thumb|right|250px|தமிழ் மொழியியல்

மொழியியல் (Linguistics) என்பது  மொழியை  அறிவியல் முறைப்படி  ஆராய்வதற்குரிய ஒரு துறையாகும். மொழியின் வடிவம், பொருள், சூழல் போன்றவற்றையும் மொழியியல் ஆய்வு செய்கிறது . பொதுவான சகாப்தத்திற்கு முன்திய 4 ஆம் நூற்றாண்டில் இந்திய இலக்கண அறிஞரான பானிணி  சமசுகிருத மொழியைப்பற்றி  ஒரு முறையான ஆய்வு விளக்கத்தை எழுதியுள்ளார் Sanskrit Literature The Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 2 (1909), p. 263..

மொழியியலாளர்கள் சொற்களின் ஒலி மற்றும் பொருளுக்கு இடையிலான ஓர் ஒற்றுமையைக் கவனிப்பதன் மூலம் பாரம்பரியமாக மனித மொழியை பகுப்பாய்வு செய்கின்றனர் . ஒலிப்பியல் என்பது பேச்சு மற்றும் உரையாடல் ஒலிகளைப் பற்றிய ஆய்வு ஆகும், மேலும் இது அவர்களின் ஒலி தொடர்பான மற்றும் ஒலிகளை தெளிவாக உச்சரிப்பதற்குரிய உச்சரிப்பொலியியல் பண்புகளுக்குள்ளும் நுழைகிறது. மறுபுறம், மொழியின் அர்த்தத்தை ஆய்வு செய்து உலகின் பிற கூறுகள், பண்புகள் மற்றும் உலகின் பிற அம்சங்கள் ஆகியவற்றிற்கு இடையேயான உறவுகளை எவ்வாறு புரிந்துகொள்வது, செயல்படுத்துவது மற்றும் பொருளை வழங்குவது, அத்துடன் எவ்வாறு நிர்வகிப்பது, தோன்றும் கருத்து மயக்கத்தை எவ்வாறு தீர்ப்பது ஆகியவற்றைப் பற்றியும் மொழியியல்  பேசுகிறது . அதேவேளையில் சொற்பொருள்களைப்பற்றிய ஆய்வு, சூழல் எவ்வாறு மொழிக்கான பொருளை உருவாக்குகிறது என்ற உண்மை நிலையையும் ஆராய்வதை மொழியியல் நடைமுறையாகக் கொண்டுள்ளது .

இலக்கணம் என்பது ஒரு மொழியில் சொற்களின் உற்பத்தி மற்றும் பயன்பாட்டை நிர்வகிக்கும் விதிமுறைகள் தொடர்பான நடைமுறையாகும். இவ்விதிமுறைகள் ஒலிகளுக்கும்All references in this article to the study of sound should be taken to include the manual and non-manual signs used in sign languages. அவை தரும் பொருளுக்கும் பொருந்தும். மேலும், ஒலிக்கும் ஒலியமைப்புகளின் அமைப்பு சார்ந்த குரலியல், சொற்களின் அமைப்பு மற்றும் உருவாக்கம் சார்ந்த உருபனியல், சொற்றொடர்கள் உருவாக்கம் மற்றும் அமைப்பு சார்ந்த தொடரியல் உள்ளிட்டவற்றின் உட்கூறுகள் சார்ந்த துணைவிதிகளையும் இலக்கணம் வரையறை செய்கிறது. இலக்கணத்தின் கொள்கைகளில் நவீன இலக்கணக் கோட்பாடுகள் கவனம் செலுத்துகின்றன. இவை பெரும்பாலும்   நோம் சோம்சுகியின் சித்தாந்தக் கல்வியின் பொது இலக்கணத்தை அடிப்படையாகக் கொண்டுள்ளன.  [

மொழியியல் ஆய்வு, கீழே தரப்பட்டுள்ள மூன்று விதமான அடிப்படைகளில் நடைபெறுவதாகக் காணப்படுகிறது. பழங்கால இலக்காண பதிப்பான தொல்காப்பியம், தமிழ் மொழியில் மட்டும் இல்லாமல் உலக மொழிகளில் ஒரு மொழியியல் அய்வு என்பதில் முதான்மயும், தொன்மையும் பெற்றது.

 விளக்கமுறையும் வரலாற்றுமுறையும் (Synchronic and diachronic) -- விளக்கமுறை, என்பது ஒரு குறிப்பிட்ட நேரத்தில் ஒரு மொழியின் நிலையைக் கருத்திலெடுத்து ஆய்வு செய்வதைக் குறிக்கும். வரலாற்றுமுறை என்பது ஒரு மொழியின் அல்லது ஒரு மொழிக் குழுவின் வரலாற்றையும், அவற்றில் எவ்வாறான அமைப்பு மாற்றங்கள் ஏற்பட்டுள்ளன என்பதையும் ஆராய்வதாகும்.
 கோட்பாட்டு மற்றும் பயன்பாட்டு முறை -- கோட்பாட்டு மொழியியல், தனிப்பட்ட மொழிகளை விவரிப்பதற்கான சட்டகங்களை (frameworks) உருவாக்குவதுடன், அனைத்து மொழிகள் தொடர்பான கோட்பாடுகள் பற்றியும் கவனத்திற் கொண்டுள்ளது.
 சூழ்நிலைசார் மற்றும் சுதந்திரமான -- இப்பகுப்பு தொடர்பில் சொற்கள் சரியாக நிலைநிறுத்தப்படாததால், வசதி கருதி இப் பெயர்கள் இங்கே பயன்படுத்தப் படுகின்றன. பிரித்தானிக்கா கலைக்களஞ்சியம் பெரு மொழியியல் (macrolinguistics), நுண் மொழியியல் (microlinguistics), என்னும் சொற்களைப் பயன்படுத்துகிறது. சூழல்சார் மொழியியல், ஒரு மொழி எவ்வாறு இந்த உலகத்துடன் பொருத்தப்பாட்டைக் கொண்டுள்ளது என்பதை, அதன் சமூகச் செயற்பாடு, எவ்வாறு பெறப்பட்டது, எவ்வாறு உருவானது மற்றும் எவ்வாறு நோக்கப்படுகிறது என்பவற்றைக் கருத்திலெடுத்து ஆராய்கின்றது.சுதந்திர மொழியியல், மொழிகளின் புறநிலை அம்சங்களைக் கருத்தில்கொள்ளாது, அம் மொழிகளைத் தனியாக ஆராய முற்படுகிறது.

இவ்வாறான பகுப்புகள் இருந்தாலும், பொதுவாக எவ்வித சிறப்பு அடைமொழிகளுமில்லாது, வெறுமனே "மொழியியலாளர்கள்" என்று அழைக்கப்படுபவர்கள், மொழியியலின் மையக்கருவாகக் கருதப்படும் சுதந்திர, கோட்பாட்டு விளக்கமுறை (synchronic) மொழியியல் பற்றியே முக்கியமாக ஆர்வமுடையவர்களாக உள்ளார்கள். இதுவே பொதுவாகக் "கோட்பாட்டு மொழியியல்" என்று அழைக்கப்படுகிறது.

 கோட்பாட்டு மொழியியற் பகுதிகள்

கோட்பாட்டு மொழியியல் பொதுவாக, ஓரளவுக்குத் தனித்தனியாக ஆராயத்தக்க வகையில் பல்வேறு பிரிவுகளாக வகுக்கப்படுகிறது. கீழ்வரும் பிரிவுகள் இன்று பரவலாக ஏற்றுக்கொள்ளப்படுகின்றன:

 ஒலிப்பியல் (phonetics), ஒரு மொழியில் பயன்படுத்தப்படும் வெவ்வேறு ஒலிகள் பற்றிய துறை;
 ஒலியியல் (phonology), ஒரு மொழியின் அடிப்படை ஒலிகளின் வடிவுரு பற்றி ஆராயும் துறை;
 உருபனியல், சொற்களின் உள் அமைப்புப் பற்றி ஆராயும் துறை;
 சொற்றொடரியல் (syntax), எவ்வாறு சொற்கள் சேர்ந்து இலக்கணத்துக்குட்பட்ட வசனங்களை உருவாக்குகின்றன என்பதை ஆராயும் துறை;
 சொற்பொருளியல் (semantics), சொற்களின் நேரடியான (literal) பொருளை ஆராய்தலுக்கும்,(சொல் குறிக்கும் பொருள் (lexical semantics)), அவை சேர்ந்து உருவாக்கும் வசனங்களின் நேரடியான பொருள்களையும் ஆராயும் துறை;
 மொழிநடை (stylistics), மொழியின் பாணிகளை ஆராயும் துறை;
 சூழ்பொருளியல் (pragmatics), தொடர்புச் செயற்பாடுகளில் எவ்வாறு utterances பயன்படுத்தப்படுகின்றன (literally, figuratively, அல்லது வேறுவிதமாக) என்பது பற்றிய ஆய்வு;
 தொடரியல் (syntax) ஒலி, உருபன்,
இந்த ஒவ்வொரு பகுதியினதும் தனிப்பட்ட முக்கியத்துவம் எல்லோராலும் ஏற்றுக்கொள்ளப்படுவதில்லை, எனினும், கிட்டத்தட்ட எல்லா மொழியியலாளருமே இந்தப் பிரிவுகள் குறிப்பிடத்தக்க அளவு பொதுப் பகுதிகளைக் கொண்டிருக்கின்றன என்பதை ஒத்துக்கொள்வர். இருந்தாலும் ஒவ்வொரு துணைப்பிரிவும், குறிப்பிடத்தக்க அறிவுபூர்வ ஆய்வுகளைச் செய்யக்கூடிய அளவுக்குத் தனியான அடிப்படையான எண்ணக்கருக்களைக் கொண்டுள்ளன.

 வரலாற்று மொழியியல் (Diachronic linguistics)
கோட்பாட்டு மொழியியலின் மையக்கருவானது, மொழியை ஒரு குறிப்பிட்ட நேரத்தில் (அநேகமாக நிகழ்காலம்) ஆராய்வதோடு சம்பந்தப்பட்டிருக்கும் அதேவேளை, வரலாற்று மொழியியல், எப்படி மொழி காலப்போக்கில், சிலவேளைகளில் நூற்றாண்டுகளில், மாற்றமடைகின்றது என்பதை ஆராய்கின்றது. வரலாற்று மொழியியல் வளமான வரலாற்றையும் (மொழியியல் துறை வரலாற்று மொழியியலிலிருந்தே உருவானது), மொழி மாற்றங்களை ஆராய்வதற்கான பலமான கோட்பாட்டு அடிப்படையையும் கொண்டுள்ளது.

அமெரிக்கப் பல்கலைக்கழகங்களில், வரலாறல்லாத நோக்கின் கையே ஓங்கியுள்ளதாகத் தெரிகிறது. வரலாறல்லாத நோக்கு சார்ந்த திருப்பம், பேர்டினண்ட் சோசருடன் தொடங்கி நோம் சொம்ஸ்கி காலத்தில் முன்னணிக்கு வந்தது.

வெளிப்படையாக வரலாற்று நோக்கு வரலாறுசார்-ஒப்பீட்டு மொழியியல் மற்றும் சொற்பிறப்பியல் (etymology) என்பவற்றை உட்படுத்தியுள்ளது.

 பயன்பாட்டு மொழியியல்
கோட்பாட்டு மொழியியல், ஒவ்வொரு மொழிக்கு உள்ளேயும், ஒரு குழுவாக எல்லா மொழிகளுக்கு இடையேயும் உள்ள பொதுவான தன்மைகளைக் கண்டுபிடித்து விளக்கமுயலுகின்ற அதேவேளை, பயன்பாட்டு மொழியியல், இந்தக் கண்டுபிடிப்புகளின் பெறுபேறுகளை ஏனைய துறைகளில் பயன்படுத்துகிறது. வழக்கமாகப் பயன்பாட்டு மொழியியல், மொழியியல் ஆய்வை, மொழி கற்பித்தல், மற்றும் ஏனைய துறைகளில் பயன்படுத்துவதைக் குறிப்பிடுகிறது. பேச்சுத் தொகுப்பு (Speech synthesis) மற்றும் பேச்சு அடையாளம்காணல்(Speech recognition), என்பன, கணனிகளில் குரல் இடைமாற்றிகளை ஏற்படுத்துவதற்கு மொழியியல் அறிவைப் பயன்படுத்தும் உதாரணங்களாகும்.

 சூழ்நிலை மொழியியல்

சூழ்நிலை மொழியியலே, மொழியியல் ஏனைய கல்வித்துறைகளுடன் தொடர்பு கொள்ளும் பகுதியாகும். சமூக மொழியியல், மானிடவியல்சார் மொழியியல் (anthropological linguistics), and மொழியியல்சார் மானிடவியல் (linguistic anthropology) என்பன சமூகத்தை முழுமையாகக் கருத்திலெடுக்கின்ற சமூக அறிவியலும், மொழியியலும் தொடர்பு கொள்ளுகின்ற இடமாகும்.

