The place of pronunciation in eighteenth‐century grammars of English

Abstract

AbstractThe entry on ‘grammar’ in the first edition of the OED (volume 4, 1901) includes the following information: ‘Until a not very distant date, Grammar was divided by English writers (following the precedent of Latin grammarians) into Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, and Prosody, to which Orthoëpy was added by some authors’. The ECEG database is a useful tool for investigating the nature and extent to which eighteenth‐century grammars paid attention to matters of pronunciation. Although a search for orthoëpy as a division of grammar only yields ten hits, the facility for searching within the comments sections allows the researcher to find many more grammars which include information about pronunciation. In this paper, I report on the use of the ECEG database to answer the following research questions: (i) does the rise of the elocution movement in the second half of the eighteenth century lead to a greater or lesser emphasis on pronunciation in grammars published after 1760? (ii) is there any evidence of grammar‐writers being influenced by elocutionists such as Thomas Sheridan (, ) and John Walker ()? Finally, I report on the ways in which this information might be included in a planned database of eighteenth‐century phonology.