CHAPTER IV.

PHONOLOGY AND SEMATOLOGY.

“Sind doch die Lautgebilde der Vorhang, hinter welchem das Geheimniss der Begriffe steckt, das vom Sprachforscher Aufdeckung erwartet.”—POTT.

The skeleton of language is formed by those phonetic utterances into which significancy must be breathed before they can become living speech. They are the outward vestment of the thought that lies within, the material in which the mind of man finds its expression. Thought, it is true, may be conveyed through gesture and picture-writing as well as through phonetic utterance, but in phonetic utterance alone does it find a vehicle sufficient and worthy of itself. Like the marble in the hands of the sculptor, however, sound not only embodies meaning; it also limits and defines the expression of that meaning, and confines it within barriers which it may not pass. The language of man is conditioned by his physical structure and organization.

What anatomy is to physiology, that phonology is to the science of language. Comparative philology is based upon phonetic laws; the relation of words, of forms, of dialects, and of languages is determined by the laws which govern their outward shape. Languages are grouped together because they have a common stock of roots and a common grammar; and the identity of roots and of grammar is on the outward side an identity of phonetic sound. The laws of scientific philology are for the most part the laws which regulate the change of sounds, and these are dependent on the physiological structure of the organs of speech. The priority of sounds, of words, and even of dialects, is frequently to be discovered by an appeal to the formation of the throat and lips. We may lay down the general rule that the harder sound passes into the easier, rather than the easier into the harder; but it lies with phonology and physiology to determine which is really the harder sound. It is phonology which has created the modern science of language, and phonology may therefore be forgiven if it has claimed more than rightfully belongs to it or forgotten that it is but one side and one branch of the master science itself.

The empirical laws of the interchange and equivalence of sounds in a special group of tongues are ascertained by comparative philology; the explanation of these laws, the assignment of their causes, the determination of the order followed by phonetic development or decay, belong to the province of phonology. Phonology touches on the one hand upon physics in so far as it is concerned with the analysis of the sounds of speech, and on the other upon physiology in so far as it studies the nature and operations of the vocal organs themselves. It is, in fact, as much a branch of physiology as it is of the science of language, dealing as it does with a special department of physiology; but it passes beyond the province of physiology when it investigates the nature of the sounds produced by the activity of those organs with which alone physiology is concerned. But whether it touches upon physiology or upon physics, phonology is equally one of the physical sciences, pursuing the same method and busied with the same material. So long as philological research is purely phonological, so long have we to do with a physical science; it is only when we turn to the other problems of glottology, only when we pass from the outward vesture of speech to the meaning which it clothes, that the science of language becomes a historical one. The inner meaning of speech is the reflection of the human mind, and the development of the human mind must be studied historically. Those, therefore, who refuse to regard glottology as other than a physical science, take as it were but a half-view of it; they are forced to confine themselves to its outward texture, to be content with a mere description of the different families of speech and their characteristics, like the botanist or the zoologist, and to leave untouched the many questions and problems which a broader view of the science would present to them. It is true that even upon the broader view, the method of the science is as much that of the physical sciences as the method of geology; it is also true that the doctrine of evolution has introduced what may be termed the historical treatment even into botany and zoology; but nevertheless linguistic science as a whole must be included among the historical ones, unless we are to narrow its province unduly and identify it with the subordinate science of phonology. The physical science will give us the skeleton of speech, the dry bones of the anatomist’s dissecting-room; for life and thought we must turn to history.

We must not forget, however, that we can understand the past only by the help of the present. An antiquarian study of philology will enable us to trace the history of words and forms, to group languages into families, and to discover the empirical laws of phonetic change; to interpret and verify these laws, to correct our classifications and conclusions, to learn what sounds really are, we must examine the living idioms of the modern world. The method of science is to work back from the known to the unknown, and if we are to study glottology to any purpose and to extend and confirm its generalizations, it must be by first observing and experimenting on actual speech. We must begin by disabusing our minds of the belief that words consist of letters and not of sounds; on the contrary, letters are at best but guides to the sounds they represent, and only the experienced student of actual sounds is in a position to determine their real value. Phonology stands at the threshold of linguistic science, and those alone who have honestly wooed and won her can enter into the shrine within. The physical science leads upward to the historical science; the key to the past is to be found in the present.

