La notion d'unité sonore dans les grammaires françaises des 17ème et 18ème siècles
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Jean-Marie Fournier
Résumé
The object of this article is to present one aspect of the development of the theory of sounds during the 17th and 18th centuries, after a discussion of the hypotheses put forth by i) Sylvain Auroux, who believes that during this period, the letter played a regulating role analogous to that of the phoneme among modern linguists, and ii) Daniel Droixhe, who suggests that certain authors (such as those of the Port-Royal grammar) were guided by a “sense of the phoneme”. The important issue in this debate is the way in which the authors of this period conceived the units of sound in the language, their status, and the criteria for defining them. The article examines these questions using a corpus of texts from the 17th and 18th centuries, tackling three problems characteristic of phonetic descriptions during that time: the “discovery” of nasal vowels, that of semivowels, and the identification of the different values of the letter e in French.
Résumé
The object of this article is to present one aspect of the development of the theory of sounds during the 17th and 18th centuries, after a discussion of the hypotheses put forth by i) Sylvain Auroux, who believes that during this period, the letter played a regulating role analogous to that of the phoneme among modern linguists, and ii) Daniel Droixhe, who suggests that certain authors (such as those of the Port-Royal grammar) were guided by a “sense of the phoneme”. The important issue in this debate is the way in which the authors of this period conceived the units of sound in the language, their status, and the criteria for defining them. The article examines these questions using a corpus of texts from the 17th and 18th centuries, tackling three problems characteristic of phonetic descriptions during that time: the “discovery” of nasal vowels, that of semivowels, and the identification of the different values of the letter e in French.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements ix
- The natural: Its meanings and functions in the history of linguistic thought 1
- On grammatical gender as an arbitrary and redundant category 24
- Penser l'espace, penser l'espèce: Modélisation des affinités linguistiques 37
- On the origins of the participle as a part of speech 50
- Grammar as a liberal art in antiquity 67
- Priscian's pedagogy: A critique of the Institutio de nomine et pronomine et verbo 80
- L'horizon de retrospection du Mithridate de Conrad Gessner (1555) 89
- Montaigne's view of skepticism and language in the Essais 103
- Competing models for a 17th century universal language: A study of the dispute between George Dalgarno and John Wilkins 112
- La notion d'unité sonore dans les grammaires françaises des 17ème et 18ème siècles 120
- Une "Grammaire générale et raisonnée" en 1651 (1635?): Description et intérpretation d'une découverte empirique 131
- 'Analogy': The history of a concept and a term from the 17th to the 19th century 156
- Une écriture de l'histoire: La Lettre à M. Pinglin sur l'histoire de la science grammaticale 169
- Quels facteurs (linguistiques ou historiques) considérer dans l'accord en français? Étude de certains cas dans le Journal de la langue française (1784) d'Urbain Domergue 183
- Nicolas Beauzée: La clé inexploitée de la phonétique française 197
- Colonialism, scientific expeditions and linguistics in 19th century Brazil 212
- The concept of civilization in historic Brazilian linguistics 228
- The European linguistic tradition and early missionary grammars in Central and South America 236
- Steinthal and the limits of etymology: The special case of Chinese 252
- An epistemological assessment of the Neogrammarian movement 262
- Privileged languages and others in the history of historical-comparative linguistics 274
- The nationalist turn: Dutch linguistics and German philosophy in the 18th and early 19th centuries 288
- Représentations de l'autre: L'italien et les Italiens dans quelques dictionnaires bilingues des XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles 308
- L'utile et l'agréable dans les méthodes familières et autres ouvrages utilisés pour l'apprentissage du français aux Pays-Bas (XVIIIe-XIXe siècles) 321
- La reformulation dans la lexicographie des XVIe-XIXe siècles: L'emergence de la syntaxe française 333
- Words and concepts for child language learning in late 19th versus late 20th century America 344
- La lexicologie, un savoir scolarisable? 356
- Aspects de la linguistique prescriptive: Les perceptions des vocabulaires de specialité à travers des dictionnaires français (XIXe et XXe s.) 372
- Semantique et analogie dans la tradition grammaticale arabe: La valeur des formes verbales 386
- Meaning by collocation: The Firthian filiation of corpus linguistics 404
- Kristeva on the encyclopedists: Linguistics, semanalysis, and the epistemology of Enlightenment science 416
- La preuve de Gaifman: Réflexions sur la méthode de construction des grammaires catégorielles 432
- Name index 441
- Subject index 447
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements ix
- The natural: Its meanings and functions in the history of linguistic thought 1
- On grammatical gender as an arbitrary and redundant category 24
- Penser l'espace, penser l'espèce: Modélisation des affinités linguistiques 37
- On the origins of the participle as a part of speech 50
- Grammar as a liberal art in antiquity 67
- Priscian's pedagogy: A critique of the Institutio de nomine et pronomine et verbo 80
- L'horizon de retrospection du Mithridate de Conrad Gessner (1555) 89
- Montaigne's view of skepticism and language in the Essais 103
- Competing models for a 17th century universal language: A study of the dispute between George Dalgarno and John Wilkins 112
- La notion d'unité sonore dans les grammaires françaises des 17ème et 18ème siècles 120
- Une "Grammaire générale et raisonnée" en 1651 (1635?): Description et intérpretation d'une découverte empirique 131
- 'Analogy': The history of a concept and a term from the 17th to the 19th century 156
- Une écriture de l'histoire: La Lettre à M. Pinglin sur l'histoire de la science grammaticale 169
- Quels facteurs (linguistiques ou historiques) considérer dans l'accord en français? Étude de certains cas dans le Journal de la langue française (1784) d'Urbain Domergue 183
- Nicolas Beauzée: La clé inexploitée de la phonétique française 197
- Colonialism, scientific expeditions and linguistics in 19th century Brazil 212
- The concept of civilization in historic Brazilian linguistics 228
- The European linguistic tradition and early missionary grammars in Central and South America 236
- Steinthal and the limits of etymology: The special case of Chinese 252
- An epistemological assessment of the Neogrammarian movement 262
- Privileged languages and others in the history of historical-comparative linguistics 274
- The nationalist turn: Dutch linguistics and German philosophy in the 18th and early 19th centuries 288
- Représentations de l'autre: L'italien et les Italiens dans quelques dictionnaires bilingues des XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles 308
- L'utile et l'agréable dans les méthodes familières et autres ouvrages utilisés pour l'apprentissage du français aux Pays-Bas (XVIIIe-XIXe siècles) 321
- La reformulation dans la lexicographie des XVIe-XIXe siècles: L'emergence de la syntaxe française 333
- Words and concepts for child language learning in late 19th versus late 20th century America 344
- La lexicologie, un savoir scolarisable? 356
- Aspects de la linguistique prescriptive: Les perceptions des vocabulaires de specialité à travers des dictionnaires français (XIXe et XXe s.) 372
- Semantique et analogie dans la tradition grammaticale arabe: La valeur des formes verbales 386
- Meaning by collocation: The Firthian filiation of corpus linguistics 404
- Kristeva on the encyclopedists: Linguistics, semanalysis, and the epistemology of Enlightenment science 416
- La preuve de Gaifman: Réflexions sur la méthode de construction des grammaires catégorielles 432
- Name index 441
- Subject index 447
