Accent, Gricean Key

S. R. Chapman (who wrote her first book on this) will or shall be amused that I wrote bunches about this in HEL--HOTEL:

"Accent is a kind of chanting; all men have
accent of their own, -- though they only notice
that of others."
Carlyle, Heroes 1840, p. 247.

Regardign this question, not posed by Grice, of 'accent' and 'singing', I was recently browsing the OED def. of 'accent', and it may be of some relevance that the word, from L. 'adcantus', is supposed to be the strict translation of 'pro-s-odia'.

And Grice did like a ditty.

Some of the OED cites pointed to the 'chanting' origin of _all_ dialect.

As the OED has it "accent" -- "from the Latin "accentum", from "ad",
to, + "-cantus", singing, a literal rendering of Greek "prosodia", from
"pros", to + "ode", song, lit. 'song added to' sc. speech." Thus, Dion. Hal
distinguished 3 'pitches': any lexeme was said to carry a grave ('bareia')
accent if spoken at a low pitch, an acute ('oceia') one when spoken one 5th
higher ("dia pente"), or a circumflex ('perispomene') one if begun in the
high pitch and descending a 5th during the utterance. With English, though,
only "_stress_ accent has remained [as] the substitute for musical accent"
as the Greeks knew it. The OED quotes a statement though by Ben Jonson as
relating to this 'pitch' side to 'accent':

"All our vowels are sounded doubtfully. In quantity (which is time)
long or short. Or, in accent (which is tune) sharp or flat." B. Jonson,
_English Grammar_, 1637

The OED gets a 'more dialectological' use of 'accent' from A. Ellis:
accent: the mode of utterance peculiar to

i. an individual.

ii. a locality.

iii. a nation


-- the OED has a nota bene:


"If the word "accent" is used "without
[any other] defining word", it means
"of a regional English accent.""

For Ellis, as cited by the OED, accent includes:

"this [peculiar mode of] utterance
consists mainly in

i. a prevailing quality of tone.

or

ii. a peculiar alteration of pitch.

But it may also include

iii. the mispronunciation of a vowel or
a consonant.

iv. the misplacing of a stress

and (last but not least)

v. misinflection of a sentence."

As for cites, the first the OED gives for this "dialectological" 'usage' of
'accent' is Shakespeare:

"Your accent is something finer,
then [than] you could purchase in so
removed a dwelling."
Shakespeare, As You Like It, 1600, iii ii 359

The other cites being (for the record).

"Our accent's equal to the best."
Daniel Musoph st cli 1602
"We fynd the south and north to differ more
in accent then symbol."

Hume Orthogr Brit Tongue 1620 (1865) p.27
"The Tone, or (as the French call it) the
Accent of every Nation in their ordinary Speech
is altogether different from that of every
other People. By the Tone or Accent I do not
mean the Pronunciation of each particular Word,
but the Sound of the whole Sentence."

Addison, Spectator 29, 1711 p.4,
"I have been correcting several Scotch accents
in my friend Boswell."

Johnson in Boswell's Life 2, 1772 p. 14
"He spoke French without the least foreign
accent."

T. Jefferson Wks 1789 1859 2 559
"Accent is a kind of chanting; all men have
accent of their own, -- though they only notice
that of others."
Carlyle Heroes 1849 1858, p. 247
"There is Anglo-Saxon blood in her veins and a
right English accent on her tongue."

Hawthorne Marble Faun 1860 1869 i, p. 128
"Underbred contradictory people with accents
and most preposterous views."

H. G. Wells Autocr. Mr. Parham 1930, p. 74
"He spoke with an accent."

H. G. Wells, Exp Autobiogr 1934 II, p. 522
"Accent is a word which, in its popular use,
carries a stigma: speaking without an accent
is considered preferable to speaking with an
accent. The popular, pejorative, use of the
word begs an important question by its
assumption that an accent is something which
is added to, or in some other way distorts,
an accepted norm."

D. Abercrombie Prob. & Princ. 1956, p. 42
"They were poor, they had `accents',
the children went to State schools."
Guardian 5 Oct 1962, p. 9

May I end this note with a quote from G. Mikes:

"Anyway, this whole language business is not
at all easy. After spending eight years in
this country, the other day I was told by
a very kind lady: 'But why do you complain?
You really speak a most excellent accent
without the slightest English."
(_How to be an alien_, p. 41).

Etc.

So how many implicatures can accent get'ya?