Bloomfield & Bolling - What Symbols Shall We Use

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Linguistic Society of America

What Symbols Shall We Use?Author(s): Leonard Bloomfield and George Melville BollingReviewed work(s):Source: Language, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Jun., 1927), pp. 123-129Published by: Linguistic Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/408965 .Accessed: 29/12/2011 05:13

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WHAT SYMBOLS SHALL WE USE?

LEONARD BLOOMFIELD

GEORGE MELVILLE BOLLINGOHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

The material of Linguistic Science is human utterance, and for its

work the ideal medium is viva vocecommunication. Rather, this wouldbe the case, did not factors of time and space greatly restrict its ap-plicability. Human utterance is so fleeting that even the field-workerplaced most fortunately as he is in the immediate presence of hismaterial, must seek to hold this transitory phenomenon-to make anartificial record of it for re-examination.

Now to make a record that will permit an absolutely perfect repro-duction of the utterance is, of course, beyond his or any human power.There can at most be only question of an approximation. For itthe best device is undoubtedly a phonograph; but both its cost andcumbersomeness render its use for many purposes inadvisable, andthus even the field-worker is forced to fall further back upon a mucholder device-upon a system of graphic symbols as substitute stimulifor speech reactions. What is true of the field-worker is obviouslytrue in a still higher degree of his less fortunately situated colleagues.For all linguists, then, written symbols are a necessity, and ourproblem is to make of them the best possible use.

To show that we are at present far from attaining such a use needs noreference to old articles on Transkriptionsmisdrel nor any account of therecent Copenhagen Conference.2 The fact is all too evident, and inevidence too are its harmful consequences. Of these may be mentionedfirst, the fact that our science is too esoteric; that it repels instead ofattracting many who should be its closest friends (practical teachers oflanguages, historians and critics of literature, students of ancient life,etc., etc.); and that its effect in wider circles is practically nil. Thentoo, modern methods of printing and the rising cost of printers' labor

'Brugmann, Idg. Forsch 7.167-77 (1897).2 0. Jespersen and H. Pedersen, Phonetic Transcription and Transliteration,

Proposals of the Copenhagen Conference April 1925. Oxford, 1926.123



124 L. BLOOMFIELD AND G. M. BOLLING

are making our present procedure a costly luxury. We are rapidlyreaching the point where linguistic matter is so expensive to print thatthe claim of our science upon the economic resources of society does notsuffice. This will make itself felt in the concrete instance in variousways: publishers cannot afford to buy our manuscripts; we cannotafford to print at private expense; our journals must grow smaller andfewer. Now if the complication and costliness of our present methodsare inherent in the nature of our science, we shall, of course, have toput up with their consequences as best we can. The present writers,however, are convinced that these habits of ours are not only unessentialto our work, but positively harmful to it.

The first source of our difficulties is an unwillingness to draw thepractical conclusions from a fact which we would admit in theory. Aslinguists we all know that symbols are symbols, matters of convention,without any mystic tie between themselves and the thing symbolized.The same series of sounds gvetas can (and does) mean either 'white'or 'black'; water might perfectly well mean 'milk' and milk mean 'water'.We laugh at the peasant who says: 'bread is bread everywhere, butthey call it pain in France'. Yet we act as if the symbol p for instance,

could not perfectly well symbolize, say, a voiced velar spirant, or anyother sound, if we so willed it. No! p is p! And o with a tail underit is an open o-sound (does that mean a lower or a looser articulation?)or a nasalized o as the case may be; to substitute a or 6 were heresy.The cause is a blind clinging to tradition.

