The Cambridge History of the English Language Volume 4 Part 8 docx

Phonology 141 Although he was described on the 1795 tidepage as 'living in CamberwelT (i.e. close to London), other evidence shows that his background was Scottish: see e.g. Scott 1928: 494. 142 See Eustace 1969:61-6 for a detailed exposition and discussion of the variety of [r]-like sounds and symbols used by Ellis. Some of these, e.g. Ellis's Vocal r 9 , and Vocal murmur', were probably rhotacised sounds. Similarly, of the two sorts of /r/ realisation mentioned by Comstock & Mair (1874), the second, the 'smooth' one, is also likely to have been rhotacised (Comstock & Mair 1874: 16-17). 143 The description of American /r/ by Day (1843:450) deliberately leaves open the question of the position and activity of the tip of the tongue, once the 'essential position' is established of the posterior part of the tongue being in contact with the upper teeth or gums. 144 Confirmation of an earlier fricative pronunciation may come from the typical South African pronunciation nowadays of /r/ as a fricative, not an approxi- mant — on the assumption that an earlier (i.e. eighteenth and early nineteenth century) British pronunciation lies behind some of the phonological and phonetic features of modern South African English. A similar line of argu- ment can be offered for the occurrence of the 'bunched /r/' in American English, with a possible antecedent being the use of this articulation in earlier forms of British English. 145 ABDOMEN, ACADEMY, ACCEPTABLE, ACCEPTABLY, ACCESS, ACCES- SARY, ACCESSORY, ACETÓSE, ACUMEN, ADMINISTRATOR, ADVERTISE, ADVERTISEMENT, ADVERTISER, ADVERTISING, AERIAL, ALCOVE, ALLY, ALMOST, AMPHITHEATRE, ANCHOVY, ANNEX, APHRODISIAC, ARBUTUS, ARCHDUKE, ARISTOCRACY, ARISTOCRAT, AVANT-GARDE, BALCONY, BELLES LETTRES, BITUMEN, BOMBAST, CANINE, CAPIL- LARY, CAPRICE, CARBINE, CELIBACY, CEMENT, CEMENT (v), CHAMPAIGN (Open Country) , CHAMPAIGN (wkie), COADJUTOR, COM- MENDATORY, COMMENDABLE, COMMENDATORY, COMMENTATOR, COMMODORE, COMMONWEALTH, COMPENSATE, COMPLAISANCE, COMPROMISE, COMPROMISING, CONCORDANCE, CONFESSOR, CON- FISCATE, CONSECUTIVE, CONSISTORY, CONSTRUE, CONSTRUED, CON- SUMMATE, CONTEMPLATE, CONTRARY, CONTROVERSY, COQUETRY, COROLLARY, CORRIDOR, DANDELION, DECOROUS, DEHORTATORY, DEMONSTRABLY, DEMONSTRATE, DEPRECATORY, DESPICABLE, DESPICABLENESS, DIOCESAN, DISPUTABLE, ELONGATE, ENERVATE, ENTERPRISE, ENTERPRISING, ENVELOPE, EXCAVATE, EXCAVATED, EXECUTER, EXEMPLARY, EXHORTATORY, EXIGENCY, EXPURGATORY, EXQUISITE, EXQUISITELY, FINANCIER, FLORIN, FORMIDABLY, GEOGRAPHY, GLADIATOR, GRIMACE, HOSPITABLE, HOSPITABLY, HYPOCHONDRIAC, HYPOCHONDRIACAL, ILLUSTRATE, ILLUSTRA- TIVELY, IMBECILE, IMPRECATORY, INCULCATE, INDISPUTABLE, 533 Michael Κ. Ρ. MacMahon INDISSOLUBLE, INDISSOLUBLY, INEXPERT, INEXPLICABLE, INN HOLDER, INOPPORTUNE, INTERSTICE, INTUMESCENCE, IRREPARA- BLE, JUDICATURE, KORAN, LABORATORY, LANDAU, LEGISLATOR, MAGNETISE, MATADOR, MEDIATOR, MENAGERIE, MISCELLANY, MISHAP, MODERATOR, MULTIPLÍCATE, OBDURATE, OPERATOR, ORCHESTRA, ORCHESTRE, PACIFICATORY, PANTHEON, PEREMPTO- RILY, PEREMPTORINESS, PEREMPTORY, PERFECT (v), PERFECTED, PREDICAMENT, PRETEXT, PROCURATOR, PROFILE, PROMULGATE, QUADRUPLE, QUINTESSENCE, RAGAMUFFIN, RECOGNISE, RECOG- NISING, RECUSANT, REMONSTRATE, RENDEZVOUS, RESEARCH, RESERVOIR, RETINUE, S ACRIFICATORY, SACRIFICING, SALINE, SATELLITE, SCRUTINISE, SHERBET, SINISTER, SPLENETIC, SUBSTAN- TIVE, SUCCESSOR, SUPERFLUOUS, SUPERVISE, SUPERVISING, SUR- CHARGE, SURVEY, TOPOGRAPHY, TOUPEE, TRAVERSE, TRAVERSE, TURMOIL, UNDERTAKER, UNTOWARD, UNTOWARDLY, UTENSIL, VAGARY, VENTILATOR, VERTIGO, VIBRATE. 146 Ideally, a dataset is required which takes full account of the various morpho- logical features and diachronic lexical sources which have contributed to the numerous lexical stress patterns of English (cf. the typology of such a dataset in Kingdon 1958). Furthermore, the accuracy of some of the data to be examined here cannot be fully guaranteed. For instance, it is noteworthy that OEHl (1992) quotes far more cases of alternative stress-patterns which are identical to pre-1945 patterns, than any of the other dictionaries from 1945 onwards. This may have more to do with the automatic 'translation' of Murray's phonetic notation for OED\ into IPA for 0EU1 (cf. MacMahon 1985), than the results of any survey of late twentieth-century stress patterns. An example is i L LU s T RAT E : up to about 1850, the pattern was xpx; by 1908, it was both pxx and xpx; since 1917, the stressing has been only pxx - with the exception of OED2, which, in 1992, has xpx. The latter is the same as OEDVs stress-pattern of the word from no later th^n 1899. 147 Even then, the brief remarks in, for example, Herries 1773 and Odell 1806 are indicative rather than substantive. 148 See further Abercrombie 1965. 149 The pitch of A 4 in the 1770s was approximately 425 Hz; cf. with today's 440 Hz. Consequendy, all the pitch values in Steele 1775/1779 should be lowered by about a semi-tone to reproduce as accurately as possible the physical qual- ities of Steele's and Garrick's intonation. 