather than
Old English sc, to represent [s]. Middle English spelling,
which T shall discuss in detail below, is a combination of
the Old English system with the Old French system.
After the complication of the English spelling system
by the influence of French, the sound-spelling relationship
was made more irregular during the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries by the sound changes that mark the difference
between Middle and Modern English. The Great Vowel Shift
itself was a regular sound change and left consistent,
although different, sound-spelling correspondences. Many
of the changes, however, involved the consonants, such as
the loss of initial velar stops before n as in knight and
gnat, which left a residue in Modern English spelling.
Along with the vowel shift and other sound changes,
the tremendous number of loan words from Latin further com-
plicated the spelling of English. Not only were words
borrowed from Latin with the original spelling intact, but
many words already in the language which were originally
Latin were respelled according to Latin principles. The
b in debt was introduced apparently to reflect the Latin;
the word had been spelled more phonetically as dette in
Middle English.
It has sometimes been suggested that the irregulari-
ties of English spelling are the result of sound changes,
like the Great Vowel Shift, without accompanying changes
in spelling, but this explanation is not strictly true.
It is rather spelling change unrelated to sound change
that has made the system irregular. I shall return
presently to a detailed examination of the factors out-
lined above.
In any study involving the development of English
phonology, as this one is, the monuments of English philo-
logy, Luick's Historische Grammatik (1921), and Jordan's
Handbuch der mittel-englishen Grammatik (1934), are indis-
pensable. Many philological works of smaller scope are
valuable since, in examining the evidence of early English
sound change, they catalog and organize many samples of
spelling. Among these works are Neumann's (1904),
Lekebusch's (1906), and Kjerrstrom's (1946). Among the
histories of English, Wyld's History of colloquial English
(1936) must be singled out for the thoroughness of its
treatment of the fifteenth century, a crucial period for
the development of English spelling as well as English pro-
nunciation.
Few philologists or linguists have actually done more
than suggest the outline of the development of English
spelling. Jespersen (1909) sketches its development, but
he is clearly more interested in the development of English
phonology than of English spelling. William A. Craigie has
been concerned with spelling, however, rather than phonology.
His book on English spelling (1927) is primarily concerned
with the spelling of Modern English, but it suggests that
the origin and history of a word are indicated by its
spelling. Craigie's pamphlet, Some anomalies of English
spelling (1942), is concerned exclusively with the history
of English spelling, but, as its title suggests, it is incom-
plete. Craigie has also adopted an alphabetic organization,
listing each spelling and its sources. While this organiza-
tion makes clear the history of each spelling treated
(vowel, consonant, or digraph), it tends to obscure many of
the general relationships among the phonology, sound change,
and the spelling system.
More recently, Richard Venezky (1965) has examined
the background of Modern English spelling in his Ph.D.
dissertation. Venezky has organized his work alphabetically
by 'spelling units': letters of combinations of letters
(like th or sh) which are used as units. His treatment of
the development of the consonantal spelling units is
generally excellent, but the alphabetical organization, like
that of Craigie's work, seems to hinder a full treatment of
the vowel spellings, and he has little to say about the
occurrence of double consonant letters. Venezky is also
primarily interested in the spelling-to-sound correspondences
of present-day English, and these correspondences differ, if
only slightly, from those of early Modern English. Neverthe-
less, my debt to Venezky's work will become plain as I
proceed.
Many other sources not concerned directly with ortho-
graphy--or, for that matter, necessarily with English--will
be cited in the course of this chapter. Of these, two are
of exceptional importance. Mary Serjeantson's (1936) study
of the loan words in English is invaluable, and Margaret K.
Pope's From Latin to Modern French (1934) contains one of the
few recent treatments of Anglo-Norman phonology.
I shall turn first to the spelling system of Old
English, which, after the sound changes between Old and
Middle English, formed the basis for Middle English spelling.
I shall examine the phonology and spelling of loan words
from Anglo-Norman and Old French along with the scribal
changes effected by French scribes. These elements are
combined in the spelling of Middle English. From Middle
English spelling I shall turn to the sound changes that
mark the distinction between Middle and Modern English.
These changes, along with the fixation of English spelling
word by word and the influence of classical Latin, formed
Modern English spelling much as we know it today.
The Old English alphabet was a combination of the
alphabet introduced by Roman missionaries and the Irish
alphabet (Jensen, 1969: 531). It had four letters not to
be found in the Modern English alphabet: consonant letters
thorn (7 ), eth ( ), and wynn (p), and the vowel letter
ash (ae). and both represented both [ ] and [ ];
p represented [w]; and [a] represented the same low front
vowel (as in cat) that it represents in modern phonetic
alphabets. The letters k and z did not occur in Old English
except in occasional loan words.
Some of the consonant letters represented sounds
different from those they represent in Modern English. c
and g represented the voiceless and voiced velar stops [k]
and [g], respectively, in conjunction with low front and
back front, as in candel, 'candle,' and gad, 'goad.' The
same letters represented the affricate [c] and the palatal
glide [j], respectively, in conjunction with mid and high
2
vowels and diphthongs, as in ceorl, 'churl,' and gea, 'yea.'
g also represented the voiced velar fricative [y] when it
occurred intervocalically in conjunction with back vowels,
as in dagas, 'days.' Doubled consonant letters indicated
consonant length, as in pyffan [pyf:an] 'puff,' settan
[set:an] 'set,' and spinnan [spin:an] 'spin.' Short frica-
tives were voiced intervocalically, as in heofon [heavon]
'heaven,' and aeqer [ca:jder] 'either.' Voiced fricatives,
then, occurred in Old English only as phonetic variants of
the voiceless fricatives.
12
In addition, sc represented [s], as in scip, 'ship,'
and cg represented [j], as in ecg, 'edge.'
The following is a table of the sound-spelling corres-
pondences of Old English adapted from Venezky (1965: 195).
Table 1
Old English Consonant Spellings
Spelling
b
P
d
t
k
c
g
cg
s
z
f,ph
x
h
m
n
1
r
sc
cw
Posited Phonetic Value
[b]
[P]
[d]
[t]
[k]
[k], [c]
[g], [j]
[?]
[s], [z]
[ts], [dz]
[ ] [d]
[f], [v]
[ks]
[h], [1 ], [x]
[m]
[n]
[1]
[r]
[kw]
[kw]
The vowel letters of Old English were those of the
Latin alphabet--a, e, o, u--to which ae and y were added.
The digraph oe represented [0] which was formed from i-umlaut
of [o] and was the early unrounded to [e] (Campbell, 1959:
76-77). y represented the high front rounded vowel [y].
In addition to the simple vowels there were four diphthongs
in Old English, spelled ea, eo, io, and ie. The same
spellings represented both long and short vowels and
diphthongs.3 Below is a table of the Old English vowels
and their posited phonetic values:
Table 2
Old English Vowel and Diphthong Spellings
Vowels
i [i], [i:]
y [y], [y:]
e [e], [e:]
aE [ae] [aa:]
a [a], [a:]
o [o], [o:]
u [u], [u:]
Diphthongs
ea [mea], [ae:a]
eo [eo], [e:o]
io [io], [i:o]
ie [ia], [i: ]
As suggested above, the same vowel and diphthong
spellings represented long and short vowels and diphthongs;
the vowels in biddan 'bid,' and bidan 'bide,' as in Latin,
4
were not distinguished in the original orthography.
The sound changes which separate Old English from
Middle English began in the late Old English period. The
changes important for this study begin with the Old English
lengthening and shortening of vowels and diphthbngs before
certain consonant clusters, and the later monophthongiza-
tion of the Old English diphthongs. Important changes in
early Middle English are vowel lengthening in open syllables
and the loss of contrastive consonant length. Other signi-
ficant changes are the rise of Middle English diphthongs
and the reduction of unstressed vowels in inflectional
endings. This reduction began earlier but was not reflected
directly in the spelling until the Middle English period.
The significance of these changes is that they make the
spelling system and phonological system of Old English
into those systems which existed when Norman French began
its influence on English early in the Middle English period.
Old English short vowels and diphthongs were lengthened
before a liquid or nasal plus a homorganic stop: [ld],
cTld 'child'; [rd], heard 'hard'; [mb], climban 'climb';
[nd], bindan 'bind'; [Ijg], lang 'long.' Short vowels and
diphthongs were also lengthened before [r] plus [1], [n],
or [d] : [rl], eorl 'earl'; [rn], bearn 'child'; [rd],
eorSe 'earth.' A third consonant following the lengthening
so that child 'child,' had a long vowel, while cildru
'children,' did not (Jordan, 1934: 39-40).
The Old English long and short diphthongs were
leveled to long and short vowels in late Old English. ea
was leveled to [e:] in stream 'stream'; eo was leveled to
5 -
[2:]in deor 'dear'; le and its short equivalent occurred
only in West Saxon (Campbell, 1959: 68, 107, 126-128);
their history is not significant for the development of
Modern Standard English. The short diphthongs were
leveled to equivalent short vowels: ea and eo became [e]
and [0]. The io and eo spellings had become confused
with each other early in the Old English period, most
likely because the sounds they represented had been
neutralized.
In the Old English period the reduction of unstressed
vowels had also begun, especially in suffixes. Front
vowels [i], [e], and [a] all came to be written e fairly
early in the Old English period. In late Old English a,
o, and u came to be used interchangeably for unstressed
back vowels. By the eleventh century the distinction
between front and back unstressed vowels was being lost,
so that hlefdigen, minas could be written for hlaefdigan,
mines (Campbell: 153-157).
The long vowels showed changes between late Old
English and early Middle English. The following table of
correspondences is from Jordan (1934: 68-78).
Table 3
Long Vowels in 10E and eME
10E ( eME
[i:] [i:]
[e:] [e:]
[1 :] [#:], [e:]
[a : ] [e:]
[a-:] le:]
[a:] [o:]
[o:] [o:]
[u:] [u:]
[y:] [y:J, [i:]
The high front and mid front rounded vowels [y(:)] and
[((:)] remained in Middle English, especially in the southern
dialects, for some time. [0:] was eventually unrounded to
[e:]. [y:] remained at least in some dialects throughout
the Middle English period; it may in fact have survived into
Modern English (Melchior, 1972; see also note 14 of this
chapter).
These vowel changes altered the relationship between
long and short vowels. In Old English, as mentioned above,
there were long and short versions of each vowel. After the
changes in early Middle English, this was no longer true.
There were two long mid front vowels, [e:] and [e:], as
compared to one short vowel [e]; there were likewise two long
mid back vowels compared to one short vowel [o]. Old English
[a] came to be written a in Middle English, but there is
some doubt whether it was ever centralized, as the spelling
suggests.
Two Middle English sound changes which left a permanent
stamp on the spelling tactics of English were vowel lengthen-
ing in open syllables and the loss of contrastive consonant
length in the thirteenth century. These changes left
English with the pervasive--but not entirely consistent--
spelling patterns of double consonant letters as signals of
preceding short vowels, and of 'mute e' as a signal of a
preceding long vowel.
Doubled consonant letters in Old English words like
settan, middel, spillan, siJan 'after,' or missan represented
phonetically-long consonants. Single consonant letters in
words like witan 'know,' and a9 eling 'noble' represented
phonetically-short consonants. Long consonants occurred only
intervocalically and only after short vowels. Although
doubled consonant letters occurred in final position, they do
not seem to have represented final long consonants.
In the thirteenth century short stressed vowels were
lengthened in open syllables (before single short consonants
followed by a vowel) in words like nama 'name.' Long conso-
nants blocked open syllable lengthening, so that words like
settan retained short vowels in Middle English. When
consonant length was lost, also in the thirteenth century,
consonant length was lost, also in the thirteenth century,
the spelling with doubled consonant letters was generally
retained, leaving doubled consonant letters as a signal of
a preceding short vowel.
Later in Middle English, vowels in inflectional endings
were reduced to schwa, and the spelling of those vowels was
changed to e, so that OE nama became ME name (pronounced
[na:ma]). In late Middle English, when final schwa was
dropped, final 'mute e' remained as a signal of a preceding
long vowel.
Another effect of the loss of consonant length was
the rise of voiced fricatives in English. In Old English
contrastive voicing did not occur in the fricatives. Voice-
less [f], [e], and [s] occurred initially and finally; long
fricatives were also voiceless. Intervocalic short frica-
tives were voiced in words like heofon 'heaven,' aeleling
'noble,' and bosm 'bosom.' Long fricatives were always
voiceless. When contrastive length was lost in the medial
consonants, short voiceless fricatives remained in words like
missan and siL7an, and these consonants were in contrast to
the short voiced fricatives in words like heofon (Kurath,
1956).
