National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

native words when pronounced by a foreigner, without presenting any interference with the rendering of the characters of the word.

In the regular pronunciation of every word of more than one syllable a certain raising or sinking of the voice (the accentuation) can be distinguished, besides the duration of the sound (the quantity). The accentuation becomes. apparent if the syllables of the word are pronounced in a rapid succession, and disappears by a decomposition of the word into its separate syllables.'

The accent is originally also a musical modification, the acute indicating a raising of the voice, the circumflex a ligation, the grave a sinking of the voice. The latter, however, was only actually made to replace the acute in the respective phraseological combination.'

In the pronunciation of modern languages the accent has generally become so predominant that the influence of the quantity acoustically and even rythmically becomes extremely reduced, whilst each word has one or even more phonetic accents.'

Principal accent.

In each word of more than one syllable we have marked the principal phonetic accent. In 'Hindostâni, as in German and English, it has a tendency to coincide with the root of the word : it is rarely combined with the prefix. A connection between accent and quantity was better marked in ancient languages than at present; in Greek a long ultima, in Latin a long penultima interferes with the accentuation of the antepenultima. Vowels can become accentuated, whether long or short. In I-Iindostâni, as in many other modern languages (particularly those of the Slavonic group), syllables

1 It is well known that in many cases the wrong position of an accent makes a word far more incomprehensible than many other apparently much more important alterations referring to its spelling. The accent gives the "relief" not less decidedly than the "shading" produced by one or the other of its alphabetical component parts. In words of unusual forms, such as geographical names, the accent is also much more difficult to be guessed if the word is but "seen," and not "heard."

2 Among ancient languages with a system of accent, the most generally known is the Greek. This system, which is still kept up in the modern tongue, was introduced, together with the signs for interpunctuation, by Aristophanes Byzantinus, about 290 B.C. Also in the Védas and in the Hebrew bible we find accents; in Latin the accent """ as in "malus," indicates a raising and sinking of the voice difficult to reproduce.

3 Also in languages where the "phraseologic" accent has become predominant, as in French, the words, when pronounced separately, allow of an accentuated syllable being recognised; these are generally oxytones. The accents as written in French are purely orthographical signs.—With respect to another most interesting participation of the tone, whether rising, falling, or abrupt, in the signification of one syllable, see MAX MÜLLER, "On the Classification of the Turanian Languages," p. 130.