150 A caveat must be that Steele was born in Ireland and moved later to London. Garrick was brought up in Staffordshire and moved to London at the age of twenty. Given the relatively sparse examples that exist of intonation gener- ally in the published literature, it is not possible to determine the extent to which their rhythm and intonation may have differed from that of educated native Londoners. 5 34 Phonology 151 Vol. II contains a few more examples. Walker makes no attempt to systema- tise the description of intonation. Note, however, the view of Faber 1987: 31, who argues that Walker's 'genius [in the description of intonation] and the scale of his contribution are not sufficiendy recognised'. Faber maintains that Walker anticipated 'in many ways' the concept of the nucleus, that he described all the nuclear tones and that he introduced the tonetic marks for rising and falling tones. (One can, of course, already see elements of Walker's analysis in Steele (1775).) 152 Cylinder recordings exist of the speech of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92), William Gladstone (1809-98), Robert Browning (1812-89), George, 2nd Duke of Cambridge (1819-1904), William Booth (1829-1912), Arthur Peel (1829-1912), Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830-1903), Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-92), and Sir Henry Irving (1838-1905). For an analysis of a recording of Gladstone, see Eustace 1969: 74. 153 It cannot be assumed, of course, that 'regional' accents (within Britain at least) will automatically have been more conservative, and hence have altered less over the last two centuries than RP has. FURTHER READING The major scholarly study of the period between late Middle English and the early eighteenth century is Dobson (1968); occasionally, it also touches on matters to do with later eighteenth-century pronunciations. Horn &Lehnert (1954), though much less detailed than Dobson, brings the description of both British and American English pronunciations forward in the twentieth century. Specifically for American English from the mid-eighteenth to the early twentieth century, the second volume of Krapp (1925) is recommended. Jespersen (1909/1961) is an accessible text, and includes much useful commentary on late nineteenth-century pronunciation. Briefer summaries of the period can be found in Ekwall (1975) and Gdrlach (1991). Wells's tour de force of current English pronunciation world-wide (1982) includes several discussions of phonological changes from Middle English onwards5Mugglestone (1995) is an important study of various aspects of the sociophonetics of nineteenth-century British English. 535 6 ENGLISH GRAMMAR AND USAGE Edward Finegan 6.1. Introduction The codification of English usage, not by an official academy but by a dispar- ate band of independent entrepreneurs, constitutes the story of this chapter. It is a story of increasing knowledge about language in general and English in particular, of competition between prescriptive and descriptive ideals of grammar and lexicography in the market-place and of a sHfring role for the place of speech and writing in codifying the language. It is also a story of the influence of piety, morality, discipline and social politics on the evaluation of English usage as the language was codified and the codifications disseminated over the last two centuries. The focus throughout is on Britain, but the inter- actions between Britons and Americans and the intertwined scholarship and international markets for English-language grammars and dictionaries make a tidy separation of the British and American stories impracticable. Following section 6.1, the discussion is divided into three periods. Section 6.2 concen- trates on the years roughly from the mid-eighteenth century to the introduc- tion of comparative historical linguistics into Britain around 1830, section 6.3 the period from 1830 to 1930 so as to encompass the entire scope of planning and producing the Oxford English Dictionary, and section 6.4 the span from the completion of the OED to the close of the millennium. The chronological subdivisions are somewhat arbitrary in that the patterns examined do not start or end on particular dates, but the periods serve as convenient frames for focusing on notable trends. Section 6.5 offers some conclusions and prospects. (American views of grammar and usage are reported in volume VI.) 6.1.1 Latin yields to English in Britain Latin played an important role in the intellectual life of Britain for some time after the Reformation had muted its voice in the religious life of the 536 English grammar and usage nation. Although English increasingly encroached on the already limited territory of the classical language, Latin by no means vanished from Britain. Especially in matters of philosophy and science, writers surpris- ingly often preferred the classical tongue. In the seventeenth century even grammars of English appeared in Latin, as with Wallis's influential Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae (1653) and Cooper's (1685) later