After the Norman Conquest the influence of French loan
words and French scribal tradition had such a pervasive
influence on English spelling that the orthography of
English from late Middle English on can be considered a
combination of French and native English spelling.
The orthographies of both French and English were, of
course, based on Latin orthography. In addition, both lan-
guages were phonetically similar in many respects. The
similarities and dissimilarities between the vowels and
diphthongs are especially significant. The following vowel
charts for Old French and early Middle English are based on
those of Pope (1934: 433, 435).9
Table 4
Old French and Early Middle English Vowels
Old French Vowels
i y u
e o
e
e o
a
Diphthongs: aj, ej, oj, uj, yj, we, aw, ow, ew
Triphthongs: ieu, eau
Early Middle English Vowels
Long Short
i y: u: i y u
e: o: e 5 o
e: o: a:
aa
a:
Diphthongs: aj, ej, aw, ow, ew, iw
The differences between the consonant systems of Old
French and Middle English were not in fact significant for
the spelling. French had the alveolar affricates [ts] and
[dz] (spelled with the letters c and z in cent and treze)
which were lacking in Middle English. These sounds changed
to [s] and [z], respectively, on the continent during the
thirteenth century, somewhat earlier in Anglo-Norman (Pope,
1934: 93, 450). In addition, French had a palatal nasal [n]
and lateral [ A ] (in digne and vaillant); the nasal survives
into Modern French, but the lateral changed to a palatal
glide [j] during the Middle French period on the continent
(Pope: 274). In Anglo-Norman [n] and [\] changed to [n] and
[1], respectively, preceded by a palatal glide in words like
desdeign and soleil, apparently in conformity with the
Middle English consonant system (Pope: 450).
Among the vowels, the greatest difference was in the
length distinction of English, which did not occur in French.
French, on the other hand, had many diphthongs and triphthongs
which did not occur in English. The diphthongs of Middle
English--[aj], [ej], [ow], [ew], and [iw] in day, eye, flowen,
newe, and stiward--were falling diphthongs; that is, they had
offglides rather than onglides like the rising diphthong in
French oui. The diphthongs of Old French included all the
diphthongs of Middle English except the [iw] of stiward.10
In addition, French had the falling diphthongs [oj], [uj],
and [yj] in ioie, puint 'point,' and fruit. French also had
rising diphthongs [qi] in cuiver 'quiver' and [je] in chef
'chief.'11
Anglo-Norman brought with it a number of triphthongs,
and more arose in the course of its development in England
(Pope: 445-446). Of the triphthongs, only two seem to have
been borrowed into English--[ieu] and [eau], as in lieu and
beauty or quarreau 'quarry.' These triphthongs may have
actually been reduced to [ew] by the time they were borrowed
(Pope: 446).12
Of course, English phonology differed from Anglo-Norman
in other ways than the phonetic segments. Perhaps the most
important difference was in the placement and strength of
word stress. Middle English stress was much stronger than
that of Old French. The result of this stress in Anglo-
Norman was the acceleration of the reduction of unstressed
syllables. Homophonous countertonic vowels, as in graanter,
coalesced with the tonic vowel to yield granter (Pope: 437-439).
English stress was morphological, falling on the stem
syllable of the word, whereas in French stress tended to fall
on the penultimate syllable, regardless of the placement of
the stem. In loan words, therefore, English tended to shift
the stress forward to the stem syllable when it fell on some
other syllable in French. Thus French pite and envie tended
to become English pite and envie (Serjeantson, 1936: 295).
In those cases where the phonetic elements of French
and English corresponded closely, as in the open and close mid
vowels [e], [e], [o] and [o], little or no change had to be
made for loan words from French to be absorbed into English;
prechen 'to preach,' for example, could be taken into English
with little phonetic change.3 Most loan words, however,
underwent some change when they were borrowed into English.
Serjeantson (1936: 295-300) provides a summary of
the changes that took place before the during the transfer
of loan words from Anglo-Norman into Middle English. Unless
otherwise noted below, it is from her appendix on the
phonology of French loan words that I have drawn my informa-
tion on these changes.
The low and mid vowels of Anglo-Norman generally
follow the same rules of lengthening as English (see note 13).
They are long in open syllables under stress or before final
consonants (dame, debate, apelen, robe). They are short in
closed syllables (part, lettre, cofre). Old French [a]
was diphthongized to [aw] before nasals and was borrowed
as [aw] into Middle English, as in chance; Anglo-Norman [aw]
was monophthongized to [a:] in loan words before [mb] or [nd]
(strange, chambre). [e] and [o] are long before final
consonants (bek 'beak,' clQs 'close'). Anglo-Norman [e]
was very tense, sometimes appearing as [i:] in Middle
English--Middle English has both free and frire 'friar.'
[i] is long in open syllables when the stress remains
on the same syllable, as in bible. If the stress is shifted,
the vowel remains short (pite 'pity,' diner 'dinner'; see
note 13). When the stress remains the same, [u] may be short
or long in closed syllables (scurge, scourge); it is usually
long in open syllables (route), before a single final
consonant (bout) or before a nasal plus a consonant (count).
When the accent is shifted, [u] is short (super 'supper').
However, [u] is sometimes short in open syllables when
followed by a consonant plus 1 doublee 'double,' couple
'couple').
[y], when the accent remained the same, was short in
closed syllables (juggen 'judge'); it was long in open
syllables and before a single final consonant (use and duc
'duke'). The history of this sound is obscure and hotly
14
contested by scholars.4 It seems to have been borrowed, or
to have changed early in English, to [iw], which fell
together with [ew], perhaps as early as 1300. The resulting
sound develops normally into current English [ju:], as in
few and duke, or loses the onglide, [u:] in chute (Dobson,
1968, II: 711-712).
The nasal vowels of French were denasalized in English.
Since Anglo-Norman retained the Old French distinction
between Ca] and ['], these sounds were borrowed with distinct
vowels and following nasals, as in emperor. [a] followed by
a nasal plus a consonant was diphthongized in Anglo-Norman
to rw]. The spelling aun appears early in the thirteenth
century in words like enchauntement (Pope, 1934: 442). The
vowels in these words were denasalized when they were
borrowed into English, but otherwise the words were unchanged.
[aw] before [mb] and [nd] was monophthongized in Middle
English to [a:] in words like chambre and strange, as
mentioned above.
The other French diphthongs likewise had a complex
history in Anglo-Norman and in their adoption into English.
[aj] fell together with [ej] in the eleventh century, and
[ej] was leveled to [e] in the late twelfth and early
thirteenth centuries. The nasal diphthongs followed the
same course of development as the nonnasal ones, falling
together first as [6j], then being leveled to [e], so that
ain, ein, and en represented the same sound in Anglo-Norman,
and defense, mains, and meins were all rhymes (Pope: 444).
Serjeantson (298) adds that [aj] and [ej] remained as
diphthongs longest before [1], [m], and [n], and when final.
The offglide remained before vowels, so that English
borrowed grain, paien, obeien, but pes 'peace' and rec t
'receipt,' which originally had [aj] and [ej], respectively.
A new [aj] had also developed before the conquest from French
[a] before [lj] or [nj], the glide fronting and consonant
and then disappearing, leaving words like tailor and Spaine.
The continental development of [ej] to [oj] was responsible
for later loans like esploit and royal.
The diphthong [oj] was borrowed directly into Middle
English (noise, ioie). Anglo-Norman [uj], from Old French
[oj], comes into Middle English sometimes as ui, sometimes as
oi. The oi spelling, as Serjeantson points out (298), may
represent the [uj] diphthong, since o was often used in
Middle English to represent short [u] (compare sun-son).
Variants of puint 'point,' and builen 'boil' may be spelling
variants, or they may be from continental French, where [oj]
fell together with [oj], so that the normal spelling would
be point, boilen.
The spelling ui could also represent two other
diphthongs in French. It could represent the falling diph-
thong [yj], which occurred in fruit; this diphthong ordinarily
was leveled to [y], and followed the course of development
of that vowel. After [k] it became a rising diphthong [4i]
and, in English as well as continental French, developed into
[wi], as in quiver and squirrel (from Old French cuiver,
escuireuil).
Three reflexes occurred in Anglo-Norman for Old French
[ue]. It could remain a falling diphthong and be leveled
to [u] as in buf (OF buef) 'beef'; it could change to a rising
diphthong [we]; or it could change to [0] (Pope: 443-444).
The last reflex was the one borrowed into Middle English,
falling together with Middle English [s] (Serjeantson: 299).
It was spelled ue, eo, oe, and e, in words like people and
boef 'beef.'
The rising diphthong [je] was leveled to [e] in Anglo-
Norman during the latter part of the twelfth century. It was
borrowed into English as [e] in words like chef 'chief,' and
pece 'piece' (see note 11).
Additional diphthongs were formed from the vowels [a],
[e], and [o] when they preceded Old French [A]. [A]
changed into an offglide, forming the diphthongs [aw], [ew],
and [ow] (Pope: 446). These diphthongs were borrowed into
Middle English in faut, souden, peutre, but before labial
consonants they were monophthongized to long vowels, as in
15
saf 'safe.'
One triphthong [eau] comes from the same course as the
diphthong [ew] above, that is, from [e] plus Old French [A].
In Middle English loan words it fell together with [ew]
and followed the same course of development in beauty (also
spelled beuty).
A number of consonants differed in Anglo-Norman and
the Central French dialect attaining dominance on the
continent. English borrowed heavily from both dialects,
occasionally even borrowing the same word twice, once from
each dialect. This situation is reflected in the pair
warranty (Anglo-Norman) and guarantee (Central French).
Anglo-Norman initial [w] corresponded to Central
French [g] in Germanic loan words (from Germanic [w]),
giving Middle English were 'war,' waste, warisoun, as well
as gile 'guile,' gerdoun guerdonn,' and garisoun. Anglo-
Norman [k] before [a] corresponded to Central French [C],
as in casten 'chasten,' cacchen, catel, compared to
chasten, chacen, chatel. Anglo-Norman [g] corresponded to
Central French [ts], which was being simplified to [s].
Examples from Anglo-Norman are chisel, cacchen 'catch,'
and winch, as opposed to Central French chace, cite 'city,'
and wince. Finally, Anglo-Norman [s] corresponded to
Central French [s], as in norishe, anguishe, compared to
rejoice.
The consonants e ] and [ ] remained longer in Anglo-
Norman than in continental French, perhaps, as Pope suggests
(431-432), because of the presence of these sounds in English.
[e] and [(] developed from [t] and [d], respectively, which
became continuants intervocalically and finally after a
vowel. [e] occurs in a few early loan words like cariteP
'charity' (later carite), and plentep (later plenty). [S]
also developed from [z] before a voiced consonant and from
[s] before [f], as in mecler and eTfreuer; this fricative
was hardened into [d] in Middle English medle (from medler)
and medlar (from mealier) (Pope: 448-449).
Initial [h] does not occur in early loans from French,
except where influenced by classical Latin spelling, as in
hour. But in loan words originally from Germanic, like
haste, heraud, and hardy, initial [h] was retained and
borrowed into English.
Finally, Old French final [n] became [m] be dissimila-
tion after front consonants [1], [r], [n], [s], giving
venim, ransum, and pelegrim (from French venin, ransum,
pilegrin).
The leveling of diphthongs in Anglo-Norman led to a
great deal of confusion in the spelling of Anglo-Norman
itself and in the spelling of loan words in English. Anglo-
Norman [aj] and [ej] were both leveled to [e], for which
English ea (from Old English ea, whose Middle English reflex
was [e:]--Jordan, 1934: 97) and Latin ae could also be used.
In the end, five spellings were possible for [fet]--fait,
feit, fet, feat, and fact. To aggravate this situation,
after the thirteenth century continental French [oj] was
changing by way of [we] to [e], adding oi and oe to the
number of possible spellings for {e]. In addition, ee
came to be used to represent final fe], to distinguish it
from [a], in words like donnee and anee, and this doubling
was used from the mid-thirteenth century on to represent
[e] in stressed syllables, as in pees (for pais); Pre-
consonantal s, which had been dropped in pronunciation,
also came to represent 'lengthened fe],' as in fest for Jfet]
(Pope: 460). Finally, then, Ivet] (from videt and vadit)
could be spelled uet, uait, uoit, uoet, uest, or ueet, as
well as ueat or uaet (Pope: 458).
In the transfer of loan words from French to English
it was the French words which accommodated themselves to
the phonology of English. The palatal consonants of French,
Ik] and In], for instance, were changed in English to the
similar alveolar 11] and In], as in valliant and sign.
