The London School of Linguistics had
three main representatives:
Henry Sweet (1845 - 1912). English philologist and phonetician. An
authority on Anglo-Saxon and the history of the English language, Sweet was
also a pioneer in modern scientific phonetics. His History of English Sounds
(1874) was a landmark in that study. In 1901 he was made a reader in phonetics
at Oxford. Among his other writings are A Handbook of Phonetics (1877), A New
English Grammar (2 parts, 1892–95), The History of Language (1900), The Sounds
of English (1908), and works on Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, and Icelandic.
Sweet was the model for Professor Higgins in G. B. Shaw's play Pygmalion.
Daniel Jones (1881 - 1967). British phonetician. He was involved in the
development of the International Phonetic Alphabet from 1907 and went on to
invent the system of cardinal vowels and produce the English Pronouncing Dictionary
(1917).
J. R. Firth (1890 - 1960): professor of English at the University of the
Punjab, Lahore (1920-1928), senior lecturer at University College London
(1928-1938), then senior lecturer, reader and Professor of General Linguistics at
the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (1938-1956).
An important figure in the foundation of linguistics as an autonomous
discipline in Britain; known for his original ideas on phonology and the study
of meaning.
The London School of Harry Sweet (1845-1912) and Daniel Jones
(1881-1967) stressed the practical side of phonetics, and trained its students
to perceive, transcribe and reproduce each minute sound distinction very
precisely — far more than the American behaviourists, for example, and of
course the Chomskians, who are extending models rather than testing them. And
this phonetic competence was much needed when J.R. Firth (1891-1960) and others
at the School of Oriental and African Studies helped to plan the national
languages and their writing systems for the new Commonwealth countries.
Overall, the School has been very far ranging — noting, for example how stress
and tone co-occur with whole syllables, and developing a terminology to cope: a
basis for poetic metre. Firthian analysis also finds a place for aesthetic
considerations and develops a system of mutually exclusive options, somewhat
like Saussure but more socially and purposively orientated.
Firth himself tried to base a theory of meaning on such choice-systems,
but the approach has not been generally accepted. Not only was it rather
simplistic, but confused the scientific invariance of linguistic rules with the
unregimented and creative way that human beings get their meaning across.
The London approach to phonology has bequeathed many fruitful ideas to
current theorizing and the theory of syntax known as systemic grammar also owes
its origins to the London School.
Bibliography
Chapman, S. &
Routledge, P. (eds) (2005) Key Thinkers
in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press. Pp 80-86.
Encyclopedia:
Sweet, Henry. (s.f.). Recuperado el
29 de febrero de 2012, de Infoplease:
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0847401.html
Jones, Daniel. (s.f.). Recuperado el 29 de febrero de 2012, de
Oxford Dictionary: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/Jones,+Daniel
Linguistics: a brief
history. (s.f.). Recuperado el 29 de
febrero de 2012, de Textetc: http://www.textetc.com/theory/linguistics.html