Now the first question we have to ask is, What is a sound? The most general answer we can give to this question is that a sound is the impression made upon the organs of hearing by the rapid swinging of an elastic body in an elastic medium, which is usually the air. The vibrations set on foot by this rapid swinging reach the ear under the form of waves, and these may succeed each other at either irregular or regular intervals. In the first case we have what is called a noise—a source of constant delight to the savage and the infant, but exceedingly painful to the sensitive ear. In the second case musical tones are produced, among which must be counted the utterances of articulate speech. Tones, or rather full tones (as opposed to partial ones), are distinguished from each other by their (1) strength or loudness, their (2) height or pitch, and their (3) quality or _timbre_. The strength depends upon the amplitude of the vibrations produced in the elastic medium, the pitch on the number of the vibrations in any given space of time, or, what amounts to the same thing, on the length of time occupied by each vibration, and the _timbre_ (also called “tone”) on the form assumed by the vibrations or waves of sound, that is to say, on the relations of the vibrations one to the other.

There are but few musical instruments that produce a simple tone; in fact, among those usually employed the tuning-fork is almost the only one from which we can hear it. All other musical tones result from a combination of simple, or as they have sometimes been termed, “partial” tones, whose double vibrations or “swing-swangs,” as De Morgan named them, stand to one another in the relation of 1, 2, 3, 4, &c. The Pythagoreans of the fourth century B.C. were already acquainted with the fact that the respective lengths of the fundamental note with its octave, fifth and fourth, must be as one to two, as two to three, and as three to four.[136] This fundamental note, or deepest partial tone, is the starting-point from which we ascend upwards; it forms the standard by which the pitch or ascending scale of sounds is measured, while the remaining partial tones go by the name of the harmonics or upper tones. The partial tones coalesce so closely into a full tone as almost to escape the notice even of the trained ear, but their co-existence may be easily detected by the help of resonatory instruments. The full tones themselves, however, which we shall henceforth call tones or notes,[137] may not be able to make the impression upon the nerves of hearing needful for conveying a sense of sound to the brain within. The tone produced by any number of vibrations less than sixteen a second is wholly inaudible except by the help of the microphone, and even this number of vibrations brings out so deep a pitch as to be scarcely perceptible.[138] “For practical purposes,” says Professor Max Müller,[139] “the lowest tone we hear is produced by thirty double vibrations in one second, the highest by 4,000. Between these two lie the usual seven octaves of our musical instruments. It is said to be possible, however, to produce perceptible musical tones through eleven octaves, beginning with sixteen and ending with 38,000 double vibrations in one second, though here the lower notes are mere hums, the upper notes mere clinks.” The sense of sound is not stronger and more trustworthy than the other senses of sight, of touch, of taste, of smell. On all sides we are strictly limited by the conditions which surround us, and even science, though she may assist the senses by instruments which enlarge and extend their powers, reaches at last a boundary which she cannot pass. The world is a vast sounding-board, even if we know it not; the infinitesimally small and the infinitesimally great alike lie beyond our apprehension. Above and below there is infinity, and “the music of the spheres,” of which the old Greek thinkers dreamed, is not, after all, so very far removed from the truth that science has revealed to us. The notes or partial tones that we hear are the purely mechanical product of a definitely determined number of double vibrations, and the variations in pitch we notice between them are due to the length of time occupied by these vibrations. If, for instance, one note takes half the time another does, if the number of oscillations in the second is twice that required by the fundamental note, the interval between the two notes is what is called an octave. If, again, the proportion between the two notes is as three to two, three waves of the one occupying the same time as two waves of the other, the interval between them is a fifth; while a major sixth represents the interval between two notes, which stand to each other as five to three. Consequently, if we divide into two equal parts a tense cord, which, when made to vibrate throughout its whole length, yields its fundamental note, and vibrate either part, we shall hear the octave above that fundamental note. In other words, the number of the vibrations of any two cords having the same degree of tension is (other things being equal) inversely as their length. In the case of two elastic rods or rigid tongues, the number of vibrations is inversely as the square of the length; hence an elastic rod six inches long will vibrate four times more rapidly than a rod of the same material and equal thickness twelve inches long. The number of vibrations is also dependent on the thickness and tension of the cords or rods, being inversely as the thickness of the cords and directly as the thickness of the rods, and in both cases proportional to the square root of their tension. It must be remembered that membranous tongues like our own _chordæ vocales_, act in accordance with the same general law as tense cords and not as elastic rods.

Every body capable of producing sound has a tone peculiar to itself; a stringed instrument, for instance, and a trombone differ in the tones they give forth, and we may even divide the air into definitely circumscribed portions, or “chambers of resonance,” each of which will have its own peculiar tone. The form assumed by the double vibrations, the ultimate causes of sound, determines these differences in the quality of the tones we hear. Sometimes the vibrations will run in zigzag course through the elastic medium; sometimes their shape will be rounded; sometimes, again, it will be angular. The simplest wave of sound, that produced by a tuning-fork, flows in a succession of spiral lines, and the partial tones or harmonics of other instruments may also be assumed to be so many simple waves of sound of the same form. In fact, even if a harmonic may be resolved into a combination of other harmonics or partial tones, and these again into yet simpler and fainter harmonics, we must come at last to simple notes, corresponding with the note emitted by the tuning-fork and composed of vibrations that have the same spiral shape. It is the varying amalgamation of these simple spirals that occasions the varying forms of the full tones; each full tone (the simple tone alone excepted) being made up of harmonics and consequently of their spirals in different proportions, and in this difference of mixture lies the difference of quality in the tones we hear.

