The Contribution of Nineteenth-Century Treatises on Orthology to the History of Spanish Phonetics

Based on the study of a selection of 17 Spanish orthologies published between 1671 and 1880, this paper systematises the types of phonological information provided in this genre and discusses its contribution to the development of phonetics in Spain and Latin America. The corpus was divided into three groups: descriptive, prescriptive/proscriptive and educational texts. The remarks based on this taxonomy belong to two different fields: theoretical and applied phonetics. At the theoretical level, the authors of the orthologies under study have an interest in physiology, experimental phonetics and medicine or deaf-mute studies, introducing: (i) theoretical questions; (ii) physiological and acoustic descriptions (difference between sound and voice [ fundamental tone], vocal cord vibration mechanisms, resonant cavities, comparisons with musical instruments, etc.); and (iii) general articulatory descriptions (classification accuracy, coarticulation effects, etc.). As expected, these treatises base their explanations on a standard of Spanish pronunciation. Some of the authors suggest phonetic correction strategies, introduce reflections on teaching methods and discuss the acquisition of the phonological component in first language learning.