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Suprasegmentals, Prosodies, Prosodemes

Comparison and Discussion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Archibald A. Hill
Archibald A. Hill*
Affiliation:
University of Texas
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Extract

The paper which follows is an attempt to compare the analytical procedures of the greatest of British structuralists, the late J. R. Firth, with the procedures of one American linguist. At present, there is rather more than usual confusion and disunity among linguists in this country, so that I feel that the only course open to me is to speak for myself alone, though obviously I must also acknowledge that the great majority of the techniques, concepts, and entities which I use have originated with other linguists. I have been motivated by the belief that when there are two differing approaches to the same body of phenomena, with important differences in analysis and conclusions, the most useful discussion is detailed comparison to discover where there are agreements and what sort of disagreements there are, and, if possible, to remove some of the disagreements by showing that they are merely verbal rather than factual.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 37 , Issue 4-Part1: October-December , December 1961 , pp. 457 - 468
Copyright
Copyright © 1961 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 My source for Firth's ideas is his article Sounds and Prosodies, Payers in linguistics 1984–1951 121–38 (Oxford, 1957); the article was originally published in TPS 1948. In the interests of unity I have avoided reference to followers or modifiers of Firth's theory. References are to pages of the 1957 volume.

An excellent account of neo-Firthian theory is now available: G. L. Bursill-Hall, Levels of Analysis: J. R. Firth's Theories of Linguistic Analysis, Journal of the Canadian Linguistic Association 2.124–35, 164–91 (1960–61).

2 ‘It is especially helpful that there are things called English words and Arabic words. They are so called by authoritative bodies; indeed, English words and Classical Arabic words are firmly institutionalized’ (122).

2a [Gingham /'giŋəm/.—Editor.]

3 ‘More detailed notice of “h” and the “glottal stop” in a variety of languages will reveal the scientific convenience of regarding them as belonging to the prosodic systems of certain languages rather than to the sound systems’ (124).

4 Antonie Cohen, The phonemes of English 49–50 (The Hague, 1952).