Historiographia Linguistica - Volume 33, Issue 1-2, 2006

This paper examines Ann Fisher’s (1719–1778) most important and influential work, A New Grammar (1745?). In this grammar, the author did not follow the trend of making English grammar fit the Latin pattern, a common practice still in the eighteenth century. Instead, she wrote an English grammar based on the nature and observation of her mother tongue. Besides, she scattered throughout her grammar a wide set of teaching devices, the ‘examples of bad English’ being her most important contribution. Her innovations and her new approach to the description of English grammar were indeed welcomed by contemporary readers, since her grammar saw almost forty editions and reprints, it influenced other grammarians, for instance Thomas Spence (1750–1814), and it reached other markets, such as London. In order to understand more clearly the value of this grammar and of its author, this grammar has to be seen in the context of her life. For this reason, we will also discuss some details of her unconventional lifestyle: unconventional in the sense that she led her life in the public sphere, not happy with the prevailing idea that women should be educated for a life at home.

At the end of the preface to his Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) Robert Lowth (1710–1787) makes an appeal for comments on his work. This article analyses his correspon­dence with James Merrick (1720–1769), a friend and fellow scholar, written between December 1761 and October 1764, in which he receives such comments. The discussion is an illustration of the current debate at the time as to whether Custom or Propriety should be invoked in deciding on correct usage. It shows first and foremost that Lowth’s attitude to grammar was focussed on the level of usage rather than the structure of the language.

Joseph Priestley’s (1733–1804) Rudiments of English Grammar (1761, second revised edition 1768) has often been interpreted as demonstrating that, unlike most 18th-century grammarians, Priestley took a descriptive approach towards the study of language. This article argues that such a characterisation both of Priestley’s work and that of his contemporaries is misleading. The article offers a reappraisal of Priestley’s Grammar, demonstrating that the idea of linguistic perfectibility is central to his linguistic ideas, but that it has often been overlooked by modern commentators. The two editions of Priestley’s Grammar are assessed, and it is argued that the substantial alterations that he makes for the second edition reveal a grammarian struggling to bring order to the study of the English language.

This article investigates the linguistic work of the English Jesuit James Adams (1737–1802). It places Adams’ work in the socio-cultural context of 18th-century linguistic writing, in particular with respect to two ongoing debates: (1) on a monogenetic vs. a polygenetic origin of language and (2) on the origins of Scots. Both of these were highly ideological debates, in the first case between a biblical and a scientific world view, and in the latter between those who were content with the political state of affairs (the Union of Scotland and England), and those who would rather have had an independent Scotland. Adams manages to reconcile linguistic evidence with monogenism, while his views on language and dialects are guided by ‘Christian phil­anthropy’. They contrast sharply with those of many of his contemporaries. In his “Vindication of the Dialect of Scotland”, which is the central part of the “Appendix” of his Pronunciation of the English Language (published in 1799), Adams strongly votes for Scottish linguistic independence, though not for political independence, even advocating a separate Scots spelling. The analysis of this work shows that his attitude to dialects is informed by his education and life as a Jesuit in the 18th century, his belief that all people are created as equals, his didactic concerns as a teacher, and the personal experience of an extended stay in Scotland.

On the basis of an analysis of works for children published by Ellenor Fenn (1743–1813) in the 1780s, an argument is offered concerning the significance of English grammar to the domestic education of elite boys and girls. The topic is contextualized in overviews of the high social value of grammar and of the maternal educator, idealized for her ‘civilizing’ influence, especially on men. Some elite mothers were criticized by Fenn and her contemporaries for preferring public life to domestic responsibility or for indulging their children. While acknowledging the difficulties of child-rearing and the challenges to women’s domestic authority, Fenn and others spell out the consequences of failing to train young males in particular. The author argues that educational toys and age-graded books like Fenn’s encouraged loving mothers to socialize their children while simul­taneously displaying their wealth. Grammar, because of its associations with order, was central to this domestic curriculum. While not overtly challenging conventional gender roles, Fenn represented ‘sprightly’ young females not as intellectually superficial but as naturally quick to learn and playfully able to teach young males and females. Their pedagogical duties justified young women’s education and granted women educators domestic authority and public importance.

This paper examines the role of William Perry (1747–post 1805), an active Scottish schoolteacher and lexicographer, in the prescription of norms for a ‘correct’ pronunciation of standard English, being perfectly in line with the language guardians of the time. Although Perry shares a few characteristics with Thomas Sheridan (1719–1788) and James Buchanan (fl. 1753–1773), as he himself maintains in the Preface to his The Royal Standard English Dictionary, first published in Edinburgh in 1775, he also reveals a certain dissatisfaction with the way ‘the sounds of words are expressed’ by the other two 18th-century scholars. Therefore, the paper examines the ‘more rational method’ proposed in his attempt to better represent the sounds of the English language.

This paper focuses on the linguistic work of John Gilchrist (1759–1841), one of the first British grammarians to produce a detailed and systematic study of the language known in the 18th century as ‘Hindustani’. An interesting feature of Gilchrist’s grammatical texts is the fact that, within the framework of a grammatical account of a South Asian language, they often include short passages discussing contemporary problems in the analysis of English. In these passages, Gilchrist engages directly with the work of writers such as John Horne Tooke, Samuel Johnson, Robert Lowth, and Thomas Sheridan, taking up a position in relation to their work and drawing upon his research on Hindustani to support or challenge their analyses of English. In one typical example, discussed in this paper, he mobilises evidence from his own work in support of Thomas Sheridan’s innovative account of the vowel in words such as mine and thine, an analysis that characterises this sound as a diphthong rather than a simple articulation. In the light of Gilchrist’s later visibility as a political radical, some commentators have seen his allusions to Horne Tooke as evidence that his linguistic work has a demonstrably radical character. However, the diversity of the thinkers with whom Gilchrist engages suggests that it is better to interpret his interventions in the analysis of English as attempts to build a reputation as a scholar, not only in the colony but in the metropolis as well. As such, the passages in which Gilchrist discusses the nature of English can be seen as political in the sense that they helped him to find a platform from which he could voice his radical ideas. But they do not always constitute a radical account of the language itself, their importance lying in the opportunities they offered for self-promotion and, indeed, self-transformation.