History of Linguistics Histoire De La Linguistique

HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS HISTOIRE DE LA LINGUISTIQUE

GEORGE DALGARNO AND JOHN RAY ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE LETTERS

1. Introduction Descriptions of English pronunciation produced by orthoepists of the Renaissance are remarkable for their observational detail, and offer a rich resource of phonetic data for the study of dialect variation and language change. These works were surveyed in E.J. DOBSON’s book entitled Eng- lish Pronunciation 1500–1700, which appeared in 1957, and they have been the object of various studies in the intervening years1. But orthoepy in the mid-17th century is also remarkable for its theoretical sophistica- tion. It is fully informed by the classical doctrine of the letters, the “letter” being an abstract element analysed in terms of its name, figure and power. Furthermore, these traditional ideas are enriched and elaborated in the context of universal language schemes. A convenient survey of the rele- vant issues from a 17th-century point of view, referring both to classical and contemporary authors, can be found in the well-footnoted chapter on orthography in John WILKINS’s Essay Towards a Real Character (1668)2.

1 Although DOBSON (1957) remains the definitive survey of orthoepic writings in this period, it is curiously uninformed by the contemporary “doctrine of the letters” which underpins them. In the absence of a general treatment of the theoretical issues in question, the most effective introduction is through one of the recent excellent studies of individual writers, such as KEMP on WALLIS (1972), SALMON on HARRIOT (1992) and HART (1994), or PERCIVAL on NEBRIJA (1982). On the transmission of Greek phonetic ideas to Renais- sance thinkers, see ALLEN (1981), PERCIVAL (1987) and SALMON (1995). 2 At the outset of his chapter on orthography, WILKINS provides a list of authorities (by no means exhausting those referred to elsewhere in the work) covering both the classical tradition and more recent scholarship. From the ancients, in addition to “those Famous Emperours, Cajus Cæsar and Octavius Augustus”, he mentions VARRO, APPIAN, QUINTILIAN and PRISCIAN; modern writers include ERASMUS, the two SCALIGERs, LIPSIUS, SALMASIUS, VOSSIUS, Jacobus MATTHIAS, Adolphus METKERCHUS and Bernardus MALIN- CHOT. Of English writers he singles out four for special mention, namely Sir Thomas SMITH, William BULLOKAR, Alexander GIL and John WALLIS, the last of whom he con- siders has “with greatest Accurateness and subtlety to have considered the Philosophy of Articulate sounds”. William HOLDER and Francis LODWICK receive special mention as having given WILKINS access to their private papers, in which he has found “several suggestions that are new, out of the common rode, and very considerable” (WILKINS 1668: 357) 136 D. CRAM

In fact I should declare at the outset that this paper is as much about universal language schemes as it is about phonology and phonetics in their own right, and is a continuation of an earlier paper (CRAM 1991) concerning the “alphabet of simple ideas”, a way of thinking about a philosophical language which links George DALGARNO with Seth WARD, John WALLIS and LEIBNIZ. The notion of an alphabet of simple ideas can be taken as a metaphorical way of indicating that the set of simple notions to which all complex ones might be reduced are perhaps as few in number as the letters of the alphabet. However, it is clear from DAL- GARNO’s work (DALGARNO 1661; 1680) that the idea of an alphabet of simple notions can also be taken at face value, and that there is a non- trivial parallel between the analysis of speech into “simple” letters and the analysis of thought into “simple” notions. In the first part of the paper I shall sketch out the theoretical framework by exploring 17th-century reception of the doctrine of the letters, and more particularly the idea of a “simple” letter, within the framework of universal language schemes. In the second part of the paper I shall then consider two concrete instances where there were conflicting opinions regarding the analysis of letters as simple and compound, and which reveal contrasting methods of argumentation which are peculiar to the 17th century.

2. The alphabet of simple notions Let me introduce the first section by giving a quotation from George DALGARNO in which he seeks to establish a parallel between phonological analysis on the one hand and semantic analysis on the other: “As he therfore that first founde out the way to resolve all articulate sounds of humane voice into 24 letters [according to the vulgar account] deserved well of mankinde, so my judgment has alwise bin that he that shews himself so good a philosopher as to state the fewest Notions of things, which in my opinion should be the Genera and communes rationes rerum, and so skilfull a Grammarian to fitt radical words [to them …] I say he that does this skillfully has laid the best foundation for a Philosophical Language”. (DALGARNO MS Christ Church 162 f. 47 r)