work of the same title. In other fields, too, writing continued in Latin well into the eight- eenth century: Newton employed it not only for PrincipiaMathematica (1687) but also for Arithmetica Universalis (1707). As well, the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions contain occasional pieces in Latin as late as 1775. Further, in the last decades of the eighteenth century English-language writers sometimes quoted and occasionally composed paragraphs in Latin, more often than not on tide pages and dedications, to be sure, but appar- ently confident that many readers would find the code transparent and the content illuminating. Even in the nineteenth century some university lec- turing in Latin could be heard, and an occasional Ph.D. dissertation was submitted in the traditional language of learning. By 1700, of course, the tide of writing in Latin had ebbed and by 1776 had receded so definitively that the elocutionist Thomas Sheridan, writing in 1780 (Preface), could say of the classical languages that they are 'fallen into utter disuse Nay so totally are they gone out of fashion, that in order to avoid the imputation of pedantry, no gentleman must let it appear in conversation, that he ever had the least tincture of those studies.' Still, for centuries it had been Latin that was referenced by expressions like 'grammar school' and 'the study of grammar', and only grudgingly and incompletely in the course of the eighteenth century did the study of English grammar emerge from the shadows of the classical tongue. By then the place of English in the intellectual life of Britain had become a matter of some pride, though it was a neglected school subject, as Joseph Priesdey's (1761: ix) mid-century comments indicate: it is not much above a century ago, that our native tongue seemed to be looked upon as below the notice of a classical scholar; and men of learn- ing made very litde use of it, either in conversation or in writing: and even since it hath been made the vehicle of knowledge of all kinds, it hath not found its way into the schools appropriated to language, in proportion to its growing importance The disproportionately small place of English in the schools was to be cor- recte d on both sides of the Adantic in the course of the century to follow. Writing in a newly independent United States of America, Noah Webster 5 37 Edward Finegan (1789: 18) acknowledged that 'The English tongue . . . has attained to a considerable degree of purity, strength and elegance, and been employed, by an active and scientific nation, to record almost all the events and dis- coveries of ancient and modern times', and he busied himself codifying the language of the new nation in his spellers, grammars, and dictionaries. 6.1.2 Vernacular regulation and academies Well before the eighteenth century entered its final quarter, English had extended its robust reach into every domain of use. Bolstered in vocabulary and syntax to meet an extensive set of literary, legal, commercial, and scientific demands, it had become 'the vehicle of knowledge of all kinds', as Priesdey put it, and had been employed 'to record almost all the events and discoveries of ancient and modern times', as Webster wrote. Nor could anyone using English doubt its strength and adaptability or its potential for eloquence. Despite such patent vigour, however, there remained a distinct perception that not all was well with the vernacular and a netdesome concern that it was inad- equately regulated. Compared with the classical language it had displaced in science and philosophy and compared even with certain Continental vernacu- lars, English appeared uncultivated — unpolished, unrefined, unstable, and unregulated. As a consequence writers felt uncertain about aspects of its use. By contrast the Italians had established an academy for the cultivation and regulation of their vernacular in 1582, and by 1635 the French had done likewise for theirs. Calls for an English academy had been voiced by Dryden and Defoe, among others, but not until a century after Italy's Accademia della Crusca had published its monolingual Italian dictionary was the best-known call for an English academy given voice. In 1712 Jonathan Swift addressed A Proposalfor Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue to the Lord High Treasurer: I do here complain that our Language is extremely imperfect; that its daily Improvements are by no means in proportion to its daily Corruptions; that the Pretenders to polish and refine it, have chiefly multiplied Abuses and Absurdities; and, that in many Instances, it offends against every Part of Grammar What I have most at Heart is, that some Method should be thought on for ascertaining and fixing our Language for ever, after such Alterations are made in it as shall be thought requisite. (1712:8,31) Thus did Swift lament the imperfections, corruptions, abuses, and absur- dities of the vernacular, and he urged formation of a society to alter it where necessary and then to stabilise it. 53» English grammar and usage For various reasons Swift's proposal was never to be honoured and among the reasons was suspicion of an official body to rule over the lan- guage. Discussing the French Academy's lack of success, John Fell (1784: x—xi) observed that 'the republic of letters is a true republic, in its disregard to the arbitrary decrees of usurped authority'. Of Britain he added that 'Our critics are allowed to petition, but not to command: and why should their powers be enlarged? The laws of our speech, like the laws of our country, should breathe a spirit of liberty: they should check licentiousness, without restraining freedom.' Priestley (1761: vii) had expressed a similar sentiment in noting that the idea of an academy was 'not only unsuitable to the genius of a free nation, but in itself ill calculated to reform and fix a language', and he further deemed an academy superfluous because 'the best forms of speech will, in time, establish themselves by their own superior excellence'. Preferring the 'slow and sure' decisions of time to the 'often hasty and injudicious' decisions of synods, Priestley argued that a language that 'many persons have leisure to read and write' would eventually reach 'all the perfection' of which it was capable, much as manufactured goods are perfected when they are in demand. Whereas Priesdey professed respect for the efficient workings of what might be called a linguistic market-place, his contemporaries generally shared Swift's concern that the market-place was corrupting the language by propagating 'Abuses and Absurdities'. Thus, although Britain did not establish a language academy, it was not because Swift's pessimistic view was unique or even uncommon: conventional wisdom held that English lacked adequate codification and that 'its daily Improvements [were] by no means in proportion to its daily Corruptions'. Rather, many influential Britons believed that English would suffer from the official linguistic con- straints of an academy, although they remained persuaded that, academy or not, the language needed taming and its unruly improvements reining in. While many, including Dr Johnson, shared Priesdey's distaste for an official academy, his view that English would reach perfection without assistance was not widely shared, and analysts by the score - Priesdey among them - enlisted their grammars and dictionaries in pursuit of what they feared an otherwise elusive goal. 6.1.3 Grammars, dictionaries, and handbooks In 1700 a score of English grammars existed, and scores more appeared by 1800. Several English dictionaries, slight by later standards, also existed in 1700, and substantial ones including Dr Johnson's were to 539 Edward Finegan follow in the next hundred years. Thus, in the eighteenth century the regulation and codification of English fell to independent entrepreneurs: grammarians and lexicographers operating in a market-place unfettered by guidelines, unsanctioned by imprimatur, and unencumbered by official meddling. Then in the nineteenth century, besides grammars and dictionaries aplenty, including a beginning for the grand Oxford English Dictionary, prescriptive handbooks of lexical and grammatical usage also flourished, as the batde between prescriptivists and descriptivists was joined. In the twentieth century, grammar books with distinctiy desctip- tivist underpinnings have been compiled, and the OED completed, updated, integrated, and computerised so that it is now available in a mammoth set of twenty volumes or a single saucer-sized compact disc. The Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM is emblematic of the impres- sive power of the new technologies available at the close of the millen- nium, when machine-readable corpora of English-language texts and computer programs for exploring the linguistic usage captured in those texts have enhanced the character of reliable information about English usage world-wide. For all that, though, there remains uncertainty in many quarters as to what is right and wrong in English usage, grammar, and lexicography, and sometimes strident disagreement about how best to address such matters. Echoing nineteenth-century convictions, there is also a resurrected sense that if only English grammar were taught properly in the schools, splendid social and moral benefits would shower like manna from heaven upon the citizens of righteous English-speaking communities. 6.2 First period: mid-eighteenth century-1830 Particularly since the introduction of printing at Westminster in the late fifteenth century, the wider functions of English have fostered a vernacu- lar adept at carrying out the high and low affairs of Britain and its colonies. In the extension of English into new domains throughout Britain's English-speaking centres of learning, commerce, and government, however, there also had arisen a perplexing diversity of linguistic expres- sion. Not only in regional and social dialects but in situational registers, competing forms of English prompted concern about correct usage. Observers fretted about variant forms and continuing innovation. Underlying the unease was an assumption that, far from enhancing a lan- guage, alternative ways of expressing things was potentially harmful. In this environment, entrepreneurs set about to ascertain the language by 540 English grammar and usage determining its correct forms and to fix it or give it permanent form by codifying it in dictionaries and grammars. 