Alphabetic Iconography: A Metalinguistic Guide to Phonologies and Orthographies

Sound change is endemic to language. This chapter situates the semiotics of our alphabetic letters—their names, phonetic values and symbolization in IPA notation—within descriptive accounts of phonological typology and theoretical accounts of phonological change. Socrates’ discussion in the Cratylus is the first recorded metalinguistic analysis of letter names, but it was guided by a more general interest in language and language change which continues today. More than 2500 years later, both the pronunciation of our letter names and our approach to language have changed enough for them to reconnect. On the one hand, the pronunciation of our modern letter names stands as a conspicuous example of language change channeled in specific directions by iconic forces. The tautonymy of Socrates’ favorite four, E, ʋ, O and Ω, has been joined by many PDE letter names—a win for Cratylus. On the other hand, the splintering among our modern names into different metalinguistic sets with distinct semiotic properties shaped by recurrent phonetic interference (e.g., /h/-loss, consonantalization, vowel shifts, palatalization, voicing, /r/-loss, syllabicity) would seem to be a win for Hermogenes. This chapter demonstrates how much can be learned about the phonology of a language by capitalizing on these alphabetic tensions.