Frequently there were nearly exact phonetic equivalents
between French and English sounds, like the parallel between
the French vowels and the Middle English long vowels (Table
4 above). The transfer of loan words from French to English
was accomplished by a process of phonological translation,
which replaced a phonetic segment in a French word (like
French Il] in signe) with the English segment most phoneti-
cally similar (In] in English sign).16 Since the loan words
brought with them new spellings, which they retained after
their anglicization, they added new spellings for English
17
sounds, such as ai for [e:], as in pais 'peace.'
In addition to new spellings brought into English with
loan words, Anglo-Norman scribes wrought a number of other
changes in spelling which were not related to the phonology
of loan words. A peculiarity of Old French orthography was
an uncertainty whether to represent Old French [o] with u
18
or o, an uncertainty which affected the Middle English
spelling of short [u] (in sun and son, for instance) but
not long [u:]. The spelling of French [o], vacillating
between o and u, as in tor and tur (Modern tour), was resolved
in the thirteenth century on the continent (Beaulieux, 1927:
175), somewhat later in Anglo-Norman, as ou. The ou spelling
originated from the leveling of the [ow] diphthongs in mout
and escoute to [u] (Pope: 278). The ou spelling was generally
adopted for English [u:], as in house and out.
When [u] was regularly spelled ou, the letter u was
more or less exclusively to represent [y], as it does in
Modern French. This spelling was borrowed along with the [y]
sound in words like use and duc. French [y] then fell together
with Middle English [iw], which developed ultimately into
Modern English [ju:] in use and duke (see above and note 14),
giving u as an alternative spelling to Middle English eu, ew,
and iw, as in few and stiward.
The change of [ts] to [s] in Anglo-Norman was responsible
for the use of c with the value [s]. In early Old French [ts]
could be represented by either ti or ci, but c (before i or e)
later became the usual representation.
The French use of h to suggest modification of the pro-
nunciation of a letter was partly responsible for the number
of digraphs consisting of a letter plus h in English. h was
attached to a letter to indicate that its pronunciation was
'not what would normally be expected under the conditions in
which it stood' (Pope: 177); for instance, ch (which occasion-
ally represented [k], as in Latin Christus) generally repre-
sented [ts], as in Charles or cheval. Old English used th
19
in the earliest manuscripts to represent [e] and [d],1 and h
was used to represent the velar fricative [x], so that there
was some precedent in Old English for the use of h in wh for
f\ 20
[w], gh for [x], and s(c)h for [s]. The wh spelling for
[w] is, of course, simply reversed from the Old English spells
ing hw, as in hwaet 'what.'
I cannot give more than a general outline of Middle
English spelling, since, although the subject has been fre-
quently discussed, it has never received more than cursory
21
treatment. I do not have access to the materials for a
thorough study, so I must rely largely on secondary sources.
The following sketch of Middle English spelling comes partly
from my own investigation, but it also depends heavily on
Mosse's (1952) discussion of Middle English spelling, on
Robinson's (1961) summary of spelling and pronunciation in
Chaucer, and especially on Venezky's chapter on the develop-
ment of English orthography (1965: 191-214). Although
Venezky's chapter misses some important generalizations in
the development of English spelling, it is excellent in its
treatment of specific Anglo-Norman scribal changes and the
later changes brought about by the etymologizing of the
Renaissance.
French influence was pervasive in the spelling of
Middle English vowels, although native developments, like
doubling of long vowels, also left their stamp on the spell-
ing. After the French ou spelling for [u:] was introduced
(although u was still used to represent short [u]--see
below), y then became an alternate spelling for [i(:)] in
words like bydden 'bid,' or byden 'bide.' y was also used
to represent the palatal glide [j] in words like yelpe
'yelp.'
u and o were interchangeable spellings for either [u]
or [o], partly because of the French habit of not distin-
guishing the spellings, and partly because of the handwriting
of the scribes. o was frequently substituted for u,
especially in the vicinity of u, m, and n, to avoid a suc-
cession of minims, or downstrokes, which made the letters of
words like some and son difficult to distinguish when spelled
with u (Venezky, 1965: 202).
Old English ae disappeared early and was replaced by
ea, a, or e in words like appel.
Later introductions from French were ei and ie, repre-
senting [e:] and [e:], respectively, in receive and chief.
ei did not become common until the fourteenth century, and
ie not until the fifteenth century.
The reduced vowel [a] in inflectional endings was
represented by e, as in biden 'bide.' When final schwa
disappeared in late Middle English the 'mute e' spelling
remained as a signal of a preceding long vowel.
A development in spelling native to English was the
doubling of vowel letters to represent long vowels,
especially the mid vowels. ee and oo were used frequently
to represent both the open and closed mid vowels. In
sweete and heeth 'heath,' ee represents [e:] and [e:],
respectively. In good and goot 'goat,' oo represents [o:]
and [o:]. The ea and oa spellings which represent [e:] and
[o:], respectively, occurred in the Middle English period
(ea was., of course, an Old English spelling) but were not
put into general use until the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries.
The diphthongs of Middle English arise from a number
of sources. [oj] and [uj] seem to have come into English
from French in words like joie and puint 'point.' It is
difficult to tell to what extent the oi (oy) and ui (uy)
spellings represented different sounds, however, because of
the general confusion between u and o spellings.
Early Middle English [aj] and [ej] merged early,
yielding [aj]. The general spelling was ai (ay), so that
the spelling of sail (OE segl) and way (OE weg) reflected
the same vowel as day (OE daeg). A few words like they
and eight preserve the e spelling.
The [ow], [ew], [aw], and [iw] diphthongs were spelled
more or less phonetically in arowen, knew, cause, and stiward.
[iw] also developed from Anglo-Norman [y:], so that u was a
possible spelling, as in vertu. The offglide of [ow] was
frequently not represented in the spelling when it occurred
before [x], as in fo(u)ghte or tho(u)ght.
The following chart, adapted from Robinson (1961: xxxi),
summarizes the spelling of the vowels and diphthongs of
fourteenth-century English.
Table 5
Middle English Vowel Spellings
Sound
[i]
[e]
[a]
[a]
[o]
[u]
Sound
[i:]
[e:]
[e:]
[a:]
[o:]
[o:]
[u:]
Sound
[iw]
[ew]
[aw]
[ow]
[aj]
[oj]
Spelling'- Short Vowels
i, y
e
e
a
o
u, o
Spelling Long Vowels
i, y
e, ee (eo)
e, ee (ea, ei, ai)
a, aa
o, 00
0, 00
ou, ow, ogh
Diphthongs
u, iu, iw
eu, ew
au, aw
OU, OW
ai, ay, ei, ey
oi, oy
Examples
this, thyng
tendre
yonge, sonne
can, that
oft, lot
but, yonge
Examples
shires, ryden
sweete
heeth
name, caas
holy, rood (vb.)
good, bote
fowles, droghte
Examples
vertu, stiward
knew, lewed
cause, draughte
growen, sowle
sayle, day, they
coy, joie
The above table assumes that Old English [y(:)] had
disappeared in late Middle English. Ordinarily OE [y:]
became ME [i:], as in fir 'fire,' or pride. OE [y] became
[i] as in synne 'sin.' This merger also contributed to
the interchangeable use of i and y in Middle English.
Anglo-Norman and Old French [y], on the other hand, was
generally borrowed as [u], and OF [y:] generally came into
English as [iw]--responsible for the u spelling in the
chart. However, [y(:)] did not drop out of all varieties
of English until much later; there is some evidence that
it survived at least into the late seventeenth century (see
note 14).
A number of changes in the spelling of the consonants
of Middle English were made by French scribes. These
changes did not reflect changes in the phonology of the
language, but only in its appearance. My source, unless
otherwise noted, is Venezky (1965: 201-204).
The remaining letters of the runic alphabet, wynn (P),
thorn (P), and eth (C), all disappeared. Wynn was replaced
by w. Eth was replaced by thorn and th, and thorn continued
in use until the introduction of printing. Since the early
type was made in France, there was no letter to represent
English [9] or [T], and th eventually came to be used
exclusively for both sounds.
Yogh (3) represented a number of related but different
sounds in Middle English. It was replaced by g when it
represented [g], as in gras 'grass.' It was replaced by
gh when it represented [x], and by y when it represented [j],
as in knight and yelp, respectively, g was also used to
represent [ ], as in hegge [heza] 'hedge,' and initial [ ]
in French loans like gentile 'gentle.' Initial [3] was also
represented by i (or j, which was a positional variant of
i--OED) in words like ioie 'joy.'
In keeping with the French habit of using h to indi-
cate the changed value of a letter (above), [c] came to
be represented by ch, as in cherle 'churl,' as well as in
French words like the name Charles. [s"] (OE sc, as in scip
'ship') was variously spelled sch, ssh, or sh, as in schal
'shall,' flessh 'flesh,' or fish, eventually settling down
to the modern sh spelling. The order of the Old English hw
sequence was reversed everywhere to wh, as in what (OE hwat).
c in its double value as [k] and [s] was introduced
through French in words like certayne 'certain.' Since c
was used to represent [s] before e and i, k was used to repre-
sent [k] in those positions, as well as before n and 1, as
in kepe, knaue, and kloke 'cloak' (Mosse,1952; 9).
In late Middle English, ph began to be substituted for
f in learned words of Greek origin, like phleume 'phlegm,'
where it was a transliteration of Greek phi.
The doubled consonant letters left from Old English
long consonants took on their role in Middle English as
signals of preceding short stressed vowels in words like
beggar, cribbe 'crib,' dokke 'dock' (vb.), and bicche 'bitch.'
The doubling of consonants was not consistently carried out
in the spelling, however, so that there are doublets like
cache-cacche 'catch,' and comen-commen 'come.'
The fifteenth century marked the transition from
Middle to Modern English. Sound changes like the Great
Vowel Shift were in progress in the fifteenth century, along
with consonant loss and cluster simplification which left
a residue in the spelling of English. The stress system of
English was also changing at this time. In addition to the
sound changes of the fifteenth century, there were other
changes which affected the development of English spelling,
directly or indirectly.
Although Middle English spelling had been subject to
considerable variation, that variation was consistent in
that a certain small number of spellings were used for each
sound (such as e, ee, and rarely ea, ei, ai for [e:]). Varia-
tions in fifteenth-century spelling became inconsistent, or
less consistent, than that of Middle English, for a number
of reasons.
In early fifteenth-century sources like the London
Chronicles, the spelling is very much like that of Chaucer,
but later in the century, in sources like the records of
22
Parliament and the Paston Letters,2 more variants began to
occur, which finally formed a spelling system very near that
of Modern English. One reason for the instability in
fifteenth-century spelling was an increase in literacy,
which, by adding a large number of people who could read and
write, caused a breakdown in the scribal tradition (Wyld,
1936: 63).
Another cause of the instability was undoubtedly the
influence of regional dialects. However, the scarcity of
material on Middle English dialects makes it difficult to
assess the influence of the dialects on the spelling.23
We know that the population of London was constantly being
recruited from all over England (Chambers and Daunt, 1931:
237), and that people of high rank (like Margaret Paston of
the Paston Letters, who is mentioned above) usually employed
secretaries to whom they dictated their correspondence
(Kihlbom, 1926: xiii).
The greatest variation in the spelling occurred in
the representation of post-tonic unstressed syllables,
where the reduction of the vowels made all the vowel
spellings meaningless. The vowel letters in the final
syllables of taken, lynyn 'linen,' and happen 'happen,' all
represented a pronunciation which was probably virtually
identical with the pronunciation of those syllables today.
In the inflectional endings-- -ed (past participle),
-eth (third person singular), -es (second person singular
and noun plural)--the most frequent variation was -id, -ith,
and -is (or the equivalent -yd, -yth, -ys), as in dwellyd,
semyth 'seemeth,' or horsis. More rarely u occurred, as in
clepud 'clept.' In -en and -en plus a consonant, o and u
occur, as well as i (y), in y-writon 'written,' gotun 'gotten,'
and gravyn 'graven.'
There was a tendency to represent all unstressed vowels
with i or y, on the one hand, or a, o, or u, on the other.
It may be that the i spellingsrepresent [i] pronunciations,
while the a, o, and u spellings represent [a], as in the two
modern pronunciations of stomach [stAmpk] and [stAmik]
(Wyld, 1936: 258-282).
Some of the variations are due to varying stress on
the words concerned--certin from ME certain, certayne from
ME certain (Wyld: 259).
Another occasional variation which apparently repre-
sented a variant pronunciation was e where [i] was expected.