திறனாய்வுப் பேச்சுக்கூறுபாடு (critical discourse analysis) இலே தான்பேச்சுக்கலை (rhetoric) உம் தத்துவமும் மொழியியலோடு தொடர்புகொள்ளுகின்றன. உளமொழியியலும் (psycholinguistics) நரம்புமொழியியலும் (neurolinguistics), மருத்துவ அறிவியல்கள் மொழியியலைச் சந்திக்கும் இடமாகும். ஏனைய, மொழியியலின் வேறு துறைத்தொடர்புகளுள்ள பகுதிகள் பின்வருவனவற்றை உள்ளடக்கும். மொழி கற்றல் (language acquisition), படிமலர்ச்சி மொழியியல், stratificational linguistics, மற்றும் அறிதிற அறிவியல் (cognitive science).

 தனிப்பட்ட, மொழிபேசுபவர்கள், மொழிச் சமுதாயங்கள், மற்றும் மொழியியற் பொதுமைகள் (linguistic universals)
எந்த அளவு பரந்த மொழி பயன் படுத்தும் குழுவினரை ஆராயவேண்டும் என்பதிலும் மொழியியலாளர்கள் வேறுபடுகிறார்கள். சிலர் குறிப்பிட்ட ஒருவருடைய மொழியை அல்லது மொழி அபிவிருத்தியை மிகவும் நுணுக்கமாக ஆராய்வர். சிலர் ஒரு முழு பேச்சுச் சமுதாயத்தினதுக்குத் தொடர்பான மொழிபற்றி ஆய்வு செய்வர். வேறு சிலர் எல்லா இடங்களிலும் உள்ள எல்லா மனித மொழிகளுக்கும் பொருந்தக்கூடிய விடயங்கள் பற்றி ஆராய முயல்வர். கடைசியாகக் குறிப்பிடப்பட்ட திட்டத்துக்காக நோம் சொம்ஸ்கி பிரபலமாக வாதிட்டார், அத்துடன் இது, உளவியல்சார் மொழியியல் (psycholinguistics) மற்றும் அறிதிற அறிவியல் துறைகளைச் சேர்ந்த பலரைக் கவர்ந்தது. மனித மொழியிற் காணப்படும் பொதுமைகள் மனித மனத்தின் பொதுமைகள் பற்றிய முக்கியமான உண்மைகளை வெளிப்படுத்தும் எனக் கருதப்பட்டது.

 விளக்கமுறையும் (Description) விதிப்புமுறையும் (prescription)

"மொழியியல்" என்ற பெயரில் தற்போது நடைபெறும் பெரும்பாலான வேலைகள், சுத்தமாக விபரிப்பு சார்ந்தவையாகும். மொழியியலாளர்கள், கருத்துக்களெதையும் கூறாமல் அல்லது மொழியின் எதிர்காலப் போக்குத் திசைகளைக் குறிப்பிட்டுக் காட்டாமல், மொழியின் இயல்பை விளக்கவே முனைகிறார்கள். எனினும் பல தொழில்சார் மற்றும் அமெச்சூர் மொழியியலாளர்கள், எல்லோரும் பின்பற்றவேண்டிய நியமங்களை வைத்து, மொழிக்கான விதிகளையும் குறித்துக் காட்டுகிறார்கள்.

விதிப்புமுறை சார்பாளர்கள் (Prescriptivists), "பிழையான பயன்பாடு" என்று கருதி முத்திரை குத்தும் ஒரு விடயத்தில், விளக்கமுறையாளர்கள் (descriptivists) அப் பயன்பாட்டின் மூலம் எதுவென்று ஆராய முயல்வர்; அல்லது அதை "வினோதப் போக்கு" (idiosyncratic), என விளக்குவர், அல்லது, மிக நவீனமானது அல்லது அங்கீகரிக்க முடியாத வட்டார மொழிகளிலிருந்து பெறப்பட்டது போன்ற காரணங்களுக்காக விதிப்புமுறை சார்பாளர்களால் விரும்பப்படாத சில ஒழுங்குமுறைகளை வெளிப்படுத்துவார்கள்.

 பேச்சு எதிர் எழுத்து

பெரும்பாலான சமகால மொழியியலாளர்கள் பேச்சு மொழியே மிகவும் அடிப்படையானது அதனால், எழுத்து மொழியிலும், பேச்சு மொழி பற்றி ஆராய்வதே முக்கியமானது என்ற கருதுகோளுடன் செயல் படுகிறார்கள். இதற்கான காரணங்கள் பின்வருவனவற்றை உள்ளடக்கும்:

 பேச்சு மனித இனம் முழுவதற்கும் பொதுவானதாகத் தெரிகின்ற அதேவேளை, பல பண்பாடுகளில், எழுத்துத் தொடர்பு முறை காணப்படவில்லை;
 மக்கள், எழுதுவதிலும், பேசுவதற்கும் கிரகித்துக்கொள்வதற்கும் பேச்சு மொழி எளிதாகப் பழகி விடுகிறார்கள்;
 பல அறிதிற அறிவியலாளர்களின் கூற்றுப்படி, மூளையில் உள்ளார்ந்த "மொழிப் பிரிவு" ஒன்று உள்ளதாகவும், அதற்கான அறிவு எழுத்தைவிடப் பேச்சைக் கற்பதன் மூலமாகவே கிடைக்கிறது என்றும் தெரிகிறது.

எழுத்து மொழியைப் பயில்வது பெறுமதியானது என்பதில் எல்லா மொழியியலாளர்களும் ஒத்த கருத்தையேகொண்டுள்ளார்கள். மொழித் தொகுப்பு மற்றும் கணிப்புமுறை மொழியியல் (computational linguistics), முறைகளைப் பயன்படுத்தும் மொழியியல் ஆராய்ச்சிகளில், பெருமளவு மொழியியல் தரவுகளைக் கையாள்வதற்கு, எழுத்து மொழி மிகவும் வசதியானதாகும். பெருமளவு பேச்சு மொழித் தரவுகளை உருவாக்குவதும், கண்டுபிடிப்பதும் கடினமாகும்.

மேலும், எழுத்து முறைமை பற்றிய ஆய்வும் மொழியியலின் பாற்பட்டதேயாகும்.

 மொழியியல் தொடர்பான ஆராய்ச்சிப் பகுதிகள்

 ஒலிப்பியல் (phonetics),
 ஒலியியல் (phonology),
 தொடரியல் (syntax),
 சொற்பொருளியல் (semantics),
 சூழ்பொருளியல் (pragmatics),
 சொற்பிறப்பியல் (etymology),
 சொல்லியல் (lexicology),
 அகராதிக் கலை (lexicography),
 கோட்பாட்டு மொழியியல்,
 வரலாற்று-ஒப்பீட்டு மொழியியல் மற்றும் விளக்க மொழியியல்,
 மொழியியற் குறியீட்டியல் (linguistic typology),
 கணிப்புசார் மொழியியல்,
 மொழித் தொகுப்பு,
 குறியியல் (semiotics).

 துறைகளிடை மொழியியல் ஆராய்ச்சி

 பயன்பாட்டு மொழியியல்,
 வரலாற்று மொழியியல்,
 எழுத்திலக்கணம் (orthography),
 எழுத்து முறைமைகள்,
 ஒப்பீட்டு மொழியியல்,
 சமூகமொழியியல்,
 மொழியியல்சார் மானிடவியல்,
 திறனாய்வுப் பேச்சுக்கூறுபாடு,
 உளவியல்சார் மொழியியல்,
 மொழி கற்றல்,
 படிமலர்ச்சி மொழியியல்,
 மானிடவியல்சார் மொழியியல்,
 அறிதிற அறிவியல்,
 நரம்பியல்சார் மொழியியல், மற்றும்
 கணனி அறிவியல் என்பவற்றிலும்
 இயல்பு மொழி விளக்கம்,
 பேச்சு அடையாளங்காணல் (speech recognition),
 பேசுனர் அடையாளங்காணல் (speaker recognition) (authentication),
 பேச்சுத் தொகுப்பு (speech synthesis), மற்றும் மேலும் பொதுவாக,
 மேற்கோள்கள்

 உசாத்துணைகள்
 Rymer, p. 48, quoted in Fauconnier and Turner, p. 353)
 Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner (2002). The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities. அடிப்படை நூல்கள்.
 Rymer, Russ (1992). "Annals of Science: A Silent Childhood-I". New Yorker, April 13.
 Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct

 வெளி இணைப்புகள்
 Multilingual Morphology Software
 Grammar Book
 Syllabification algorithm
 The hyphenation block

*
பகுப்பு:அறிதிற அறிவியல்
பகுப்பு:மொழி

Linguistics (Linguistics) is a sphere for the study of language as a scientific method. The language form, subject, and so on is a language study.

ஆராய்வதற்குரிய

போன்றவற்றையும்

Roman Jakobson (1942)
Source: Lectures on Sound & Meaning, publ. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1937, Preface by Claude Lévi-Strauss. Most of first and all of last lectures reproduced here.
I AM SURE you are familiar with Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem The Raven, and with its melancholy refrain, ‘Nevermore.’ This is the only word uttered by the ominous visitor, and the poet emphasises that ‘what it utters is its only stock and store.’ This vocable, which amounts to no more than a few sounds, is none the less rich in semantic content. It announces negation, negation for the future, negation for ever. This prophetic refrain is made up of seven sounds seven, because Poe insists on including the final r which is, he says, ‘the most producible consonant.’ It is able to project us into the future, or even into eternity. Yet while it is rich in what it discloses, it is even richer in what it secretes, in its wealth of virtual connotations, of those particular connotations which are indicated by the context of its utterance or by the overall narrative situation. Abstracted from its particular context it carries an indefinite range of implications. ‘I betook myself to linking/ fancy unto fancy,’ the poet tells us, ‘thinking what this ominous bird of yore -/ What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore/ Meant in croaking "Nevermore"./ This I sat engaged in guessing ... This and more I sat divining... .’ Given the context of the dialogue the refrain conveys a series of different meanings: you will never forget her, you will never regain peace of mind, you will never again embrace her, I will never leave you! Moreover this same word can function as a name, the symbolic name which the poet bestows upon his nocturnal visitor.
Yet this expression’s value is not entirely accounted for in terms of its purely semantic value, narrowly defined, i.e., its general meaning plus its contingent, contextual meanings. Poe himself tells us that it was the potential onomatopoeic quality of the sounds of the word nevermore which suggested to him its association with the croaking of a raven, and which was even the inspiration for the whole poem. Also, although the poet has no wish to weaken the sameness, the monotony, of the refrain, and while he repeatedly introduces it in the same way (‘Quoth the raven, "Nevermore" ‘) it is nevertheless certain that variation of its phonic qualities, such as modulation of tone, stress and cadence, the detailed articulation of the sounds and of the groups of sounds, that such variations allow the emotive value of the word to be quantitatively and qualitatively varied in all kinds of ways.
The utterance of Poe’s refrain involves only a very small number of articulatory motions – or, to look at this from the point of view of the acoustic rather than the motor aspect of speech, only a small number of vibratory motions are necessary for the word to be heard. In short, only minimal phonic means are required in order to express and communicate a wealth of conceptual, emotive and aesthetic content.. Here we are directly confronted with the mystery of the idea embodied in phonic matter, the mystery of the word, of the linguistic symbol, of the Logos, a mystery which requires elucidation.
Of course, we have known for a long time that a word, like any verbal sign, is a unity of two components. The sign has two sides: the sound, or the material side on the one hand, and meaning, or the intelligible side on the other. Every word, and more generally every verbal sign, is a combination of sound and meaning, or to put it another way, a combination of signifier and signified, a combination which has been represented diagrammatically as follows:
But while the fact that there is such a combination is perfectly clear, its structure has remained very little understood. A sequence of sounds can function as the vehicle for the meaning, but how exactly do the sounds perform this function? What exactly is the relation between sound and meaning within a word, or within language generally? In the end this comes down to the problem of identifying the ultimate phonic elements, or the smallest units bearing signifying value, or to put this metaphorically, it is a matter of identifying the quanta of language. In spite of its fundamental importance for the science of language it is only recently that this set of problems has at last been submitted to thorough and systematic investigation.
It would certainly be wrong to ignore the brilliant insights concerning the role of sounds in language which can be found scattered through the work of the thinkers of Antiquity and of the Middle Ages, for example those of Thomas Aquinas, who was among the most profound of philosophers of language: and it would equally be wrong to ignore the subtle observations of the ancient oriental, and above all Hindu, grammarians. But it is only in the last two centuries that our science has devoted itself really energetically to the detailed study of linguistic sounds.
This interest in linguistic sounds derived at first from essentially practical objectives, such as singing technique or teaching the deaf and dumb to speak: or else phonation was studied by physicians as a complex problem in human physiology. But during the nineteenth century, as linguistics gained ground, it was this science which gradually took over research into the sounds of language, research which came to be called phonetics. In the second half of the nineteenth century linguistics became dominated by the most naive form of sensualist empiricism, focusing directly and exclusively on sensations. As one would expect the intelligible aspect of language, its signifying aspect, the world of meanings, was lost sight of, was obscured by its sensuous, perceptible aspect, by the substantial, material aspect of sound. Semantics, or the study of meaning, remained undeveloped, while phonetics made rapid progress and even came to occupy the central place in the scientific study of language. The neogrammarian school of thought, which was the most orthodox and characteristic current of thought in linguistics at the time, and which was dominant in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and up to the First World War, rigorously excluded from linguistics all problems of teleology. They searched for the origin of linguistic phenomena but obstinately refused to recognise that they are goal-directed. They studied language but never stopped to ask how it functions to satisfy cultural needs. One of the most distinguished of the neogrammarians, when asked about the content of the Lithuanian manuscript which he had been assiduously studying, could only reply with embarrassment, ‘As for the content, I didn’t notice it.’ At this time they investigated forms in isolation from their functions. And most important, and most typical of the school in question, was the way in which they regarded linguistic sounds; in conformity with the spirit of the time their view was a strictly empiricist and naturalistic one. The fact that linguistic sounds are signifiers was deliberately put aside, for these linguists were not at all concerned with the linguistic function of sounds, but only with sounds as such, with their ‘flesh and blood’ aspect, without regard for the role they play in language.
Linguistic sounds, considered as external, physical phenomena have two aspects, the motor and the acoustic. What is the immediate goal of the phonatory act? Is it the acoustic phenomenon or is it the motor phenomenon itself? Obviously it is the acoustic phenomenon which the ‘ speaker aims at producing, and it is only the acoustic phenomenon which is directly accessible to the listener. When I speak it is in order to be heard. Of the two aspects of sound it is, therefore, the acoustic aspect which has intersubjective, social significance, whereas the motor phenomenon, in other words the workings of the vocal apparatus, is merely a physiological prerequisite of the acoustic phenomenon. Yet phonetics in the neogrammarian period concerned itself in the first place with the articulation of sound and not with its acoustic aspect. In other words it was not strictly speaking the sound itself but its production which was the focus of attention, and it was this which formed the basis for the description and classification of sounds. This perspective may seem odd or even perverse to us, but it is not surprising in the context of neogrammarian doctrine. According to this doctrine, and to all others which were influential in that period, the genetic perspective was the only one considered acceptable. They chose to investigate not the object itself but the conditions of its coming into being. Instead of describing the phenomenon one was to go back to its origins. Thus the study of linguistic sounds was replaced by historical phonetics, i.e., by a search for their prototypes in earlier forms of each given language, while so-called static phonetics was more or less entirely given over to the observation of the vocal apparatus and its functioning. This discipline was incorporated into linguistics in spite of the obviously heterogeneous character of the two domains. Linguists tried to pick up a bit of physiology with results that are well illustrated by the following typical example: Edward W. Scripture, a famous phonetician who also had training as a physician, ironically quotes the current description of a particular laryngal articulation which would, had this description been accurate, have inevitably resulted in the fatal strangulation of the speaker! But even disregarding mistakes like this we can ask what results would the study of linguistic sounds in their motor aspect arrive at.
At first, even though linguists attempted to discuss sounds in a strictly naturalistic manner and to scrupulously leave aside the problem of the functions they perform in language, they did in fact unconsciously employ properly linguistic criteria in their classifications of sounds, and especially in their demarcation of sounds in the speech chain. This illicit importation was facilitated by the fact that linguists, and psychologists too, were as yet quite unfamiliar with the role of the unconscious, and in particular with its great importance in all linguistic operations. But as the observation of phonatory acts was improved and as the employment of special instruments came to replace reliance on purely subjective experience, the linguistic correlate of the physiological phenomena was increasingly lost sight of.
It was towards the end of the century that instrumental phonetics (or as it was usually but less accurately called ‘experimental phonetics’) began to make rapid progress. With the help of increasingly numerous and improved instruments a remarkable precision was achieved in the study of all the factors involved in buccal articulation and in the measurement of expiration. A new era in the physiological investigation of linguistic sounds was opened up by X-ray photography. X-rays, used in conjunction with sound film, revealed the functioning of the vocal apparatus in all its details; the whole of sound production, the entire phonatory act, was uncovered and could be actually seen as it happened. When this method became practically and technically available to phoneticians a large number of the previous phonetic instruments became redundant.
It was radiography above all which brought to light the crucial role of the posterior parts of the vocal apparatus, parts which are most hidden and which were until then most inaccessible to the available methods of experimental phonetics. Before the arrival of radiography there was, for example, very little accurate knowledge of the functioning in the process of the phonatory act of the hyoid bone, of the epiglottis, of the pharynx, or even of the soft palate. The importance of these parts, and especially of the pharynx, was suspected, but nothing about them was known in detail. Remember that the pharynx is at a crossroads from which leads off, at the top, the passage to the mouth cavity and the passage to the nasal cavity, and below, the passage to the larynx. Each of these upper two passages is opened or closed by the velum whereas the lower passage, to the larynx, is opened or closed by the epiglottis. It was only a few dozen years ago that one could read on the subject of the pharynx, in the text-book of Ludwig Sütterlin, a well-known linguist and phonetician: ‘The pharynx seems to be very important in sound production, in that it can be narrowed and widened, but at the present time nothing more definite is known with certainty on the subject’ (Die Lehre von der Lautbildung, Leipzig, 1908).
As a result especially of recent work by Czech and Finnish phoneticians using radiography we do now have a more adequate understanding of the functioning of the pharynx in phonation, and we can now affirm that the phonetic role of this organ is no less important than, for example, that of the lips, which are in some ways analogous to it. It can be seen from these more recent observations that so long as the physiological investigation of sounds had no grasp of the functioning of the pharynx and of contiguous parts, it was only possible to arrive at a fragmentary and unsatisfactory description. A physiological classification of sounds which scrupulously takes into account the varying degrees of opening of the mouth but which fails to consider the varying degrees of opening of the pharynx can lead us into error. If phoneticians concentrated on the functioning of the lips and not on that of the pharynx this was not because the former had been shown to be the more important. If the physiology of sound production were to refuse to draw on other disciplines it would have no way of establishing the relative importance of the various organs involved. If phoneticians, in classifying linguistic sounds, took the labial factor but not the pharyngal factor into account, this was solely because the former was more accessible to observation than the latter. As it broadened the field of inquiry and as it became an increasingly precise discipline, the autonomous investigation of phonation decomposed the sounds which it analysed into a disconcerting multitude of detail without, however, being able to answer the fundamental question, namely that of the value which is assigned by language to each of these innumerable details. In its analysis of the various sounds of a language, or of several languages, motor phonetics uncovers for us a stunning multitude of variations, but it has no criterion for distinguishing the functions and the degrees of relative significance of all these observed variations, and thus has no way of discovering the invariants among all this variety.
Now the identification of individual sounds by phonetic observation is an artificial way of proceeding. To the extent that phonetics is concerned exclusively with the act of phonation, that is with the production of sounds by the various organs, it is not in a position to accomplish this, as Ferdinand de Saussure had already made clear. In his Cours de linguistique general, given between 1906 and 1911 and edited after his death (1913) by his pupils Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, and published in 1916, the great linguist said with foresight: ‘Even if we could record on film all the movements of the mouth and larynx in producing a chain of sounds it would still be impossible to discover the subdivisions in this sequence of articulatory movements; we would not know where one sound began and where another ended. Without acoustic perception how could we assert, for example, that in fal there are three units and not two or four?’ Saussure imagined that hearing the speech chain would enable us to directly perceive whether a sound had changed or had remained the same. But subsequent investigations have shown that it is not the acoustic phenomenon in itself which enables us to subdivide the speech chain into distinct elements; only the linguistic value of the phenomenon can do this. Saussure’s great merit was to have understood clearly that in the study of the phonatory act, when we raise the question of phonetic units and that of demarcating the sounds in the speech chain, something extrinsic is unconsciously brought into play. Twenty years after his death the film that Saussure would have liked to have seen was in fact made. The German phonetician Paul Menzerath made an X-ray sound film of the workings of the vocal apparatus, and this film completely confirmed Saussure’s predictions. Drawing on this film and on the latest results of experimental phonetics Menzerath and his Portuguese associate Armando Lacerda demonstrated that the act of speech is a continuous, uninterrupted movement (Koartikulation, Steuerung und Lautabgrenzung, 1933). Whereas traditional doctrine had distinguished between positional sounds, which are held steady, and transitional sounds which lack this stability and which occur in the transition from one position to another, these two phoneticians showed that all sounds are in fact transitional. As for the speech chain, they arrived at an even more paradoxical conclusion. From a strictly articulatory point of view there is no succession of sounds. Instead of following one another the sounds overlap; a sound which is acoustically perceived as coming after another one can be articulated simultaneously with the latter or even in part before it. However interesting and important the study of linguistic sounds in their purely motor aspect may be everything indicates to us that such a study is no more than an auxiliary tool for linguistics, and that we must look elsewhere for the principles by which the phonic matter of language is organised.
Even though they focused on the motor aspect of language, phoneticians were nevertheless unable to ignore the quite obvious, indeed tautological, fact that sound as such is an acoustic phenomenon. But they believed that the investigation of the production of sound, rather than of the sound itself, gave one the motor equivalent of the acoustic phenomenon, an equivalent which is more accessible, more instructive and open to more profitable methods of analysis. This view was put forward, for example, by Pierre Rousselot. They assumed that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the two aspects and that the classification of motor phenomena has an exact equivalent in the classification of acoustic phenomena. Thus one need only construct the former, since the latter follows automatically from it. Now this argument, which has been put forward time and again right up to the present day, and which has many implications for the science of linguistics, is utterly refuted, contradicted by the facts. Arguments against this position were put forward long ago, even before the very first hand-books on phonetics.