Now our tradition is made up of many items, and these vary instrength and serviceableness. The habit of symbolizing unvoiced labialstops by p (we ignore matters of interest to the palaeographer) has ahistory running back for some three thousand years. So far as we

recall, the symbol has never been used for any other purpose; nor havesuch sounds been represented by any other symbol in systems based onthe Greco-Roman alphabet. To tamper with a convention of thatsort would be madness, and there is no likelihood that any scientist willpropose to do so. The symbol j has a much shorter and more variedhistory (jest, jamais, ja). In dealing with it we have a freer hand and amore difficult problem. The special conventions of our science, thequeer-shaped letters and the diacritic marks, are but creations ofyesterday. They have sprung up almost before our eyes in a hap-hazard fashion, inventions to meet a momentary need, controlledlargely by the native speech-habits of the inventor, or dictated perhapsby a passion for an illusory 'accuracy', combined with the conveniences:



WHAT SYMBOLS SHALL WE USE 125

of a particular printer. At best they are inspired by considerationswhich are palaeographic, rather than linguistic-as when, for instance,vowel-length is marked in OE, ON, OI by an acute accent, but in OHGby an apex, a procedure as irrelevant to our purposes as would be re-producing the shapes of the letters in which these languages werewritten. Sometimes even such a basis is surprisingly narrow, and stillthe convention-cf. a and s-may become a shibboleth.

Yet these are probably the very conventions to which we cling themost tenaciously. Brugmann, indeed, laid it down as a principle thatwe must do so: that for each language we must adhere to the traditionas developed by students of that language. The result is that the readerof the Grundriss is accommodated in his own field, but has to form newhabits for half a dozen or more unfamiliar languages; not to mentionthe fact that, as the 'traditions' are far from uniform-witness thetransliteration of Sanskrit-further readjustments are required as soonas the student turns from Brugmann to another author. From such aprinciple the only possible outcome is a hodge-podge wherein one symbolrepresents divers phenomena, and the same phenomenon is symbolizedin various ways. Hirt had the wisdom to protest against the principle;3

and the American Anthropological Association decided against it in asimilar case.4 Only by following in the way these scholars have ledcan we ever attain to self-consistency-the first requirement to be madeof any system of symbols.

However, one valuable lesson may be gained from our experience withthe system of transcription in the Grundriss. It is that we can adaptourselves to changes in our symbols with almost kaleidoscopic rapidity.A proposal therefore to break with some of our traditions, even withsome that appear the most sacrosanct, need not be regarded as pe-

culiarly appalling.The other great source of our trouble is the habit of cluttering up our

pages with queer-looking symbols in our efforts to attain an 'accuracy'that is an illusion. No series of human speech-sounds can be repre-sented exactly and completely by any system of written symbols-noteven by one so complicated as the Lepsius or the Anthropos alphabet.An approximation is always the best that can be done; always there isquestion only of more or less exactness.

That means the necessity always of choosing what we shall symbolizeand what we shall leave unindicated; and in doing this we must be guided

3IF 21. 145-61 (1907); Idg. Gram. 1. 112-19 (1927).SSmithsonian Misc. Coll. 66.6.




by the purposes we have in hand. For many of them (syntactic discus-sions, for instance) the traditional spelling even in a language writtenas unphonetically as English is the most serviceable form. Whenmore is needed, we must ask ourselves how much; bearing in mind thatthere is no sacrifice of scientific accuracy-no compromising with ourprofessional conscience-in choosing between a 'narrow' and a 'broad'transcription.' A superfluous complication of the symbols cannotreproduce the sounds for a reader unfamiliar with the language; allit can do, and it will do it, is to confuse him.

But the striving for an illusion of accuracy has done worse than clutterour pages; it has actually kept back our knowledge. For instance thefairly simple matter of the diphthongs and their variants before [r]in the Western ('General') American type of pronunciation has beenconfused by attempts to be 'phonetically accurate', until today nobodyknows where he stands or what his neighbor's record may mean. Ourseven diphthongs, as in see, say, sigh, boy, do, go, how, involve certainautomatic variations of the vowels and of the semivowels. Thesevariations cannot profitably be indicated by separate characters; thebest we can do is to tell about them in our text. So far as symbolism

goes, we cannot do better than [sij, sej, saj, boj, duw, gow, haw].Before [r] these diphthongs suffer certain automatic changes, so thatnear, hair, hire, poor, door, hour differ rather strikingly from the precedingseries. Nevertheless they can be most intelligibly and plainly recordedin the same symbols as [nijr, hejr, hajr, puwr, dowr, awr] with thedifferences which go hand in hand with the following [r] stated to acertain extent in words.

