- The London School :D

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Linguistic description evolves a standard language since eleventh century.

¢In the sixteenth century the practical linguistic was flourished in England.

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Practical Linguistic

¢Orthoepy- it is the codification and teaching the correct pronunciation.

¢Lexicography- it is the invention of shorthand systems, spelling reform, and the creation of artificial ‘philosophical languages.’

¢They induce in their practitioners a considerable degree of sophistication about matters linguistics.

Phonetics 

¢Henry Sweet based his historical studies on a detailed understanding of the working of the vocal organs. He was concerned with the systematizing phonetic transcription in connection with problems of language-teaching and of spelling reform-.

¢Sweet was among the early advocates of the notion of the phoneme, which was a matter of practical importance as the unit which should be symbolized in an ideal system of orthography.   

¢Daniel Jones stressed the importance for language study of through training in the practical skills of perceiving, transcribing, and reproducing minute distinctions of speech- sound.

¢He invented the system of cardinal reference-points which made precise and consistent transcription possible in the case of vowels. 

Linguistics

¢J.R. Firth turned linguistics proper into a recognized, distinct academic subject.

¢Firth said that the phonology of a language consist of a number of system of alternative possibilities which come into play at different points in phonological unit such a syllable, and there is no reason to identify the alternants in one system with those in another.

¢A phonemic transcription, represent a fully consistent application of the particular principles of orthography on which European alphabetic scripts happen to be more or less accurately based.

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Firth´s theory allows for an unlimited variety of systems, the more distinct systems a given description recognizes the more complex that description will be.

Languages do not display too great a variety of phonological ‘systems’: thus we do not on the whole find languages with quite different kinds and numbers of consonants before each distintic vowel.

¢Trubetzkoy assumes that the range of sounds found in the special neutralizing environment will be related in a regular way to the range found in other environments.