6.2.1 Selecting a variety to be standardised In his 1712 proposal Swift had observed that were it not for familiarity with the English of the Bible and Common Prayer Book, 'we should hardly be able to understand any Thing that was written among us an hundred Years ago'. Expressing the concern of many writers that a too fluid language would soon leave the written word incomprehensible, he noted that the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, because they were 'perpetually read in Churches', had served as 'a kind of Standard for Language, espe- cially to the common People'. In referring to c a kind of Standard', Swift pointed to what would remain a perennial challenge for grammarians and lexicographers: identifying appropriate models of English to codify. He also pointed to the role of books in providing a standard. In 1776 the Scottish rhetorician George Campbell published The Philosophy of Rhetoric, a work of scope and substance that included discus- sion of 'grammatical purity'. For Campbell, the best-known rhetorician of his age, what gave 'law to language' was use. Like many of his contempo- raries, Campbell understood language to be 'purely a species of fashion' and words to carry meanings by virtue of a tacit agreement among speak- ers and writers, as Locke had proposed at the end of the seventeenth century. Drawing an important distinction between the practice of grammar and the practice of verbal criticism, Campbell restricted grammarians to the task of description: 'It is not the business of grammar, as some critics seem preposterously to imagine, to give law to the fashions which regulate our speech'. In 1776, however, the challenge facing grammarians who jtook usage as th e basis for grammatical description was in choosing whose usage and which kind of usage to describe. '[I]f use be a matter of such conse- quence, it will be necessary to ascertain precisely what it is', Campbell (1776: 141) said and, in an oft echoed phrase, proposed 'reputable, national, and present use' as the basis for establishing a standard language. Present use he distinguished from obsolete, recognising that the relevant chronological scope differs across different forms of composition. National he opposed not only to provincial and foreign use but to professional styles as well. Reputable use he identified in theory as 'the practice of those who have had a liberal education, and are therefore presumed to be best acquainted with men and things' (1776: 143). (Apologetically, he offered 54i Edward Finegan that if this last characterisation implied 'any deference to the practice of the great and rich, it is not ultimately because they are greater and richer than others, but because, from their greatness and riches, they are imag- ined to be wiser and more knowing'.) In practice Campbell (1776:144—5) setded on 'authors of reputation' — on the modes of language that are 'authorized as good by the writings of a great number, if not the major- ity, of celebrated authors'. In balancing theoretical considerations with practical ones, Campbell's views are typical of those that informed late eighteenth-century opinion about the role of usage in ascertaining and codifying English. He raised questions about the central criteria for ascer- taining correctness and establishing a standard: the roles of writing and speaking; the choice of models; and the distinct responsibilities of grammarians and critics. 6.2.2 History and scope of grammar The earliest English grammars had appeared only in the late sixteenth century, and the field expanded somewhat in the seventeenth century, but by 1700 only twenty-one English grammars had been published (Michael 1970: 151). In the eighteenth century, interest in regularising the vernacu- lar had sufficiendy increased that British and American entrepreneurs - clerics and teachers, scientists and lawyers - faced a-demand so voluminous that some grammars sold by the hundreds of thousands. The success of Robert Lowth (1710-87) prompted popularisers and interpreters such as John Ash, whose Grammatical Institutes (1763) promoted itself as an 'easy introduction' to Lowth's (1762) work. The most successful interpreter was Lindley Murray (1745-1826), an American who had retired to England after a successful career as a lawyer and merchant and whose English Grammar (1795), prepared initially for a girls' school in York, eventually saw more than 300 editions on both sides of the Adantic. Other contributors included the distinguished natural scientist Joseph Priesdey (1733-1804), whose Rudiments of English Grammar (1761) appeared a few months before Lowth's work and was superior to it in many ways but failed to achieve its popularity. The impressive Essay on Grammar (1765) by William Ward, master of a grammar school in York, comprised a speculative treatise of almost 300 pages and a somewhat smaller practical grammar. Despite its mammoth proportions, Ward's Essay found a sufficient market to be reis- sued three times before the century was out, and the practical grammar was abridged for separate publication. In America no grammar was more popular than the Englishman Thomas Dilworth's (1751) New Guide to the 542 [...]