I want to ask about something that I truly hope can not be
controversial - I mentioned last fall that I sometimes thought of
phonemes in 3 groups - consonants, continuants and vowels (rather than
2 groups - consonants and vowels) and that continuants might be thought
of as syllabic under certain conditions.
I couldn't remember where I had got this from but I was sure it wasn't
a fantasy. Then I saw this in Aristotle's Poetics and realized that,
of course, this is how sounds are divided up in a Greek Primer. Now I
am wondering who it was that gave us the divisions of consonant and
vowel. Who first used the word 'consonant' or Latin precursor of the
word 'consonant'? Varro?
"The Diction viewed as a whole is made up of the following parts: the
Letter (or ultimate element), the Syllable, the Conjunction, the
Article, the Noun, the Verb, the Case, and the Speech. (1) The Letter
is an indivisible sound of a particular kind, one that may become a
factor in an intelligible sound. Indivisible sounds are uttered by the
brutes also, but no one of these is a Letter in our sense of the term.
These elementary sounds are either vowels, semivowels, or mutes. A
vowel is a Letter having an audible sound without the addition of
another Letter. A semivowel, one having an audible sound by the
addition of another Letter; e.g. S and R. A mute, one having no sound
at all by itself, but becoming audible by an addition, that of one of
the Letters which have a sound of some sort of their own; e.g. D and G.
The Letters differ in various ways: as produced by different
conformations or in different regions of the mouth; as aspirated, not
aspirated, or sometimes one and sometimes the other; as long, short, or
of variable quantity; and further as having an acute.grave, or
intermediate accent."
"(2) A Syllable is a nonsignificant composite sound, made up of a mute
and a Letter having a sound (a vowel or semivowel); for GR, without an
A, is just as much a Syllable as GRA, with an A."