Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/840

 His exposition is this: "Accent is the rising and falling of the Voice, above or under its usual Tone. There are three Sorts of Accents, an Acute, a Grave, and an Inflex, which is also call'd a Circumflex. The Acute, or Sharp, naturally raises the Voice; and the Grave, or Base, as naturally falls it. The Circumflex is a kind of Undulation, or Waving of the Voice."&mdash;Brightland's Gram., Seventh Ed., Lond., 1746, p. 156. Dr. Johnson, whose great authority could not fail to carry some others with him, too evidently identifies accent with quantity, at the commencement of his Prosody. " is just," says he, "when every letter has its proper sound, and when every syllable has its proper accent, or which in English versification is the same, its proper quantity."&mdash; Johnson's Gram., before Dict., 4to, p. 13; John Burn's Gram., p. 240; Jones's Prosodial Gram., before Dict., p. 10. Now our most common notion of accent&mdash;the sole notion with many&mdash;and that which the accentuation of Johnson himself everywhere inculcates&mdash;is, that it belongs not to "every syllable," but only to some particular syllables, being either "a stress of voice on a certain syllable," or a small mark to denote such stress.&mdash;See Scott's Dict., or Worcester's. But Dr. Johnson, in the passage above, must have understood the word accent agreeably to his own imperfect definition of it; to wit, as "the sound given to the syllable pronounced."&mdash;''Joh. Dict. An unaccented'' syllable must have been to him a syllable unpronounced. In short he does not appear to have recognized any syllables as being unaccented. The word unaccented had no place in his lexicography, nor could have any without inconsistencey. [sic&mdash;KTH] It was unaptly added to his text, after sixty years, by one of his amenders, Todd or Chalmers; who still blindly neglected to amend his definition of accent. In these particulars, Walker's dictionaries exhibit the same deficiencies as Johnson's; and yet no author has more frequently used the words accent and unaccented, than did Walker. [493] Mason's Supplement, first published in 1801, must have suggested to the revisers of Johnson the addition of the latter term, as appears by the authority cited for it: "UNA'CCENTED, adj. Not accented. 'It being enough to make a syllable long, if it be accented, and short, if it be unaccented.' Harris's Philological Inquiries."&mdash;Mason's Sup. This doctrine of Harris's, that long quantity accompanies the accent, and unaccented syllables are short, is far from confounding or identifying accent with quantity, as has already been shown; and, though it plainly contradicts some of the elementary teaching of Johnson, Sheridan, Walker, Murray, Webster, Latham, Fowler, and others, in regard to the length or shortness of certain syllables, it has been clearly maintained by many excellent authors, so that no opposite theory is better supported by authority. On this point, our language stands not alone; for the accent controls quantity in some others. [494]  In the Latin and Greek languages, this is not commonly supposed to be the case; but, on the contrary, the quantity of syllables is professedly adjusted by its own rules independently of what we call accent; and, in our English pronunciation of these languages, the accentuation of all long words is regulated by the quantity of the last syllable but one. Walker, in the introduction to his Key, speaks of "The English pronunciation of Greek and Latin [as] injurious to quantity." And no one can deny, that we often accent what are called short syllables, and perhaps oftener leave unaccented such as are called long; but, after all, were the quantity of Latin and Greek syllables always judged of by their actual time, and not with reference to the vowel sounds called long and short, these our violations of the old quantities would be found much fewer than some suppose they are. Dr. Adam's view of the accents, acute and grave, appears to be peculiar; and of a nature which may perhaps come nearer to an actual identity with the quantities, long and short, than any other. He says, "1. The acute or sharp accent raises the voice in pronunciation, and is thus marked [´]; prófero, prófer. [The English word is written, not thus, but with two Effs, proffer.&mdash;G. B.] "2. The grave or base accent depresses the voice, or keeps it in its natural tone; and is thus marked [`]; as, doctè. ☞ This accent properly belongs to all syllables which have no other. "The accents are hardly ever marked in English books, except in dictionaries, grammars, spelling-books, or the like, where the acute accent only is used. The accents are likewise seldom marked in Latin books, unless for the sake of distinction; as in these adverbs, aliquò, continuò, doctè, unà, &c."&mdash;Adam's Latin and English Grammar, p. 266.  As stress naturally lengthens the syllables on which it falls, if we suppose the grave accent to be the opposite of this, and to belong to all syllables which have no peculiar stress,&mdash;are not enforced, not acuted, not circumflected, not emphasized; then shall we truly have an accent with which our short quantity may fairly coincide. But I have said, "the mere absence of stress, which produces short quantity, we do not call accent;" and it may be observed, that the learned improver of Dr. Adam's Grammar, B. A. Gould, has totally rejected all that his predecessor taught concerning accent, and has given an entirely different definition of the thing. See marginal notes on page 771, above. Dr. Johnson also cites from Holder a very different explanation of it, as follows: "Accent, as in the Greek names and usage, seems to have regarded the tune of the voice; the acute accent, raising the voice in some certain syllables, to a higher, (i.e. more acute) pitch or tone; and the grave, depressing it lower; ☞ and both having some emphasis, i.e. more vigorous pronunciation. ."&mdash;Johnson's Quarto Dict., w. Accent.  G H. Noehden, a writer of uncommon ability, in
 * 1) It may in some measure account for these remarkable omissions, to observe that Walker, in his lexicography, followed Johnson in almost every thing but pronunciation. On this latter subject, his own authority is perhaps as great as that of any single author. And here I am led to introduce a remark or two touching the accent and quantity with which he was chiefly concerned; though the suggestions may have no immediate connexion with the error of confounding these properties.
 * 2) Walker, in his theory, regarded the inflections of the voice as pertaining to accent, and as affording a satisfactory solution of the difficulties in which this subject has been involved; but, as an English orthoëpist, he treats of accent in no other sense, than as stress laid on a particular syllable of a word&mdash;a sense implying contrast, and necessarily dividing all syllables into accented and unaccented, except monosyllables. Having acknowledged our "total ignorance of the nature of the Latin and Greek accent," he adds: "The accent of the English language, which is constantly sounding in our ears, and every moment open to investigation, seems as much a mystery as that accent which is removed almost two thousand years from our view. Obscurity, perplexity, and confusion, run through every treatise on the subject, and nothing could be so hopeless as an attempt to explain it, did not a circumstance present itself, which at once accounts for the confusion, and affords a clew to lead us out of it. Not one writer on accent has given such a definition of the voice as acquaints us with its essential properties. * * * But let us once divide the voice into its rising and falling inflections, the obscurity vanishes, and accent becomes as intelligible as any other part of language. * * * On the present occasion it will be sufficient to observe, that the stress we call accent is as well understood as is necessary for the pronunciation of single words, which is the object of this treatise."&mdash;Walker's Dict., p. 53, Princip. 486, 487, 488.
 * 3) Afterwards, on introducing quantity, as an orthoëpical topic, he has the following remark: "In treating this part of pronunciation, it will not be necessary to enter into the nature of that quantity which constitutes poetry; the quantity here considered will be that which relates to words taken singly; and this is nothing more than the length or shortness of the vowels, either as they stand alone, or as they are differently combined with the vowels or consonants." Ib., p. 62, Princip. 529. Here is suggested a distinction which has not been so well observed by grammarians and prosodists, or even by Walker himself, as it ought to have been. So long as the practice continues of denominating certain mere vowel sounds the long and the short, it will be very necessary to notice that these are not the same as the syllabic quantities, long and short, which constitute English verse.