We have, however, tangled things to the point where phoneticiansmisunderstand and disbelieve each other; cf. D. Jones, commenting,Maitre Phondtique 5 (Jan.-March 1927), on an article of Kenyon's:'We find it difficult to believe that two kinds of [c] and an [me] an existas three separate phonemes in any language ... .' Yet everyspeaker of Western American will bear out Kenyon's point. Thetrouble is merely in the pedantic and irrelevant symbolism which we alluse.

6 For this distinction, cf. Princ. Int. Phon. Ass. 14-5 where it is rather implied,perhaps unintentionally, that 'narrow' and 'scientific' transcription are alwaysto be

identified;also

Propos. ofthe

Copenh. Conf.8-9 where the

possibilityof such

an understanding is excluded explicitly. In the former passage the point of realinterest was that 'broad' transcriptions suffice for most practical purposes; and(we may add) for many scientific ones.




Our speech has, like French, Italian, and many another, two levelsof mid vowels, as in men, son and man, saw. If we use the Latin letters

[e] and [o] for the higher vowels, we shall need two extra symbols.For these, following the Principles of the International Phonetic Associa-tion (London 1912) we shall use [e, ] writing men, man [men, men]and son, saw [son, so]. This is all that is needed; for tenseness, length,and lip-rounding play no distinctive part in our simple vowels, and neednot be symbolized. There is then nothing strange about our diphthongsand simple vowels:

may [mej] sow, sew, so [sow]men [men] son, sun [son]man [men] saw [so]

nor about their, in part altered, appearance before [r] :6Mary [mejrij] hoarse, wore [howrs, wowr]merry [merij horse [hors]marry [merij war [wor]

Jones would not have been incredulous had the matter been presentedin this way, i.e. without conformity to our bad habits of recording and inparticular to our habits of recording other types of English.

To take asimpler case, 'accuracy'

combined(let

us confessit)

withthe influence of traditional writing,' leads us to attribute to Russian asix-vowel system. Here the attempt to be irrelevantly 'exact' hasactually deceived us about the linguistic facts. Russian has a five-vowel system: the high-front vowel and the high-back or high-mixedvowel are merely variants of a single phoneme, the latter occurring onlyand always after non-palatalized consonants. Hence we should use asingle symbol in ['igo] yoke, [b'it'] beat, (front vowel) and ('pod igo)under the yoke, [bit'] be (back vowel). By giving up a pedantic and

irrelevant distinction we lose nothing in communicative value (for thepreceding symbol for an unpalatalized consonant suffices to distinguishthe back vowel) but we actually gain in the accuracy with which thephonetic system is reproduced.

We wish then to be easily intelligible and economical, ends that inpart oppose, in part support each other. The need is to re-examinein the light of these purposes our traditions to see how far they mayprofitably be changed. At least they have trained us, by their veryinconsistency, to adapt ourselves quickly.

6 In Western American; my own dialect (chiefly Southern) differs for the backseries: hoarse, horse [has]; wore, war [war] before vowel. GMB.

I The fact that this writing ultimately rests upon conditions of an earlier stateof the language is here irrelevant.




We would suggest to our fellow-workers as general principles:1) That we abandon our present conventions in the use of Roman,

italic, and bold-face type. They entail a duplication of equipment inspecial symbols and serve only purposes that are essentially ornamental.Linguistic forms can (as far as necessary) be set off from each otherand from the surrounding text by brackets, dashes, or what not. Varia-tions in these can be used to distinguish (where needed) 'broad' and'narrow' transcription, transliteration, etc., etc. The equipment thusreleased becomes automatically available for real work: e.g. italicsfor 'emphatic' consonants, bold-face for stressed vowels, etc. Foreignwords in Roman type stand out as well as in italics; the latter can thenbe used for translations. For a specimen of such printing, seeLANGUAGE 1. 130-56; 3. 9-11.