... first aim of Language was to communicate our thoughts: the second, to do it with dispatch', and the chief cause of the variety of words is to enable the tongue to keep pace with the mind by use of 'winged' words (17 98: 27—9) These 5 54 English grammar and usage 'abbreviations' constitute the pivotal notion of Home Tooke's theory of language, and the Diversions of Purley details his derivation of English. .. is 'the art of combining letters into syllables, and sylla­ bles into words'; etymology 'the deduction of one word from another, and the various modifications by which the meaning of the same word is diver­ sified'; syntax 'the proper construction of words, or the method of joining them together in sentences'; and prosody 'the rules of pronunciation, and of versification' Reflecting the influence of. .. derived from on neder (17 98: 40 8) , while head and heaven are 'evidently the past participles of the verb to Heave'; indeed, 'the names of all abstract rela­ tion are taken either from the adjectived common names of objects, or from the participles of common verbs' (17 98: 45 3) Home Tooke thus endeavoured to show that some particular noun or verb can be found at the origin of every word and that each... and Priesdey (1761: 1), grammar is 'the art of using words properly'; by Lowth (1762: 1), 'the art of righdy expressing our thoughts by words'; by Fell (17 84 : 1), 'the Art of Speaking and Writing the English Language, agreeably to the established usage of the best and most approved Speakers and Writers'; by Murray (1795: 1), 'the art of speaking and writing the English language with propriety' Generally... comparative approach of Jones but the speculations of Home Tooke that captured the British philological imagination Indeed, the Diversions of Purley is 'of fundamental importance in the history of linguistic thought, and its influence in the first 5 58 English grammar and usage half of the nineteenth c e n t u r y profound', as Alston notes in his intro­ duction to the facsimile edition of the work What... event in the codification of English during the nine­ teenth century was, of course, the compilation of the New English Dictionary, whose grounding can be traced to the Philological Society, founded in London in 1 84 2 By the mid- 185 0s members of the Society had come to recognise certain deficiencies in the dictionaries of Samuel Johnson and Charles Richardson, the latter a disciple of Home Tooke Consequently,... heard even to the present day that nothing iUuminates English grammar like the study of Latin The observation made by a young schoolmaster toward the end of the eight­ eenth century has had echoes at the end of the twentieth: We are apt to be surprised, that men who made the languages their prin­ cipal study should not discover that the Grammar of one language would not answer for another; but our... suggestion of his Creator' Thus Genesis provides 'the clearest intimation of the origin, at once divine and human, of speech' ( 185 2: 24) , and the record of language would be a record of man's 'greatness and of his degradation, of his glory and of his shame' ( 185 2: 38) It needs no more than to open a dictionary and we shall find abun­ dant confirmation of this sadder and sterner estimate of man's moral... may truly say: Voxpopuliy vox Dei, The voice of the people is the voice of God How deep an insight into the failings of the human heart lies at the root of many words; and if only we would attend to them, what valuable warnings many contain against subtle temptations and sins! ( 185 2 : 48 -9) With its eloquent linking of language and morality, Trench's On the Study of Words was popular enough to warrant... of the true theory of the construction of lan­ guage' and had accepted the likelihood that 'the noun or substantive is the principal part of speech from which most words are originally derived' (1 789 : 182 ) Etymology is an aspect of the story of correctness that is far more significant than many accounts indicate, and we consider it further in the following sections 6.3 Second period: 183 0-1930 We . incompletely in the course of the eighteenth century did the study of English grammar emerge from the shadows of the classical tongue. By then the place of English in the intellectual life of Britain. 18 74: 16-17). 143 The description of American /r/ by Day (1 84 3 :45 0) deliberately leaves open the question of the position and activity of the tip of the tongue, once the 'essential. to encompass the entire scope of planning and producing the Oxford English Dictionary, and section 6 .4 the span from the completion of the OED to the close of the millennium. The chronological