Phonetic Transcription: History

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a satisfactory device. He also attempted to symbolize durational differences by introducing characters of different widths. However, his system had no better success than did others of the time. Languages of America and Africa In the early 19th century, most of the languages of Africa and the indigenous languages of America had no writing systems. Pierre Duponceau (see Duponceau, Pierre Etienne (1760–1844)), a French émigré to the United States, won the Volney Prize in 1838 with his Mémoire sur le système grammatical des langues de quelques nations indiennes de l’Amérique du Nord, and had shown in an earlier article (‘English phonology,’ 1817) a thorough understanding of the principles of a universal alphabet, though he never produced one himself. Under his influence, John Pickering (1777–1846), like Duponceau a lawyer by training, was led to publish his Essay on a uniform orthography for the Indian languages of North America (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1818). Pickering, like Sir William Jones, whose work he admired, used a Roman alphabet supplemented by digraphs and some diacritics, preferring small superscript letters or subscript numerals to dots or hooks, which he felt might accidentally be omitted. This system was designed specifically for Native American languages, not as a universal alphabet. Many of the missionary societies were concerned at this time to establish a standard transcription system. The Church Missionary Society produced a pamphlet in 1848 entitled Rules for reducing unwritten languages to alphabetical writing in Roman characters: with reference especially to the languages spoken in Africa. The rules allowed some flexibility in deciding how detailed the transcription should be, according to its intended use. The notation suggested was Roman based, with a few diacritics and some digraphs. Lewis Grout produced a Roman-based system for Zulu in 1853, on behalf of the American Mission in Port Natal, using the symbols for the clicks. Carl Richard Lepsius (1810–1884) In 1852, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) invited the distinguished German Egyptologist Lepsius to adapt an alphabet that he had devised earlier, to suit the needs of the Society. Lepsius had been interested in writing systems for many years. In 1853, he won the agreement of the Royal Academy of Berlin to fund the cutting and casting of type letters for a new alphabet, to be used as a basis for recording languages with no writing system. In the following year, an Alphabetical Conference was convened in London, on the initiative of the Prussian ambassador in London, Carl Phonetic Transcription: History 403 Bunsen, who, as a scholar with an interest in philology, wished to explore the possibility of an agreed system for representing all languages in writing. The conference was attended by representatives from the CMS, the Baptist Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Missionary Society, and the Asiatic and Ethnological Societies, and a number of distinguished scholars, including Lepsius and Friedrich Max Müller. In spite of their well-known involvement in the transcription problem, neither Isaac Pitman nor A. J. Ellis was among those included. Four resolutions were passed: (1) the new alphabet must have a physiological basis, (2) it must be limited to the ‘typical’ sounds employed in human speech, (3) the notation must be rational and consistent and suited to reading and printing and also it should be Roman based, supplemented by various additions, and (4) the resulting alphabet must form a standard ‘‘to which any other alphabet is to be referred and from which the distance of each is to be measured.’’ Lepsius and Max Müller both submitted alphabets for consideration; Müller’s Missionary alphabet, which used italic type mixed with roman type, was not favored, and Lepsius’s extensive use of diacritics had obvious disadvantages for legibility and the availability of types. The conference put off a decision, but later in 1854, the CMS gave its full support to Lepsius’s alphabet. A German version of the alphabet appeared in 1854 (Das allgemeine linguistische Alphabet), followed in 1855 by the first English edition, entitled Standard alphabet for reducing unwritten languages and foreign graphic systems to a uniform orthography in European letters. The Lepsius alphabet had some success in the first few years, but Lepsius was pressed by the CMS to produce a new enlarged edition, which appeared in English in 1863 (printed in Germany, like the first edition, because the types were only available there; see Figure 5). The most obvious difference from the first edition was that the collection of alphabets, illustrating the application of Lepsius’s standard alphabet to different languages, had been expanded from 19 pages and Figure 5 Symbols of the standard alphabet devised by Lepsius in 1863.
