The Grammar of English Grammars, Goold Brown [ebook reader for manga txt] 📗

that, as a "due pronunciation" necessarily includes the utterance of every syllable, the explanation above stolidly supposes all our syllables to be accented, each "according to its Quantity, (whether it be long or short,)" and each "with a stronger Force or Stress of Voice, than the other Syllables!" Absurdity akin to this, and still more worthy to be criticised, has since been propagated by Sheridan, by Walker, and by Lindley Murray, with a host of followers, as Alger, D. Blair, Comly, Cooper, Cutler, Davenport, Felton, Fowler, Frost, Guy, Jaudon, Parker and Fox, Picket, Pond, Putnam, Russell, Smith, and others.

OBS. 8.—Sheridan was an able and practical teacher of English pronunciation, and one who appears to have gained reputation by all he undertook, whether as an actor, as an elocutionist, or as a lexicographer. His publications that refer to that subject, though now mostly superseded by others of later date, are still worthy to be consulted. The chief of them are, his Lectures on Elocution, his Lectures on the Art of Reading, his Rhetorical Grammar, his Elements of English, and his English Dictionary. His third lecture on Elocution, and many pages of the Rhetorical Grammar, are devoted to accent and quantity—subjects which he conceived to have been greatly misrepresented by other writers up to his time.[495] To this author, as it would seem, we owe the invention of that absurd doctrine, since copied into a great multitude of our English grammars, that the accent on a syllable of two or more letters, belongs, not to the whole of it, but only to some ONE LETTER; and that according to the character of this letter, as vowel or consonant, the same stress serves to lengthen or shorten the syllable's quantity! Of this matter, he speaks thus: "The great distinction of our accent depends upon its seat; which may be either upon a vowel or a consonant. Upon a vowel, as in the words, glóry, fáther, hóly. Upon a consonant, as in the words, hab'it, bor'row, bat'tle. When the accent is on the vowel, the syllable is long; because the accent is made by dwelling upon the vowel. When it is on the consonant, the syllable is short;[496] because the accent is made by passing rapidly over the vowel, and giving a smart stroke of the voice to the following consonant. Obvious as this point is, it has wholly escaped the observation of all our grammarians and compilers of dictionaries; who, instead of examining the peculiar genius of our tongue, implicitly and pedantically have followed the Greek method of always placing the accentual mark over a vowel."—Sheridan's Rhetorical Gram., p. 51. The author's reprehension of the old mode of accentuation, is not without reason; but his "great distinction" of short and long syllables is only fit to puzzle or mislead the reader. For it is plain, that the first syllables of hab'it, bor'row, and bat'tle, are twice as long as the last; and, in poetry, these words are trochees, as well as the other three, glo'ry, fa'ther, and ho'ly.

OBS. 9.—The only important distinction in our accent, is that of the primary and the secondary, the latter species occurring when it is necessary to enforce more syllables of a word than one; but Sheridan, as we see above, after rejecting all the old distinctions of rising and falling, raising and depressing, acute and grave, sharp and base, long and short, contrived a new one still more vain, which he founded on that of vowels and consonants, but "referred to time, or quantity." He recognized, in fact, a vowel accent and a consonant accent; or, in reference to quantity, a lengthening accent and a shortening accent. The discrimination of these was with him "THE GREAT DISTINCTION of our accent." He has accordingly mentioned it in several different places of his works, and not always with that regard to consistency which becomes a precise theorist. It led him to new and variant ways of defining accent; some of which seem to imply a division of consonants from their vowels in utterance, or to suggest that syllables are not the least parts of spoken words. And no sooner has he told us that our accent is but one single mode of distinguishing a syllable, than he proceeds to declare it two. Compare the following citations: "As the pronunciation of English words is chiefly regulated by accent, it will be necessary to have a precise idea of that term. Accent with us means no more than a certain stress of the voice upon one letter of a syllable, which distinguishes it from all the other letters in a word."—Sheridan's Rhetorical Gram., p. 39. Again: "Accent, in the English language, means a certain stress of the voice upon a particular letter of a syllable which distinguishes it from the rest, and, at the same time, distinguishes the syllable itself to which it belongs from the others which compose the word."—Same work, p. 50. Again: "But as our accent consists in stress only, it can just as well be placed on a consonant as [on] a vowel."—Same, p. 51. Again: "By the word accent, is meant the stress of the voice on one letter in a syllable."—Sheridan's Elements of English, p. 55. Again: "The term [accent] with us has no reference to inflexions of the voice, or musical notes, but only means a peculiar manner of distinguishing one syllable of a word from the rest, denominated by us accent; and the term for that reason [is] used by us in the singular number.—This distinction is made by us in two ways; either by dwelling longer upon one syllable than the rest; or by giving it a smarter percussion of the voice in utterance. Of the first of these, we have instances in the words, gl=ory, f=ather, h=oly; of the last, in bat'tle, hab'it, bor'row. So that accent, with us, is not referred to tune, but to time; to quantity, not quality; to the more equable or precipitate motion of the voice, not to the variation of notes or inflexions."—Sheridan's Lectures on Elocution, p. 56; Flint's Murray's Gram., p. 85.

OBS. 10.—How "precise" was Sheridan's idea of accent, the reader may well judge from the foregoing quotations; in four of which, he describes it as "a certain stress," "the stress," and "stress only," which enforces some "letter;" while, in the other, it is whimsically made to consist in two different modes of pronouncing "syllables"—namely, with equability, and with precipitance—with "dwelling longer," and with "smarter percussion"—which terms the author very improperly supposes to be opposites: saying, "For the two ways of distinguishing syllables by accent, as mentioned before, are directly opposite, and produce quite contrary effects; the one, by dwelling on the syllable, necessarily makes it long; the other, by the smart percussion—of the voice, as necessarily makes it short"—Ib., p. 57. Now it is all a mistake, however common, to suppose that our accent, consisting as it does, in stress, enforcement, or "percussion of voice," can ever shorten the syllable on which it is laid; because what increases the quantum of a vocal sound, cannot diminish its length; and a syllable accented will always be found longer as well as louder, than any unaccented one immediately before or after it. Though weak sounds may possibly be protracted, and shorter ones be exploded loudly, it is not the custom of our speech, so to deal with the sounds of syllables.

OBS. 11.—Sheridan admitted that some syllables are naturally and necessarily short, but denied that any are naturally and necessarily long. In this, since syllabic length and shortness are relative to each other, and to the cause of each, he was, perhaps, hardly consistent. He might have done better, to have denied both, or neither. Bating his new division of accent to subject it sometimes to short quantity, he recognized very fully the dependence of quantity, long or short, whether in syllables or only in vowels, upon the presence or absence of accent or emphasis. In this he differed considerably from most of the grammarians of his day; and many since have continued to uphold other views. He says, "It is an infallible rule in our tongue that no vowel ever has a long sound in an unaccented syllable."—Lectures on Elocution, p. 60. Again: "In treating of the simple elements or letters, I have shown that some, both vowels and consonants, are naturally short; that is, whose sounds cannot possibly be prolonged; and these are the [short or shut] sounds of ~e, ~i, and ~u, of vocal sounds; and three pure mutes, k, p, t, of the consonant; as in the words beck, lip, cut. I have shown also, that the sounds of all the other vowels, and of the consonant semivowels, may be prolonged to what degree we please; but at the same time it is to be observed, that all these may also be reduced to a short quantity, and are capable of being uttered in as short a space of time as those which are naturally short. So that they who speak of syllables as absolutely in their own nature long, the common cant of prosodians, speak of a nonentity: for though, as I have shown above, there are syllables absolutely short, which cannot possibly be prolonged by any effort of the speaker, yet it is in his power to shorten or prolong the others to what degree he pleases."—Sheridan's Rhetorical Gram., p. 52. And again: "I have already mentioned that when the accent is on the vowel, it of course makes the syllable long; and when the accent is on the consonant, the syllable may be either long or short, according to the nature of the consonant, or will of the speakers. And as all unaccented syllables are short, the quantity of our syllables is adjusted by the easiest and simplest rule in the world, and in the exactest proportion."—Lect. on Elocution, p. 66.

OBS. 12.—This praise of our rule for the adjustment of quantity, would have been much more appropriate, had not the rule itself been greatly mistaken, perplexed, and misrepresented by the author. If it appear, on inspection, that "beck, lip, cut," and the like syllables, are twice as long when under the accent, as they are when not accented, so that, with a short syllable annexed or a long one prefixed, they may form trochees; then is it not true, that such syllables are either always necessarily and inherently short, or always, "by the smart percussion of the voice, as necessarily made short;" both of which inconsistent ideas are above affirmed of them. They may not be so long as some other long syllables; but, if they are twice as long as the accompanying short ones, they are not short. And, if not short, then that remarkable distinction in accent, which assumes that they are so, is as needless as it is absurd and perplexing. Now let the words, beck'on, lip'ping, cut'ter, be properly pronounced, and their syllables be compared with each other, or with those of lim'beck, fil'lip, Dr=a'cut; and it cannot but be perceived, that beck, lip, and cut, like other syllables in general, are lengthened by the accent, and shortened only in its absence; so that all these words are manifestly trochees, as all similar words are found to be, in our versification. To suppose "as many words as we hear accents," or that "it is the laying of an accent on one syllable, which constitutes a word," and then say, that "no unaccented syllable or vowel is ever to be accounted long," as this enthusiastic author does in fact, is to make strange scansion of a very large portion of the trissyllables and polysyllables which occur in verse. An other great error in Sheridan's doctrine of quantity, is his notion that all monosyllables, except a few small particles, are accented; and that their quantity is determined to be long or short by the seat or the mode of the accent, as before stated. Now, as our poetry abounds with monosyllables, the relative time of which is adjusted by emphasis and cadence, according to the nature and importance of the terms, and according to the requirements of rhythm, with no reference to this factitious principle, no conformity thereto but what is accidental, it cannot but be a puzzling exercise, when these difficulties come to be summed up, to attempt the application of a doctrine so vainly conceived to be "the easiest and simplest rule in the world!"

OBS. 13.—Lindley Murray's principles of accent and quantity, which later grammarians have so extensively copied, were mostly extracted from Sheridan's; and, as the compiler appears to have been aware of but few, if any, of his predecessor's errors, he has adopted and greatly spread well-nigh all that have just been pointed out; while, in regard to some points, he has considerably increased the number. His scheme, as he at last fixed it, appears to consist essentially of propositions already refuted, or objected to, above; as any reader may see, who