B.B.C. COMMITTEE

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 71, 24 March 1934, Page 18

8.8.C. COMMITTEE

"DISPEWTANT" PREFERRED

A DISPU-TABLE PREFERENCE

(By "Ajax.")

[.3rd Notice.] : . Among the 16 words included in the recommendations of the 8.8.C.'s Advisory -Committee on Spoken English, •which w,ere published in '' The Times'' on December 28 and in this column on March 10, the only two to which serious objection *was taken were "conduit" and "disputant." .Though the suggestion that "conduit" should be pronounced "condewit" seems to have excited the fiercer indignation, the word has so narrow a range as to be of much greater interest than importance. On the-other hand, though "disputant" is of greater importance as a very common word, -the, question whether it should be pronounced with the stress on the second syllable seems in effect to have, been answered in the affirmative, so far as the 8.8.C. is concerned, five years'ago. ■; * * • • .1 say "seems" to have been so answered because it would be rash to speak positively /of a point which, though it looks quite obvious, was not mentioned by the 8.8.C.'s Advisory Committee, nor, so. far as my observation goes, by either the assailants or the defenders of its ruling in "The Times." No less than 322 words were covered by the "Recommendations to Announcers Regarding Certain Words of Doubtful Pronunciation" which were issued by the 8.8.C. in pamphlet form in 1928. Included in this list were "disputable" and "indisputable," which were to be'pronounced with the stress on the second and third syllables respectively; If " dispewtable " and "indispewtable" were the correct pronunciations of .these words for 8.8; C.' purposes,' must 'not "dispewtant" fol-' low as a matter of course? 'Yet, after the first-two of these pronunciations had - been established for five years, a sep- : arate ruling was found to be necessary regarding the third, and in the controversy that ensued dispewtants - and dispu-tants exchanged blows in blissful ignorance of the fact that the issue had really been determined long ago. I confess myself unable to understand the reason;-' • ' '. ; * • ■•■-,.;■'• In 1928 aii exceedingly interesting introduction to the 8.8.C. Committee's rulings was written by Professor A. Lloyd James, the honorary secretary ,of the committee. la a section dealing specially with the position of the stress, he says that in this respect "English offers an example almost unique in the ■world of languages, for there is no known principle that governs the incidence of stress." ■ • . ... - The words "photograph,",,"photographer," "photographic," he continues; have the stress on the first, second,'and third syllables respectively. Some words, e.g., "convict," "increase," are nouns if the stress falls on the first syllable, and verbs if it falls on the second syllable. We are all agreed as to where the stress falls in many words, e.g., "agree," ."belong," "prominent," "independent." But there is no uniformity ■with regard to "magazine," "apologise," which differ in the North, and South, or. with "laboratory," "peremptory," "gyratory," "applicable," "indisputable," and hundreds of others. There would appear to be ' a popular tendency to place the stress in long words as near to the beginning as possible, with the result that the remaining syllables suffer by the distortion or loss of their vowel sounds. * * * . As the only disadvantage of this tendency Professor James mentions that "the resultant distortion oV loss of unstressed vowel sounds frequently brings into awkward contact numbers of consonants, and leads, especially* in broadcast speeehj'to confusion and unintelligi-, bilityj" He instances tlie -word "laboratory'? as liable, when broadcast with the stress on the first syllable, •to be heard ~by the listener as "lavatory." In the letter to /the ; "New Statesman" of January 13,"from which I quoted last week, Professor James gives an amusing example of this misunderstanding. Some time ago, he writes, during a broadcast address to a learned body given by a distinguished person who shall be nameless, my. loud-speaker expressed the -rather- original sentiment that we ought to be very grateful to the scientists of this age for the time they spent in their "lavatories"! * * * Against this tendency to throw back the stress as far as possible, Professor James mentions another principle as" active in determining the accent ; of polysyllables, and that is "the utilitarian, principle of keeping the original accent of the root on all its derivatives. " . . This latter principle seems now in favour, he adds, driving out older pronunciations, but as it cannot be always observed it will have to win its victories word by word, in the general rub: thus <(indispewtable" is winning from "indisputable," because, of "dispute." For an • example of anomalies, compare "omniscience" and "omnipotent" with ."omnipresence." * * * Robert Bridges, who was the first chairman of the 8.8.C. Advisory Committee, was also the founder and first chairman of the S.P.E. (Society for Pure English), and in the latter capacity conducted, with the aid of a committee composed of Lord Balfour, Earl Russell, Lord Grey of ■ Fallodon, Mr: Granville-Barker, and Dr. C. T. Onions, a detailed examination of the 8.8.C1 recommendations of 1928; which was published by the Clarendon Press in the following year. "With regard to "disputable" and "indisputable, "the result of the S.P.E. inquiry was adverse to the decision of the 8.8.C. ~.. , About the position of accent, Dr. Bridges' writes, common use is divided. The major* ity is plainly for dis-putable [with- the accent on the first syllable.] . ! * # ' # It is pointed out by Dr. Bridges that there are many dissyllabic verbs which are accented on the last- syllable, such as "ascribe,"- "avoid, "inform," and that ■it is "a general rule that such words taking the suffix 'able' retain their original accent." The question therefore arises what exceptions there are, and whether "dispute" is one of them. Typical exceptions, he says, are "admirable, "comparable, and what is common to these words is that the root—or vert) —syllable in them is not recognisable as an English word: "mire," "ment," "pare," are not syllables with any appropriate meaning; and this condition, -which lightens the syllable, allows and even invites loss and recession of accent. It is not a rule that words in this condition will recess their accent: there are too .many examples on the other side; but it is the condition which has provoked recession in the words which have yielded to it. Now "pute" and "fute" are no-more significant than "mire" and "ment," and as we have got "reputable" and "refutable" [with' the accent on the first syllable] it is natural that "confut-

able," "disputable," "computable," and "imputable" should go witli them. * * » The 8.8.C.'s pronouncement in favour of stressing the second syllable in " disputable " is nevertheless described as testifying to a present tendency to ignore tradition in iavqur of what seems to be a general rule and common sense. And that this is recent is shown by the fact that it is. the two younger of our five critics who pass "dispewtable," while the three older speakers object, and we concur in their objection. The S.P.E. may therefore bo'said to have dissented with reluctance from the 8.8.C. preference for "dispewtable," and as five years have since passed the recent ruling in favour of "dispewtant" might meet with its approval.