404 Phonetic Transcription: History 54 languages to 222 pages and 117 languages (see Lepsius, 1863). There was as yet no phoneme theory, but Lepsius was well aware that no alphabet could or should try to convey all of the subtle nuances of speech. His practical aim was to make an intelligible and usable system available to nonspecialists, hence the expansion of the collection of alphabets and the avoidance of a technical description of the physiology of speech. However, Lepsius relied almost entirely on the use of diacritics to supplement the basic Roman symbols. They were used in a consistent way for the most part, and Lepsius foresaw situations in which it would not be necessary to use all of the distinctions provided for, namely, when, in modern terms, a ‘broad’ transcription would be sufficient. Nevertheless, the profusion of diacritics meant that the printing types were less accessible, and the symbols were less legible and more subject to errors in reproduction. Ellis calculated that on the basis of 31 diacritical marks (17 superscripts and 14 subscripts), Lepsius’s alphabet had at least 286 characters, of which at least 200 would have to be cut for every font used. The alphabet attained a limited success in Africa; the distinguished Africanist Carl Meinhof (see Meinhof, Carl Friedrich Michael (1857–1944)) and his missionary friend Karl Endemann (1836–1919) gave it their support by using it, with some modifications, in their works on African languages (see Heepe, 1983), and the missionary P. Wilhelm Schmidt adopted it as a basis for his ‘Anthropos alphabet’ (see later). However, in spite of Lepsius’s high international reputation, the support of the Berlin Academy, and the resources of the CMS, the alphabet failed to find an established place. A. J. Ellis’s Later Alphabets Ellis’s Universal writing and printing with ordinary letters (Edinburgh, 1856) contained his ‘Digraphic’ and ‘Latinic’ alphabets, with examples, hints on practical use, and comparisons with the systems of Lepsius and Max Müller, together with suggestions for a future ‘Panethnic’ alphabet. The digraphic alphabet, as its name suggests, supplemented the Roman alphabet with digraphs or trigraphs, such as for [x], for [N], and for [ J], with the idea of making its notation accessible to as wide a group of people as possible. It was intended for use in any language, and Ellis supplied an abbreviated form of it for use when detailed precision of description was not necessary. The Latinic alphabet was intended for those wishing ‘‘to avoid the cumbersomeness of the Digraphic alphabet,’’ which it did, by employing small capitals and turned letters; for example, [x] is rendered by and [N] is rendered by . Probably Ellis’s most well-known alphabet is Palaeotype (so-called because it used the ‘old types,’ without diacritics or non-Roman symbols, and with relatively few turned letters). Palaeotype was for scientific, not popular, use, and Ellis employed it in his monumental work On early English pronunciation (EEP) (1869–1889). There were about 250 separate symbols, the greatest number being digraphs or trigraphs, but with some italics, small capitals, and (very few) turned letters. Certain letters were used as diacritical signs – for instance is used to indicate palatality, as in for [L]. There were also nonalphabetic signs for features such as ingressive airstreams, tones, and stress. Ellis provided a reduced form of his alphabet, known as ‘Approximative Palaeotype,’ which contained about 46 separate symbols. The full alphabet was, he believed, ‘‘in all probability the most complete scheme which has yet been published,’’ but he foresaw the need to supplement it to accommodate sounds from languages not yet phonetically studied. In the third volume of EEP (1871), Ellis published the ‘Glossic’ alphabet, a simplified form of transcription for English, based on symbols used in normal English orthography. He intended it as a new system of spelling, to be used concurrently with the existing English orthography. In answer to objections that it would be too sweeping a change, Ellis produced a revised form in 1880 called ‘Dimid-iun,’ but this received even less support. None of these alphabets was destined to have any lasting success, but in the process of devising them Ellis laid a foundation for the development of phonetics as a discipline in Britain, and more particularly for the study and recording of English dialects. Germany: Physiology and New Alphabets In Germany, several schemes for a new alphabet were proposed by scholars who approached phonetics from a physiological rather than a linguistic angle. Karl Rapp (1803–1883), in Versuch einer Physiologie der Sprache (1836), used a Roman alphabet, supplemented by some letters taken from the Old English and Greek alphabets and a few diacritics. Ellis, writing in the 1840s, frequently paid tribute to Rapp’s work. Ernst Brücke (see Brücke, Ernst (1819–1891)), in his Grundzüge der Physiologie (1856), also put forward a Roman-based alphabet, supplemented by some Greek letters and by superscript numerals used as diacritics. For example, represented alveolar [t], represented retroflex [
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Phonetic Transcription: History

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