This is a point which DALGARNO elaborates elsewhere, ascribing the invention of the alphabet to none other than Adam3. What is required to establish a philosophical language, and to reconstruct the adamic language

3 The controversial issue for DALGARNO, as for others in the 17th century, was not so much the antiquity of the Hebrew characters as such but the antiquity of the diacritic “points” to represent the vowels (cf. WILKINS 1668: 365). On the debate concerning the origin and diversity of writing systems, see DAVID (1965). G. DALGARNO AND J. RAY ON THE DOCTRINE OF LETTERS 137 in full, is a parallel semantic analysis of our notions of things, which would have been an aspect of the structure of the adamic language sub- sequently lost. The outcome of such a logical analysis would be a set of simple notions — i.e. ones that could not themselves be resolved further into component parts — a set which might be as few in number as the alphabet itself. The idea of an “alphabet of simple notions” is therefore, for DAL- GARNO, more than a metaphorical turn of phrase. It can also be taken quite literally, assuming a 17th-century understanding of the idea of a letter. Thus, when at the beginning of Ars Signorum DALGARNO gives the overall map of his summa genera, each of these is represented by a single letter of the alphabet. The procedure followed is described by DALGARNO as follows: “Conatus eram omni studio, tot Summa Genera Rerum constituere, qot [sic] soni simplices sunt, idqe methodo correspondenti inter Signum & Signatum […]”4. (DALGARNO 1661: 50) In fact this is more than just a serial list of letters. It is a structured list, arranged in such a way that the phonological categories match the conceptual ones. First come the seven vowels corresponding to DAL- GARNO’s maximally superordinate categories, followed by nine stop consonants which themselves were arranged in classical triads (nasal stops, voiced stops and voiceless stops). There then follow three “servile” letters (s, r, l) which have the combinatorial properties of forming clusters with the foregoing stops (the letter r for example being used in combi- nations to indicate the opposite of a given notion). The final letter, v, has the function of setting off words representing numerals. Phonological groupings thus correspond with notional groupings. (There is more that could be said about the assignment of numerical values to each of the letters, which has associations with hermetic and cabalistic tradition, but this need not concern us here.) Notice that some letters of the alphabet are missing — for instance j, which is used in English to represent the palato-alveolar affricate [dz]. This is because the affricate [dz] is not a simple sound but a compound one, and can be resolved into a sequence of two simple sounds (as we shall see below). In a philosophical language, a simple letter must represent a simple sound, just as more generally a simple sign must represent a simple signatum. This is where Occam’s razor applies: entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. Indeed, as DALGARNO himself is

4 Translation: “I made every effort to arrive at the same number of summa genera of things as there are simple sounds and this in accordance with a principle of correspon- dence between the sign and the things signified”. 138 D. CRAM pleased to point out, since the most general category of all is Ens, one can say that Occam’s razor applies in a particularly appropriate manner — one might say that it applies quite literally: Entia non sunt multipli- canda praeter necessitatem. The charge of redundancy (of multiplying entities beyond necessity) is the major criticism which DALGARNO directs at John WILKINS’s universal language scheme. DALGARNO argues at length in his unpublished papers that in departing from the crucial mapping between simple sound and simple concept, WILKINS’s Essay is not a universal language at all but something more like an encyclopaedia of notions. That this principle was initially in the background of WILKINS’s Essay is, however, evident from the testimony of John RAY, who was commissioned by WILKINS to draw up the tables relating to natural history. In a letter to Martin LISTER in 1669, RAY describes the precise brief that WILKINS had given him — and in reading this one should bear in mind the phonological triads just mentioned: “I was constrained, in arranging the Tables, not to follow the lead of nature, but to accommodate the plants to the author’s prescribed system. This demanded that I should divide herbs into three squadrons as nearly equal as possible: then that I should split up each squadron into nine “differences” as he called them, that is subordinate kinds, in such a way that the plants ordered under each “difference” should not exceed a fixed number; finally that I should join pairs of plants together or arrange them in couples”. (RAY to LISTER [1669]; cited from RAVEN [1942:182])

I shall return to RAY further on. Let me briefly summarise what I have said so far. DALGARNO argues that a philosophical language must be based on a strict logical analysis of things. What I am suggesting, however, is that although his analysis is indeed strictly logical, it is guided or motivated (one might almost say “driven”) by phonological analysis in a more direct manner than is usu- ally assumed.