This alternation in words like wreten 'written,' and drevyn
'driven,' seems to be involved with the lengthening of [i]
to [e:] in Middle English.24
While confusion over the spelling of unstressed vowels
was making itself evident, the spelling of vowels in stressed
syllables was changing to the consistent system of the six-
teenth century. Early fifteenth-century sources like the
London Chronicles, where the scribal traditions were pre-
served (Kjerrstrom, 1946: 15), generally reflect Middle
English spelling traditions. Letters are occasionally
doubled to represent long vowels, especially mid vowels, as
in queen or goode. Final e is sometimes used to indicate
vowel length, as in coke 'cook,' or kepe 'keep.' ou (ow)
was used almost exclusively for [u:] (in howse or toun)
except in words which had French [0] and [u], where o
frequently occurred, as in consellyd 'counselled,' or
montaynys 'mountains.' Consonant spellings display a few
variants like f for [v] in fochesave 'vouchsafe,' and p for
[b] in pupplyscyde 'published' (also v for [f] and the Old
English spelling sc for [s]). Of some significance is the
occasional use of sch to represent [sk], as in schole
'school' (a transliteration of Greek ox),as it does in
today's English.
In general, though, early fifteenth-century sources
did not distinguish open and close mid vowels in the spell-
ing any more than Middle English did. Length in both instances
may be indicated by doubling or final mute e. The ea spelling
for [e:] (as in great) occurs rarely in the London Chronicles
examined by Kjerrstrom (1946: 250), the oa spelling for [o:]
not at all.
The distinction in spelling of the long open and close
mid vowels is one of the spelling features that marks the
difference between Middle and Modern English. The Old English
ea spelling was revived to represent [e:], especially in
native words like great (OE great) and deal (OE dal). The
oa spelling for [o:] was introduced late and applied less
consistently in words like boat and oath. Lekebusch (1906:
36), using official records that cover the latter two-thirds
of the fifteenth century, says that the ea spelling becomes
more and more frequent during the last twenty-seven years
of the century. But he records no occurrence of the oa
spelling.
In the Paston Letters, however, both ea and oa occur,
though not with total consistency. Neumann (1904) records
one instance of the use of ea to represent [e:]--meave 'move.'
Otherwise, ea occurs in familiar spellings like please and
meane, as well as the unfamiliar sease 'seize' (32). oa
occurs in oath and broad, as well as in stoan 'stone' (57).
We can see that by the early Modern period, English
had acquired a bewildering variety of alternate spellings,
especially the vowel spellings that were a legacy of French
loan words and pronunciations. The ie spelling of chief,
the eo of people, as well as the eau of beauty were relics
of distinct French pronunciations which had long since been
lost in English.
If we take the Middle English vowels and their spell-
ings listed in Table 5 above and consider the changes in
English pronunciation in the early Modern English period,
we can see what opportunity for confusion existed in these
spellings.
In the first place, the Great Vowel Shift changed the
relationships between long and short vowels. Once ME [i:]
had become a diphthong, it was no longer phonetically the
long (or tense) version of [i], and the similar spellings
of bit and bite were phonetically misleading. [u:], as we
have seen, was spelled with a digraph ou (ow), so its
spelling was not similarly misleading. The spellings of
long mid vowels were never entirely consistent, but the
final coalescence of the Middle English front mid vowels
left a single vowel [i:] with seven historical spellings (e,
ee, eo, ea, ei, ie, and ai), none of which was directly
related phonetically to the sound it represented. The
diphthongs [iw] and [ew] were in process of changing from
falling diphthongs to rising [ju:]. The [aw] and [aj]
diphthongs were becoming monophthongized into [3] and [e:].
In addition, certain consonant sounds like [x] and
initial [k] and [g] before nasals were disappearing, in some
instances with compensatory lengthening, as in knight.
French influences had added c with the value of [s], and
qu with the value of [k] or [kw].
The vowel system of English in particular was in flux
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Two other factors
entered the picture at this point--a new influx of loan
words from Latin with Latin spellings intact, along with
etymological respellings of older Latin loan words, and a
gradual freezing of the spelling system, largely because of
the influence of printing.
The fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries saw
a great influx of words like accommodate (the OED records
the first appearance in 1525) and exaggerate (1553), whose
double consonants were not motivated in the English spelling
system, where double consonants indicated short vowels in
preceding stressed syllables. At any rate, the normal
'double' form for [f] was dg, as in edge, not gg. Other
examples are occasion (1382), occur (1527), succession (1537),
and recommend (spelled recommend by Chaucer in 1386).
In addition to unmotivated double consonants, Latin
spellings and respellings brought problems with vowel
spellings. Since all unstressed vowels are subject to
vowel reduction in English, unstressed vowels are also sub-
ject to spelling variation. The polysyllabic words borrowed
from Latin offer more opportunity for variant spellings of
schwaa' than most of the shorter native English words. So
Renaissance borrowings give us problem words like definite
(1553) and separate (adj., 1526), as well as the -ent
endings in words like existent (1561) and prevalent (1576).
The changes occurring in the pronunciation of early
Modern English combined with large numbers of borrowed words
coming into the language and an already staggering number of
spellings for the vowels and diphthongs to create a situation
in which the sound-spelling relationships in English must
have bordered on the chaotic, as some of the whimsical
spellings from fifteenth-century documents suggest. In the
midst of this situation, and perhaps partly because of the
need for stability it created, spelling began to be frozen.
The introduction of printing and the spread of literacy from
the fifteenth century on, combined with the undoubtedly
tremendous influence of the 1611 King James translation of
the Bible, encouraged and helped printers in choosing one
from among the alternative spellings for each word or mor-
pheme and sticking to that choice. By the middle of the
seventeenth century, English spelling had assumed the form
it was to keep (Baugh, 1957: 256-257). Students of English
literature cannot help but notice that at times it seems
that Chaucer never spells the same word the same way twice;
Shakespeare still exhibits some variant spellings and spell-
ings that strike us as unusual; but Milton's spelling is
virtually identical with our own.
From a historical point of view, what English spell-
ing preserves is a hodgepodge of relics from defunct pro-
nunciations and linguistic sources. Words like knight pre-
serve in spelling consonants which have not been pronounced
for centuries; the spellings of heath and beet reflect a
distinction (ME long open [e:] and long close [e:]) that
died out after the seventeenth century. The spelling of
accommodate and prevalent reflects classical Latin, rather
than English, pronunciation.
Insofar as it reflects English pronunciation at all,
English spelling reflects Middle English pronunciation.
This in itself does not make the spelling remarkably incon-
sistent, phonetically or phonologically. The changes of
the Great Vowel Shift were regular changes, and left
regular, although changed, correspondences between the vowels
and their spellings. It is somewhat awkward from the point
of view of terminology that 'long i' is a diphthong [aj]
and 'long e' is [ij], while 'short i' is phonetically closer
to 'long e' than to 'long i' and 'short e' is phonetically
kin to 'long a' [ej]. If, as Chomsky and Halle (1968)
maintain, the phonological representation is very conserva-
tive and the spelling reflects a level of phonology near
;-
46
the phonological representation, then the relationship
between the spelling and pronunciation of English stressed
vowels is normal and regular. But other influences than
regular phonetic change have been at work on the spelling
of English, so that the underlying regularity of the
system, as it is, is often very difficult to see.
Notes
1
To represent the vowels of Middle and early Modern
English, I shall use the traditional symbols of the
philologists, which were developed for this purpose. I
shall use a colon to indicate length in the vowels and,
when needed, in the consonants. The short vowels of Middle
English will be represented by simple letter symbols--
[i], [e], [a], [o], [u]. The long high vowels will be
represented by letter symbols plus colons--[i:], [u:];
also the low vowel [a:]. The mid close and open vowels
are represented with dots and hooks, respectively--[e:],
[e:], [o:], [o:]. In the relatively few cases where'I
cite Old English forms, I shall use traditional orthography
with macrons to indicate long vowels and long diphthongs.
Palatal c and g (as opposed to the velar stops from
which they evolved) are distinct sounds in Old English,
and cannot always be predicted on the basis of the surface
phonology. Some knowledge of the previous history of the
language is required (Campbell, 1959: 21-22).
3Although vowel length was not marked in Old English
manuscripts, I shall mark long vowels and diphthongs with
macrons in the examples I cite, following editorial tradi-
tion in works on Old English, for the sake of clarity--
ceorl 'churl,' ceosan 'choose.'
This summary of the Old English vowels and diph-
thongs is, of course, greatly simplified and is given only
to illustrate the development of English spelling. It also
ignores the recent controversies about the phonemic and
phonetic nature of Old English vowels and diphthongs. For
a summary and evaluation of dissenting opinions, see Kuhn
and Quirk (1953), who ultimately defend the traditional
philological view. I have followed Kuhn and Quirk because,
in this article and those mentioned below, their arguments
seem more persuasive, and their treatment of the data more
convincing. For a full treatment of Stockwell's monophthongal
theory, see Stockwell (1958), in which short ea, eo, and io
(West Saxon ie) are assigned with phonetic values [a], [E],
[i], which are central allophonic variants of /ae/, /e/,
and /i/, respectively. A rebuttal of Kuhn and Quirk (1953)
was published by Stockwell and Barritt (1955), in which
many of the original claims made by Stockwell and Barritt
(1951) were withdrawn. In the same issue of Language was
published a counter-rebuttal by Kuhn and Quirk (1955). Fisiak
(1968: 32-33, 35) follows the interpretation of Stockwell
and Barritt (1951) and Stockwell (1953).
5-
lo and eo were not distinct in West Saxon, the
literary dialect (Campbell, 1959: 125-126).
Peters (1967) has called the phonological significance
of Old English long consonants into question. He bases his
objections on the principle of complementary distribution.
Few if any convincing minimal pairs can be found for conso-
nant length in Old English. However, Peters reaches no
firm conclusions as to the status of consonant length. I
have followed what seems to me the more satisfactory analysis
of Kurath (1956).
There is some difficulty with terminology here.
Kurath (1956), writing from the American structuralist
framework, uses the term phonemicallyy long' consonants.
In the generative framework, which, except for Schane
(1971, 1973), does not recognize phonemic contrast, the
change from long to short consonants would involve restruc-
turing--change in the underlying representation--as would
the rise of voiced fricatives concurrent with the loss of
consonant length.
Contrastive consonant length was lost in some of the
northern dialects, like that of Orm, by 1200. In more con-
servative southern dialects, long consonants remained through-
out the fourteenth century (Kurath, 1956: 443-445).
In terms of phonology, the distinction between
(continental) Old French and the Anglo-Norman dialect is
not made consistently. Generally, the same sound changes
seem to have occurred in Anglo-Norman as in Old French.
1Since ME [ew] coalesced with ME [iw] in the fifteenth
century (Fisiak, 1968: 55), words borrowed from French with
[ew] also changed to [iw] (as in peutre 'pewter'), which
develops normally into the Modern English rising diphthong
[ju:] in pewter or few.
OF [je] was monophthongized early in Anglo-Norman
to [e]. It was apparently borrowed as [e:]in Middle English
and spelled with e in words like chef. The ie spelling in
words like chief, relief, fierce was rare before the fifteenth
century (Serjeantson, 1935: 298).
12Professor William J. Sullivan has suggested an
example which must have contained both triphthongs--Beaulieu
Abbey (pronounced [bjulij]. This word also illustrates the
development of these sounds in stressed ([ju]) and unstressed
([ij]) position.
3Anglo-Norman, unlike English, did not have distinct
long and short vowels. In English, of course, the distinc-
tion between open and close mid vowels occurred only in the
long vowels, not in the short vowels. Vowel lengthening in
loan words in English followed the same rules that applied
to native English words. For instance, vowels were
lengthened in open syllables under stress--native name,
French robe. French words with [i] and [u] followed T-his
rule as long as the stress was not shifted (bTble, house);
if the stress was shifted, [i] and [u] were short, as in
city.
14
1The course of development of ME [ew], [iw], and [y:]
(from OE y) has been hotly debated by philologists. Dobson
(1968, II: 699-713) summarized the arguments and presents
the evidence, along with his own theory of the development
of the sounds up to 1700. Kokeritz (1959) suggests a
different theory for the development of [y:] into [(j)u:].
Melchior (1972) argues from the evidence of Thomas Smith
and John Wallis that [y:] must have survived into the later
seventeenth century.
15Later spellings of these words with 1, as in fault,
or falcon, is due to the reborrowing of a Latinized form
from later French, or to the Latinized respelling of words
in English, which will be discussed later in this chapter.
16Catford (1965: 56-61) discusses phonological trans-
lation as transfer at the phonemic level. In generative
theory the transfer would take place at the systematic
phonetic level, with phonetic similarity defined in terms
of phonetic features. The borrowed word would become
attached to an Anglicized systematic phonemic representation
subject to English rules, such as vowel lengthening in open
syllables.
