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Linguistics

Notes Phonetics studies the defining characteristics of all human vocal noise, and concentrates its attention
on those sounds which occur in the languages of the world. In other words, phoneticians try to
study how the various organs of speech—the lungs, the larynx, the soft palate, the tongue and the
lip—function in the production of speech. They also attempt to offer articulatory descriptions of
various sounds by describing the air-stream-mechanism and the phonatory and articulatory
processes involved. Acoustic phoneticians examine the physical nature of sounds and analyse the
speech waves with the help of various instruments.

4.2 History of Phonetics

The ancient Hindu Rishis who composed the Vedas, must have been in the know of phonetics. The
Vedas were to be chanted and pronounced very accurately. To mispronounce a Vedic mantra or
richa was regarded as a sin of the first order. Even the classification and arrangement of sounds
and their formation in varnas in Sanskrit give an evidence of a sound phonetic base of this
language. In the works of Panini (400 B.C.?), Patanjali (2nd Century A.D.), etc., we can have some
concrete and outstanding evidence of the ancient phonetics of India. At about the same time the
Greeks and the Romans had also made language and speech the subject of serious study.
Early Studies
Besides the Indians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, and the Arabs also took interest in
speech around the seventh century A.D.
The Sixteenth Century

Some of the first writers whose work was concerned with the relation between the sounds of
English and those of another language were John Palgrave (Lesclarcissement de la langue Francoyse,
1530), William Salesbury (Dictionary in English and Welshe, 1547), Thomas Smith (De rectaet emendata
linguae anglicae scriptone 1568), John Hart (Orthogaphie, 1569), John Wallis (Grammatical Linguae
Anglicane, 1563). Special mention must be made of Hart and Wallis. Besides making out his case
for spelling reform and proposing a revised system, Hart took a keen interest in the description of
the organs of speech, defined vowels and consonants and noted the aspiration of voiceless plosives.
Wallis intended his Grammar to help foreigners to learn English more easily and also to enable his
countrymen to understand more thoroughly the true nature of their language. A work of wider
scope than Wallis’ is Bishop John Wilkins’ work who wrote Essay toward a Real Character and a
Philosophical Language (1668). Wilkins also describes the functions of the speech organs, and offers
a general classification of the sounds articulated by them. He offers suggestions for a phonetic
alphabet.
The Seventeenth Century

Among the seventeenth-century phoneticians, the most important name is that of Christopher
Cooper. His work on English pronunciation was first published in 1685 Grammatica linguae Anicanae,
with an English edition apearing in 1687 (The English Teacher, or The Discovery of the Art of Teaching
and Learning the English Tongue). Cooper wanted to describe, and prescribe rules for, the
pronunciation of English for ‘Gentlemen, Ladies, Merchants, Tradesmen, Schools and Strangers’.
His aim was to describe English as it existed and not to reform its spelling.
The Eighteenth Century

The work done in the seventeenth century was continued in the eighteenth, but it lost its original
spirit. The Eighteenth-century writers were deeply interested in the production of dictionaries to
stabilize and standardize the language. The Dictionaries of Samuel Johnson (1755), Thomas Sheridan
(1780), and John Walker (1791), are noteworthy contributions of this age. Some of the scholars in
this age confused phonetics with rhetoric. And it was not until the nineteenth century that a clear
distinction was made between the aesthetic judgments and the phonetic analysis.

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