We can mention, in the first place, a French book, dating from 1630, which was called Aglossostomographie ou description d’une bouche sans langue quells parle et fait naturellement toutes ses autres fonctions [Aglossostomography, or the description of a tongueless mouth which speaks and naturally performs all its other functions]. In 1718 Jussien published in the Mémoires de l’Académie royale des sciences a treatise called ‘Sur la fille sans langue’ [On the girl with no tongue]. Each of these works contained a detailed description of people who, though they had only rudimentary tongues, were capable of an impeccable pronunciation of all the sounds which in phonetics nowadays are called the ‘linguals,’ and which are defined as sounds the emission of which necessarily involves the tongue. These interesting facts have since then been confirmed many times. For example, at the beginning of this century the physician Hermann Gutzmann, who was one of the best known of researchers in the field of errors of pronunciation, was forced to admit that while in French the very same word (langue) is used to designate a part of the mouth (the tongue) and language itself, in fact as far as the latter is concerned the former is dispensable, for almost all the sounds which we emit can be produced if necessary in quite a different way without the acoustic phenomena being altered at all (Des Kindes Sprache und Sprachfehler, Leipzig, 1894). If one of the phonatory organs is missing then another one can function in its place, without the hearer being aware of this. Gutzmann, however, stated that there are exceptions to this. Thus the sibilants – the fricatives z, s, and the corresponding affricates – require the involvement of the teeth. Subsequent research, however, has shown conclusively that these apparent exceptions are not in fact so at all. Godfrey E. Arnold, director of the Vienna clinic for language disorders, has shown (Archiv für gesamte Phonetik, III, 1939) that even with the loss of the incisors the ability to pronounce the sibilants correctly remains intact as long as the subject’s hearing is normal. In cases where dental abnormality gives rise to errors of pronunciation one always finds that the subject’s hearing is impaired, and it is this that prevents the functional compensation for the anatomical abnormality.
...
Acoustic phonetics, which is developing and increasing in richness very rapidly, already enables us to solve many of the mysteries of sound, mysteries which motor phonetics could not even begin to solve. However, even though it has infinitely greater organising power, acoustic phonetics, no more than motor phonetics, cannot provide an autonomous basis for the systematisation and the classification of the phonic phenomena of language. Basically it is faced with just the same obstacles as is motor phonetics. At first acoustics attributed to the different sounds only a limited number of characteristic features. This did not mean that these particular features were the most essential ones. The limits were due above all to the fact that the analytical capacities of the new discipline were as yet rather restricted. But if we consult a thoroughly modern work in the field of acoustic phonetics, such as for example the fine monograph by Antti Sovijärvi on the Finnish vowels and nasals, Die gehaltenen, geflüsterten und gesungenen Vokale und Nasale derfinnischen Sprache (Helsinki, 1938), we find ourselves once again confronted with a stunning multitude of details concerning the features of each sound, the sound being decomposed into an innumerable variety of fractions. Motor and acoustic phonetics have proved equally incapable of offering any guidance in this chaos, of identifying the pertinent characteristics, the constitutive and inalienable features of each sound. Acoustics can provide us, in impressive detail, with the micrographic image of each sound, but it cannot interpret this image; it is not in a position to make use of its own results. It is as if they were the hieroglyphics of an unknown language. When, as is always the case, two sounds show both similarities and dissimilarities, acoustics, having no intrinsic criteria for distinguishing what is significant from what is not, has no way of knowing whether it is the similarity or the dissimilarity which is crucial in any given case. It cannot tell whether it is a case of two variants of one sound or of two different sounds.
This crucial difficulty is faced not only by experimental acoustics but by any method of phonetic transcription of auditory phenomena, to the extent that the transcription is based solely on purely auditory perception. Such transcriptions, being obliged to note all nuances of pronunciation, even the most subtle, scarcely perceptible and fortuitous among them, are as Antoine Meillet pointed out, difficult to read and difficult to print. This is not a purely technical difficulty. It is once again the vexing problem of identity within variety; without a solution to this disturbing problem there can be no system, no classification. The phonic substance of language becomes as dust. When faced with a similar problem in relation to motor phonetics we had to make reference to an extrinsic criterion and to ask about the immediate aim of articulations, or more precisely about their acoustic aim. Now we must ask what is the immediate aim of sounds, considered as acoustic phenomena? In raising this question we straight away go beyond the level of the signifier, beyond the domain of sound as such, and we enter the domain of the signified, the domain of meaning. We have said that we speak in order to be heard; we must add that we seek to be heard in order to be understood.
The road goes from the phonatory act to sound, in a narrow sense, and from sound to meaning! At this point we leave the territory of phonetics, the discipline which studies sounds solely in their motor and acoustic aspects, and we enter a new territory, that of phonology, which studies the sounds of language in their linguistic aspect.
One hundred years ago the Romantic Russian writer Vladimir Odoevskij told the story of a man who received from a malevolent magician the gift of being able to see everything and to hear everything: ‘Everything in nature became fragmented before him, and nothing formed into a whole in his mind,’ and for this unfortunate man the sounds of speech became trans- formed into a torrent of innumerable articulatory motions and of mechanical vibrations, aimless and without meaning. The victory of naive empiricism could not have been foretold and represented in a more forceful way. In the laboratories of the scientists of this tendency the phonic resources of language were split up into a multitude of microscopic facts which they proceeded to measure with great care while deliberately neglecting their goal and raison d’être. It was in conformity with this approach that metrists at that time taught that one can only study verse if one forgets both the language it is written in and the meaning which it conveys. The study of the sounds of language completely lost touch with the truly linguistic problem, that of their value as verbal signs. The disheartening picture of the chaotic multitude of facts inevitably suggested the antithetical principle, that of unity and organisation. ‘Phonology,’ said the master of French linguistics, Antoine Meillet, ‘frees us from a kind of nightmare which had weighed upon us.’ In the next lecture we shall try to state more exactly what phonology is and how it succeeds in reconnecting the problem of sound with that of meaning.
TO START the last of our discussions on sounds and meaning I want to summarise rapidly the points raised in my earlier lectures. Speech sounds cannot be understood, delimited, classified and explained except in the light of the tasks which they perform in language. Motor, acoustic and auditory description of phonic matter must be subordinated to a structural analysis of it. In other words the auxiliary discipline of phonetics must be placed in the service of phonology, which is an integral part of linguistics. Phonology, which in its early days relied far too much on a mechanistic and creeping empiricism, inherited from an obsolete form of phonetics, now seeks more and more to overcome these vestiges. The task is to investigate speech sounds in relation to the meanings with which they are invested, i.e., sounds viewed as signifiers, and above all to throw light on the structure of the relation between sounds and meaning. In analysing a word from the point of view of its phonic aspect we decompose it into a sequence of distinctive units, or phonemes. The phoneme, although it is an element at the service of meaning, is itself devoid of meaning. What distinguishes it from all other linguistic, and more generally, semiotic values, is that it has only a negative charge.
The phoneme is dissociable into distinctive features. It is a bundle of these features; therefore, notwithstanding outmoded but still current conceptions, the phoneme is a complex entity: it is not the phoneme but each of its distinctive features which is an irreducible and purely appositive entity. Every linguistic sign is located on two axes: the axis of simultaneity and that of succession. The phoneme is the smallest linguistic entity which disposes of these two axes. The distinctive features are subdivided into a class of inherent features, which are bound to the axis of simultaneity, and a class of prosodic features which involve the other axis, that of succession.
Ferdinand de Saussure attributes to the linguistic sign two essential characters which he states in the form of two fundamental principles. The analysis of the phoneme, and especially of the distinctive qualities which are its constituents, has led us to abandon one of these two principles, that which asserts ‘the linear character of the signifier.’ The inquiry into the system of phonemes allows us also to reevaluate the other principle, ‘the arbitrariness of the sign.’ According to Saussure it was the pioneer of general linguistics in America, William Dwight Whitney, who in his book The Life and Growth of Language, published in 1875, ‘pointed linguistics in the right direction’ by his emphasis on the arbitrary character of verbal signs.
This principle has provoked disagreement, especially in recent years. Saussure taught (Course, 100/68) that in the word its ‘signified’ is not connected by any internal relation to the sequence of phonemes which serve as its ‘signifier’: ‘It could equally well be represented by any other: this is proved by differences between languages, and by the very existence of different languages: the signified ‘ox’ has as its signifier b-ö-f (buf) on one side of the border and o-k-s (Ochs) on the other.’ Now this theory is in blatant contradiction with the most valuable and the most fertile ideas of Saussurian linguistics. This theory would have us believe that different languages use a variety of signifiers to correspond to one common and unvarying signified, but it was Saussure himself who, in his Course, correctly defended the view that the meanings of words themselves vary from one language to another. The scope of the word buf and that of the word Ochs do not coincide; Saussure himself cites ‘the difference in value’ between the French mouton and the English sheep (Course, 160/115). There is no meaning in and by itself ;- meaning always belongs to something which we use as a sign; for example, we interpret the meaning of a linguistic sign, the meaning of a word. In language there is neither signified without signifier nor signifier without signified.
The most profound of modern French linguists, Émile Benveniste, in his article ‘Nature du signe linguistique’ which appeared in the first volume of Acta Linguistica (1939), says in opposition to Saussure that ‘the connection between the signifier and the signified is not arbitrary; on the contrary, it is necessary.’ From the point of view of the French language the signified ‘boeuf’ is inevitably tantamount to the signifier, the phonic group b-ö-f. ‘The two have been imprinted on my mind together,’ Benveniste stresses; ‘they are mutually evocative in all circumstances. There is between them such an intimate symbiosis that the concept "boeuf" is like the soul of the acoustic image b-ö-f.’
Saussure invokes the differences between languages, but actually the question of the arbitrary relation or the necessary connection between the signified and the signifier cannot be answered except by reference to a given state of a given language. Recall Saussure’s own shrewd advice: ‘It would be absurd to draw a panorama of the Alps from the points of view of several peaks of the Jura simultaneously; a panorama must be drawn from a single point.’ And, from the point of view of her native language, a peasant woman from Francophone Switzerland was right to be astonished: how can cheese be called Käse since fromage is its only natural name.
Contrary to Saussure’s thesis, the connection between signifier and signified, or in other words between the sequence of phonemes and meaning, is a necessary one; but the only necessary relation between the two aspects is here an association based on contiguity, and thus on an external relation, whereas association based on resemblance (on an internal relation) is only occasional. It only appears on the periphery of the conceptual lexicon, in onomatopoeic and expressive words such as cuckoo, zigzag, crack, etc. But the question of the internal relation between the sounds and the meaning of a word is not thereby exhausted. Lack of time prevents us from being able to do more than touch on this subtle and complex question. We have said that distinctive features, while performing a significative function, are themselves devoid of meaning. Neither a distinctive feature taken in isolation, nor a bundle of concurrent distinctive features (i.e., a phoneme) taken in isolation, means anything. Neither nasality as such nor the nasal phoneme /n/ has any meaning of its own.
But this void seeks to be filled. The intimacy of the connection between the sounds and the meaning of a word gives rise to a desire by speakers to add an internal relation to the external relation, resemblance to contiguity, to complement the signified by a rudimentary image. Owing to the neuropsychological laws of synaesthesia, phonic oppositions can themselves evoke relations with musical, chromatic, olfactory, tactile, etc. sensations. For example, the opposition between acute and grave phonemes has the capacity to suggest an image of bright and dark, of pointed and rounded, of thin and thick, of light and heavy, etc. This ‘sound symbolism,’ as it was called by one of its original investigators, Edward Sapir, this inner value of the distinctive features, although latent, is brought to life as soon as it finds a correspondence in the meaning of a given word and in our emotional or aesthetic attitude towards this word and even more towards pairs of words with two opposite meanings.
In poetic language, in which the sign as such takes on an autonomous value, this sound symbolism becomes an actual factor and creates a sort of accompaniment to the signified. The Czech words den ‘day’ and noc ‘night,’ which contain a vocalic opposition between acute and grave, are easily associated in poetry with the contrast between the brightness of midday and the nocturnal darkness. Mallarmé deplored the collision between the sounds and the meanings of the French words jour ‘day’ and nuit ‘night.’ But poetry successfully eliminates this discordance by surrounding the word jour with acute vowelled vocables and the word nuit with grave vowelled vocables; or alternatively it highlights semantic contrasts which are in harmony with that of the grave and acute vowels, such as that between the heaviness of the day and the mildness of the night.
The search for the symbolic value of phonemes, each taken as a whole, runs the risk of giving rise to ambiguous and trivial interpretations because phonemes are complex entities, bundles of different distinctive features. These latter are invested with a purely appositive character and each of these oppositions lends itself to the action of synaesthesia, as is demonstrated in the most striking way in the language of children.
For Whitney everything in the formation of a linguistic sign is arbitrary and fortuitous, including the selection of its constitutive elements. Saussure remarked in this connection: ‘Whitney goes too far when he says that the vocal organs were selected by us quite by chance’ and that men would have been able equally well to choose gesture and to use visual images instead of acoustic images.’ The Genevan master correctly objects that the vocal organs ‘were certainly in some way imposed on us by nature,’ but at the same time Saussure believes that the American linguist was right on the essential point: ‘Language is a convention, and the nature of the sign which is agreed upon makes no difference.’ In discussing the relations between static linguistics and evolutionary linguistics’ Saussure, followed by his disciples, went so far as to say that in the science of language ‘there is no place for natural givens,’ and to assert ‘the always fortuitous character’ of any state of any language as well as of whatever change brought this state about. The repertory of distinctive elements of any given language can only be contingent, and any one of these elements could be replaced by another one which, though completely lacking any material similarity with the former, would be invested with, indeed would embody, the same distinctive value. Saussure identifies this state of things with the game of chess in which one can replace a destroyed or mislaid piece by one of completely different shape as long as one gives it the same role in the game. So the question is raised of whether the distinctive features, whether the assortment of phonemes in operation, is in reality purely arbitrary or whether this assortment, although obviously a social phenomenon, is not – just like the very fact of using the vocal apparatus – ‘in some way imposed on us by nature.’
We have pointed out that the distinctive features of the phonemes are strictly appositive entities. It follows from this that a distinctive property never stands alone in the phonological system. Because of the nature, in particular the logical nature, of oppositions, each of these properties implies the coexistence in the same system of the opposite property; length could not exist without shortness, voicing without voicelessness, the acute character without the grave character, and vice versa. The duality of opposites is therefore not arbitrary, but necessary. The oppositions themselves also do not stand alone in the phonological system. The oppositions of the distinctive features are interdependent, i.e., the existence of one opposition implies, permits or precludes the coexistence of such and such other opposition in the same phonological system, in the same way that the presence of one particular distinctive feature implies the absence, or the necessary (or at least probable) presence of such and such other distinctive properties in the same phoneme. Here again arbitrariness has very restricted scope.
Apart from the typological study of the greatest variety of the world’s language systems, it is the structural analysis of language in the process of development – the analysis of children’s language and its general laws – and of language in the process of disintegration – aphasic language – which enables us to throw light on the selection of phonemes, the distinctive features, and their mutual relations, and to get closer to the main principles of this selection and of this interdependence so as to be in a position to establish and explain the universal laws which underlie the phonological structure of the world’s languages. The systematic investigation of the way in which phonological resources are put to use in the construction of grammatical forms, which was initiated by Baudouin’s school and by the Prague circle under the name of ‘morphology,’ promises to construct an indispensable bridge between the study of sound and that of meaning, as long as one takes into account the range of linguistic levels and what is specifically fundamental to each of them.

