Alexander John Ellis, (14 June 1814 – 28 October 1890), was an English
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
,
philologist
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined ...
and early
phonetician
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...
who also influenced the field of
musicology. He changed his name from his father's name, Sharpe, to his mother's maiden name, Ellis, in 1825 as a condition of receiving significant financial support from a relative on his mother's side. He is buried in
Kensal Green Cemetery, London.
Biography
He was born Alexander John Sharpe in
Hoxton, Middlesex to a wealthy family. His father, James Birch Sharpe, was a notable artist and physician who was later appointed Esquire of
Windlesham. His mother, Ann Ellis, was from a noble background, but it is not known how her family made its fortune. Alexander's brother James Birch Sharpe junior died at the
Battle of Inkerman during the
Crimean War
The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia.
Geopolitical causes of the war included the ...
. His other brother, William Henry Sharpe, served with the
Lancashire Fusiliers after moving north with his family to
Cumberland, due to military work.
Alexander was educated at
Shrewsbury School
Shrewsbury School is a public school (English independent boarding school for pupils aged 13 –18) in Shrewsbury.
Founded in 1552 by Edward VI by Royal Charter, it was originally a boarding school for boys; girls have been admitted into ...
,
Eton College
Eton College () is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school in Eton, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1440 by Henry VI of England, Henry VI under the name ''Kynge's College of Our Ladye of Eton besyde Windesore'',Nevill, p. 3 ff. i ...
and
Trinity College, Cambridge (BA 1837). Initially trained in mathematics and the classics, he became a well-known phonetician of his time and wrote the article on phonetics for the ''
Encyclopaedia Britannica'' in 1887. Through his work in phonetics, he also became interested in vocal pitch and, by extension, in musical
pitch, as well as
speech and song.
Ellis is noted for translating and extensively annotating
Hermann von Helmholtz
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Associat ...
's ''On the
Sensations of Tone''. The second edition of this translation, published in 1885, contains an appendix which summarises Ellis' own work on related matters.
In his writings on musical pitch and scales, Ellis elaborates his notion and notation of
cents for musical intervals. This concept became especially influential in
comparative musicology, a predecessor of
ethnomusicology. Analyzing the scales (tone systems) of various European musical traditions, Ellis also showed that the diversity of tone systems cannot be explained by a single physical law, as had been argued by earlier scholars.
In part V of his work ''On Early English Pronunciation'', he applied the
Dialect Test The Dialect Test was created by A.J. Ellis in February 1879, and was used in the fieldwork for his work ''On Early English Pronunciation''. It stands as one of the earliest methods of identifying vowel sounds and features of speech. The aim was to ...
across Britain. He distinguished forty-two different dialects in England and the
Scottish Lowlands. This was one of the first works to apply phonetics to English speech. The work was criticised by
Joseph Wright, author of the
English Dialect Dictionary, and
Eugen Dieth, one of the pioneers of the
Survey of English Dialects, but regained popularity in the second half of the 20th century as many dialect researchers said that their results were similar to that found in Ellis's work. Some have argued that much of Ellis's information was appropriated without sufficient citation by Joseph Wright.
He was acknowledged by
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
as the prototype of Professor Henry Higgins of ''
Pygmalion'' (adapted as the musical ''
My Fair Lady''). He was elected in June 1864 as a
Fellow of the Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemati ...
.
Ellis's son
Tristram James Ellis trained as an engineer, but later became a noted painter of the Middle East.
Phonetic alphabets
Ellis developed two phonetic alphabets, the
English Phonotypic Alphabet
The English Phonotypic Alphabet is a phonetic alphabet developed by Sir Isaac Pitman and Alexander John Ellis originally as an English language spelling reform. Although never gaining wide acceptance, elements of it were incorporated into t ...
(together with
Isaac Pitman
Sir Isaac Pitman (4 January 1813 – 22 January 1897) was a teacher of the :English language who developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman shorthand. He first proposed this in ''Stenographic Soundhand'' in 183 ...
),
which used many new letters, and the
Palaeotype alphabet
The Palaeotype alphabet is a phonetic alphabet used by Alexander John Ellis to describe the pronunciation of English. It was based on the theory of Bell's Visible Speech, but set in roman script, and attempted to include the sounds conveyed by L ...
, which replaced many of these with turned letters (such as ⟨ə⟩, ⟨ɔ⟩), small caps (such as ⟨ɪ⟩), and italics. Two of his novel letters survived: ⟨ʃ⟩ and ⟨ʒ⟩ were passed on to
Henry Sweet
Henry Sweet (15 September 1845 – 30 April 1912) was an English philologist, phonetician and grammarian.''Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language'', as hosted oencyclopedia.com/ref>
As a philologist, he specialized in the Germanic l ...
's
Romic alphabet
The Romic Alphabet, sometimes known as the Romic Reform, is a phonetic alphabet proposed by Henry Sweet. It descends from Ellis's Palaeotype alphabet and English Phonotypic Alphabet, and is the direct ancestor of the International Phonetic Alph ...
and from there to the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
.
Works (selected)
* 1845, ''The Alphabet of Nature''
* 1848, ''A Plea for Phonetic Spelling: or, The Necessity of Orthographic Reform''
* 1869, ''On Early English Pronunciation'', London: N. Trübner / reissued by Greenwood Press: New York (1968).
* --do.-- ''On early English pronunciation : with especial reference to Shakspere and Chaucer, containing an investigation of the correspondence of writing with speech in England from the Anglosaxon period to the present day ...'' (text online at "archive.org")
* 1885, "On the Musical Scales of Various Nations", ''Journal of the Society of Arts'' 33, p. 485. (Link is to a HTML transcription (Accessed September 2008)
* 1890, ''English Dialects – Their Sounds and Homes''
Notes
References
*
*
* M. K. C. MacMahon, ''Ellis , Alexander John (1814–1890)'', ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,'' Oxford University Press, 200
accessed 14 June 2006
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ellis, Alexander John
1814 births
1890 deaths
Burials at Kensal Green Cemetery
People from Hoxton
People educated at Shrewsbury School
Dialectologists
English-language spelling reform advocates
English philologists
English music theorists
Ethnomusicologists
Fellows of the Royal Society
International Phonetic Alphabet
19th-century musicologists