2) That we use to the utmost Latin letters, including capitals andsmall capitals together with italic and bold-face types. Only wherethese do not reach should we have recourse to other alphabets and todiacritic marks. This applies chiefly to new needs and to particularemergencies that may arise. Diacritic marks that are well-known andalready in the printers' stock are not to be recklessly discarded. Buteven

amongthese are

manywhose

rightto a continued existence should

be scrutinized closely. In general the presumptions are against anysymbol with two marks above or below the letter, and very stronglyagainst any with more. In a system employing such symbols, thenumber of type required mounts rapidly,8 and their cost becomes pro-hibitive. When all that these marks indicate must be indicated, thesolution will often be to put the diacritics after or before the letter, orto avoid one set at least of diacritics: higher and lower vowel-types,for instance can be distinguished better by different letters (small

capitals, e, oa than by tails or dots under one (and sometimes both!)letters.9 In making such readjustments advantage should be takenof the opportunity to iron out inconsistencies like those that have arisenin IE grammar from the principle of adhering to v Irious (and unstable)traditions. More frequently, however, the solution will be found byregarding the next two suggestions.

8 If only five vowel letters and only six diacritics be used, it can be calculatedthat the possible combinations of zero, one, two, or three of these six diacriticswith the five vowels is 210, and will cost well over $1000.00 for the equipment.

9 To illustrate: symbols such as [o' ] (high long oral) and [o, ] (low short nasal-ized), will express as much as the troublesome combinations mentioned in thepreceding note, and their cost is practically negligible.




3) That we recognize frankly the will-o'-the-wisp nature of the effortto assign a separate symbol to each variety of sound. In part we do

recognize this, as when we employ the same symbol p for the surd labialstops of both French and English in spite of their easily noticeabledifferences. But at other times we become too rigid. If [o'] and [o]represent tense, rounded vowels in French; that is no reason why [o]may not represent a loose vowel in German or a loose, unrounded vowelin English. For those"' who do not know these facts, a once-for-allstatement will suffice; neither for them nor for other readers is anythinggained by diacritics, inverted v, or similar devices of the grimoire.

4) That normally we symbolize only phonemes (distinctive features)so far as we can determine them; and that always before we indicatemore, we convince ourselves that more is demanded by the purpose inhand. The gain in elegance (in the mathematician's sense) will repayus for whatever nostalgia may result. We know today that no purposewas served by those who wrote the Irish symbol instead of g in OE,presumably because the sound was a spirant. Who would wish fordifferent symbols for the I's in E little, or for the sibilants in Gr. rpe"avs?If in German the long vowels are tense and the short vowels loose, the

long-signwill suffice. If our

diphthongsare much altered before

[r]the [r] will symbolize this.To the present writers it seems that these suggestions should be the

more welcome, because they lie in the direction not of crippling ourscience, but of greatly enhancing its power by giving it a suppler andmore abstract symbolism. We are all working with Roman numeralsand deceiving ourselves by attaching costly flourishes; let us stop dis-cussion of the flourishes and adopt the Arabic digits. The history ofour science, by blind accident, has trained us to great flexibility in

responding to symbols; let us take advantage of this flexibility, now thatwe need to free ourselves from the magic of symbolism. Once we takeadvantage of the purely external character of our symbols and learn tomake them do what we want, the door will be open for uniformity-uniformity as between different languages and as between differentscholars.

10 The existence of such persons is not to be assumed too lightly. Periodicalarticles are written for scholars, not for college students.

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Bloomfield & Bolling - What Symbols Shall We Use