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A Mid-18th-Century Use of [ə], [ɔ], and [ʞ] as Phonetic Symbols

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

Michael K. C. MacMahon
Michael K. C. MacMahon
Affiliation:
Department of English Language, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland, U.K.
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Extract

According to Sweet, the German linguist Johann Andreas Schmeller was the first to use [ə] as a phonetic symbol (Sweet 1877: 175). (Although Sweet gives no bibliographical reference, the work he must have had in mind was Schmeller's Die Mundarten Bayerns of 1821; cf. also Ellis 1874: 1357.) Schmeller uses [ə] for the ‘dumpfe Vocallaut’ in words like Semmel, Nennen, Wetter, and for the second element of various diphthongs, e.g. in dialectal pronunciations of Not(h), Bruder, etc. (Schmeller 1821: 25, 72, 141, and passim). According to Abercrombie (1946), an earlier use of [ə] than Schmeller's is to be found in William Thornton's Cadmus of 1793, for the vowel in run, come, etc. However, neither the original nor the reprint of Cadmus uses a [ə], but the symbol [ℶ].

Type
Research Notes
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , June 1994 , pp. 19 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © Journal of the International Phonetic Association 1994

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References

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