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From: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Alexander [John] Ellis born (13-6-1814)
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2024 22:45:52 +1200
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One of the Fathers of Phonetics.

"He changed his name from his father's name, Sharpe, to his mother's 
maiden name, Ellis, in 1825 as a condition of receiving significant 
financial support from a relative on his mother's side."

1848, A Plea for Phonetic Spelling: or, The Necessity of Orthographic Reform

1869-99 [5 vols.] On early English pronunciation : with especial 
reference to Shakspere and Chaucer, containing an investigation of the 
correspondence of writing with speech in England from the Anglosaxon 
period to the present day....

Wrote the article on Phonetics for "Encyclopedia Britannica", 1887. 
(Possibly the first time the subject had been recognized there?)

"Ellis developed two phonetic alphabets, the English Phonotypic Alphabet 
(together with Isaac Pitman), which used many new letters, and the 
Palaeotype alphabet, which replaced many of these with turned letters 
(such as ⟨ə⟩, ⟨ɔ⟩), small caps (such as ⟨ɪ⟩), and italics. Two of his 
novel letters survived: ⟨ʃ⟩ and ⟨ʒ⟩ were passed on to Henry Sweet's 
Romic alphabet and from there to the International Phonetic Alphabet."

Also made contributions to mathematics and comparative musicology.

There's a whole chapter devoted to him, in all his multifaceted 
Victorianness, in Sarah Ogilvie's _The Dictionary People_ (2023).

Then there's this:

"He was acknowledged by George Bernard Shaw as the prototype of 
Professor Henry Higgins of Pygmalion (adapted as the musical My Fair Lady)."

Now wait a minute....
Some of you will recall this question from repeated appearances here and 
on a.u.e.

A lot of linguists had assumed (perhaps from no more than the 
coincidence of names) that Higgins was based on Henry Sweet (1845-1912), 
another famous phonetician.

But there is a book (Beverly Collins & Inger M.Mees, The Real Professor 
Higgins, 1998) which argues that Daniel Jones (1881-1967), yet another 
famous phonetician, was the one. I haven't read this book, but PTD has, 
and he was convinced.

So on what do the Wikipédistes base their claim for Ellis? Why, on a 
book called "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony", by Ross W.Duffin 
(2008). And he says (p.110) : "Ellis's passion for contemporary English 
dialects ... had made him -- as Shaw acknowledged -- a prototype for 
Professor Henry Higgins in Pygmalion..." He quotes a passage from the 
Preface (to Pygmalion) in which Shaw remembers seeing Ellis lecture; but 
I don't see any acknowledgment.

Looking back at the Preface, I see that Shaw mentions some of the 
leading figures in phonetics "when I became interested in the subject, 
towards the end of the eighteen seventies": Alexander Melville Bell (who 
had emigrated to Canada), Ellis, Tito Pagliardini [who?] and Henry 
Sweet. Sweet is the one he spends most time on, obviously fascinated by 
his personality. BUT "Pygmalion Higgins is not a portrait of Sweet, to 
whom the adventure of Eliza Doolittle would have been impossible; 
still...there are touches of Sweet in the play."

"Of the later generations of phoneticians I know little..." This would 
seem to rule out Daniel Jones.  And Ellis is mentioned only in the three 
lines quoted by Duffin. Not "acknowledged as a prototype".

That's OK -- there doesn't have to be a single prototype for Higgins. 
Just "touches", because after all he did know some of these people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_John_Ellis