miércoles, 29 de febrero de 2012







THE LONDON SCHOOL

England is a country in which certain aspects of linguistics have an usually long history. Linguistic description becomes a matter of practical importance to a nation when it evolves a standard or ´official’ language for itself out of the welter of diverse and conflicting  local usages normally found in any territory that has been settled for a considerable time, and it happens that in this respect England was, briefly, far in advance of Europe. The tradition of the study of language in Britain

Back to the 15th c. in the work of English grammarians, orthoepists, and other scholars

Concerned itself largely with THE STUDY OF ENGLISH

Was SELF-CONTAINED rather than developing in relation to comparable scholarship elsewhere

Over time, a model of scientific investigation arose which took its problems, methods, and the criteria for its critical evaluation almost exclusively from British sources

Lack of connection with work being done anywhere else

Phonetic study in the modern sense was pioneered by

Henry Sweet (1845-1912)

English phonetician

Chief founder of modern phonetics

During his life time

International phonetic association was founded

Modern languages in secondary schools became more secure

Reform Method based on the principles of language teaching laid down by the I. P. A.

The elaboration of a true method involves

(1) The selection of the variety of language to be taught

(2) The limitation of the amount to be taught in any given course

(3) The arrangement of the selected material in terms of the four language skills of the understanding speech, speaking, reading and writing

(4) The grading of the details of the materials at the various level pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and cultural content

o   A profound influence on the work of Harold Palmer, author of The Scientific Study and Teaching of Languages (1917), The Principles of Language Study.

o   He considered that knowledge of phonetics was the first essential step in learning a foreign language, and that no attempt should be made to advance in grammar and vocabulary until the sounds of the language have been mastered.

o   He suggests that the first foreign language should be introduced to children when they are 10 years of age.


Sweet was the greatest of the few historical linguists whom Britain produced in the nineteenth century to rival the burgeoning of historical linguistics in Germany, but unlike the German scholars, Sweet based his historical studies on a detailed understanding of the workings of the vocal organs. Sweet's general approach to phonetics was continued by Daniel Jones ,  who took the subject up as a hobby that they ought to consider teaching phonetics of French, was taken on as a lecturer there in 1907 and built up what became the first university department of phonetics in Britain.

·         though he even preferred the psychological view, he opts  for the physical definition of the phoneme on practical grounds (better for teaching)

·         1950 The Phoneme: ”a family of sounds in a given language which are related in character and are used in such a way that no member occurs in a word in the same phonetic context as any other member (195)”

·         so, members are concrete fully specified sounds, whereas the phoneme is an abstraction of a higher level



John Rupert Firth (1890-1960)


·         Studied history at Leeds; joined the Indian education service (Afghanistan, Africa, India)


·         1928 senior lecturer under Jones


·         Participated in seminars with the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, which affected his view of language


·         Appointed lecturer in SOAS, then reader, and head


·         During WWII, teaching Oriental languages, esp. Japanese









[RTF] The London School of Prosodic Analysis




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