Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/839

 some have charged it as a glaring error, long prevalent among English grammarians, and still a fruitful source of disputes, to confound accent with quantity in our language. [489] "We shall now take a view of sounds when united into syllables. Here a beautiful variation of quantity presents itself as the next object of our attention. The knowledge of long and short syllables, is the most excellent and most neglected quality in the whole art of pronunciation.The disputes of our modern writers on this subject, have arisen chiefly from an absurd notion that has long prevailed; viz. that there is no difference between the accent and the quantity, in the English language; that the accented syllables are always long, and the unaccented always short.An absurdity so glaring, does not need refutation. Pronounce any one line from Milton, and the ear will determine whether or not the accent and quantity always coincide. Very seldom they do."&mdash;: Bicknell's Gram., Part ii, p. 108. "Some of our Moderns (especially Mr. Bishe, in his Art of Poetry) and lately Mr. Mattaire, in what he calls, The English Grammar, erroneously use Accent for Quantity, one signifying the Length or Shortness of a Syllable, the other the raising or falling of the Voice in Discourse."&mdash;Brightland's Gram., London, 1746, p. 156. "Tempus cum accentu a nonnullis malè confunditur; quasi idem sit acui et produci. Cum brevis autem syllaba acuitur, elevatur quidem vox in eà proferendà, sed tempus non augetur. Sic in voce hominibus acuitur mi; at ni quæ sequitur, æquam in efferendo moram postulat."&mdash;Lily's Gram., p. 125. Version: "By some persons, time is improperly confounded with accent; as if to acute and to lengthen were the same. But when a short syllable is acuted, the voice indeed is raised in pronouncing it, but the time is not increased. Thus, in the word hominibus, mi as the acute accent; but ni, which follows, demands equal slowness in the pronunciation." To English ears, this can hardly seem a correct representation; for, in pronouncing hominibus, it is not mi, but min, that we accent; and this syllable is manifestly as much longer than the rest, as it is louder.

This charge, however, there is reason to believe, is sometimes, if not in most cases, made on grounds rather fanciful than real; for some have evidently mistaken the notion of concurrence or coincidence for that of identity. But, to affirm that the stress which we call accent, coincides always and only with long quantity, does not necessarily make accent and quantity to be one and the same thing. The greater force or loudness which causes the accented syllable to occupy more time than any other, is in itself something different from time. Besides, quantity is divisible,&mdash;being either long or short: these two species of it are acknowledged on all sides, and some few prosodists will have a third, which they call "common." [490] "Syllables, with respect to their quantity, are either long, short, or common."&mdash;Gould's Adam's Lat. Gram., p. 243. "Some syllables are common; that is, sometimes long, and sometimes short."&mdash;Adam's Lat. and Eng. Gram., p. 252. Common is here put for variable, or not permanently settled in respect to quantity: in this sense, from which no third species ought to be inferred, our language is, perhaps, more extensively "common" than any other. "Most of our Monosyllables either take this Stress or not, according as they are more or less emphatical; and therefore English Words of one Syllable may be considered as common; i.e. either as long or short in certain Situations. These Situations are chiefly determined by the Pause, or Cesure, of the Verse, and this Pause by the Sense. And as the English abounds in Monosyllables, there is probably no Language in which the Quantity of Syllables is more regulated by the Sense than in English."&mdash;W. Ward's Gram., Ed. of 1765, p. 156. Bicknell's theory of quantity, for which he refers to Herries, is this: "The English quantity is divided into long, short, and common. The longest species of syllables are those that end in a vowel, and are under the accent; as, mo in harmonious, sole in console, &c. When a monosyllable, which is unemphatic, ends in a vowel, it is always short; but when the emphasis is placed upon it, it is always long. Short syllables are such as end in any of the six mutes; as cut, stop, rapid, rugged, lock. In all such syllables the sound cannot be lengthened: they are necessarily and invariably short. If another consonant intervenes between the vowel and mute, as rend, soft, flask, the syllable is rendered somewhat longer. The other species of syllables called common, are such as terminate in a half-vowel or aspirate. For instance, in the words run, swim, crush, purl, the concluding sound can be continued or shortened, as we please. This scheme of quantity," it is added, "is founded on fact and experience."&mdash;Bicknell's Gram., Part ii, p. 109. But is it not a fact, that such words as cuttest, stopping, rapid, rugged, are trochees, in verse? and is not unlock an iambus? And what becomes of syllables that end with vowels or liquids and are not accented? But, of our English accent, the word being taken in its usual acceptation, no such division is ever, with any propriety, made; for even the stress which we call secondary accent, pertains to long syllables rather than to short ones; and the mere absence of stress, which produces short quantity, we do not call accent. The impropriety of affirming quantity to be the same as accent, when its most frequent species occurs only in the absence of accent, must be obvious to every body; and those writers who anywhere suggest this identity, must either have written absurdly, or have taken accent in some sense which includes the sounds of our unaccented syllables. The word sometimes means, "The modulation of the voice in speaking."&mdash;Worcester's Dict., w. Accent. In this sense, the lighter as well as the more impressive sounds are included; but still, whether both together, considered as accents, can be reckoned the same as long and short quantities, is questionable. Some say, they cannot; and insist that they are yet as different, as the variable tones of a trumpet, which swell and fall, are different from the merely loud and soft notes of the monotonous drum. This illustration of the "easy Distinction betwixt Quantity and Accent" is cited with commendation, in Brightland's Grammar, on page 157th; the author of which grammar, seems to have understood Accent, or Accents, to be the same as Inflections&mdash;though these are still unlike to quantities, if he did so. (See an explanation of Inflections in Chap. II, Sec. iii, Art. 3, above.)