Question: what is another name for linguistics

Question: what type of study is linguistics

மொழியியல் ஆய்வு

Question: what is linguistics a sphere for the study of language

அறிவியல் முறைப்படி

what is linguistics a sphere for the study of language

Question: what is a language study

மொழியின் வடிவம் , பொருள்

Question: linguistics is a sphere for the study of language as what

அறிவியல் முறைப்படி

Question: what is a sphere for the study of language as a scientific method

Linguistics ( Linguistics ) is a sphere for the study of language as a scientific method . The language form , subject , and so on is a language study .

சகாப்தத்திற்கு

நூற்றாண்டில்

மொழியைப்பற்றி

எழுதியுள்ளார்

மொழியியலாளர்கள்

பாரம்பரியமாக

செய்கின்றனர்

உச்சரிப்பதற்குரிய

உச்சரிப்பொலியியல்

பண்புகளுக்குள்ளும்

ஆகியவற்றிற்கு

புரிந்துகொள்வது

செயல்படுத்துவது

நிர்வகிப்பது

Power of the Word
Bhartrihari is an early figure in Indian linguistics who lived around 5th century B.C. His work is known as Vakya-padiya (treatise on words and sentences). But the word ‘Vakya’ is the name of the Science of Mimamsa exegesis, and ‘Pada’ is the name of the Science of Grammar.
This work is deals with relevant issues in Mimamsa and Grammar such as Jati (class) and Dravya (substance). It has three sections -- Brahma Kanda, Vakya Kanda and Pada Kanda.
In the first section, the author enunciates the nature of Sabda-tattva and Sphota; in the second, he discusses individual sentences and in the third, he explains different aspects of Pada or word.
All words first convey their form before conveying the meaning. Thus all words primarily convey Jati. First the Sabda-jati is conveyed and then, Artha-jati. The separate individuals are called Dravyas.
Bhartrihari is in agreement with other schools such as early Nyaya-Vaiseshika, Mimamsa and Samkhya in regard to the concept of Jati. He belongs to the Sabda-Advaita (Monism of Speech) School which identifies language and cognition. But it should be kept in mind that his philosophy does not show the world as an illusion, as is well known in the later Advaita. For him, the world is a real projection of Brahman. Verbal communication is a real manifestation of the supreme principle whose essence is Sabda.
The special contribution of Bhartrihari is the Sphota theory but it was known much before his time. The word ‘Sphota’ is derived from the root ‘Sphut’ meaning ‘to burst’, ‘to open’ or ‘to spurt.’ Patanjali uses this word. Panini refers to an ancient grammarian Sphotayana who may be taken as the earliest propounder of the Sphota theory.
Bhartrihari says that the act of speech comprises three stages:
Conceptualisation by the speaker (Pasyanti – ‘idea’)
Actual act of speaking (Madhyama – ‘medium’)
Comprehension by the interpreter (Vaikhari – full utterance).
There is, of course, the highest stage called Para, which is identified with Brahman. For him, word is eternal. It is permanent, immutable and ever lasting. Word, its meaning and their relationship are eternal.
It is interesting to note that the celebrated rhetorician Anandavardhana, who propounded Dhvani (Suggestion) as the Soul of Poetry, says in his ‘Dhvanyaloka’ that he borrowed the term ‘dhvani’ from early grammarians (such as Patanjali and Bhartrihari) who refer to the letters produced through Sphota, as Dhvani.
The book under review is a brilliant exposition of the concepts of Sphota, Jati and Dravya as laid down by Bhartrihari. The concept of Jati is already well known to the followers of the Nyaya-Vaiseshika and Mimamsa schools. The book, organised in seven well-structured chapters, explores the unique way in which Bhratrihari showed the impact of linguistics on philosophy.
But it is a matter of regret that there are a number of printing mistakes in the text presented here (e.g., pp.12, 15, 16, 21, etc.). Notwithstanding this, Dr Sharada Narayanan needs to be lauded for this scholarly production which will be of great help to students of linguistic philosophy.
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Please Email the Editor

Question: what is the study of speech and communication sounds

what is the study of speech and communication sounds

Question: when was the sanskrit literature published

4 ஆம் நூற்றாண்டில்

when was the sanskrit literature published

Question: in what century was sanskrit literature published

in what century was sanskrit literature published

Question: communication is the study of what

பேச்சு மற்றும் உரையாடல் ஒலிகளைப்

Question: what does communication study

Question: when was the imperial Gazetteer of india v. 2 published

when was the imperial Gazetteer of india v. 2 published

In the 4th century prior to public health , this target scientific literature has written a methodological study publication of the Sanskrit Literature The Imperial Gazetteer of India , v. 2 ( 1909 ) , p. 263 ..

Communication is the study of speech and communication sounds , and it also enters into their light - related and light - related communications . Communication studies the meaning of language and speaks about how to understand , operate and deliver relationships between the world 's different phrases , phrases and world 's different aspects , and how to manage them , and how to solve their perceptions . Communication also speaks about how to understand , operate and deliver relationships between the world 's different phrases , phrases and other aspects .

In the 4th century prior to public health, this target scientific literature has written a methodological study publication of the Sanskrit Literature The Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 2 (1909), p. 263.. Communication is the study of speech and communication sounds, and it also enters into their light-related and light-related communications. Communication studies the meaning of language and speaks about how to understand, operate and deliver relationships between the world's different phrases, phrases and world's different aspects, and how to manage them, and how to solve their perceptions. Communication also speaks about how to understand, operate and deliver relationships between the world's different phrases, phrases and other aspects.

It is also important for him and his assets.

இவ்விதிமுறைகள்

ஒலிகளுக்கும்All

பொருளுக்கும்

ஒலியமைப்புகளின்

சொற்றொடர்கள்

உள்ளிட்டவற்றின்

துணைவிதிகளையும்

Question: what should all references in this article to the study of sound be taken to include

It is also important for him and his assets.

Question: the manual and non-manual signs are used in what

the manual and non-manual signs are used in what

Question: who targets the organization of the associations

who targets the organization of the associations

Question: who is the study of sound also important for

who is the study of sound also important for

Question: what is the importance of using manual and non-manual signs

Question: what is the study of in sign languages

Question: why should all references in this article to the study of sound be included in sign languages

It is also important for him and his assets

அவை தரும் பொருளுக்கும் பொருந்தும்

It is also important for him and his assets

All references in this article to the study of sound should be taken to include the manual and non - manual signs used in sign languages .

It is also important for him and his assets .

Furthermore , the organization of the associations is targeted by the organizations of the associations , the organization of the property and the creation of the creation , the creation of the property and the organization of the associations .

அவை தரும் பொருளுக்கும் பொருந்தும்.

All references in this article to the study of sound should be taken to include the manual and non-manual signs used in sign languages. It is also important for him and his assets. Furthermore, the organization of the associations is targeted by the organizations of the associations, the organization of the property and the creation of the creation, the creation of the property and the organization of the associations.

It is also important for him and his assets.

External connections Multilingual Morphology Software Grammar Book Syllabification algorithm The hyphenation block

|
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Multilingual Morphology Software
Word Analysis and Generation for over 3 million word forms
WMTrans (WordManager Transducers) is a smart
text processing software for information retrieval and language processing applications. Typical uses include integration into search engines, software for text indexing, text mining,
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WMTrans is based on the Canoo morphological dictionary, containing more than 250'000
lexemes and generating 3 million fully categorized word forms for German, as well as 50'000 lexemes for English and Italian respectively. The dictionaries include information on word formation dependencies, all types of morphological
irregularities and spelling variants.
Demos based on WMTrans can be tested at:www.canoo.net
For more information, see products and licenses.
News
May 2004: The Transducer compiler has been released.
May 2004: Dr. Sandro Pedrazzini will present the Canoo's "Morphological Treatment of Unknown Words" at LREC 2004.
November 2003: Dr. Elisabeth Maier will be speaking at Lang Tech 2003.
July 2003: Multi-platform Recognizer and Multi-platform Inflection Generator for all currently available languages released.
July 2003: Transparent cache integration to improve performance in all available Unknown Word Products.
June 2003: Multi-platform Word Formation Analyzer/Generator for all currently available languages released.
May 2003: Italian products released. Italian versions of the Java-based Lemmatizer, Inflection Analyzer and Inflection Analyzer/Generator are now available. Read here for more information about language-specific issues.
April 2003: WMTrans in the news: See the NZZ article on Canoo's morphology tools (in German only).
April 2003: English products released. English versions of the Java-based Lemmatizer, Inflection Analyzer and Inflection Analyzer/Generator are now available. Read here for more information about language-specific issues.
March 2003: Multi-platform Inflection Analyzer/Generator (pure Java implementation) released
February 2003: Multi-platform Inflection Analyzer (pure Java implementation) released
February 2003: Read the ELSNews 11.4 (Winter 2002/3) article on WMTrans

Question: what block is used in multilingual morphology software grammar book formatting algorithm

Question: what does the hyphenation block refer to

வெளி இணைப்புகள்

what does the hyphenation block refer to

Question: what block blocks the translation of words in multilingual morphology

Question: what block is used in multilingual morphology software grammar book formatting

Question: what block is used to block the translation of words

what block is used to block the translation of words

Question: what software grammar book syllabification algorithm uses the hyphenation block

Question: what type of linguistics is multilingual

what type of linguistics is multilingual

Question: what is the software grammar book syllabification algorithm

External connections Multilingual Morphology

External connections Multilingual Morphology

Editor for this issue: T. Daniel Seely <dseely@emunix.emich.edu>
Summary of responses to query about syllabification algorithms--- Many thanks to: Larry Romans (ljr@cobra.jpl.nasa.gov) Alain Theriault (theriaal@ERE.UMontreal.CA) Mike Hammond (hammond@aruba.ccit.arizona.edu) David M. W. Powers (powers@ist.flinders.edu.au) Walter Daelemans (Walter.Daelemans@kub.nl) John Coleman (jsc@indy.phon.ox.ac.uk) Hugh Buckingham (hbuck@salvador.speech.lsu.edu) Deborah D K Ruuska (druuskan@cc.helsinki.fi) Antal van den Bosc (antal@cs.rulimburg.nl) Ton Weijters (weijters@cs.rulimburg.nl) Markell R West (markell@afterlife.ncsc.mil) As you might recall, I said: "I've been looking for syllabification algorithms, but I am having a hard time finding practical, clearly stated and complete algorithms that will provide good coverage." Several people mentioned the relationship of hyphenation and syllabification and directed me to hyphenation algorithms of several flavors, though I was cautioned that morphology plays a large role in hyphenation and none in syllabification. Liang's computer hyphenation algorithm (used in TeX) was mentioned as well as table-lookup methods by Weijters and connectionist/machine learning methods by Daelemans and van den Bosch. 1) Liang, F. M. Word hy-phen-a-tion by com-put-er / by Franklin Mark Liang. Word hyphenation by computer. Thesis (Ph. D.)--Stanford University, 1983. 2) Daelemans, W. and van den Bosch, A. "Generalization performance of backpropagation learning on a syllabification task." In M.F.J. Drossaers and A Nijholt (Eds.), Proceedings of TWLT3: Connectionism and Natural Language Processing, pp. 27-37. Enschede: University of Twente. 1992. ftp://ftp.cs.rulimburg.nl/pub/papers/antal/twlt3-92.ps.gz 3) Van den Bosch, A., Weijters, A., Van den Herik, J., and Daelemans, W. "The profit of learning exceptions". In Proceedings of the 5th Belgian-Dutch Conference on Machine Learning, BENELEARN'95, pp. 118-126. ftp://ftp.cs.rulimburg.nl/pub/papers/antal/benelearn-95.ps.gz 4) Weijters, A. "A simple look-up procedure superior to NETtalk?". In Artificial Neural Networks, T. Kohonen, K. Makisara, O. Simula and J. Kangas (eds) Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland), 1991. A couple of respondents mentioned sonority theory. 1) G. N. Clements. "The role of the sonority cycle in core syllabification". In PAPERS IN LABORATORY PHONOLOGY I: BETWEEN THE GRAMMAR AND PHYSICS OF SPEECH, John Kingston and Mary F. Beckman (eds). Cambridge University Press, 1990. Also recommended for reading is 1) R. Treiman and A. Zukowski. "Toward an understanding of english syllabification", In Journal of Memory and Language. 1990. Volume 29, pages 66-85. Hammond's syllable parser (based on optimality theory) was mentioned by several people and is available on-line (http://aruba.ccit.arizona.edu/~hammond). IPOX by Coleman and associates is also available on-line and has a grammar of English syllables (ftp://chico.phon.ox.ac.uk/pub/ipox/index.html). Several people wrote that they were involved in current computer syllabification efforts in various languages, such as French, Finnish and English and offered to send me their code. The responses to my query provided me with several viable alternatives that I am planning to explore. Thank you all for your help, I really appreciate all the responses. - Su-Lin. - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Su-Lin Wu Computer Science Division UC Berkeley and International Computer Science Institute sulin@icsi.berkeley.edu http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~sulin - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------Mail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue

Introduction
This document describes the Perl script
html2ps – an
HTML to PostScript converter. The program is developed on a Unix system
(Sun Solaris 2.5.1), but earlier versions have been reported working on
other platforms, such as Windows NT, MS-DOS and MacIntosh.
First, do not get intimidated by the size of this document. At least
on a Unix system with Perl installed, you should be able to convert a
local text-only HTML file directly without doing any preparation at
all. Just execute the script with the HTML file as parameter and
direct the output to a file or a printer, for example:
html2ps file.html > file.ps
or perhaps
perl html2ps file.html > file.ps
There are several possibilities to control the appearance of the
output. Starting with version 1.0 of html2ps, most of this is done
via configuration files, and not with command line options only.
A sample configuration file 'sample' is included with the html2ps
distribution (used by the installation script to convert this
document to postscript). You can take a look at this file to see
an example of a configuration file.
The command line options, and how to set their defaults using
a configuration file, are described in the
option block below. Due to the new concept of
configuration files, some of the command line options in earlier
versions have been removed. Hopefully, this will not cause too many
problems for old users.
Jean-Philippe Argaud has written a GUI (xhtml2ps) for html2ps. You can find
this in the directory 'contrib'. Both html2ps and xhtml2ps comes with the
GNU General Public License, see the file 'COPYING' for details.
There is a mailing list for html2ps. If you want to be included on this
list, send a mail with the word 'subscribe' on the subject line to
html2ps-request@tdb.uu.se.
Installation
For certain tasks, such as rendering of inline images and retrievement
of remote documents, html2ps depends on other program packages. First
of all, you should make sure that you have all the necessary software
is installed on your system. See below where these
packages can be found.
Since html2ps is written in Perl, you must of course have Perl installed,
version 5 or later is required.
If you want to make use of the support for inline images, you must
have one of the packages ImageMagick, pbmplus or netpbm installed. If
you do not have ImageMagick (or if it is not installed with jpeg
support), you can use djpeg from the jpegsrc distribution to handle
jpeg images. The recommended image package is ImageMagick together
with its Perl module interface PerlMagick.
To be able to convert remote documents directly without downloading them
first, you must have have some program installed for this purpose. The
best is to either use the Perl module library libwww-perl or www.pl and
network.pl, but you can for example also use lynx or url_get for this.
Ghostscript is also required to get full functionality (needed to generate
DSC PostScript and cross references).
If you are on a Unix system, and have all necessary software installed,
you can now execute the installation script 'install' to build a global
configuration file, and install all files. On other platforms you will
have to create a global configuration file manually, and insert its name
into the html2ps script. This is described in next section.
Configuration files
Configuration files are used for layout control, resource information
etc. Normally, there should always exist a global configuration file.
In this file one typically specify things like: what image conversion
packages are available on the system, the default paper size, the default
text fonts and sizes, etc.
For Unix systems, the installation script 'install' can be used to
automatically build a global configuration file with all necessary
definitions, and install all files. The files replaced by the installation
are saved. If you for some reason are not satisfied with the new version:
execute the script 'backout' to reinstall your earlier version.
On non-Unix systems, you will have to manually create a global
configuration file, and insert the name of this file into the
html2ps script (close to the beginning, the line starting with
"
$globrc="). The configuration file should contain a
package block, and perhaps
paper and
hyphenation blocks, described below.
Each user can then have a personal configuration file (by default
$HOME/.html2psrc) that complements/overrides the definitions made in the
global file. It is also possible to specify alternative files on the
command line, using the -f option.
File format
A configuration file can include other configuration files. This is done with:
@import "filename";
The rest of the configuration file consists of zero or more blocks.
A block is given by a block name, followed by the block definition, as in:
BODY {
font-size: 12pt;
font-family: Helvetica;
text-align: justify
}
The block definition, enclosed by curly braces: { }, consists of
key-value pairs and/or other blocks. A key-value pair consists of the key
name followed by a colon, followed by the value. Blocks and key-value pairs
are separated by semicolons. The semicolon may be omitted after a block.
Several blocks can share the same definition. The block names are then
separated be commas, as in:
H2, H4, H6 { font-style: italic }
A comment in a configuration file starts with the characters
"
/*" and ends with "
*/":
@html2ps {
seq-number: 1; /* Automatic numbering of headings */
}
Notations
Here are some definitions of terms used below:
- Flag:
- A value of either 0 (absence, inactive etc) or 1 (presence, active etc).
- Absolute size:
- A real number optionally followed by one of the following two-letter
unit identifiers: cm (centimeters), mm (millimeters), in (inches),
pt (points, 1pt = 1/72 inch), pc (picas, 1pc = 12pt). The default
unit is centimeters.
- Relative size:
- A size relative to current fontsize. The default and currently only
recognized unit is em. One em equals the size of the current font.
The value should be given as a real number, optionally followed by 'em',
as in '0.25em'.
- Whitespace:
- Any one of the characters: space, tab, newline, or carriage return.
CSS1 blocks
All blocks, except one: the
@html2ps
block, coincides with a subset of the
CSS1 – Cascading Style Sheets
level 1 – specification.
(If this link is no longer valid, try looking for style
sheet documentation starting at the
W3C home page.)
The following default settings for html2ps illustrate just about everything
that currently can be used from the CSS1 specification:
BODY {
font-family: Times;
font-size: 11pt;
text-align: left;
background: white;
}
H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 {
font-weight: bold;
margin-top: 0.8em;
margin-bottom: 0.5em;
}
H1 { font-size: 19pt }
H2 { font-size: 17pt }
H3 { font-size: 15pt }
H4 { font-size: 13pt }
H5 { font-size: 12pt }
H6 { font-size: 11pt }
P, OL, UL, DL, BLOCKQUOTE, PRE {
margin-top: 1em;
margin-bottom: 1em;
}
P {
line-height: 1.2em;
text-indent: 0;
}
OL, UL, DD { margin-left: 2em }
TT, KBD, PRE { font-family: Courier }
PRE { font-size: 9pt }
BLOCKQUOTE {
margin-left: 1em;
margin-right: 1em;
}
ADDRESS {
margin-top: 0.5em;
margin-bottom: 0.5em;
}
TABLE {
margin-top: 1.3em;
margin-bottom: 1em;
}
DEL { text-decoration: line-through }
A:link, HR { color: black }
This block is used to specify parameters that are specific to
html2ps, and not covered by CSS1. The
@html2ps block has
several sub-blocks and key-value pairs, these are described in this section.
This block is used to specify which program
packages are installed on the system. Typically, this is done in the
global configuration file.
The paper size is defined in this block. The size can either be
given as one of the recognized paper types or by giving explicit values
for the paper height and width.
-
PerlMagick
- A flag specifying whether the Perl module PerlMagick is installed
or not. The default is 0.
-
ImageMagick
- A flag specifying whether the ImageMagick package is installed
or not. The default is 0.
-
pbmplus
- A flag specifying whether the pbmplus package is installed
or not. The default is 0.
netpbm
- A flag specifying whether the netpbm package is installed
or not. The default is 0.
djpeg
- A flag specifying whether djpeg is installed or not.
The default is 0.
Ghostscript
- A flag specifying whether Ghostscript is installed or not.
The default is 0.
TeX
- A flag specifying whether the TeX package is installed or not.
The default is 0.
dvips
- A flag specifying whether dvips is installed or not.
The default is 0.
libwww-perl
- A flag specifying whether the Perl module library libwww-perl
is installed or not. The default is 0.
jfriedl
- A flag specifying whether the Perl scripts www.pl and network.pl
(by Jeffrey Friedl) are installed or not. The default is 0.
geturl
- When neither of the Perl packages for retrieving remote documents
are available, it is possible to use some other program like lynx or
url_get. This value should be set to a command that retrieves a document
with a complete MIME header, such as "
lynx -source
-mime_header" or "
url_get -h".
check
- The name of a program used for syntax checking HTML documents.
No default, a good choice is weblint.
path
- A colon separated list of directories where the executables from
the program packages are. It is only necessary to include directories
that are not in the PATH for a typical user.
This block is used to set default values for the command line
options. The key in the key-value pair is the option name, in either its
long or short form.
type
- Paper type, possible choices are: A0, A1, A2, A3, A4,...,A10,
B0, B1,...,B10, letter, legal, arche, archd, archc, archb, archa,
flsa, flse, halfletter, 11x17, and ledger (this set of paper types
is taken from Aladdin Ghostscript). The default is A4.
height
- An absolute size specifying the paper height.
width
- An absolute size specifying the paper width.
twoup (on the command line:
-2 or
--twoup)
- Two column (2-up) output. The default is one column per page.
base (on the command line:
-b URL or
--base URL)
- Use URL as a base to expand relative references for in-line
images. This is useful if you have downloaded a document to a local file.
The URL should then be the URL of the original document.
check (on the command line:
-c or
--check)
- Check the syntax of the HTML file (using an external syntax
checker). The default is to not make a syntax check.
toc (on the command line:
-C string or
--toc string)
- Generate a table of contents (ToC). The value should be a string
consisting of one of the letters 'f', 'h', or 't', optionally combined
with the letter 'b':
- b
- The ToC will be printed first. This requires that Ghostscript is
installed.
- f
- The ToC will be generated from the links in the converted document.
- h
- The ToC will be generated from headings and
titles in the converted documents. Note that if the document author
for some strange reason has chosen to use some other means to represent
the headings than the HTML elements H1,...,H6, you are out of luck!
- t
- The ToC will be generated from links having the attribute
rev=TOC in the converted document.
debug (on the command line:
-d or
--debug)
- Generate debugging information. You should always use this
option when reporting problems with html2ps.
DSC (on the command line:
-D or
--DSC)
- Generate DSC compliant PostScript. This requires Ghostscript and
can take quite some time to do. Note that a PostScript file generated
with this option cannot be used as input to html2ps for reformatting
later.
encoding (on the command line:
-e encoding or
--encoding encoding)
- The document encoding. Currently recognized values are ISO-8859-1,
EUC-JP, SHIFT-JIS, and ISO-2022-JP (other EUC-xx encodings may also
work). The default is ISO-8859-1.
rcfile (on the command line:
-f file[:file[:...]] or
--rcfile file[:file[:...]])
- A colon separated list of configuration file names to use
instead of the default personal configuration file $HOME/.html2psrc.
Definitions made in one file override definitions in previous files
(the last file in the list has highest precedence). An empty file
name (as in ':file', 'file1::file3', or 'file:') will expand to the
default personal file. The environment variable HTML2PSPATH is used
to specify the directories where to search for these files. (Note:
this is only supposed to be used on the command line, not
in a configuration file.)
frame (on the command line:
-F or
--frame)
- Draw a frame around the text on each page. The default is
to not draw a frame.
grayscale (on the command line:
-g or
--grayscale)
- Convert colour images to grayscale images. Note that the
PostScript file will be smaller when the images are converted to
grayscale. The default is to generate colour images.
help (on the command line:
-h or
--help)
- Show usage information.
hyphenate (on the command line:
-H or
--hyphenate)
- Hyphenate the text. This requires TeX
hyphenation pattern files.
scaleimage (on the command line:
-i num or
--scaleimage num)
- Scale in-line images with a factor num.
The default is 1.
language (on the command line:
-l lang or
--language lang)
- Specifies the language of the document
(overrides an eventual LANG attribute of the BODY element).
The language should be given according to
RFC1766 and
ISO 639.
landscape (on the command line:
-L or
--landscape)
- Generate code for printing in landscape mode. The default
is portrait mode.
scalemath (on the command line:
-m num or
--scalemath num)
- Scale mathematical formulas with a factor num.
The default is 1.
number (on the command line:
-n or
--number)
- Insert page numbers. The default is to not number the pages.
startno (on the command line:
-N num or
--startno num)
- Specifies the starting page number, the default is 1.
output (on the command line:
-o file or
--output file)
- Write the PostScript code to file. The default is
to write to standard output.
original (on the command line:
-O or
--original)
- Use PostScript original images if they exist. For example, if a
document contains an image figure.gif, and an encapsulated PostScript
file named figure.ps exists in the same directory, that file will be
use instead. This only work for documents read as local files. Note:
if the PostScript file is large or contains bitmap images, this must
be combined with the -D option. In HTML 4.0 this can be achieved in a
much better way with:
<OBJECT data="figure.ps" type="application/postscript">
<OBJECT data="figure.gif" type="image/gif">
<PRE>[Maybe some ASCII art for text browsers]</PRE>
</OBJECT>
</OBJECT>
rootdir (on the command line:
-r path or
--rootdir path)
- When a document is read from a local file, this value specifies
a base directory for resolving relative links starting with "/".
Typically, this should be the directory where your web server's home
page resides.
xref (on the command line:
-R or
--xref)
- Insert cross references at every link to
within the set of converted documents.
scaledoc (on the command line:
-s num or
--scaledoc num)
- Scale the entire document with a factor num.
The default is 1.
style (on the command line:
-S string or
--style string)
- This option complements/overrides definitions made in the
configuration files. The string must follow the configuration
file syntax. (Note: this is only supposed to be used on the
command line, not in a configuration file.)
text (on the command line:
-T or
--text)
- Text mode, ignore images. The default is to include the images.
