Petrus Montanus as a Phonetician and a Theoretician

Petrus Montanus’ (1594/95–1638) book on phonetics, De Spreeckonst (1635), which was intended to apply to all languages, could have been an epoch-making standardwork on phonetics, if it had been read and studied more widely. Although he characterized Spreeckonst as a difficult theory he intended it to be an easy textbook. However, Montanus’ terminology made the book almost unreadable.

In the first section special attention is paid to Montanus’ idea that all aspects of his object of inquiry (i.e. the spoken language) had to be characterized as aptly and precisely as possible, after having examined the object (a). Next, (in section 2), an attempt is made to clarify Montanus’ opinion that the precise determination of objects (actually, the result of his scientifc inquiry) should function as a perfect didactic tool for his readers (b). Through names’ the reader could learn to produce speech sounds even better than by simply practising their production. Indeed, Spreeckonst was meant to be both a theory and a practical handbook. This can be explained by pointing out the two functions names had: they were instruments of knowledge (a) and instruments of learning (b). As shown in section 3 Montanus was directly influenced by Simon Stevin (1548–1620) with regard to (b).

In section 4 it is shown that, in essence, the first idea (a) can be traced back to Socrates’ ideas on names, as Plato had Socrates defend them in his Cratylus. The other idea (b) can be traced back to Cratylos’ ideas on names, which were unfolded and discussed in the same work.

Section 5 analyses the sorts of names Montanus actually used. A complete survey of the names of Montanus’ distinctions of speech sounds is presented in this section.

In the concluding section (6) an indication is made of the astonishing results of Montanus’ analyses of spoken language.