1There was also considerable influence of English on
Anglo-Norman spelling. The reflex of early Old French ie
in siet (from Latin sapit) was [e], which was associated-
with Middle English [e:J, reflex*of Old English eo; the
result was that eo was added to the possible spellings of
[e] in Anglo-Norman, so that set, siet, and seot were
interchangeable spellings for [set].
18
1This confusion stems from the fact that Old French
[o] developed from Latin [o:] and [u], just as OF [e]
developed from Latin [e:] and [i]. The Latin spellings
tended to be preserved with u and o after the distinction
in pronunciation disappeared.
19
9English had three representations for [ ] and [ ].
th was used from the earliest times in Old English, but
thorn (P), of runic origin, and eth ( ) were introduced
during the Old English period. eth disappeared during
Middle English, but thorn continued in use until the intro-
duction of printing ,(OED).
20The Old English spelling was sc, as in scip 'ship.'
Other spellings for [5] used by French-educated scribes
were s, ss, sz. By the fourteenth century sch was generally
used initially (as in schal 'shall'), with other variants
(sh and ssh) used medially (OED).
21Middle English spelling has, of course, been
approached from the point of view of graphemic theory by
McIntosh and Samuels. But apart from McIntosh's initial
paper (1956), and articles announcing early results by
McIntosh (1963) and Samuels (1963), no general application
has been made of graphemics to Middle English spelling and
dialectology.
22
I have had to rely on secondary sources for most of
my data on fifteenth-century English. When fifteenth-
century documents are available at all, they frequently
have been edited as historical, rather than linguistic,
documents; variant spellings are often regularized, there-
fore, and other information of linguistic interest is some-
times omitted. In the latest edition of the Paston
Letters by Norman Davis (1971), pains have been taken to
produce a reliable text, and to provide other valuable infor-
mation, such as whether a letter is autograph, or was taken
down by a secretary. Unfortunately, this edition is not
yet complete. Three sources I have found especially helpful
are Kjerrstrom (1946), The language of the London chronicles;
Neumann (1904), Die Orthographie der Paston Letters von
1422-1461; and Lekebusch (1906), Die londoner Urkundensprache
von 1430-1500. I believe that the thoroughness of these
works makes them reliable sources for the spelling of the
fifteenth century, even when their interpretation of the
phonology has been superseded.
23
2The existing studies of Middle English dialects are
not very helpful in this respect. The data in the last
complete dialect study (Moore, Meech, and Whitehall, 1935)
are so limited that they have little value in discovering
spelling patterns associated with different dialects. The
work begun by McIntosh (1963) and Samuels (1963) is more
promising, but still incomplete.
51
24Trnka (1959) points to the peculiar alignment of
long and short vowels in Middle English as an early stage
of the Great Vowel Shift. [u:] and [i:] had no equivalent
short vowels. [i] and [u] were lengthened to [e:] and [o:],
respectively. [e] and[o] had [e:] and [o:] as their long
counterparts. Examples illustrating the lengthening of [i]
and [u] are [we:kes] 'weeks,' from [wikas], and [wo:da]
'wood,' from [wude](Trnka: 441).
CHAPTER II
ALPHABETIC WRITING AND PHONOLOGICAL THEORY
Alphabetic writing is the representation of the
phonetic or phonological segments of a language by discrete
graphic symbols. The relationship between the symbols and
the segments that they represent is necessarily arbitrary
in the sense that alphabets consist of 'pieces,' of dis-
crete images, which are put together to represent units
of language, while phonetic and phonological segments are
not discrete pieces but are made up of features. The
assignment of a particular graphic shape to a particular
segment is motivated by tradition and is not apparently
related to the structure of the language. The spelling of
some homophones in English, as in 'crewell gnus' for 'cruel
news,' indicates the potential independence of spelling
from phonology in indicating meaning; the visual form of
the words can indicate their meaning independent of sound.
Although arbitrary, alphabetic writing is related more or
less directly to the phonetic or phonological segments of a
language.
Alphabets represent these segments at some level of
abstraction. They do not represent sound either at the
articulatory or the acoustical level since segments are
theoretical constructs, not detectable at the level of
52
production or perception of speech (see .Ladefoged, 1967 and
Halle, 1964).
The traditional motivation for the assignment of
particular graphic shapes to the spelling of English words
has been treated in Chapter I. This chapter is concerned
with the relationship between phonological theory and English
spelling. In this chapter and Chapter III, I shall lay
the theoretical basis for the discussion of Robinson's
alphabet in Chapter V. And, finally, I hope to achieve a
limited synthesis of the two dominant American theories of
phonology, generative and stratificational phonology, to
the extent that they can be related to alphabetic writing.
My discussion will begin with the ancestors of the
current theories, the American structuralist and Prague
school theories, both of which have exerted a powerful influ-
ence on the contemporary schools.
Alphabetic writing is generally (and often tacitly)
taken to be the optimum representation of a language. It
is associated with the phonology of the language, rather than
with the morphology, in contrast to the Chinese character
system, which is essentially morphemic.1 It is also
associated with the phonological segments, in contrast to
the syllabic writing system of Japanese2 and the consonantal
system of Arabic and Hebrew. Alphabets represent each seg-
ment of the phonology, consonant and vowel, with a letter
or combination of letters. English spelling is morphemic
to the extent that it uses alternate spellings to indicate
the difference between homophones (as in they're, there,
their, or crewell gnus, mentioned above). It nevertheless
seems to operate on the basic principle of one letter for
each segment.
The difficulties of dealing with alphabetic writing
come in relating a given alphabetic system to a particular
theoretical interpretation of the phonological segments of
the language in question. Although some languages, notably
Spanish and Italian, seem to present no problems to the
speaker in relating the sound to the spelling, others are
notorious for their inconsistency in relating sound to
spelling (writing) and spelling to sound (pronunciation).
French3 is especially noted for its variant spellings of
the same sound, while English has both variant spellings of
the same sound and variant pronunciations of the same
spelling.4
If the spelling of a language corresponds to the
phonological segments of that language, however inconsis-
tently, the degree of correspondence between the segments
and their representation can be determined only if there
is a clear picture of what those segments are, independent
of the spelling. Since theories of phonology vary on this
subject, some preliminary discussion of them and their
approaches may be helpful.
Until the development of generative phonology, lin-
guists generally maintained that the alphabetic principle
was the correspondence of one spelling unit or letter to
each phoneme of the language being spelled. Geib (1963: 197)
suggests that the word 'alphabet' refers to 'writing which
expresses the single sounds of a language.' Although Gelb
does not use the term 'phoneme,' his notion of 'single
sounds' suggests phonemics. Bloomfield (1933: 290) states
unequivocally that 'the principle of phonemic or alphabetic
writing,' arrived at by the Greeks, was 'the principle of
using a single symbol for each phoneme,' and that the match
between symbols and phonemes was imperfect only because
the Greeks did not have enough symbols to represent both
long and short vowels.6
The imperfect match between phonemes and letters in
some modern languages can be explained in a number of ways.
The Greek (or Latin) alphabet was not altered sufficiently
to account for all the phonemes of the newly written
language; for instance, English has never consistently dis-
tinguished between [d] and [e], although it had sufficient
symbols in the early Middle English period to do so--thorn
(b ) and eth (S) could each represent either the voiced or
the voiceless dental fricative. In addition, the conserva-
tism of scribes caused (and still causes) them to write
words down as they had seen them written, not as they sounded.
This tendency, combined with the inevitable phonetic change
in any language, eventually changes the relationship between
sound and spelling, as it has in the case of the 'mute e' in
English words like bite, a letter which was pronounced in
Middle English. And in English especially there has been a
tendency to spell (and re-spell) words etymologically, so that
English debt reflects the b in Latin debitum, although the b
has never been pronounced in English, and the Middle English
spelling dette more accurately reflects the pronunciation.
(The changing relationship between English spelling and pro-
nunciation has been discussed in detail in Chapter I).
For the traditional phonemicist, then, a one-letter-
per-phoneme correspondence is optimal: a phonemic represen-
tation is the most efficient possible representation of the
(traditional phonemic) phonology of the language because
the phoneme inventory of the language is the minimum number
and variety of units which can be accurately and consistently
used to represent the pronunciation. Departures from the
phoneme-letter correspondence can be attributed to historical
accident and the pressures of regular phonetic change without
corresponding change in spelling (Bloomfield, 1933: 291-293).
The optimum efficiency of a phonemic representation of
the pronunciation of a language is the direct result of the
methods used by American structuralists in establishing
phoneme inventories (the epitome of which is the discovery
of minimal pairs like bit-bet) and of the clearly stated
definition of Prague school linguistics of the phoneme as
the unit of contrast in phonology. From the point of view
of traditional phonemics, therefore, a phonemic alphabet is
the most efficient way to represent the phonology of a
language.
The question to be raised is whether the pronunciation
is what an alphabetic system should represent. It is clear
that English spelling at least in some cases is morphophonemic
rather than phonemic. The letter c, for example, having no
peculiar phonetic or phonemic interpretation, is ideally
suited to represent the morphophonemic alternation between
[k] and [s] in electric-electricity. Because of the French
influence in opaque-opacity, the c reflects only the [s]
part of this alternation, the [k] member being represented
by the French spelling -que.
The c spelling of electric can be seen as representing
a more abstract level of the phonology than the traditional
phonemic level. It can be seen as representing the morpho-
phoneme which is realized as either [k] or [s], depending
on whether or not it is followed by the morpheme -ity.
In traditional phonemic theory, it is the morphopho-
nemics which accounts for the allomorphic variation--such
as the three regular variants of the English plural, [ z],
[s], and [z]--found in most languages. According to Trager
and Smith (1957: 60), 'a full study of English morphophonemics
and vowel sequences that occur, the relation of certain
stresses to specific segmental phoneme structure, and the
relation of intonation to the stresses and junctures; then
would follow a morpheme list with all allomorphs, and an
indefinitely extendable list of morphemes not showing alter-
nation.' Some linguists use morphophonemes in situations
like that in knife /nayF/, in which the /F/ represents a
morphophoneme which may be realized as the phoeme /v/ when
'-I'
followed by the plural morpheme, and the phoneme /f/ else-
where. Traditional structural phonology, however, does not
postulate a 'morphophonemic level' or representation. For
Harris (1951: 219) the morphophonemic symbol is a device
for marking 'the more common phonological alternations in
a language.' The morphophoneme, then, is a convenient cover
symbol for regular phonological alternations which,
together with specification of morphemic environments and
realizations, predicts those alternations.
The two current theories which have developed this
phonological level have both discarded the term morphophoneme.
Stratificational grammar uses the term morphon for the seg-
ments at this level, and generative grammar uses the term
phonological representation or, for some linguists,
systematic phoneme. The stratificational treatment of mor-
phophonemics is far more complex than the clause above indi-
cates, and I shall discuss its ramifications later in this
chapter. The point to be made here is that, if we proceed
from grammatical to phonological units, it is at the level of
morphons or phonological representations that morphemes or
lexical items (depending on the theory) are first divided
into segments. In other words, it is the most abstract level
of phonology in either theory.
Generative linguists have suggested that, for English
and French specifically, the orthography is near the under-
lying phonological representation, and is therefore optimal
for the adult native speaker of the language. According to
Ch'omsky and Halle (1968: 49)'the fundamental principle of
orthography is that phonetic variation is not indicated
where it is predictable by a general rule. .. Ortho-
graphy is a system designed for readers who know the
language, who understand sentences and therefore know the
surface structure of sentences. . Except for unpredict-
able variants (e.g. man-men, buy-bought), an optimal ortho-
graphy would have one representation for each lexical
8
entry. Chomsky and Halle make no explicit claim that
English spelling corresponds to the underlying phonological
segments. They seem to doubt, in fact, that the phonemic
representation of alphabetic writing, as opposed to their
feature matrices, is 'psychologically real,' But their
definition of an optimal system of orthography makes the
units of the alphabet correspond to phonological segments
at a level very near the underlying representation.
An important difference should be stated here between
generative theory and the other theories of language under
discussion. It is related to the well-known distinction
between competence and performance made by Chomsky and other
generative linguists. Generative theory is concerned not
with manifest speech, but with what the 'ideal native
speaker' knows about his language. This idealistic view
of language accounts for the difficulty Chomsky and Halle
have in relating alphabetic writing to a particular level of
phonology.
Chomsky and Halle are working with what arsounts to a
sound-image of the phonological segment in the 'abstract
symbols,' which are in fact 'informal abbreviations for
certain complexes of feature' (1968: 10). The cautious
negative statement of the principle of orthography quoted
above, that the orthography does not indicate regular
phonetic variation, makes no precise commitment as to what
the orthography does indicate. It has been commonly
assumed, however--and Chomsky and Halle's first approxima-
tion of the reading process (49-50) encourages this view--
that units of conventional orthography correspond very
roughly with the symbols of the phonological representation
(the systematic phonemes of earlier treatments of generative
phonology). There has been at least one thoroughgoing
attempt to explore the implications of the comments Chomsky
and Halle make about orthography--that of Klima (1972),
which will be discussed later in this chapter.
Before turning to more specific discussions of the
theories, it may be useful here to comment further on the
notion of an 'optimal' orthography. English spelling has
frequently been castigated for its failure to be optimal
in the sense that it does not preserve anything near a
direct correspondence to the pronunciation. This criticism
has been echoed by traditional phonemicists and by
teachers of reading everywhere, and, from their point of
view, English spelling is indeed doubly inconsistent, pre-
serving neither a sound-to-spelling nor a spelling-to-sound
correspondence (see note 4). This failure of spelling to
correspond to pronunciation clearly does make the
teacher's--and the learner's--task in language study more
difficult; therefore, from the standpoint of one trying to
learn English, the spelling system is not optimal. But
the orthography may be optimal from other points of view
than the teacher's and the learner's, as Chomsky and Halle
9
suggest. The English spelling system may be optimal (or
nearly so) from the point of view of the adult who knows
the language and the spelling system.
Chomsky and Halle's mentalistic linguistics echoes
Sapir's earlier notion of the phoneme as mental image.
Opposed to this was Bloomfield's apparent belief that the
phoneme could be defined in terms of physical sound. Both
these theories will be discussed below in the general dis-
cussion of phonological theory.
A work of major importance, from which I shall draw
heavily for the discussion of American structural phonology,
is W. Freeman Twaddell's monography,"On Defining the Phoneme"
(1935). Twaddell in fact rejects the theories of American
linguists mentioned above, along with the phoneme theory of
Daniel Jones, in favor of his own definition of the phonemes
as an abstract relationship. Although Twaddell writes in the
structural tradition, he reacts against it in his monograph
on the phoneme, and his reactions bring him close in his
definitions to the phoneme of the Prague school.
Twaddell reacts in a manner characteristic of struc-
tural linguistics against theories which involve mentalistic
or psychological definitions. He echoes Bloomfield (1933:
32-34) in his arguments against the 'mental image' defini-
tion of the phoneme. 'Any correlation of phenomena which
can be established on the basis of mental entities or events
can also, and more economically, be established on the basis
of the phenomena themselves' (Twaddell, 1935: 57). The
scientific method, he says (n. 8) is 'quite simply the
convention that mind does not exist.' Specifically, he
attacks arguments for the psychological reality of the
phoneme on the grounds that they rely on negative evidence--
the failure of subjects to record differently sounds (like
the t in tone and the t in stone) which are phonetically
different.
Turning to the linguists, including Bloomfield, who
claim acoustical reality for the phoneme, Twaddell attacks
their position largely on the grounds of the continuous
10
nature of the acoustical record of speech. It is con-
siderably more difficult, however, for Twaddell to dispose
of the theories of Bloomfield and Daniel Jones than to dis-
pose of the 'mental image' theories. Bloomfield's phoneme,
as Twaddell sees it, is a feature of the speech sounds,
'characteristic of all the speech sounds in question and
characteristic only of these sounds,' while Jones' phoneme
corresponds to the sum of all the speech sounds in question.
Twaddell rejects Bloomfield's 'minimum same of vocal
feature' definition of the phoneme on the grounds that
current research in acoustic phonetics had failed to demon-
strate the feature which supposedly occurred in all instances
of a particular phoneme (63-64).
Jones' definition of the phoneme as 'a family of sounds
in a given language, which are related in character and are
such that no one of them ever occurs in the same surroundings
as any other in words,' fails to account for phonemic over-
lapping in cases like the vowel of dare and air in American
English, which may be assigned to the phoneme in Mary or that
in marry--in dialects where the vowels in these words are
different (64-65). But Jones' definition was not intended
to be 'the theoretical base for the study of phonetic rela-
tionships within a language' (65), but, instead, is intended
for practical use in phonetic transcription.
In addition, Twaddell rejects Morris Swadesh's treat-
ment in"The Phonemic Principle"(1934) because it leaves open
the possibility of arbitrary procedure. The assignment of
the p in spill to the phoneme /p/ rather than to /b/ is
arbitrary on the basis of phonetic similarity (66-67).
If the phoneme cannot be associated with either mental
or physical reality, the alternative for Twaddell is to
regard the phoneme as fiction. 'Although these two procedures
of definition for the phoneme--regarding it as a physical
reality of some order or as a mental (or psychological)
reality--appear to represent the two possibilities, perhaps
they are only subalternatives of one of two possible
procedures' (67). The alternate procedure is definition
of the phoneme as an abstractional fictitious unit. This
definition involves a complicated chain of thirteen inter-
locking definitions leading first to the micro-phoneme (in
9) and finally to the macro-phoneme, which most nearly
resembles the previous notions of the phoneme.
Twaddell defines ordered classes of forms which have
minimal phonological differences (as in the sequence beet:
bit: bait: bet: bat). The minimum phonological difference he
calls the micro-phoneme. The micro-phonemes /i/, /I/, /e/,
/6/, /ae/, in the above sequence are defined, then, as
relationships, as minimum phonological differences, not as
units.
The class pill: till: kill: bill demonstrates the micro-
phonemes /p/, /t/, /k/, /b/. The class nap: gnat: knack: nab
demonstrates a different set of micro-phonemes--different in
that their articulatory specifications are not the same.
The p in pill and the p in nap differ, for example, in
aspiration. These two classes are similarly ordered, however,
since the 'qualitative articulatory differences among the
corresponding phonetic events are similar and in a one-to-one
relation' (73). The p's in pill and nap share the articula-
tory phonetic features bilabial and voiceless; the t's in
till and gnat share the features alveolar and voiceless;
the k's in kill and knack, the features velar and voiceless;
and the b's in bill and nab, the features bilabial and voiced.
'The sum of all similarly ordered terms (micro-phonemes) of
j
similar minimum phonological differences among fori:s is
called a macro-phoneme' (73). The two ordered classes above,
then, give us the macro-phonemes /p/, /t/, /k/, /b/.
In his Principles of Phonology (1969), written soon
after Twaddell's monograph, N. S. Trubetzkoy responds
directly to Twaddell's ideas. He rejects Twaddell's defini-
tion of the phoneme because he considers it unnecessarily
complex, its complexity being due, he says, to Twaddell's
apparent eagerness to avoid the danger of the phoneme's
being considered a building block for words and sentences,
rather than a relationship. He gives his own definition:
. every language presupposes distinctive (phonological)
opposition. The phoneme is a member of such an opposition
that cannot be analyzed into still smaller distinctive
(phonological) units. There is nothing to be changed in
this quite clear and unequivocal definition. Any change can
only lead to unnecessary complications' (Trubetzkoy, 1969:
41).
Trubetzkoy's phoneme corresponds, as he says (42),
exactly with Twaddell's macro-phoneme. From Twaddell's
point of view, this definition leaves open the possibility
of arbitrary procedure like that of assigning the p of spill
to the same phoneme as the p of pill (or to the same phoneme
as the b of bill, the second alternative). Since it is
impossible, on the basis of acoustical or articulatory
criteria, to assign this sound to either the p or the b
macro-phoneme, Twaddell must assign it to a third phoneme:
'The stops of "spill, spare," etc. are significantly bilabial
and stop, but not significantly voiceless; the stops of
"pill, nap, tapper," are significantly bilabial, stop, and
voiceless' (Twaddell: 74). Trubetzkoy and other Prague
school phonologists avoid the problem of arbitrary assignment
of sounds with the notion of neutralization and the archi-
phoneme--the trademark of Prague school phonology.
In Trubetzkoy's book, Prague school phonology becomes
explicitly the study of phonetic features ('properties' in
the Baltaxe translation) and relationships. Most of the
Principles of Phonology is devoted to defining and classify-
ing the relationship between phonemes, which in turn are seen
as bundles of distinctive properties, Perhaps because he
does not limit his treatment to a particular language--nor,
indeed, does he provide any extensive analysis or examples
from any one language--the relational nature of his theory
becomes especially clear.
It is the concept of neutralization and the archiphoneme
which makes the relational nature of Prague school phonology
especially attractive. Twaddell's solution of a third
phoneme in the problem mentioned above leaves open the possi-
bility of considering the phoneme as a piece from which
larger phonological units are built--the notion which Twaddell
was at such great pains to avoid in his definitions. To
comprehend the concept of neutralization in phonology, one
must have a concept of the phoneme as a relationship, or
'fiction' in Twaddell's term.
It is characteristic of Trubetzkoy's approach that he
takes up the logical classification of distinctive opposi-
tions (Chapter III) before he discusses the phonological
classifications (Chapter IV). His phonetic properties are
those now familiar to students of phonology regardless of
their theoretical background. They include the basic divi-
sion of features into vocalic, consonantal, and prosodic
and the features of place ('localization') for consonants.
Although some of Trubetzkoy's terminology may be unfamiliar,
and his treatment of phonetics is more varied than most
others, the notions and classification of the features are
11
familiar.
The logical basis of Prague school theory distinguishes
it from the other theories like those of Sapir and Bloom-
field, as well as that of Twaddell. The notion of neutrali-
zation depends on Trubetzkoy's initial classification of
opposition into bilateral and multilateral opposition.
In bilateral opposition the sum of the features that the
two phonemes have in common is common to those two phonemes
alone; 'the basis for comparison of a multilateral opposi-
tion is not limited to the two respective opposition members'
(Trubetzkoy: 68). It follows, of course, that only members
of a bilateral opposition--like English p and b--can be
neutralized.
The treatments of phonology by American linguists
ignored the logical basis of phonological theory perhaps
because they were largely concerned with discovery procedures.
Swadesh's sections in The phonemic principle (1934) on
method, orthography, normalization, and phonetics are clearly
written for the field linguist faced with the task of analyzing
an unfamiliar language. Indeed, the phonemic principle itself
was originally a part of a paper on Chitimacha phonemes,
as Swadesh indicates at the beginning of the paper (32).
Whatever the cause, emphasis on discovery procedures has
come to be associated with American structural linguistics;
an emphasis on logical structure and analysis has come to be
associated with Prague school linguistics.
Twentieth-century phonological theories before trans-
formational-generative phonology differed from each other in
many ways (some of them indicated abovel2), but they had a
common goal--identification and description of the phonemes
of languages. There was also a general tendency to treat
phonology autonomously, without considering the possible
connections between phonology and grammar or semantics--the
legacy no doubt of the neogrammarians' specifications of
linguistic rigor.
Generative grammar introduced a number of changes that
were startling in the context of the American structuralism
with which it was originally placed in direct competition.
Instead of the behavioristic 'no mind' approach of American
structuralism suggested by Twaddell (above), generative grammar
proposed to describe explicitly the ideal native speaker's
knowledge of his language. This frankly mentalistic approach
is derived at least partly from the mentalistic notions of
Sapir, which were rejected by Twaddell, a debt that Chomsky
(1964) acknowledges.
A feature of generative grammar closely related to
its mentalistic approach is its distinction of competence
(what the ideal speaker-learner knows about his language)
and performance (which is affected by such non-linguistic
13
factors as fatigue and excitement). The business of
grammar is to describe the competence of the native speaker.
In accounting for the speaker's intuition about his language
(Chomsky, 1964: 63), the grammar must account for all possible
forms. In phonology, this means that generative grammar
claims to fill in phonological gaps; therefore, forms like
/nis/ and /blik/ will be predicted, although they do not
actually occur (they are meaningless) in English (Halle, 1962:
341).14
Generative phonology differs in several specific ways
from American structuralist phonology. Halle (1959) provides
an argument against the autonomous phoneme, and Chomsky (1964)
amplifies his argument. (The status of the phoneme in
generative and stratificational phonology will be examined
in Chapter III.)
Although they relied on native-speaker intuition (in
responses of 'the same meaning' or 'different meanings') in
their establishment of phonemes, the American structuralists
rejected mentalistic notions (and 'meaning' in general), and
minimized the importance of the phonetic level. They tended
to see the (autonomous) phonemic level as the structurally
significant level, and to view the phonetic level as non-
linguistic,15 although in practice they relied heavily on
feature analysis and 'phonetic universals' (Chomsky, 1964:
92-93). Generative grammar, in contrast, seeks to develop
a universal phonetic theory which will be incorporated into
the phonology at the systematic phonetic level (Jakobson, Fant,
Gunnar,and Halle, 1963; Halle, 1964; and Chomsky and Halle,
1968: 293-329).
