Alexander John Ellis (1814–1890) occupies an important position within the history of phonetics and that of the spelling reform movement. In this article, it is argued that Ellis’s standing as a dialectologist might profitably be reassessed. All too often in the past, Ellis’s work in the field of dialectology has been adversely criticized, underestimated or even completely ignored. Yet Ellis’s dialectological work was pioneering in many ways: he produced the first large-scale survey of English dialects, rejecting printed sources and using the direct method in part; invented an intricate system of phonetic notation (the palaeotype); produced a detailed classification of the English dialects; and illustrated his classification by means of two summary maps complete with isoglosses. A number of scholars have reported in recent years that the results of their investigations accord well with Ellis’s findings. These facts are sufficient to warrant a reassessment of Ellis’s position in the history of English dialectology, and, more generally, within the history of linguistic geography as a whole.
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1889On Early English Pronunciation. Part V1: The Existing Phonology of English Dialects Compared with that of West Saxon Speech. London: Asher & Co. for the Early English Text Society and the Chaucer Society; Trübner & Co. for the Philological Society.
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1890English Dialects: Their sounds and homes […] London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. for the English Dialect Society.
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1969 “The Meaning of Palaeotype in A. J. Ellis’s On Early English Pronunciation, 1869–89”. Transactions of the Philological Society 1969.31–79.
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1976Dialects in the South-West of England: A lexical investigation. (= The Cooper Monographs; English Dialect Series, 25.) Bern: A. Francke.
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1990 “Dialect Areas in the South-West of England: An exercise in cluster analysis”. Paper read at the International Congress of Dialectologists, Bamberg.
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1984 “Revisionist Dialectology and Mainstream Linguistics”. Language in Society 131.29–66.
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1972 “Geographical Linguistics”. Current Trends in Linguistics ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, vol. IX1: Linguistics in Western Europe, 196–222. The Hague: Mouton.
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1981A Grammar of the Dialect of Farnworth and District (Greater Manchester County, formerly Lancashire). Ph.D. dissertation, University of Sheffield. [Available through Information Publications/University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Mich. & London; ref. no. 81, 70–023.]
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1983Review of Petyt (1980). Journal of the Lancashire Dialect Society 321.32–34.
Shorrocks, Graham
1986 “A Bibliographical Note on Alexander J. Ellis’s On Early English Pronunciation, Part V, and his Palaeotype”. Journal of the Lancashire Dialect Society 351.16–18.
Speitel, Hans-Henning
1969 “An Early Specimen of Edinburgh Speech”. Work in Progress 31.26–36. Edinburgh: Department of Phonetics & Linguistics, University of Edinburgh.
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1968 “Schottische Dialektologie”. Germanische Dialektologie: Festschrift für Walther Mitzka zum 80. Geburtstag ed. by Ludwig Erich Schmitt, Vol.II1, 520–541. (= Zeitschrift für Mundartforschung’, Beihefte, Neue Folge, 6.) Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner.
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1888A History of English Sounds from the Earliest Period. 2nd, entirely rev. and enl. ed. Oxford: Clarendon. (First ed., London: Trübner & Co. 1874.)
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1964 “Der English Dialect Survey und der Linguistic Survey of Scotland: Arbeitsmethoden und bisherige Ergebnisse”. Zeitschrift für Mundartforschung 311.333–55.
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1977English Dialects: An introduction. Revised ed. London: Athlone.
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1927–56Deutscher Sprachatlas. Marburg: N. G. Elwert.
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1932The Life of Joseph Wright. 21 vols. London: Oxford Univ. Press.
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1892A Grammar of the Dialect of Windhill in the West Riding of Yorkshire. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. for the English Dialect Society.
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1905The English Dialect Grammar. Oxford: Henry Frowde.
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1985 “Alexander J. Ellis: On Early English Pronunciation, Part V: Key Dialect Tool or Forgotten Antique?”. Journal of the Lancashire Dialect Society 341.3–10.
Cited by
Cited by 5 other publications
Jones, Mark J.
2002. More on the “instability” of interdental fricatives: Gothicþliuhan‘flee’ and Old Englishflēon‘flee’ revisited. <i>WORD</i> 53:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Kemp, J.A.
1995. Phonetics: Precursors to Modern Approaches. In Concise History of the Language Sciences, ► pp. 371 ff.
Klemola, Juhani
1994. Periphrastic DO in South-Western Dialects of British English: A Reassessment. dig 1994:2 ► pp. 33 ff.
MacMahon, M.K.C.
2006. Ellis, Alexander John (né Sharpe) (1814–1890). In Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, ► pp. 114 ff.
Markus, Manfred
2023. Phonetic spellings in the Late Modern English dialect of the Isle of Wight (based on EDD Online). Journal of Linguistic Geography 11:1 ► pp. 53 ff.
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