3. The Doctrine of the Letters The “doctrine of the letters” is usefully set out, with explanations and references, in John WILKINS’s Essay toward a Real Character. He intro- duces the subject as follows: “Orthography is that part of Grammar, which concerns the doctrine of Letters, which being the most simple Elements of Speech, it ought therefore to be stated, that there may be a sufficient number of them to express all Articulate sounds, and not more then are necessary to this end. […]” (WILKINS 1668: 357) G. DALGARNO AND J. RAY ON THE DOCTRINE OF LETTERS 139

What needs to be emphasized here is that the notion of a “letter”, in this 17th-century context, is not one that belongs uniquely to the phonological level (however abstract that may be defined), but is one that “bridges” between sound and meaning. This is a complex matter since the relation between sound and meaning necessarily intersects with another quite independent dimension, viz. the relation between speech and writing, which is of equal importance in the context of universal language schemes. What WILKINS invokes at this point is a scheme deriving from the classical doctrine of the letters (WILKINS 1668: 357)5. Under this view, the “letter” is an abstract unit which can be identified in terms of a set of attributes, which include figure (i.e. its graphic realisation) and power (i.e. its phonetic realisation). In its essence the letter is thus not uniquely associated with written language, any more than it is uniquely associated with the spoken; these are alternative realisations of one and the same thing. In the context of philosophical language schemes, this traditional theory of the letter is further adapted, along lines indicated in 2. above, so as to bridge between form and meaning in much the same way as it bridges between speech and writing. It must be stressed however that this ingenious application of the theory of letters was not a self-evidently obvious step for all of the contempo- raries of WILKINS and DALGARNO. It is striking that both of their schemes are presented in a dual form, as is manifest in their respective titles: WILKINS’s Essay is an essay towards both a Real Character and a Philo- sophical Language; DALGARNO’s Ars Signorum is subtitled both a Char- acter Universalis and also a Lingua Philosophica. The term “character” here means a non-phonetic system of written signs; the term “language” means a system of effable signs. What is at issue here is that there is another axiom from the classical tradition that needs to be reconciled with the 17th-century elaboration of the doctrine of the letters. This second principle concerns the derivative status of alphabet writing; a spoken word is a primary sign, the written word represents the spoken word and is thus not a primary but a secondary sign — a sign of a sign. What is thus difficult to accommodate, in a 17th-century framework, is the step (or rather what seemed at the time to be a leap) from a real character, in which the graphic forms are held to stand not indirectly for spoken words, but directly for things, and a philosophical language which is simply a real character that has been made effable. The relation between these two artefacts is asymmetrical, and DALGARNO reports hostility towards the very idea of a philosophical

5 On the history of the doctrine of letters see ABERCROMBIE (1949) and DROIXHE (1971). On the related doctrine of permutatio litterarum, covering sound alternations from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective, see CRAM (forthcoming). 140 D. CRAM language (on intellectual and theological grounds) from those who were nevertheless quite happy with the idea of a real character. Indeed DAL- GARNO spills a lot of ink in attempting to resolve this dilemma by intricate argumentation. To cite but one example: “Let us suppose a deaf and dumb man cured of this bodily weakness after he is Master of a Language; yet books to him are still Real Character till by a new course of discipline he be taught the vocal power of letters and the Art of reading6. […] The Characters of letters to others are properly the immediate Signs of articulate voice; to him they are still the immediate signs of things, and so most properly a Real Character”. (DALGARNO MS Christ Church 162 f. 71r)

This quotation is from DALGARNO’s unpublished papers — but in fact he devoted a whole book to the language of the deaf, which he states to have been a direct spin-off from his work on universal language, as also the treatment of phonotactics, his “Discourse of the nature and number of the double consonants”, which is printed there as an appendix (DAL- GARNO 1680). Having looked at the theory of letters in connection with universal language schemes, let me return to the idea of the alphabet in its more conventional sense, and give two instances of debate over what consti- tutes a simple letter. What is of interest here is the type of argumentation that is used.

4. Two case studies of argumentation concerning the simple letters 4.1. The Nasals In 17th-century descriptions of the sound system of English it is uniformly assumed that the language has a three-way nasal contrast (i.e. labial, dental and velar — the descriptive labels vary from author to author, but that need not concern us here)7. It is also generally recog- nised as a “defect” of the English alphabet that there is no simple graph for the velar nasal: it is represented by the sequence of n plus g. (There is also a stock discussion of how this sound is represented in Greek and Latin). In the alphabet of simple letters representing his summa genera, it will be seen that DALGARNO does indeed include a third unit after the labial and dental nasals m and n, a unit which he represents as F. It is quite clear from the layout of the list which structural slot is thereby identified — using the attributes of “order” and “affinity”, to use terms