Ohm, Fourier, and others first proved that the simple pendulous oscillation is the only vibration unaccompanied by harmonics, and that all full tones can be decomposed into the simple vibrations of which they consist. Helmholtz has now ascertained the exact form of many of these compound tones, as well as the conditions under which the by-notes or harmonics are present or absent. In the violin, for example, as compared with the guitar or the pianoforte, he finds that the primary note is strong, the partial tones from two to six weak, and those from seven to ten clearer and more distinct.[140] He was first led to detect the variations of form they assume by applying a microscope to the vibrations of different musical instruments, and the fact was further confirmed by the discovery made by himself and Donders that the sounds articulated by the human voice are composed of vibrations which each assume their own special shape. The phonautographs since constructed by Scott and König actually delineate the forms of these waves of sound either on a plate of sand, or in the flickerings of a gas-flame, or in the movements of a writing pencil, and the microscopic examination of the impressions produced by articulate sounds in the tinfoil of the phonograph shows a series of indentations of various but determinate shapes.

The number of forms which can be assumed by the waves of sound is naturally limited in kind, while various bodies may emit sounds containing the same harmonic or partial tone. The quality or timbre which depends on the relation and strength of these partial tones, and of the composite form assumed by the sum of their vibrations, constitutes what we have called a peculiar tone. This, as we have seen, is a simple one in the case of the tuning-fork, but in other cases it forms part of a full or complex group. We may find an illustration in the characteristic lines of light which we learn from the spectrum analysis are projected by substances; where we are dealing with a simple elementary substance, the line thrown upon the spectrum is correspondingly simple; where, on the other hand, the substance is compound, its spectrum also is compound, reflecting the several chemical elements of which it is made up. The simple spectrum answers to the simple harmonic or partial tone with its varying pitch and invariable form, just as the compound spectrum answers to the full note or peculiar tone with its characteristic quality and diversified grouping of partial tones. Now, if a body which has a certain peculiar tone is struck by a sound which contains a partial tone in any way similar to this peculiar tone, the body in question vibrates in sympathy, and we hear what is known as a by-note or harmonic. This by-note reacts upon the partial tone which has caused it, strengthening the partial tone and so modifying the quality of the complex sound. If, for instance, we play a note such as C on a violin, the strings of a piano representing C as well as the harmonics allied to it will vibrate in sympathy. Of course the more elastic the body which is struck, the louder and clearer will be the by-note, and of all elastic bodies none are better than those chambers of resonance into which we can divide the air. Such chambers of resonance are afforded by wind instruments of all kinds, whose shape determines the peculiar tone they are to emit. If the instrument is so constructed as to change its shape at will, now round, now straight, now broad, now narrow, the number of different chambers of resonance, and consequently the number of different peculiar tones, may be almost indefinitely increased.

It is this variability of form which makes the human throat such a marvellous instrument for the production of manifold sounds. Like most chambers of resonance, it has the hollow reed-like shape which connects it most readily with the primary source of sound. In analyzing the material of language we must never forget that we have to do with the most perfect wind instrument that exists, a wind instrument, too, of infinite pliability and power of change, and thus in constant and ready sympathy with the harmonics that are struck by the other organs of speech.

We must now pass from the science of acoustics to the science of physiology. We have seen what are the conditions under which musical notes are produced, we have also seen that among these musical notes the utterances of articulate speech have to be classed; we have next to examine into the nature and conformation of the physical organs to which these utterances owe their origin. In the first place, the organs of speech may roughly be divided into three groups:—the breathing apparatus, or lungs, the _trachea_ or windpipe with larynx and bronchial tubes, and the chamber of resonance or mouth and nose. The lungs provide the material which is worked up into inarticulate noises and articulate sounds by the _trachea_ and chamber of resonance. As long as the breath flows out of the throat and mouth quietly and without interruption language of any sort is out of the question. The organs of speech are at rest, and all that can be done is to propel the breath with greater or less violence. We may breathe hard through the mouth, we may even make noises like that of snorting through the nose, but as yet there is nothing which can constitute a starting-point for articulate speech.[141] Mere _breath_, as distinguished from _voice_, only supplies the material out of which words and sentences may afterwards be created. Voice is breath, acted upon and excited into waves of sound by the organs of the throat and mouth; a larger quantity of air than is needed for simple breathing is rapidly taken into the lungs, and immediately expelled in intermittent gusts, but with varying degrees of force. Almost all the sounds we utter are accompanied by exspiration; only such sounds as an occasionally mispronounced _ja_ in Germany or our own surprised _Oh!_ are produced while the breath is being drawn in. Experiment will at once show how difficult it is to pronounce a sound at the same time that this is being done.