At the top of the phonological component is the
phonological representation, provided by the operation of
the readjustment rules (Chomsky and Halle, 1968: 371-372)
as the input to the phonological component. The phonologi-
cal representation is rendered in phonological segments,
which, in their turn, are matrices of distinctive features
which are subject to successive, ordered rules which
finally result in the systematic phonetic level, correspond-
ing to the pronunciation.
A word, phrase or sentence may have written represen-
tations corresponding to its sequence of feature matrices
after the application of each rule. This is called the
derivation of the word. It begins at the most abstract level
of the phonology, the phonological representation. The
application of each successive rule brings the word closer
to the surface level, and each representation is progressively
less abstract. Thus, the derivation of ambiguity (Chomsky and
Halle; 195):
aembig+u+ity
aembig+i+ity
aembig+w+ity
aembig+yiw+ity
aembig+yuw+ity
The segment undergoing the change in this sequence is /u/,
which is the cover symbol for the following feature matrix
(176):
/u/ vocalic +
consonantal -
high +
back +
low
anterior
coronal
round +
tense
Chomsky and Halle's features at this point--the
phonological representation--are not 'phonetic' in the sense
that they have a pronunciation. Features are defined in
articulatory terms only at the lowest--systematic phonetic--
level. Above that level they are abstract categories. Each
place in the phonological matrix represents a category and
its component (165). The category [+tense] has as its
complement [-tense].
In the derivation above, the segment /u/ undergoes a
tensing and unrounding rule, making it +rtensde, and yielding
the second representation [aembig+T+ity ]. A rule of diph-
thongization adds the segment [w], in features:
[w] vocalic
consonantal
high +
back +
low
anterior
coronal
round +
tense
This yields the third representation [aembig+iw+ity.]. A [y]-
glide is added to this form in features:
[y] vocalic -
consonantal
high +
back
low
anterior
coronal
round
tense
This yields the form [aembig+ytw+ity to which a rounding
rule applies, changing [T] to [u].
vocalic +
consonantal
high +
back +
low
anterior
coronal
round +
tense +
This finally yields the surface form [abmbig+yuw+ity]. From
the underlying phonological /u/, the rules supply [yuw]. In
features:
/u/ ---- [yuw]
+ vocalic -+-
consonantal
+ high +++
+ back -++
low ---
anterior ---
coronal --
+ round -++
tense
Since each phonological phrase undergoes the applica-
tion of rules as a unit for rules involving stress in
English (the 'transformational cycle' in Chomsky and Halle),
and the word undergoes the remaining rules, each phonological
phrase or word has its unique derivational history. Since
the language does not move monolithically through the rules,
it makes no sense to attempt to describe a level at which
a representation can be made for the language as a whole
between the phonological and systematic phonetic represen-
tations.16
The above derivations illustrate the componential
nature of generative phonology. It lacks a segmental
aspect--phonotactics or alternation patterns. The segments
are supplied at the top of the phonology by the lexicon and
the readjustment rules. Admissible segment sequences are
specified by the phonological rules.
The alphabetic representation of English corresponds
roughly to the phonological representation for Chomsky and
Halle. In the example above, /aembig+u+ity/ is nearly
identical with the spelling of the word it represents,
ambiguity; the only segment which does not correspond with
the spelling is /ae/, for which the letter a is always the
English spelling. The phonological representation of
tabular (Chomsky and Halle: 197) is /taebl+aer/, reflecting
the stem table. The spelling corresponds more closely to
the form of the word after the application of a rule that
inserts [u] and a laxing rule which yields the form
[taebul+aer ].
Chomsky and Halle do not state a direct equivalence
between the spelling and the phonological representation,
however, as I have stated. They take the more cautious path
of defining the principle of orthography in negative terns,
suggesting that it should not reflect phonetic variation
where that variation is predicted by a general rule (49).
Halle develops the principle, stating it as, 'ortho-
graphies must contain no symbols that reflect the operation
of phonological rules' (Halle, 1969: 19). The difference
between phonetic [s] and phonetic [z] in consign and design,
respectively, is predicted by a phonetic rule (intervocalic
voicing), and therefore is not represented in the orthography.
Double consonants--not pronounced in English--may also have
a function in the orthograph as they do in the phonology.
The ss sequence in dissent or dissemble blocks the voicing
rule, mentioned above, yielding unvoiced [ss], which is then
reduced by another rule to [s]. The orthographic represen-
tation ss, then, reflects the phonological representation
before the application of the rules, according to the
principle (21).
It is interesting to note that this principle of ortho-
graphy also finds a legitimate use for the letter c. While
c has no distinct sound of its own, always taking the sound
of k or s, this very fact makes it the ideal symbol for the
[k]-[s] alternation in electric-electricity, medical-medicine,
and vocal-vociferous.
Klima (1972) has further pursued the generative ortho-
graphic principle. He suggests four additional principles
in the creation of an optimal orthography: (1) minimal
arbitrariness in representation, (2) minimal redundancy,
(3) sufficient ambiguity or expressiveness, and (4) standardi-
zation (61).
Alphabetic writing is necessarily minimally arbitrary,
as compared with the ideographic of pure syllabic systems.
Alphabets represent the essential segments of the language,
rather than the larger and more numerous elements of syllables
and words. Although an element of arbitrariness is necessary
in representing phonological segments with graphic symbols (a
change from an essentially auditory--albeit abstract--image
to a visual image), alphabetic writing reduced arbitrariness
to a minimum by representing the least numerous and most
frequently repeated elements of language, the phonological
segments. This reduces the number of graphic symbols to a
minimum, making the load on the memory of the language user
as small as possible.
Of course, it is possible for the orthography to indi-
cate distinctive features--p and b are clearly related in
the printed version of English orthography (and in the
orthographies of all other languages using the Latin alpha-
bet). A system that is too thorough in representing the
features, however, runs the risk of violating the first
principle of orthography and representing automatic features.
This unnecessarily phonetic representation also leads
to violation of the principle of economy or minimal redun-
dancy. It would make little sense to have three representa-
tions for the three phonetic k sounds that occur in English
(Klima, 1972: 64): medial in cop, back, labialized in coop;
and palatal in keep.17 The principle of economy in effect is
the same as Chomsky and Halle's orthographic principle.
The principle of expressiveness allows the distinction
of homophones in spelling, as in there and their in English,
and the principle of standardization requires the same word
to be spelled the same way wherever it occurs.
Klima experiments with a number of possible interpreta-
tions of Chomsky and Halle's orthographic principle. He
demonstrates that the relationship between the spelling of
English and any level of the phonology is anything but simple
and straightforward. All the principles he suggests fall
short of adequacy in spelling English. The underlying repre-
sentation of fashion, for example, is /fac+ion/ (70). Tabbed,
tapped, and patted would be spelled tabd, tapt, and pated
by a convention that would permit somewhat less abstract
representations (71). A convention which allows the ortho-
graphy to reflect everything except what is predicted by
regular phonological rules--excluding only those phonetic
effects ascribable to surrounding sound segments and internal
or external word boundary (79)--yields the correct spelling
of oblivion, but the incorrect spellings of rebelyon (rebellion)
and crusyal (crucial).
Klima points out (72) that real orthographies often
reflect the representation of the word rather than its sound
form when the two diverge. For example, the spelling of the
preterite morpheme -ed, cited above, reflects the unity of
the morpheme, rather than the predictable [t], [d], or [Od]
phonetic forms. Thus, spelling in some instances may be only
indirectly phonological.
At any rate, generative phonologists have demonstrated
that spelling in a language like English (and presumably
other languages as well) may be consistent at a level of
language more abstract than pronunciation, although the
optimal nature of the English spelling system has yet to be
conclusively demonstrated--in fact, English spelling reflects
different levels at different times, as the examples cited
here indicate. Phonologists have suggested that in fact
orthography should not reflect the pronunciation, since the
language may be more economically represented at more
abstract levels.
While traditional structural linguists insisted on
viewing writing as the representation of the pronunciation
or the phonology, rather than talking about the pronunciation
of the spelling, the generative interpretation of orthography
has made this distinction as parallel manifestations of an
abstract level of language, so that it makes as much sense
to talk about the pronunciation of the spelling as it does
to talk about the spelling's representing the pronunciation.
King, in his chapter on scribal practice (1969: 203-213),
discusses the competing notions that scribes tend to repre-
sent autonomous phonemes on the one hand (if the analyst is
a traditional phonemicist), or deeper phonological segments
on the other (if the analyst is a generative phonologist).
Scribalpractice, however, is so inconsistent--as in fifteenth-
century English manuscripts--that it is difficult to explain
it consistently on any basis.
It should be observed here that the scribal practice
described in King (1969) is a problem of historical linguis-
tics, while the optimal orthography of Chomsky and Halle and
of Klima (as well as of traditional phonemic theorists) is
a problem of theoretical linguistics. Optimal orthography
is a question of competence in writing, to use generative
terminology, whereas scribal practice is a matter of perform-
ance. The two areas should illuminate each other, but they
cannot be expected to be identical. Historical linguistics
must account for occurring data, while theoretical linguistics
attempts to find the abstract system behind the data, which
is then used to organize and describe the data.
Stratificational theory is an alternative to generative
theory at all levels of analysis, although it has perhaps
been most consistently developed in phonology. The success
that stratificational grammar has had as a basis for machine
translation (see, for example, Lamb, 1964) recommends it
for attention if it had no other appeal. But the theory has
more to recommend it than this basis, and it has many
18
ancestors other than the computer.
One feature of stratificational grammar that sets it
apart from generative grammar is that it rejects the strict
distinction made by Chomsky and others between competence--
what the speaker knows--and performance--what the speaker
actually produces. This feature is central to Algeo's
(1970: 266-268) classification of stratification grammar as
'process-oriented' as opposed to 'system-oriented' generative
19
grammar.
Another important distinction is that stratificational
grammar does not have 'rules' in the same sense that
generative grammar does. The rules of generative grammar
are unidirectional, moving (in phonology) from the more
abstract phonological representation to the more concrete
systematic phonetic level (the pronunciation, in effect).
The lines and nodes of stratificational grammar define rela-
tionships and are bidirectional. In the part of the grammar
relevant here, the morphemes of the morphemic sign pattern
are related to morphons (morphophonemes of earlier theories),
which are related to phonemes by way of the morphonic alter-
nation pattern. Phonemes in turn are related to phonons
(phonetic features) at the bottom of the phonotactics. This
is the 'realizational' portion of the phonology. In addition,
each stratum has a tactic pattern, which is the combinatory
element of that level, specifying the order of the elements,
so that the stratificational scheme may be presented in the
form of Figure 1.
phonemes
Figure 1
The Scheme of Stratificational Phonology
Stratificational linguists have not declared an ortho-
graphic principle.20 But the nearest equivalent to the
phonological representation of generative grammar is the
morphonic level. This level, the downward component of the
morphemic sign pattern, consists of what were formerly
called morphophonemes. The morphonic alternation patterns
have traditionally been called morphophonemic.
It is at this level--morphonic for stratificational
grammar and phonological representation for generative
grammar--that the two theories show perhaps their greatest
similarity. Stratificationalists have done relatively little
work with the English language, but, when work is done with
English, the morphonic level will no doubt be very similar
to the phonological representation of Chomsky and Halle.
The morphonic level, like its ancestor, the morphopho-
21
nemic level,21 contains morphemic elements before they are
distinguished into their variant phonemic forms--the plural
morpheme is represented on the morphonic level probably as
22
/z/,22 the preterite as /d/. The morphophonemic variation
in inflectional suffixes in English is easy to demonstrate.
What may not be immediately obvious is that the morphonic
level will reflect the same conservatism that the generative
phonological representation does. For example, sane and
sanity would have different vowels (/ej/ and /ae/, respectively)
on the phonemic level, but the same vowel at the morphonic
level.
The disagreements between generative and stratifica-
tional grammar involve almost all levels and aspects of
language--the overall structure of the theory; the existence
of morphemic, lexemic, and sememic levels; the existence of
the 'autonomous' phoneme; and the nature of phonetic features--
except this one. Insofar as the phonological representation
of generative theory can account for spelling, then, strati-
ficational theory can also account for it.
