The London School

The London School

From the sixteenth century onwards, England was remarkable for the extent to which various aspects of practical linguistics flourished here, by which term I refer to such activities as orthoepy ( the codification and teaching of correct pronounciation), lexicography, invention of shorthand systems, spelling reform, and the creation of artificial `philosophical language´ such as those of George Dalgarno and Jhon Wilkins.

The study of the linguistic tradition had as a consequence the enphasis in phonetics.  Phonetic study in the modern sense was pioneered by Henry Sweet (1845-1912). Sweet based his historical studies on a detailed undestanding of the workings of the vocal organs. Sweet´s phonetics was practical as well as academic; he was actively concern with sistematizing phonetic transcription in connection with problems of language-teaching and of spelling reform. He was one of the early advocates of the notion of phoneme, which for him was a matter of practical importance as the unit which should be symbolized in an ideal system of orthography.

Sweet´s general approach to phonetics was continued by Daniel Jones( 1881-1926). Jones stressed the importance for language study of thorough training in the practical skills of perceiving, transcribing, and reproducing minute distinctions of speech-sound; he invented the system of cardinal reference-points which made precise and consistent transcription possible in the case of vowels.

The man who turned linguistics proper into a recognized, distinct academic in Britain was J. R. Firth (1890-1960). J.R. Firth turned linguistics proper into a recognized, distinct academic subject. Firth said that the phonology of a language consist of a number of system of alternative possibilities which come into play at different points in phonological unit such a syllable, and there is no reason to identify the alternants in one system with those in another. A phonemic transcription, represent a fully consistent application of the particular principles of orthography on which European alphabetic scripts happen to be more or less accurately based. Firth´s theory allows for an unlimited variety of systems, the more distinct systems a given description recognizes the more complex that description will be.

A Firthian phonologycal analysis recognizes a number of ‘systems’ of prosodies operating at various points in structure which determine the pronunciation of a given form in interaction with segment-sized phonematic units.The terminological distinction between ‘prosodies’ and ‘phonematic units’ could as well be thought of as ‘prosodies’ that happen to be only one segment long.

The concept of the prosodic unit in phonology seems, so attractive and natural that it is surprising to find that it is not more widespread. In fact just one American Descriptivists, Zellig Harris, did use a similar notion; but Harris’s ‘long components’ though similar to Firth’s prosodies, are distinct and theoretically less attractive. Firth insisted that sound and meaning in language were more directly related that they are ussually taken to be.

Linguistics of the London School have done much more work on the analysis of intonation that have Americans of any camp and the Brithis work.Firthian phonology, it is primarily concerned with the nature and import of the various choices which one makes in deciding to utter one particular sentence out of the infinitely numerous sentencesthat one’s language makes available.

http://www.proprofs.com/games/crossword/the-school-of-london/