The breath, then, is the passive instrument through which language is formed by the trachea and chamber of resonance. This trachea is a long cartilaginous and elastic pipe ending in the bronchial tubes, through which the air is admitted to the lungs. Its upper part is termed the larynx, consisting of five cartilages and situated in the throat. The lowest of these cartilages is the _cricoid_, which resembles a ring with the broad flat surface turned downwards. Over this comes the _cartilago thyroidea_ or Adam’s apple, with two wings which partly enclose the _cartilago cricoidea_, and form a link between it and the _os hyoideum_,[142] or bone of the tongue, which has somewhat of the shape of a horseshoe. The space surrounded by these two cartilages may be compared with a hollow reed, out of the back part of which a piece has been cut. From the base of the latter and the upper rim of the _cartilago cricoidea_ spring two small pyramidal cartilages, the arytenoids, which resemble the horns of an ox and almost touch one another. Their roots are connected with one another and with the cricoid and thyroid cartilages by the so-called _processus vocales_, which in spite of their name have little to do with the formation of speech. The horns of the arytenoids serve to unite two elastic bands to the opposite surface of the thyroid cartilage. These bands are formed of muscle enveloped with mucous membrane, and are the famous _chordæ vocales_ upon which as upon the strings of a piano the manifold modulations of human language are played. So long as they remain, the other vocal organs, not excluding the tongue, may be removed without depriving the patient of the faculty of articulate speech.[143] Their length differs in men and women, in children and adults; the average length in men being about one-third greater than in women, and occasioning the different pitch of male and female voices.[144] The two _chordæ vocales_ run obliquely across the cavity enclosed between the thyroid cartilage and a small projection on the front part of the arytenoid cartilage, an aperture which is called the glottis, or _glottis vera_. They can be relaxed or contracted at will by the muscles of the cartilages to which they are attached, and a portion of them can even be deadened by pressure from a small protuberance on the under side of the epiglottis. The glottis itself is divided into two parts, one the space between the vocal chords and the lateral thyro-arytenoid and crico-arytenoid cartilages, the other the triangular space between the vocal chords themselves, the latter allowing a passage for breath, the former a passage for voice. Both spaces can of course be narrowed or enlarged by the contraction or relaxation of the vocal chords, and the junction of the latter will close one or both altogether. It is in this secret chamber that the phonetic substance of speech is moulded into shape; the vibrations of the _chordæ vocales_ in the breath of the glottis are the ultimate cause of syllables and words.

Above this chamber of the voice the trachea or windpipe again widens, and a second chamber is formed by two cavities on either side, called the ventricles of the larynx (the _ventriculi Morgagni_). Each cavity leads, at the back, into a pouch of the mucous membrane called the laryngeal sac and covered with sixty or seventy mucous glands, the secretion from which acts like oil on a piece of machinery by keeping the vocal chords and the surrounding parts in a moist condition. Stretched across the cavities are two thick ligaments, the false vocal chords, like the true _chordæ vocales_ below them. They differ from the vocal chords in having no muscle of their own, but like the latter can contract or enlarge at pleasure the false glottis (_glottis spuria_), the space, that is, which is enclosed between them. The false glottis, which, like the false vocal chords, takes no part in the creation of language, is shut by an elastic cartilage, called the _epiglottis_, the lower point of which is attached to the thyroid cartilage immediately above the _chordæ vocales_, while the upper end broadens out like a leaf and falls over the fissure of the false glottis. This corresponds with the entrance of the larynx. The upper surface of the epiglottis is concave, and in swallowing it is allowed to drop upon the larynx. At other times it may be depressed over the false and true vocal chords.

Such is the machinery whereby breath from the lungs is transformed into voice in its passage through the windpipe; and voice is next taken up by what we have termed the chamber of resonance and modified in various ways. If we may call the glottis the manufactory of voice, we may call the mouth and nose the manufactory of the articulate sounds into which voice is divided. At the back of the epiglottis lies the _pharynx_, leading into the _œsophagus_, and the pharynx is bounded on the side of the mouth by the posterior pillar or _arcus pharyngo-palatinus_, opposite to which is the anterior pillar or _arcus glosso-palatinus_. