The Sound System: Description and Classification

Abstract

It is perhaps just to claim that commentators in the latter half of the eighteenth century are less concerned than their predecessors with the criteria to be applied for differentiating vowels, consonants and diphthongs and the various subdivisions into which they could be placed. The influence of Wallis’ Grammatica (1653) is still strong, although it would appear that commentators in this period placed a somewhat greater emphasis on the mechanics of articulatory production in their description of both vowel and consonantal segments. Tucker, under his discussion of the Formation of Sounds, agonizes over finding any justification for the entire descriptive and classificatory process (1773: 23–4):

One would think there could be nothing curious in telling people what they do every day, and every hour of the day; but experience testifies that we do not always advert upon things we perform by constant habit and in a manner mechanically; I have found difficulty in examining my own motions exactly, and have met with people who would hold an argument in what manner we both performed the same operation; others, when I have been so lucky to find their ready concurrence with my observations, still mortify me with a question, ‘What need tell us of all this? Does not everybody know we make an l with our tongue, and an m with our lips?’

Walker’s account of the vowel/consonant dichotomy reflects the conventional wisdom of many observers earlier in the century (1791: 2): ‘A vowel is a simple sound formed by a continued effusion of the breath, and a certain confirmation of the mouth, without any alteration in the position, or any motions of the organs of speech, from the moment the vocal sound commences till its ends.¹²⁷