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TONIC OR FORCE ACCENT.

§ 52. Tonic or Force Accent in a Word.-1. The syllable in a word which is pronounced with the greatest force is said to bear the force or tonic accent.

2. The word accent in this sense must not be confused with its more frequent use with reference to the signs These signs rarely in French point out the syllable upon which the tonic accent is to be laid.

3. In English the tonic or force accent may be laid

(a) the last syllable: brigade.

(b) the last syllable but one: vapour.
(c) the last syllable but two: pastoral.
(d) the last syllable but three: inevitable.

upon

But the tendency is to put the accent as near the beginning of the word as possible.

4. In French, on the contrary, the tonic accent is always laid upon the last syllable if the word does not end in e mute, and upon the last but one if it does end in e mute. Except in verse this is the last pronounced syllable: brigade, vapeur, pastoral, inévitable.

5. The syllable upon which the accent is laid is said to be the tonic or accented syllable. Those syllables upon which. no accent is laid are said to be atonic or unaccented syllables.

6. The tonic accent in French is at all times much weaker than in English. Or, what practically is the same thing, the unaccented syllables in French are more distinctly pronounced than in English, so that the contrast is not so great between unaccented and accented syllables. Compare cascade (Eng.) and cascade (Fr.), esteem and estime, fatigue (Eng.) and fatigue (Fr.), etc., etc. When, as in économie, vagabond, Normandie, éducation, comfortable, etc., the French word is the same or nearly the same as the corresponding English one, there is a danger (§ 57) of wrongly accenting in French the syllable that is accented in English. This must be carefully guarded against, as it is doubtless one of the

principal causes of what is known as the " in the pronunciation of French.

English accent"

The principle may be safely laid down, that the less difference a speaker makes between accented and unaccented syllables, the better is his pronunciation.* This, of course is not true of English, where unaccented syllables are often scarcely heard (see § 81. 1).

§ 53. Tonic or Force Accent in a Phrase.—At the end of every phrase in French, there is a tonic or force accent over and above that found at the end of each word. To this accent the term phrase-accent may be conveniently applied. It is stronger than the ordinary word-accent. In fact, in the mouth of many speakers it is the only accent that is heard. The word-accent, already weak, is made still weaker. See Prosody, for further details.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER I.

§ 54. The Alphabet." By an alphabet we mean a list of symbols which represent conventionally to the eye the sounds which are heard in the speech of a nation. An alphabet will therefore be perfect if the number of its symbols exactly corresponds to the number of simple sounds which are commonly distinguishable in the spoken language. But this perfection has probably never yet been reached; all known alphabets have failed either by defect, i.e., from not representing all the simple sounds, or by redundancy, in having more than one symbol for the same sound. They must also necessarily become imperfect by lapse of time. No nation keeps the sound of its language unaltered through many centuries. Sounds change, as well as grammatical forms, though they may endure longer, so that the symbols no longer retain their proper values; often, too, several different sounds come to be denoted by the same symbol and in strictness the alphabet should be changed to correspond to all these changes. But little inconvenience is practically caused by the tacit acceptance of the old symbol to express the new sound; indeed, the change of language is so gradual, that the variation in the values of the symbols is

:

*This is what Vigny means by 'Leur langage (les Tourangeaux) est le plus pur français, sans lenteur, sans vitesse, sans accent.'

It must not be forgotten that emphasis may displace the ordinary

accent.

imperceptible. It is only when we attempt to produce the exact sounds of the English language less than three centuries ago that we realise the fact that if Shakspeare could now stand on our stage he would seem to us to speak in an unknown tongue; though one of his plays when written is as perfectly full of intelligence now as then. Such changes of sound are most developed in countries where many different dialects, through conquest, immigration, or otherwise, exist side by side; they are checked by the increase of education, and by facility of locomotion, both of which causes tend to assimilate all dialects to that one which by some lucky chance has become the literary speech of the nation."-Encyclopedia Britannica. Alphabet.'

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§ 55. Division of Syllables. In the rules given for the division of syllables the etymological division has of necessity been sacrificed to the merely syllabic division.

In theory, no doubt, the pronunciation ought to be subordinate to the components of which the word is built up: in practice the etymology may or may not coincide with the pronunciation. A compromise is the only way out of the difficulty for the purposes of pronunciation, let the word be divided according to the undoubtedly artificial, but correct and convenient, method given; for other purposes let the etymology be followed.

It will be found that accents are employed in strict accordance to the rules given. Compare respecter and réfléchir, etc., etc. (see also §§ 67, 83).*

In addition to the case in which a desire to display the etymology of a word may render it advisable to neglect this rule, we find in verse a frequent use of diphthongs as dissyllables it is evident that here again the syllable must begin with a vowel, and that the general rules are not applicable. This subject is treated in greater detail in the Prosody.

§ 56. Graphic Accents.- i. The Graphic Accents were adopted from the Greek, but they have not in French the same meaning as in Greek.

ii. They were introduced in the sixteenth century, to help learners to pronounce correctly, and were at first only employed for that purpose in elementary works.

iii. Till the present century they were employed with little or

* Diez recognises this formal division. 'The grave accent must be employed when e (according to the usual division of syllables) occurs at the end of a syllable or before s final. Compare mè-ne, rè-gne, rè-gle, dès, procès; and terre, appelle, coquette, aspect, secret, fer, etc.'-Grammatik, vol. i., P. 419.

no regularity.* 'Authors seem to have allowed the printers to put them or to omit them as they liked. Hence the subject is full of inconsistencies and contradictions; definite rules for their use are impossible.

iv. The accent may show that there has been contraction in comparatively recent times.t

This is especially true of the circumflex :

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1. The acute over e may have this meaning :

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2. Many recent contractions exist, where no accents are employed (§ 426, C).

v. The accent may show that the vowel on becoming tonic or semi-tonic has needed strengthening (see § 353).

This is particularly true of the grave:

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1. The acute may be added with no other meaning:

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2. Double consonants may be preferred (see § 353, b) :

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3. If the circumflex is present already for other reasons, the tonic syllable is sufficiently marked by it :

mêler

je mêle.

4. If the acute is present already for other reasons, the tonic syllable may perhaps retain it (see § 353, a) :

abréger
répéter

j'abrége (tonic)
je répéterai (semi-tonic).

vi. The accent may show that the vowel has a sound when

*Any one can convince himself that they were not much used by Racine, Boileau, Molière, Voltaire, etc., if he examine the letters written by these authors, which are exposed to view in the British Museum :Predictions; entierement a vous; apres; preface (RACINE). Privilege, interesser; Art poetique (BOILEAU). Tres, assurement, d'etre (VOLTAIRE). (Accents have been put, however, according to modern usage, in quotations after 16th century.) See Appendix, A.

†Thus the accent is put over maître, not because it is a contraction of magistrum, but of maistre.

accented, different from what it has when unaccented. This is only true of e, a, o (see § 79).

1. The accent over e may only show that it is not 'mute.' This the acute shows over atonic and therefore short syllables; the grave over tonic and therefore long syllables (§ 78). But not always (see § 79):

général,
espèce,
après.

2. The circumflex over a, o, alters the pronunciation of the vowels tache, tâche, mode, côte (see § 79, iv.).

vii. The accent may be used to distinguish one word from another.* This only occurs in a few words:

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But many words of similar spelling, but of different meaning, have no accent to distiuguish them :

plat, flat
tu, thou

plat, dish

tu, past part. of taire.

viii. "The present system of French accentuation is scarcely a hundred years old, and has been of very slow growth. The Neufchatel Bible of 1535 has not a single accent. The acute accent on the final e seems to have been the first written accent used. Towards the end of the sixteenth century the grave accent is used as a mark of distinction over à, où etc. The use of the circumflex over e instead of es (même instead of mesme) is severely censured by the Academy in the preface to the first edition of its Dictionary. Jacques Dubois † (sixteenth century) was the first who had a regular, though somewhat whimsical, system of accentuation. Up to the end of the last century considerable diversity prevailed as to accentuation. In an edition of Crébillon (2 vols. 4to, Imprimerie Royale, 1750) every word appears accented as at present, with the additional use of the circumflex over vû, pû, aperçû, and so on. The Geneva edition of Rousseau, in thirty volumes of 1782, and a Paris edition of Montesquieu of 1782, have, as far as I have observed, the system now in use. Bayle and the Dictionnaire de Trévoux use accents with great carelessness in the commonest words. The grave accent on the penultimate is regularly discarded in

* Several reasons may combine thus du (owed), sûr (sure), have accents both to mark contraction and to distinguish them from du (of the), sur (upon). † Silvius.

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