underline (on the command line:
-u or
--underline)
- Underline text that constitutes a hypertext link. The default
is to not underline.
colour (on the command line:
-U or
--colour)
- Produce colour output for text and background, when specified.
The default is black text on white background (mnemonic: coloUr ;-).
version (on the command line:
-v or
--version)
- Print information about the current version of html2ps.
web (on the command line:
-W string or
--web string)
- Process a web of documents by recursively retrieve and convert
documents that are referenced with hyperlinks. When dealing with remote
documents it will of course be necessary to impose restrictions, to
avoid downloading the entire web... The value should be a string
consisting of one of the letters 'a', 'b', 'l', 'r', or 's', optionally
combined with a combination of the letters 'p', 'L', and a positive
integer:
- a
- Follow all links.
- b
- Follow only links to within the same directory, or below, as the
start document.
- l
- Follow only links specified with
"
<LINK rel=NEXT>" in the document.
- p
- Prompt for each remote document. This mode will automatically be
entered after the first 50 documents.
- r
- Follow only relative links.
- s
- Follow only links to within the same server as the start document.
- L
- With this option, the order in which the documents are processed will
be: first all top level documents, then the documents linked to from
these etc. For example, if the document A has links to B and C, and
B has a link to D, the order will be A→B→C→D.
By default, each document will be followed by the first document
it links to etc; so the default order for the example is
A→B→D→C.
- #
- A positive integer giving the number of recursive levels. The
default is 4 (when the option is present).
duplex (on the command line:
-x num or
--duplex num)
- Generate postscript code for single or double sided printing.
No default, valid values are:
- 0
- Single sided.
- 1
- Double sided.
- 2
- Double sided, opposite page reversed (tumble mode).
The This block is used to specify page margins.
margin block
At every hyperlink (to within the set of converted documents)
it is possible to have a cross reference inserted. The
left
- An absolute size of the left margin, default is 2.5cm.
right
- An absolute size of the right margin, default is 2.5cm.
top
- An absolute size of the top margin, default is 3cm.
bottom
- An absolute size of the bottom margin, default is 3cm.
middle
- An absolute size for the distance between the columns when
printing two columns per page, default is 2cm.
xref
block is used to control this function.
Language specific quotation marks are defined in this block.
These quotation marks are used with the HTML 4.0 element Q for short
quotations. Quotation marks for a few languages are predefined,
see below. It is possible to define different quotation
marks for quotes within quotes.
text
- This defines the cross reference text to be inserted; the symbol
$N will expand to the page number, default is "[p $N]".
passes
- The number of passes used to insert the cross references.
Normally, only one pass is run. But since the insertion of the page
numbers may effect the page breaks, it might for large documents with
many links be necessary with more than one pass to get the cross
references right. The default is 1.
A quotation mark is defined as a string, using the same encoding as the
converted document (normally ISO-8859-1), and/or with character entities.
Note that quotation mark characters for several languages are not
included in ISO-8859-1, and their corresponding character entities were
not been defined prior to HTML 4.0.
Quotation marks for a language can be defined explicitly in a sub-block
of the
quote block. One can also identify the set of quotation
marks with another previously defined language, using a key-value pair.
The sub-block/key name should equal the language code as defined in
ISO 639. The language sub-block can have the following key-values:
Example: English and Spanish use the same set of quotation marks –
at least according to my book on typography. These (already known to
html2ps) are defined with:
open
- The quote opening character(s).
close
- The quote closing character(s). If undefined, it will equal
open.
open2
- The quote opening character(s) for quotes within quotes. If undefined,
it will equal
open.
close2
- The quote closing character(s) for quotes within quotes. If undefined,
it will equal
close.
quote {
en {
open: "“";
close: "”";
open2: "`";
close2: "'";
}
es: en;
}
When a table of contents (ToC) is generated from document
headings and titles, the appearance is controlled by this block.
heading
- A string with HTML code specifying a heading used on the first
ToC page. The symbols $T and $A can be used for the document title
and author respectively.
level
- The maximum heading level used for building the ToC. The
default is 6, which means that all headings will generate
ToC entries.
indent
- The ToC entries are indented proportional to the corresponding
heading level. This value specifies the size of the indentation.
The default is 1em.
extrapage
- A flag specifying whether an extra (empty) page should be printed
between the ToC and the rest of the document, when necessary, to ensure
that both will start on an odd page. This is typically desirable for
double sided printing. The default is 1.
The Currently, html2ps recognizes the fonts: Times,
New-Century-Schoolbook, Helvetica, Helvetica-Narrow, Palatino, Avantgarde,
Bookman, and Courier. To add a new font (family), choose a name (consisting
of letters, digits, hyphens, and underscores) for the font. Then define a
sub-block to the
font block
font block, with the same name as the chosen
font name. This block can contain two key-value pairs:
Example: A font 'myfont' has its four font styles defined in local files.
To use this font in all tables in the converted documents, one can use
something like:
names
- A string containing four PostScript font names, separated by
whitespace, corresponding to the font styles normal, italic, bold, and
bold-italic. If less than four names are given, the first is used for
the missing names. Note that PostScript font names are case sensitive.
files
- A string of four file names, separated by whitespace, for files
containing font definitions for the four font styles as specified above.
TABLE { font-family: myfont }
@html2ps {
font {
myfont {
names: "MyFont-Roman MyFont-Italic MyFont-Bold MyFont-BoldItalic";
files: "/x/y/myfr.ps /x/y/myfi.ps /x/y/myfb.ps /x/y/myfbi.ps";
}
}
}
Hyphenation pattern files for different languages are specified
in sub-blocks within this block. The blocks names should equal the
language code as defined in ISO 639. These language blocks can contain
the following two key-values:
For example, for English (with language code 'en') one can have a block
like:
file
- A hyphenation pattern file in TeX format for this language.
extfile
- A file containing a list of hyphenation exceptions for this language.
The exception file should contain words, separated by whitespaces, with
hyphens inserted where hyphenation is allowed, as in:
"
in-fra-struc-ture white-space".
en {
file: "/opt/tex/lib/macros/hyphen.tex";
extfile: "/opt/tdb/lib/html2ps/enhyphext";
}
The
hyphenation block itself can furthermore have these
key-values:
min
- A positive integer defining the minimum number of letters a word
must contain to make it a candidate for hyphenation.
The Default is 8.
start
- A positive integer defining the minimum number of letters that
must precede the hyphen when a word is hyphenated.
The default is 4.
end
- A positive integer defining the minimum number of letters that
must follow the hyphen when a word is hyphenated.
The default is 3.
The This block is used to specify page headers. It is possible to
define left, center, and right headers. Different headers for odd and even
pages can be specified. Some symbols can be used that will expand to
document title, author, date, etc. See below.
header block
left
- A left aligned header. If the
alternate flag in this
block is set to 1, this will be the right header on even pages.
center
- A centered header.
right
- A right aligned header. If the
alternate flag in this
block is set to 1, this will be the left header on even pages.
odd-left
- A left aligned header on odd pages.
odd-center
- A centered header on odd pages.
odd-right
- A right aligned header on odd pages.
even-left
- A left aligned header on even pages.
even-center
- A centered header on even pages.
even-right
- A right aligned header on even pages.
font-family
- The font used for the header, default is Helvetica.
font-size
- The font size for the header, default is 8pt.
font-style
- The default is "normal".
font-weight
- The default is "normal".
color
- The header color, default is black.
alternate
- A flag indicating whether the headers given by the
left and
right keys should change place on
even pages. Typically used for double sided printing.
The default is 1.
The This block is used to specify page footers. It is possible to
define left, center, and right footers. Different footers for odd and even
pages can be specified. Some symbols can be used that will expand to
document title, author, date, etc. See below.
footer block
left
- A left aligned footer. If the
alternate flag in
this block is set to 1, this will be the right footer on even pages.
center
- A centered footer.
right
- A right aligned footer. If the
alternate flag in
this block is set to 1, this will be the left footer on even pages.
odd-left
- A left aligned footer on odd pages.
odd-center
- A centered footer on odd pages.
odd-right
- A right aligned footer on odd pages.
even-left
- A left aligned footer on even pages.
even-center
- A centered footer on even pages.
even-right
- A right aligned footer on even pages.
font-family
- The font used for the footer, default is Helvetica.
font-size
- The font size for the footer, default is 8pt.
font-style
- The default is "normal".
font-weight
- The default is "normal".
color
- The footer color, default is black.
alternate
- A flag indicating whether the footers given by the
left and
right keys should change place on
even pages. Typically used for double sided printing.
The default is 1.
The The appearance of the optional frame (drawn on each page) is
controlled by this block.
frame block
width
- The width of the frame, default is 0.6pt.
margin
- The size of the frame margin, default is 0.5cm.
color
- The colour of the frame, default is black.
The This block specifies the maximum amount of extra space inserted
between words and letters when text justification is in effect.
justify block
word
- Maximum amount of extra space inserted between words.
The default is 15pt.
letter
- Maximum amount of extra space inserted between letters
within words. The default is 0pt.
The It is possible to have some text written in a large font diagonally
across each page. Typically this is a word, written in a very light colour,
indicating that the document is a draft.
draft block
text
- The text to be printed, default is "DRAFT".
print
- A flag specifying whether the draft text should be printed or not.
If unspecified, the draft text is printed when the document head contains
<META name="Status" content="Draft">.
dir
- Specifies print direction, 0=downwards, 1=upwards.
font-family
- The default is Helvetica.
font-style
- The default is "normal".
font-weight
- The default is "bold".
color
- The default is "F0F0F0".
The The 16 colour names from the
HTML 3.2
specification are recognized by html2ps. Use this block to extend this
list of colours. This is done with key-value pairs, where the key is the
colour name, and the value is the colour given as a hexadecimal RGB
value, for example: "
colour block
brown: A52A2A;".
Key-value pairs in the
@html2ps block
html2psrc
- The name of the default personal configuration file.
The default is $HOME/.html2psrc.
imgalt
- Specifies which text should be written as a replacement
for in-line images when the IMG element has no ALT attribute.
The default is
"[IMAGE]".
datefmt
- The symbol $D can be used in page headers and footers to insert the
current date/time; the value of the
datefmt key specifies the
format used. The syntax is the same as in the strftime(3) routine. The
default is
"%e %b %Y %R", which gives a date
string like "9 Aug 1997 18:24".
locale
- The locale (language code) used for formating language dependent
parts of the date/time in
datefmt. If unspecified, the value
is taken from environment variables, see setlocale(3). No default.
doc-sep
- A string of HTML code that will be inserted between the
documents when more than one are converted. The default is
"<!--NewPage-->", which will cause
a page break. You may use (almost) any HTML code, for example
"<HR><HR>" or
"<IMG src=...>".
ball-radius
- The radius, given as a relative size, of the balls used in
unordered lists. The default is 0.25em.
numbstyle
- Page numbering style, 0=arabic, 1=roman. The default is 0.
showurl
- When this flag is set to 1, the URL for external links are shown
within parentheses after the link. The default is 0.
seq-number
- When this flag is set, the headings in the document will be
sequentially numbered: H1 headings will be numbered 1, 2,..., H2 headings
1.1, 1.2, etc. The default is 0.
forms
- This flag is used to specify whether FORM elements in the document
should be processed or ignored. Some forms may be suitable for printing out
and be filled out (with a pen), others are not. The default is 1.
textarea-data
- When a TEXTAREA element contains prefilled data, the text will be
used as labels if this flag is set, otherwise ignored. The default is
1.
page-break
- Set this flag to 0 to suppress the normal behavior of generating
page breaks form the comment
<!--NewPage--> etc, as
specified below. The default is 1.
expand-acronyms
- A flag specifying whether acronyms, given by the ACRONYM element,
should be expanded or not. The default is 0.
collapse-br
- The default is 1.
spoof
- Some web servers return different documents depending on which user
agent is used to retrieve the document. You can fool the web server that
a certain browser is used, by setting this value to the identification
used by the browser, such as "Mozilla/4.0". This only works if you are
using one of the Perl packages to retrieve remote documents.
Symbols
The following symbols can be used in page headers/footers:
To avoid symbol expansion, precede the dollar sign with a backslash,
as in "\$T".
- $T
- Current document title.
- $A
- Author of current document, as specified with
<META name="Author"
content="..."> in the document head.
- $U
- The URL or file name of current document.
- $N
- Page number.
- $H
- Current document heading (level 1-3).
- $D
- Current date/time. The format is given by the
datefmt key.
Some hints how to use configuration files
I imagine that a typical use of configuration files can be something
along the following lines.
System specific definitions (e.g. specification of available program packages)
and global defaults (paper type etc) are defined in the global configuration
file.
If there is more than one user of the program on the system, each user can
also have a personal configuration file with his/hers own personal preferences.
(On a single user system one can use the global configuration file for this
purpose as well.)
One may also develop a collection of configuration files for typical
