Pronouncing Systems in Eighteenth-Century Dictionaries

Abstract

[By the end of the 18th century the diacritical system for indicating pronunciation had been developed almost to the stage now current in commercial dictionaries. This paper traces the growth of diacritical systems from their beginnings in early 18th-century dictionaries to their final form at the end of the century, and indicates the relative usefulness of the 18th-century dictionaries as source material for studies of pronunciation.]