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then, 'near Bar-le-Duc, Rheims, and the Marne, it divided Champagne with the Picardy dialect; it went down through Paris towards Chartres, and, side by side with the Normandy dialect, encroached in the west of Orléanais on the limits of Maine' (Fallot, Recherches, p. 20). It comprised part of Anjou. In the south, going from the Angoumois, the Burgundy dialect came near Limousin, Auvergne, Lyonnais, over the neighbourhood of Mâcon; and going a little towards the north, it reached again the Orbe, in following a line almost direct to the south of Lons-le-Saulnier.*

Resuming what I have just said, we shall have the following table:

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The Normandy Dialect had the following characteristics :1. 'It lost the i in most of our syllables in ie, ier, ai, air, and wrote those syllables with a simple e, either by dropping altogether this i, as in derrere, lesser, plere, or in putting it in a preceding syllable, as in primer. In other terms the Norman language substituted the simple forms, i.e., without an i to most of the mouillé forms of the other dialects.'--FALLOT, Recherches, pp. 25, 26.

Hence it wrote by e alone many syllables in ie, iel, ien, ier, ies, ieu, of the other dialects, and almost all the syllables in ai and in ei.

"The dialects of the largest part of Poitou, Saintonge, and Aunis, although forming part of the Langue d'Oil, cannot be comprehended into any of the above-named divisions. In the north, which now very nearly forms the department of Vendée, the Poitevin was strongly tinged with Norman. In the south, the Poitevin and the dialects of Saintonge and Aunis had already acquired, through their geographical position, words quite Norman, and the dialectal forms of Gascon and Limousin have had the greatest influence on those of the provinces of which we have spoken. The Poitevin dialect was fond of the combinations oe and au.' (See also Diez's Grammatik, vol. i. p. 129, etc.)

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 upon— (a) the last syllable: brigade.

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

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, inevitable.

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 "English accent" in the pronunciation of French.

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.

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§ 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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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 :

méler

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, Corneille, 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.

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