situations. These files are placed in a directory that is searched by html2ps
(the search path is defined with the environment variable HTML2PSPATH).
For example, to print a document as slides – in landscape mode, with
large text in Helvetica, and a thick frame – one can create a
configuration file, called 'slides' say, containing:
@html2ps {
option {
landscape: 1;
frame: 1;
}
frame { width: 3pt }
}
BODY {
font-family: Helvetica;
font-size: 20pt;
}
H1 { font-size: 35pt }
H2 { font-size: 32pt }
H3 { font-size: 29pt }
H4 { font-size: 26pt }
H5 { font-size: 23pt }
H6 { font-size: 20pt }
PRE { font-size: 18pt }
Then use the command:
html2ps -f slides ...
to convert the document. Note that with this command the file 'slides' is used
instead of the personal configuration file. If you want both to
be used, giving precedence to definitions made in the file 'slides', use
the command:
html2ps -f :slides ...
(The page breaks between the slides can for example be generated by
adding '
<HR class=PAGE-BREAK>' to the HTML document.)
For features that are frequently turned on and off, and that cannot be
controlled by command line options, it may be a good idea to create small
configuration files as "building blocks". For example a file 'A4' for
printing on A4 paper (if you have some other default paper type):
@html2ps { paper { type: A4 } }
and a file 'hnum' for automatic numbering of headings:
@html2ps { seq-number: 1 }
Combining this with the previous example: to convert a document for printing
on A4 sized slides with all headings numbered, use the command:
html2ps -f :slides:A4:hnum ...
Many of the new features in the HTML
4.0 draft are, at least partly, supported by html2ps. Here follow a
brief description of some of these.
OBJECT
The OBJECT element is recognized; the supported object types are images,
PostScript documents (eps), and HTML documents. For other types, the
content of the OBJECT element is rendered, as specified in HTML 4.0.
TABLE
Most of the extended table element is supported. This includes the
elements THEAD, TFOOT (used to get a running table head and foot when a
table is broken across pages), TBODY, COLGROUP, and COL. It is also possible
to get horizontal alignment on a specific character (align=char).
INS and DEL
The new elements INS and DEL, for marking text as inserted and deleted
respectively, are recognized. Inserted and deleted text is indicated with
a vertical bar in the left margin. By default, deleted text is rendered
as struck-through; it is possible to have deleted text not shown at all,
by specifying
DEL { display: none }
in a configuration file.
ACRONYM
The expansion of acronyms, given with the ACRONYM element, will be shown
within parenthesis following the acronym if one specifies:
@html2ps { expand-acronyms: 1 }
in a configuration file. By default, acronyms are not expanded.
The id attribute
The id attribute is recognized as an anchor for a link (only relevant when
cross references are inserted, and when the postscript code is converted
to PDF).
Named character entities
All character
entities in HTML 4.0, except , , , and
, are supported.
Internationalization
There is not yet much support for internationalization, as specified in
HTML 4.0. A few character encodings, other than the old
default ISO-8859-1, are supported. The element Q for short
quotations is implemented (quotation marks are chosen based on current
language). It is also possible to make language dependent
hyphenation, using hyphenation pattern files from
the TeX distribution. The
lang attribute (recognized for a
few elements) is used to determine the language of the document, or for
a particular section.
It is possible to convert documents using some other character encodings
than the old default ISO-8859-1. Currently the Japanese encodings EUC-JP,
SHIFT-JIS, and ISO-2022-JP (7-bit) are recognized. EUC encoded documents
in other languages, such as Chinese (EUC-CN), and Korean (EUC-KR) will
probably work as well. I have no such font available, so I have not been
able to test this myself.
You must of course have access to PostScript fonts for these languages and
encodings. For Japanese you can use the free
Wadalab fonts and
associated tools.
These fonts can be used together with Ghostscript to print on a printer
that does not have such fonts.
Of the three Japanese encodings, EUC-JP works best with html2ps. The
7-bit encoding ISO-2022-JP, found in several documents on the web, is
a bad choice for HTML documents. This is because the encoding uses
characters that have a special function in HTML, such as '<'. Often
this results in incorrect HTML code, and html2ps as well as browsers
will of course have problems rendering these documents.
There is not yet any automatic detection of the encoding, this must be
explicitly specified with the option -e, or in a configuration file.
If you for example would like to convert a document with EUC-JP encoding,
you can use a configuration file like:
BODY { font-family: eucjp }
@html2ps {
option {
encoding: "EUC-JP";
}
font {
eucjp {
names: "Ryumin-Light-EUC-H";
}
}
}
The name
Ryumin-Light-EUC-H should be changed into the
PostScript font name for the font to be used, here with EUC-JP encoding.
The name
eucjp can be changed to something else, as long
as it is the same in the
BODY and
font blocks.
You may not (yet) use a font having vertical writing mode.
The support for Japanese has only recently been added, and so far only
been tested by me. Unfortunately, I do not know any Japanese, and cannot
verify that what comes out is correct. Also, the line breaking is probably
not correctly done.
Please let me know if you are aware of any free PostScript fonts for Chinese,
Korean, etc.
The element Q, that is used for short quotations, is language sensitive;
so the quotation marks are chosen based on current language.
Here follow a few quotes that illustrate the languages that have their
quotation marks predefined. See the
quote
block how to extend the list of quotation marks. Note: since the Q element
is currently not implemented in most browsers, you will probably not see any
quotation marks at all if you are reading this in a browser (this document
is best printed with html2ps ;-).
A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse! –
Richard III by W. Shakespeare.
Blott Sverige svenska krusbär har
– Carl Jonas Love Almqvist (Swedish poet).
Der er et yndigt land
– National anthem
of Denmark.
Seiern er vår!
– Almost any Norwegian
nowadays...
Sukuvirttä suoltamahan, lajivirttä laulamahan
– Kalevala
, national epos of Finland.
... y veámonos, como dijo un ciego a otro
– Don Quijote de la Mancha
by Cervantes.
Je pense donc je suis
– René Descartes.
Zum Denken sind wenige Menschen geneigt, obwohl alle zum Rechthaben
– Arthur Schopenhauer.
The character entity  can be used to explicitly specify
possible hyphenation points.
Eppur si muove
– Galileo Galilei.
It is also possible to get automatic hyphenation of the text. This requires
hyphenation pattern files from the TeX distribution. A hyphenation pattern
file for English is included with html2ps. Pattern files for other
languages are available from the CTAN archives in, for example
The hyphenation patterns for words containing only ASCII characters
should work correctly. But it may be problems with other words, since the
authors of these hyphenation pattern files use different (but in TeX
equivalent) syntax to represent non-ASCII characters.
Please note that although TeX hyphenation patterns are used, the algorithm
used is not as sophisticated as in TeX. In fact, you should not expect TeX
quality in any part of this program!
Hyphenation patterns for important languages such as Swedish, Icelandic,
Danish, Norwegian and Finnish, as well as a few exotic languages such as
English, Spanish, German and French have been tested and seem to work
correctly :-).
Known bugs
The following bugs are with respect to
HTML 3.2 –
at the time of writing the current W3C Recommendation for HTML. The support
for HTML 4.0 is described in another section of this
document.
The IMG attributes ALIGN=LEFT and ALIGN=RIGHT are not recognized.
This means that text flow around images does not work. Also, the IMG
attributes WIDTH and HEIGHT are ignored.
The TYPE attribute in unordered lists UL is not supported.
A few deviations from the TABLE element as specified in HTML 3.2:
It is not possible to set the border width of a table.
The WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes of the TH and TD elements does not
work correctly (in my opinion, these attributes are bugs in the HTML
specification itself!). The CELLSPACING attribute is not implemented
as described in the specification; instead the value of the CELLPADDING
attribute is increased by half the value of CELLSPACING.
Rendering HTML tables well is a non-trivial task. For "real" tables,
that is representation of tabular data, html2ps usually generates
reasonably good output. When tables are used for layout purposes,
the result varies from good to useless. This is because a table cell
is never broken across pages. So if a table contains a cell with a
lot of content, the entire table may have to be scaled down in size
in order to make this cell fit on a single page. Sometimes this may
even result in unreadable output.
Page breaks are occasionally done in bad places: for example directly
after a (long) heading, and before the last line in a paragraph.
Todo
Actually, what really needs to be done is a complete rewriting of
the code. It started out as a small hack – originally a sed script
– and has now grown substantially, but it is still a hack...
It is quite unlikely that this rewriting will take place, though –
at least not in the near future.
A more realistic project is to implement the parts of HTML 4.0 that are
relevant for printing. Much is already implemented, but there remain a lot
to do regarding internationalization.
Support for style sheets has also high priority. Currently, a small part of
CSS1 is supported, but only in the form of personal style sheets (using
configuration files); style information within HTML documents is ignored.
Being a (currently inactive) PhD student in mathematics, I hope to be able
to implement the suggested standard for expressing
mathematical expressions
in HTML documents. However, rendering mathematical formulas well is
a very difficult task indeed.
All new features added have made the script quite large, and significantly
slower than earlier versions. I will try to find some way to speed it up
somewhat.
I am grateful for all suggestions how to improve html2ps. In fact, many of
the current features have been implemented after suggestions from other users.
Miscellaneous
Environment variables
- HTML2PSPATH
- This variable specifies the directories to search for
configuration files. It should be a colon separated list of directory
names. Use a dot '.' to denote the current directory. An empty directory
name (as in ':dir', 'dir1::dir3', or 'dir:') will expand to the directory
where the global configuration file is. The default value is '.:', that
is: search the current directory first, and then the global one.
DSC compliance
By default html2ps produces PostScript code that is not DSC
compliant. The practical implication of this is that it will not be possible
to use the code with PostScript filters for n-up printing, reordering of
pages, etc. It is also not possible to jump to a certain page directly
in previewers such as Ghostview.
The advantage with the non-DSC code is that it can be 'reused' by html2ps:
you can rebuild an already generated PostScript file using new command line
options and configuration files. This is done by running html2ps with the
new options, and with the old PostScript file as input. This can save a lot
of time and bandwidth when converting remote documents.
It is possible to generate DSC compliant PostScript by using the
option -D, but this requires that Ghostscript is installed, and it can
take quite some time to do. Note: if you are producing PostScript files
for others to download and print, it is strongly
recommended that you generate DSC compliant code (i.e. convert
with the -D option).
Extensions
A few extensions to HTML 3.2 and 4.0 are recognized by html2ps:
A page break can be forced by including any of these in a
document:
<HR class=PAGE-BREAK>
<?page-break>
<!--NewPage-->
If you want html2ps to ignore certain parts of a document, use the
following construction:
<DIV class=NOPRINT>
This will not be printed...
</DIV>
This can be used to avoid getting navigation bars etc in the printout.
The BANNER, FIG, and MATH elements from the expired HTML 3.0
specification are also supported. Note that the support for MATH is
far from complete, and requires that TeX and dvips are installed.
Conversion to PDF
The PostScript code generated by html2ps contains calls to the
pdfmark operator, that are instructions to a PostScript-to-PDF
converter (such as version 5.0 or later of Aladdin Ghostscript, or Adobe
Acrobat Distiller). These instructions generate hyperlinks in the PDF
document, from the hyperlinks in the original HTML documents. A PDF outline
entry, or bookmark, is also generated from the HTML headings.
By default the links in the PDF document will be represented by a box
with a border. You may instead have the link text coloured, by for example
specifying '
Here follow some addresses where one can obtain software used by html2ps.
Several of these programs are available from many other program archives
all over the world. Note also that it is not necessary to install all
these packages.
A:link { color: red }' in a configuration file,
and use the option -U when converting.
Reporting problems
Please note that html2ps comes with no support (this is unpaid
work done on my spare time). However, I am interested in making
the program as useful as possible, so do not hesitate to report any problems.
But please carry out the following steps first:
If you, after inspecting the results from these two steps, believe
that there is a problem with html2ps; mail the content of the file
'html2ps.dbg' together with a description of the problem to
html2ps-bugs@tdb.uu.se.
If you fail to produce the file 'html2ps.dbg', instead please include as
much details as possible: the version of html2ps, The Perl version, your
platform, etc.
- Check that the HTML documents you are converting have correct
syntax – rendering valid documents is difficult enough, do
not expect anything from documents with invalid syntax.
To check the syntax, there are
validation
services available, and also online syntax checkers such as weblint.
- Execute html2ps with the option -d. This writes out debugging information
to the terminal, as well as to a file 'html2ps.dbg'.
If possible, also include the HTML document, or a URL – preferably
containing a minimal example illustrating the problem.
Acknowledgments
There are several persons that have been helpful with the development
of this program – by supplying patches, suggesting improvements,
etc. I have most certainly forgot a few names; please forgive me if
you are missing your name in this list: John Bowe, Neil Bowers,
Reinhard Denner, Craig Oda, Thomas Mohr, Dave Raggett, John Sinues,
Larry W. Virden, and Chenxi Wang. My colleagues at the Department of
Scientific Computing have also been a great help by testing early
versions of the program.
Jan Kärrman
Dept. of Scientific Computing
Uppsala University
Sweden
jan@tdb.uu.se