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by the purposes we have in hand. For many of them (syntactic discussions, for instance) the traditional spelling even in a language written as unphonetically as English is the most serviceable form. When more is needed, we must ask ourselves how much; bearing in mind that there is no sacrifice of scientific accuracy-no compromising with our professional conscience-in choosing between a 'narrow' and a 'broad' transcription. A superfluous complication of the symbols cannot reproduce the sounds for a reader unfamiliar with the language; all it can do, and it will do it, is to confuse him.

But the striving for an illusion of accuracy has done worse than clutter our pages; it has actually kept back our knowledge. For instance the fairly simple matter of the diphthongs and their variants before [r] in the Western ('General') American type of pronunciation has been confused by attempts to be 'phonetically accurate', until today nobody knows where he stands or what his neighbor's record may mean. Our seven diphthongs, as in see, say, sigh, boy, do, go, how, involve certain automatic variations of the vowels and of the semivowels. These variations cannot profitably be indicated by separate characters; the best we can do is to tell about them in our text. So far as symbolism goes, we cannot do better than [sij, sej, saj, boj, duw, gow, haw]. Before [r] these diphthongs suffer certain automatic changes, so that near, hair, hire, poor, door, hour differ rather strikingly from the preceding series. Nevertheless they can be most intelligibly and plainly recorded in the same symbols as [nijr, hejr, hajr, puwr, dowr, awr] with the differences which go hand in hand with the following [r] stated to a certain extent in words.

We have, however, tangled things to the point where phoneticians misunderstand and disbelieve each other; cf. D. Jones, commenting, Maître Phonétique 5 (Jan.-March 1927), on an article of Kenyon's: 'We find it difficult to believe that two kinds of [e] and an [æ] can exist as three separate phonemes in any language Yet every speaker of Western American will bear out Kenyon's point. The trouble is merely in the pedantic and irrelevant symbolism which we all

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For this distinction, cf. Princ. Int. Phon. Ass. 14-5 where it is rather implied, perhaps unintentionally, that 'narrow' and 'scientific' transcription are always to be identified; also Propos. of the Copenh. Conf. 8-9 where the possibility of such an understanding is excluded explicitly. In the former passage the point of real interest was that 'broad' transcriptions suffice for most practical purposes; and (we may add) for many scientific ones.

Our speech has, like French, Italian, and many another, two levels. of mid vowels, as in men, son and man, saw. If we use the Latin letters [e] and [o] for the higher vowels, we shall need two extra symbols. For these, following the Principles of the International Phonetic Association (London 1912) we shall use [ɛ,o] writing men, man [men, men] and son, saw [son, sɔ]. This is all that is needed; for tenseness, length, and lip-rounding play no distinctive part in our simple vowels, and need not be symbolized. There is then nothing strange about our diphthongs and simple vowels:

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nor about their, in part altered, appearance before [r]:

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Jones would not have been incredulous had the matter been presented in this way, i.e. without conformity to our bad habits of recording and in particular to our habits of recording other types of English.

To take a simpler case, 'accuracy' combined (let us confess it) with the influence of traditional writing,' leads us to attribute to Russian a six-vowel system. Here the attempt to be irrelevantly 'exact' has actually deceived us about the linguistic facts. Russian has a fivevowel system: the high-front vowel and the high-back or high-mixed vowel are merely variants of a single phoneme, the latter occurring only and always after non-palatalized consonants. Hence we should use a single symbol in ['igo] yoke, [b'it'] beat, (front vowel) and ('pod igo) under the yoke, [bit'] be (back vowel). By giving up a pedantic and irrelevant distinction we lose nothing in communicative value (for the preceding symbol for an unpalatalized consonant suffices to distinguish the back vowel) but we actually gain in the accuracy with which the phonetic system is reproduced.

We wish then to be easily intelligible and economical, ends that in part oppose, in part support each other. The need is to re-examine in the light of these purposes our traditions to see how far they may profitably be changed. At least they have trained us, by their very inconsistency, to adapt ourselves quickly.

• In Western American; my own dialect (chiefly Southern) differs for the back series: hoarse, horse [hos]; wore, war [wor] before vowel. GMB.

'The fact that this writing ultimately rests upon conditions of an earlier state of the language is here irrelevant.

We would suggest to our fellow-workers as general principles:

1) That we abandon our present conventions in the use of Roman, italic, and bold-face type. They entail a duplication of equipment in special symbols and serve only purposes that are essentially ornamental. Linguistic forms can (as far as necessary) be set off from each other and from the surrounding text by brackets, dashes, or what not. Variations in these can be used to distinguish (where needed) 'broad' and 'narrow' transcription, transliteration, etc., etc. The equipment thus released becomes automatically available for real work: e.g. italics for 'emphatic' consonants, bold-face for stressed vowels, etc. Foreign words in Roman type stand out as well as in italics; the latter can then be used for translations. For a specimen of such printing, see LANGUAGE 1. 130-56; 3. 9–11.

