"Pronouncing the "P
Prescription or description in 19th- and 20th-century English dictionaries
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3955460 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Charlotte Brewer (Hertford College, Oxford, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 2-3 |
| Pages | 257-280 |
| Publication date | 2007-11-22 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Historiographia Linguistica (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0302-5160 • E-ISSN: 1569-9781 |
| Publisher | John Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.1075/hl.34.2.04bre |
| OpenAlex | W2329312902 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 13 |
During the course of the 19th century, many English dictionaries carrying information on pronunciation directed that Greek-derived words beginning ps- should be pronounced with a silent initialp. In the relevant section of theOED, however (published 1909), the editor J. A. H. Murray (1837-1915) advised that, contrary to general practice, pronouncing the p was preferable, since it made clear the etymology of such words thus enhancing their intelligibility. Dictionaries after theOEDhave reportedpas an optional pronunciation for many years subsequently - even as late as the 1970s - though their conflicting evidence supports the hypothesis that pronouncing the p was a dictionary chimaera never adopted by more than a handful of pedantic philologists. The article concludes that claims to descriptivism rather than prescriptivism, even by the most reputable dictionaries, should be taken with a pinch of salt
Epistemology · Etymology · Intelligibility (philosophy · Linguistics · Philology · Pronunciation · Sociology · Classics · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · History · Lexicography and Language Studies · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy · Psychology
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |