Historiography of Phonetics: the State of the Art

Abstract

If we are to believe Panconcelli-Calzia (1941), the history of phonetics goes back three millenia, and probably as far back as the study of language in general. However, while the history of linguistics has in recent decades become a widely practised field of scholarly endeavour, with a specialist journal and several associated monograph series available since 1973, nothing comparable has occurred with regard to the history of phonetics. There is no indication that a concerted effort is under way to remedy the situation and to establish the history of phonetics as an integral part of the study of phonetics as has been done with regard to the history of linguistics for well over fifteen years. The present paper offers a critical survey of previous scholarship in the historiography of phonetics and presents a few ideas that may strengthen the interest in the historiography of (linguistic) phonetics and encourage someone to undertake a major, comprehensive work in this field.

Nebrija como puente entre la tradición hispánica y las gramáticas misionero-coloniales de Filipinas. Aspectos fónicos

“…Como señala Abercrombie (1965a, p. 45), parece ser común la errónea idea de que la fonética no existe con anterioridad al siglo XIX. Aunque afirma que, efectivamente, no podemos hablar de una fonética como tal, no es menos cierto, dice, aludiendo a los fonetistas ingleses de los siglos XVI al XVIII que se centraban en la relación grafía-lengua hablada y en las divergencias escritura-pronunciación, que algo muy parecido se venía realizando desde mucho tiempo atrás, aproximadamente tres milenios, como indica Koerner (1993). 3 En esta tradición es en la que se inserta el trabajo realizado por los misioneros españoles que, llegados a Filipinas, sienten la necesidad de elaborar la descripción de unas lenguas cuyo uso va a ser necesario para la evangelización y para la administración de los sacramentos por parte de los ministros que se van incorporando a las misiones allí establecidas.…”

The ‘Brazilian Connection’ in the History of American Linguistics

“…The features proposed "essencialmente do ponto de vista acústico que Jakobson considera primordial fonologicamente [essentially from the acoustic viewpoint, which Jakobson considers phonologically primary]" were, then, seven in number: The two systems of features, as illustrated in Fig.3, although not yet completely consistent, clearly reaffirm the shift in Jakobson's phonology from the articulatory viewpoint toward the acoustic and perceptual properties of the speech sounds, proposed in his 1939 "Observations sur le classement phonologique des consonnes" (Jakobson 1972(Jakobson [1939), if not before (cf. Joseph 1989, Koerner 1997.…”

Psychological Model of Phonosemantics

“…It is widely acknowledged that there is some connection between sound and meaning in a word (Woodroffe 2008;Science Daily 2006;Michael 1958). The modern world believes that a 'combination' of two or three phonemes should have a cognizable meaning (Dennis 2013;Koerner 1993;Essay 2017), but an individual phoneme cannot have any meaning. But the meanings of these 'combinations', which are called phonesthemes, are still undiscovered.…”