Units

Abstract

This chapter examines units. The unit, called a ‘letter’ or an ‘element’, was in principle the smallest of articulated ‘vocal sound’, and the smallest in a hierarchy. In the light of their phonetic values, letters were divided into two main classes. Vowels are those ‘produced on their own’, and forming ‘on their own’ a syllable. Consonants were letters that form a syllable only in conjunction with a vowel. The next largest unit was the syllable. The syllable is defined as ‘a grouping of letters or the utterance of a single vowel which can have a temporal value’. Meanwhile, the largest unit of all was what people now call a ‘sentence’: in Greek a logos and in Latin an oratio or ‘utterance’.