6 “Reading” here, of course, means reading aloud rather than reading for comprehension. 7 On the treatment of nasality in the 17th century, see KEMP (1981). G. DALGARNO AND J. RAY ON THE DOCTRINE OF LETTERS 141 drawn from WILKINS. From the philosophical order in which the units are presented (in three traditional triads): MBP NDT FGK one can see that the F unit has affinity both with the velars, G and K, and also with the nasals (or gutturals, in DALGARNO’s terminology) M and N, which identifies the sound represented by F as a velar nasal. In identifying three “simple” nasal sounds, DALGARNO and WILKINS concur, and they go along with the common opinion. However, there is another point concerning the nasals where they differ, and this offers a telling illustration of how DALGARNO invokes Occam’s razor to pick holes in WILKINS’s analysis of the simple sounds. After describing the voiced nasals, which he transcribes as m, n, and ng, WILKINS says: “To the Sonorous letters of this kind, there are three Mutes of affinity, hm, hn, hng; which are formed when the breath is emitted through the Instruments of Speech, in the same position respectively as in the former, but without any vocal sound”. (WILKINS 1668: 367) Of these aspirated or “mute” nasals he goes on to say that the first two are in use amongst the Welsh and the Irish and that the third, “in the opinion of Bellarmine and some other grammarians”, is found in Hebrew. DALGARNO replies to this statement as follows: “[…] the number of close consonants is nine, neither more nor less: not more I say, because I find that some add three more, hm, hn, hng, calling them mutes, making only this difference between them and m,n,ng, that the one is uttered vocally, the other whisperingly; but if a whispering and a vocal breath make distinct letters, there will be more distinctions of letters than the authors of this opinion seem to approve; and if this be reason enough to multiply letters, I know not but soft speaking, and crying about the streets may have the same power”. (DALGARNO 1680: 166) In other words, the range of ways in which any “letter” can be pronounced, by different people and in different contexts, is indefinitely varied; but such variability (free allophony, to use an anachronistic term) is not in itself a sufficient criterion for setting up additional simple letters. Note that DALGARNO is not here disputing that some languages (e.g., Welsh and Irish) allow voiceless nasals; the issue is whether or not these constitute simple sounds. In his treatise on double consonants DAL- GARNO is concerned with the ways languages may differ in how they allow simple letters to be combined to form consonant clusters initially and finally in the syllable, and in this respect he finds a contrast between English and other languages including Greek, Hebrew and Polish. 142 D. CRAM

Resolving words into their constituent simple letters is thus, for DAL- GARNO, a matter of complex logical analysis. It is for this reason that he ascribes the invention of the alphabet to Adam in his prelapsarian state, stressing the fact that this was before the invention of writing8. What was achieved by Adam in the case of simple sounds can serve as a model for the parallel task in the case of simple notions.

4.2. The Affricates My second example involves the affricates which were mentioned above. I give this example to illustrate a type of empirical argumentation used by John RAY which differs from the a priori argumentation favoured by both WILKINS and DALGARNO9. As with the nasals, just discussed, it was a point of controversy in the 17th century whether the affricates should be analysed as single or composite “letters”. In any system of phonetic transcription, this problem could not be avoided, of course, since a decision had to be made as to whether they should be represented by a single graph or a sequence of two and some orthoepists simply made a decision in this matter without giving any explicit justification. In other cases, however, it is of considerable interest to see the types of argument deployed in justification of one or other position. Representative of those who treat the affricates as compound rather than simple sounds is William HOLDER, who states that: “Ch (as we pronounce it) is a compound of T. and Sh. or at least T. and Y. As also J Consonant with us, or G semblably pronounced, is compounded of D and Zh, or D and Y”. (HOLDER 1669: 72)

Francis LODWICK, by contrast, deals with the affricates along with other sounds represented by digraphs in received orthography which, he maintains, should nevertheless be analysed as simple sounds: “Some of the […] twenty-nine single Consonants, are vulgarly supposed compounded, as th, ch, sh, gn, ng, &c. But if you consider the Sound of each single Consonant in the Composition apart, and then the Conjunction of them in that order, so as the single Sounds may be clearly discerned in the Composition, you will never make the Sounds required, and if neither