2) That we use to the utmost Latin letters, including capitals and small capitals together with italic and bold-face types. Only where these do not reach should we have recourse to other alphabets and to diacritic marks. This applies chiefly to new needs and to particular emergencies that may arise. Diacritic marks that are well-known and already in the printers' stock are not to be recklessly discarded. But even among these are many whose right to a continued existence should be scrutinized closely. In general the presumptions are against any symbol with two marks above or below the letter, and very strongly against any with more. In a system employing such symbols, the number of type required mounts rapidly, and their cost becomes prohibitive. When all that these marks indicate must be indicated, the solution will often be to put the diacritics after or before the letter, or to avoid one set at least of diacritics: higher and lower vowel-types, for instance can be distinguished better by different letters (small capitals, ɛ, ɔ) than by tails or dots under one (and sometimes both!) letters. In making such readjustments advantage should be taken of the opportunity to iron out inconsistencies like those that have arisen. in IE grammar from the principle of adhering to various (and unstable) traditions. More frequently, however, the solution will be found by regarding the next two suggestions.

• If only five vowel letters and only six diacritics be used, it can be calculated that the possible combinations of zero, one, two, or three of these six diacritics with the five vowels is 210, and will cost well over $1000.00 for the equipment.

To illustrate: symbols such as [o] (high long oral) and [ɔ] (low short nasalized), will express as much as the troublesome combinations mentioned in the preceding note, and their cost is practically negligible.

3) That we recognize frankly the will-o'-the-wisp nature of the effort to assign a separate symbol to each variety of sound. In part we do recognize this, as when we employ the same symbol p for the surd labial stops of both French and English in spite of their easily noticeable differences. But at other times we become too rigid. If [o] and [o] represent tense, rounded vowels in French; that is no reason why [o] may not represent a loose vowel in German or a loose, unrounded vowel in English. For those who do not know these facts, a once-for-all statement will suffice; neither for them nor for other readers is anything gained by diacritics, inverted v, or similar devices of the grimoire.

4) That normally we symbolize only phonemes (distinctive features) so far as we can determine them; and that always before we indicate more, we convince ourselves that more is demanded by the purpose in hand. The gain in elegance (in the mathematician's sense) will repay us for whatever nostalgia may result. We know today that no purpose was served by those who wrote the Irish symbol instead of g in OE, presumably because the sound was a spirant. Who would wish for different symbols for the l's in E little, or for the sibilants in Gг. πρéσßus? If in German the long vowels are tense and the short vowels loose, the long-sign will suffice. If our diphthongs are much altered before [r] the [r] will symbolize this.

To the present writers it seems that these suggestions should be the more welcome, because they lie in the direction not of crippling our science, but of greatly enhancing its power by giving it a suppler and more abstract symbolism. We are all working with Roman numerals and deceiving ourselves by attaching costly flourishes; let us stop discussion of the flourishes and adopt the Arabic digits. The history of our science, by blind accident, has trained us to great flexibility in responding to symbols; let us take advantage of this flexibility, now that we need to free ourselves from the magic of symbolism. Once we take advantage of the purely external character of our symbols and learn to make them do what we want, the door will be open for uniformity— uniformity as between different languages and as between different scholars.

10 The existence of such persons is not to be assumed too lightly. Periodical articles are written for scholars, not for college students.

BOOK REVIEWS

Die Sprachfamilien und Sprachenkreise der Erde. Pp. xvi + 596 and Atlas of 14 maps. By P. W. SCHMIDT S.V.D. (Kulturgeschichtliche Bibliothek herausgegeben von W. For; 1. Reihe: Ethnologische Bibliothek mit Einschluss des altorientalischen Kulturgebietes 5.) Heidelberg: Carl Winter's Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1926.

The Indo-Europeanist who opens this book will find himself in a strange world, colorful, adventurous, even heroic,-the world of Humboldt. One journeys to the ends of the earth (pp. 7, 9); danger and hardship are not considered. Into this world the reader is guided by the strong, kind, and warmly human personality of Father Schmidt. Then with a start one realizes that this strange and vast world of human language is only that larger land within which lies our own wellcultivated domain. Upon this realization follows a profound regret: why have not the methods of our field been carried to the ventures without?

Thus, 'older' and less old languages play a part in the discussion (p. 5); one suspects the criterion of this to be one which would make modern English 'older' than the language of King Alfred (cf. the note on Hottentot and Bushman, p. 11). The whole second part of the book, 'Die Sprachenkreise und ihr Verhältnis zu den Kulturkreisen', will fail to instruct or convince, for it ignores what Indo-European has taught us about the variety of linguistic structure (even within a single stock) and of its mutability in the course of time. No one would today set up the simple concept of a 'genitive case' for even all Indo-European (e.g., modern English, French, the German dialects); Father Schmidt does so for all languages, patiently observes whether the 'genitive' precedes or follows its headword, and compares his results with a similar ethnologic schedule of 'matriarchate', deciding that originally ('die älteste Stellung') the genitive preceded, and that postposition of the genitive goes hand in hand with the 'matriarchate'.

Yet, along with Meillet and Cohen's Langues du monde, Father Schmidt's book will be indispensable for the general study of language, since the first part, 'Die Sprachenfamilien der Erde und die Geschichte ihrer Erforschung' contains a list of the languages of the earth (too

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