Perhaps it should be borne in mind that the process of
creating an orthography in a state of linguistic naivete--a
state in which most orthographies were in fact created--makes
the resulting system very much subject to confusion or preju-
dice on the part of the scribe, not to mention the adequacy
(or inadequacy) of the available symbols. Thus, with the
French influence in Middle English, English scribes learned
to distinguish f and v in the spelling, but French had no
[C] or [8] sounds, and so the distinction, which became
phonemic in Middle English, found no representation in the
spelling. Finally, the print imported from France by William
Caxton contained no letter to represent either the voiced or.
the voiceless dental fricative--which, of course, did not
exist in French. So, after some experimentation with y
(ye for the), [d] and [0] both came to be represented by the
digraph th (see Chapter I).
Historical accidents lead to inconsistencies of the
kind just mentioned, in which one voiceless-voiced pair
(f and v) is distinguished in the spelling, but another
([-] and [e]) is not. Another kind of difficulty is that
English spelling is often unaccountably phonetic. The
voicing alternation in knife-knives is reflected in the
spelling, although in the similar house-houses and bath-
23
bathe, it is not. If we accept the underlying form of
the preterite and plural, with Shibatani (1972), as /d/ and
/z/, respectively, the -ed spelling in all regular verbs
and the -es spelling after sibilants in nouns are unneces-
sarily phonetic in the generative view.24
Both these kinds of inconsistency have their roots in
the history of the language and the origins and development
of the spelling system. There are also relics in the spell-
ing system.of sounds that have been lost. The initial k
of knife and knight, for example, were pronounced in Middle
English, and the spellings of beet and beat reflect a distinc-
tion in pronunciation that died out in the seventeenth
century.
A different and important kind of non-phonological
phenomenon in English spelling is a number of patterns of
some generality which do not directly reflect the phonology,
but are part of the spelling system as distinct from the
phonology. These include the gh spelling in knight which,
while it is a relic like k, serves to indicate a preceding
long (or tense) vowel.* Similarly, single consonants followed
by 'mute e' indicate a preceding long vowel, and double
consonant letters, also for historical reasons discussed in
Chapter I, indicate preceding short vowels in stressed
syllables--mate has tense [ej] and matter has lax [a ].
Finally, there is a certain amount of spelling
irregularity which may be accounted for by the historical
source of the word, but not by the phonetics of English
phonology at any stage. The double c of accommodate
accurately reflects the Latin pronunciation of double
consonants, but its sixteenth-century adoption into
English (OED) came long after double consonants had ceased
to be pronounced in the thirteenth century. Furthermore,
following an unstressed vowel as it does, it can indicate
nothing about the quality of the vowel (normally reduced to
schwa).
There is a large number of elements, patterns, and
relics of various kinds in English spelling which would un-
doubtedly be counted as irregular in any theory of phonology.
Nevertheless, much of what has been condemned about English
spelling--such as the letter c with no single phonetic
value, and the letter a used to represent both the [as] of
telegraph and the [a] of telegraphy--can in fact be seen to
be perfectly regular at the morphonic or phonological level.
Notes
1
In Chinese, the morpheme and word are nearly identi-
cal, the major form of morpheme combination being that of
compounding. There Are only a few restricted exceptions
like the men plural ending applicable only to personal
nouns and pronouns like wo 'I' (women 'we'), and haidz
'child' (haidzmen 'children').
See Samuel E. Martin (1972) for a detailed discussion
of the Japanese writing system.
It may be of interest to note that, in a structural-
ist or Prague school phoneme inventory, standard French and
standard English have about the same number of phonemes--
forty, more or less, depending on the authority cited--with
an especially large number of vowels. Spanish and Italian,
on the other hand, have relatively few phonemes, especially
vowels.
In French a single pronunciation may be represented
by more than one spelling; for example, o: may be spelled
au or eau; a may be spelled en or an, but a given spelling
generally has only one pronunciation. In English, as beet,
beat, weather, illustrate, the irregularity goes both ways--
more than one spelling is possible for a given sound, and
more than one pronunciation is possible for a given spelling.
The distinction is often made between letter, on the
one hand, and grapheme or spelling unit, on the other.
Letters are members of our familiar twenty-six unit alpha-
bet, the abc's. Grapheme and spelling unit are both used
as technical terms to indicate the graphic representation
of language; they are used to avoid the confusion that may
be brought on by the fact that combinations of letters may
represent single segments, as in English th and sh for [8]-
[d] or [s], respectively. Grapheme, as used by Kurath (1964),
for example, seems to indicate the representative of the
phoneme, while spelling units, used by Venezky (1965, 1970)
indicates a spelling system which is more independent of the
phoneme system, having its own rules and patterns. This
distinction reflects a disagreement among linguists as to
the status of alphabetic writing either as a direct repre-
sentation of the phonology or as a system parallel to but
independent of the phonology. I shall discuss this question
later. I believe that, for the purposes of this discussion,
the terms letter and alphabet gain in comprehensibility and
familiarity what they may lose in precision. They are useful
because they preserve the ambiguity in the meanings that
grapheme and spelling unit separate--they can be used to
indicate either phoneme-representative systems or more
independent systems. I have found no reason at this point
to be in total agreement with either interpretation; there-
fore, I shall use the terms letter and alphabet as unambigu-
ously as possible to indicate a segmental spelling system
which may be either phonological or independent.
The relative recency of this view of the relationship
between ancient Greek spelling and pronunciation is attested
by the bitterness of the quarrels in the sixteenth century
between those who wished to change the academic pronuncia-
tion of ancient Greek to make it fit the spelling, and those
who wished to preserve it in the contemporary Greek pronun-
ciation (see the Introduction).
English spelling here represents the alternation at
the phonemic, not the morphophonemic, level.
8
The last statement in this quotation echoes the fre-
quent observation that English tends to spell the same
morpheme in the same way whenever it occurs, regardless of
changes in pronunciation.
9
Kiparsky (1975: 277) remarks that language may be
optimal in one of three ways--from the standpoint of
encoding, from that of decoding, and from that of learning.
It cannot be optimal in all three ways at once, and the
resulting tendency toward the optimum in all three areas
causes the constant change that we know to be a fact of
language.
1Bloomfield's definitions of the phoneme are suffi-
ciently ambiguous for Fudge (1970: 80) to identify them
with the 'functional' view, which includes Trubetzkoy and,
probably, Twaddell.
1The great variety of languages cited in Trubetzkoy's
book leads to a far greater degree of refinement in the
system of features than is generally necessary for the treat-
ment of a single language, or a small group of languages.
12There are two European theories of phonology I have
not covered in this chapter because they do not seem to have
an important bearing on the subject--the relationship of
alphabetic writing to phonology. They are the prosodic
analysis of J. R. Firth and F. R. Palmer, and the glosse-
matics of Louis Hjelmslev and his followers. A brief discus-
sion of both theories can be found in Fudge (1970), and the
origins of prosodic analysis have been treated extensively
by Langendoen (1968).
13The competence-performance distinction is similar
to, but not identical with, the langue-parole distinction
of Saussure and the habit-behavior distinction of Hockett,
as Algeo (1970: n. 6) points out.
14Although genbrative phonology claims to fill in
phonological gaps, stratificational linguistics claims that
this is not possible without a phonological base (tactics)
to define the possible combinations of segments (William J.
Sullivan, personal communication).
1Prague school linguistics developed phonetic theory
more fully than American linguistics. This phonetic theory
has been employed more recently in the phonemic theories of
Mulder (1968) and Martinet (1960, 1962).
1Sanford Schane has found the phoneme alive and well,
not between the top and bottom of the derivational chain,
but at the systematic phonetic level. He observes (1971:
520) that generative grammars generate an 'explicitly broad
phonetic representation, which, implicitly, is a representa-
tion of surface contrasts.' The output of generative
phonology is therefore often almost identical with tradi-
tional phonemic representation.
1The fact that cop, coop, and keep have two different
representations for /k/ is due to a rule of spelling that is
only partially phonetic, that c has the value of /s/ before
i and e. The reason for the development of this rule lies
in the French influence on English spelling, discussed in
Chapter I.
18Lamb acknowledges his debt especially to Hjelmslev
in his Epilegomena to a theory of language (1966a).
19Algeo (1970) outlines this and other ways in which
stratificational grammar differs from generative grammar--
the number of parallel generative mechanisms (strata)--six
for English--and the nature of the 'rules' connecting the
levels.
2Stratificational linguistics is not likely to declare
a principle of orthography like that of generative linguistics.
The question of the level of the phonology to which spelling
corresponds is considered language-specific. Czech spelling,
for example, is phonemic (William J. Sullivan, personal
communication).
21
It may be of interest to note that the term
morphophonemic was considered in earlier versions of
generative phonology, along with systematic phonemic, for
the level Chomsky and Halle (1968) call the phonological
representation.
89
22Arguing in the generative framework, Shibatani (1972)
concludes that /z/ is the underlying representation for the
plural morpheme, and /d/ for the preterite.
23Of course, standard English spelling cannot make
the voiced-voiceless distinction of bath-bathe. It has
the letters s and z to make the distinction in house-houses,
but English spelling practice follows French in generally
using s to represent both [s] and [z] unless [z] is initial.
24
2These spellings reflect Middle English forms in
which the vowel--in the ending of walked, for example--was
pronounced.
CHAPTER III
IN DEFENSE OF THE PHONEME
The concept of the phoneme has been largely rejected
as a theoretical reality by generative linguists since the
arguments against it presented by Halle (1959) and by
Chomsky (1964). However, as indicated in the previous chap-
ter, some theoretical linguists have continued to find the
phoneme to be a viable and important part of their theories.
Lamb (1966b) has demonstrated that the phoneme is defensible;
his arguments will be summarized below.
Algeo (1970) has pointed out that stratificational
and generative linguistics are not arguing at cross purposes.
He suggests that the 'system-oriented' generative grammar
and the 'process-oriented' stratificational grammar in fact
describe different, and perhaps compatible, aspects of
language. I shall try to show in this chapter that the
phoneme is a necessary consequence of a basic requirement
of stratificational linguistics, while the presuppositions
and form of generative theory make it difficult to have a
clear formulation of a phonemic level in that theory.
The disagreement among theories over the viability
of the phoneme has two bases: the question of the proper
object of linguistic enquiry and the question of the form
that the theory takes. The object of generative enquiry is
90
competence, or the rules that the native speaker knows which
enable him to speak and understand his native language.
Theories which espouse the phonema often take as their
object of enquiry something like the Hjelmslevian notion of
texts, or manifest lanquace, and take as a linguistic proce-
dure the analysis of texts. Lamb (1966a) took texts as the
object of enquiry, with a view to describing the system
underlying the production and comprehension of texts. More
recently, he has suggested that the object also includes the
information system that the native speaker knows which enables
him to speak and understand his language. This notion is
similar to the generative competence, but Lamb explicitly
rejects the generative dichotomy between competence and
performance.
The phoneme itself was, of course, conceived as a
theoretical entity long before the distinction between compet-
ence and performance was made. The phoneme was well estab-
lished in linguistic theory before the second world war.
American linguistics of this period was behavioristic in its
orientation. The.concentration of American anthropological
linguistics from Franz Boaz through the second world war on
the recording of languages foreign to the linguist encouraged
a view that linguistic behavior was the proper object of
linguistic endeavor. This concentration also encouraged
the general procedural orientation of American structural
linguistics, which Chomskyan linguists have found objection-
able.
The procedural orientation of the American structural-
ists made the isolation of the distinctive sounds of a
language--the establishment of the phonemes--the first
necessary step in the analysis and recording of the language.
It was this procedural orientation which led Bloomfield to
state (1933: 20) that 'the only useful generalizations about
language are inductive generalizations.' Attacks against
phoneme theory have usually actually been attacks against
the procedural bias of the theories which advocated the
phoneme.
Halle makes one of the early arguments against the
phoneme as a theoretical entity. He provides (1959: 19)
'six formal conditions which phonological descriptions must
satisfy.' Conditions (3), (3a) and (3a-l) are central in
his argument against the phoneme (pages 21-23):
Condition (3): A phonological description
must provide a method of inferring (deriving)
from every phonological representation the utter-
ance symbolized, without recourse to information
not contained in the phonological representation.
Condition (3a): A phonological description
must include instructions for inferring (deriving)
the proper phonological representation of any
speech event, without recourse to information not
contained in the physical signal.
Condition (3a-l): Only utterances which are
different are to be represented by different
sequences of symbols. The number of symbols
employed in all representations must be compatible
with this objective.
Traditionally linguistic descriptions have contained
both representations satisfying Condition (3) alone,
and representations satisfying Conditions (3) and
(3a). The former are usually called 'morphopho-
nemic' to distinguish them from the latter, which
are called 'phonemic.'
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