8 “The man who first discovered the method of analysing human words into the sim- plest, primary and irreducible sounds rendered the greatest of services to the human race. This discovery quite certainly preceded the invention of alphabetic letters […] for the latter are nothing but signs of signs, i.e. of sounds, and thus necessarily secondary to the former”. (DALGARNO 1661: ch.1) 9 The difference between RAY and WILKINS also emerges from RAY’s approach to the collection and classification of linguistic data; see the discussion in CRAM (1990). G. DALGARNO AND J. RAY ON THE DOCTRINE OF LETTERS 143

by this nor by any other Conjunction the required sound can be made out, it must be a single and no compound sound”. (LODWICK 1686: 31) These contrary positions, it should be noted, are both justified in artic- ulatory or acoustic phonetic terms. Turning now to WILKINS and RAY, we find that they have the same opinion on the composite nature of the affricates, but justify their position on different gounds. Of the affricates, WILKINS says: “What the true Original is of (J) Consonant, and that power which we give to (Ch) in the words Charity, Cheese, Chosen, Chink, &c. is a question men have much differed about. ‘Tis evident that neither of them are single Letters, because in the prolation of them, we do not end with the same sound with which we begin. […] It seems to be plain, that J Con- sonant is a Compound of D, and Zh; and Ch of T, and Sh”. (WILKINS 1668: 372)

In this context he refers to alternative analyses by John WALLIS and Alexander GIL10, but does not give any further reason for assuming that the affricate is not a simple letter but a complex one. On this point RAY concurs, and he does so in a tract which purports to be doing little more than reproduce WILKINS’s views on the reform of the English alphabet (RAY 1691): “To ch we give a strange power or sound, which the Bishop of Chester rightly determines to be Tsh. This young Children perceive: for bid them pronounce Church, some shall pronounce it Tursh, and some Shursh, the former observing the Letter T in it, and the latter the Letter Sh. Whence it appears that the true Writing of it is Tshurtsh”. (RAY 1691: 162) With reference to the corresponding voiced affricate he says: “To what we call J Consonant we attribute a strange power, which no Child can imagine to belong to it: which the Bishop of Chester hath rightly determined to be Dzy11. That D is an ingredient into it Children do easily discern; for bid a young child, that begins to speak, say John, it will say Don”. (RAY 1691: 160)

In fact RAY is mistaken in ascribing the analysis dzy to WILKINS: this is the analysis suggested by Alexander GIL. WILKINS transcribes this affricate as simply dy. But the phonetic details are not important; the thing of interest here is RAY’s use of empirical developmental evidence for the analysis of a complex sequence into “simple” components.

10 WALLIS treats the affricates not under simple sounds but in the section “De Sonis Compositis” (WALLIS, ed. KEMP 1972: 201); cf. GIL (1619: chapter 1). 11 Once again this is in fact not WILKINS’s analysis, but matches that of Alexander GIL. John WALLIS, incidentally, represents this affricate as dy. 144 D. CRAM

RAY’s use of evidence from children’s errors in the context of debate about the simple letters is, I think, particularly interesting. References to children’s mispronunciations are not unknown in linguistic works of this period: thus at the end of the previous century Francis CLEMENT had observed that children regularly mispronounce cla, cle, cli, clo, clu, as tla, tle, tli, tlo, tlu (CLEMENT 1587: 13). But I do not know of the pre- sentation of error analysis for settling a theoretical point. The point that RAY is addressing — “what is a simple letter?” — is one that is articu- lated in terms of philosophical grammar or “natural” grammar. But the treatise in which the argument occurs has been described as the first attempt at the systematic description of dialect variation in English.

5. Conclusion

The two case studies which I have examined in this article, DALGARNO and RAY, exemplify styles of thinking and modes of argumentation that are distinctively of the 17th century. They illustrate how new concerns brought new approaches to the study of the sound patterns of language. DALGARNO’s analysis of the nasals in terms of a set of primary or simple elements is driven by the contemporary agenda of the search for a universal language. RAY’s appeal to evidence from language acquisition, to resolve a not dissimilar theoretical issue as to whether the affricates are to be analysed as simple or complex sounds, exemplifies the new style of inductive reasoning, deployed also in his works on botanical taxonomy. However novel these approaches may appear to be they both rely for their underpinnings on the doctrine of letters, as I have tried to show. This doctrine derives from classical antiquity but remains the framework for grammatical thought and exposition into the 17th century. A contemporary reader familiar with this background would have been in a position to appreciate the novelty of the arguments presented. But the problem for the modern reader is that what was widely taken for granted in a older paradigm was not always made explicit. In the case of DAL- GARNO and RAY this applies the doctrine of the letters. Understanding what was novel in their thinking presupposes an understanding of what was traditional — yet another demonstration of the interplay between continuity and change in the historiography of linguistics.

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Jesus College, Oxford. David CRAM.