Case Studies in the History of Linguistic Transcription
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Voice Into Text: Case Studies in the History of Linguistic Transcription Valentina Tarantelli A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Sheffield Faculty of Arts School of English Department of English Language and Linguistics Supervisor (University of Sheffield): Dr. Richard Steadman-Jones Co-Supervisors (British Library): Adrian Edwards (Head, Printed Heritage Collections) Jonnie Robinson (Lead Curator, Spoken English) December 2015 iii Acknowledgements It is no exaggeration to say that this thesis would have not seen the light of day were it not for the patient, unwavering and ever-present support of my supervisor here at the University of Sheffield: Dr. Richard Steadman-Jones. Without his help, advice, enthusiasm and warmth, I would have given up very early, and I must admit I came very close to doing that quite a few times in the course of these past 6 years. Richard has been extremely understanding of the personal and medical issues that have affected me during the writing of this thesis. Time and time again, he has been able to make me re-focus, help me find new motivation and inspiration, and help me cast aside my impostor syndrome. It goes without saying that his expertise and knowledge have been invaluable, and his guidance on how to tackle the historical aspects of my research has been instrumental to this thesis. I owe him an incredible debt of gratitude. Very heartfelt thanks also go to Adrian Edwards and Jonnie Robinson, who facilitated the access to the corpora while at the British Library, and offered their expertise and guidance, especially in the first years of my research. Their supervision at the British Library has not only helped me become a better researcher, but has also made this whole process a lot less daunting. I appreciate the genuine interest they expressed in my work, and I thank them for the invaluable feedback they have given me on earlier versions of this thesis. Thank you for the coffees and for forcing me to have lunch breaks! Also thanks to the Department of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Sheffield for having become an incredibly stimulating, engaging and supportive ‘home from home’ in these past 9 years. Special thanks also go to a few friends, who supported me, comforted me, encouraged me, and provided much needed breaks and opportunities to get out of the iv academic bubble. I cannot express how much their friendship, even from a distance, has helped me, and how much their support, humour and love have contributed in making these years far more bearable, and a little easier. Particular thanks also go to Novella, who has kindly translated texts from German for me, often including a much needed comic relief in her annotated translations. Finally, my biggest thanks go to my family and my partner, Lee. I would not be here were it not for their incredible support and unconditional love. There are no words in Italian, English or Mohawk to express how extremely grateful I am for all they have done for me. They have picked me up uncountable times, they have laughed with me and cried with me, and they have always, always believed in me. This is for them. v Abstract As a contribution to the field of linguistic historiography (Swiggers, 2010), this thesis offers a detailed narrative of the ‘mental worlds’ of writers tackling the task of transcribing languages both before the appearance of the International Phonetic Alphabet in 1888 and at a time when the IPA was emerging as the agreed standard for phonetic transcription. The narrative includes an account of how the cultural, historical and political background in which these writers operated, ultimately shaped their linguistic transcriptions. I argued that this approach, which also included observations drawn from fields other than linguistics, helped to provide a far richer illustration of their mental worlds, and that its omission would have rendered my analysis seriously deficient. This work has also demonstrated that the writers’ own linguistic training could also hinder, rather than aid, the transcription process. It has also therefore focused on how the authors mediated the tension between their pre-existing linguistic knowledge and the reality of the data they had to analyse. It has been argued that success in this context also resulted in a successful transcription. The two corpora presented in this thesis are the Mohawk religious corpus held at the British Library, and the phonetic transcriptions of the British recordings included in the Berliner Lautarchiv, also at the British Library. Their peculiar characteristics, the challenges they posed to the transcribers, and the factors that led to their creation are discussed at length. With regards to the Mohawk corpus, the analysis has focused on the comparison of the notations of Mohawk by writers belonging to the French tradition and those by English-, German-, or Dutch-speaking authors. The analysis of the Berliner Lautarchiv corpus has instead focused on the phonetic transcriptions created by Alois Brandl, an Austrian Anglicist who was also a student of Henry Sweet. vi Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1 0. Original contributions ........................................................................................................... 1 0.1 Material ............................................................................................................................... 1 0.2 Methodology ....................................................................................................................... 1 1.0 Introduction and aims: what [d] can tell us ......................................................................... 3 1.1 Theoretical context of research ........................................................................................... 5 1.2 General structure and summary .......................................................................................... 7 Chapter 2: ‘Armes necessaires à la guerre’: The Linguistic Transcription of Native American Languages (examples from the Mohawk religious corpus at the British Library) ................................................................................................................................ 13 2.0 Introduction: The linguistic transcription of Mohawk ...................................................... 13 2.1 A crucial observation ........................................................................................................ 15 2.2 The importance of Missionary Linguistics ....................................................................... 18 2.2.1 Views on Missionary Linguistics: negative attitudes ..................................................... 18 2.3 A change of course: revaluation ........................................................................................ 19 2.4 Missionary Linguistics: Recent academic developments ................................................. 21 2.5 Missionary Linguistics within the field ............................................................................ 22 2.6 Aims .................................................................................................................................. 23 2.7 Missionaries and the study of Native American languages .............................................. 26 2.7.1 The need for language proficiency ................................................................................. 26 2.8 The rôle of literacy ............................................................................................................ 31 2.9 Attitudes towards the non-European languages ................................................................ 32 2.10 Three traditions ............................................................................................................... 36 2.11 The Spanish tradition ...................................................................................................... 37 2.11.1 Influences on the works of Spanish missionaries and main works .............................. 37 2.12 The French Tradition ...................................................................................................... 44 2.12.1 The role of Latin and the linguistic formation of Jesuit missionaries .......................... 44 2.12.2 Linguistic practices of Jesuit missionaries ................................................................... 46 2.12.3 Survey of key missionary and non-missionary linguistic works ................................ 47 2.13 The English tradition ....................................................................................................... 51 2.13.1 Survey of key linguistic works, missionary and non-missionary................................. 51 2.13.2 Protestants, reading instruction and the Mohawk ........................................................ 58 2.14 Other European traditions in America North of Mexico ................................................ 63 2.14.1 Moravian missionaries: Zeisberger and Heckewelder ................................................. 64 2.14.2 Dutch and Swedish works ............................................................................................ 66 vii 2.15 Practical issues with the North American material ......................................................... 69 2.16 Dishomogeneity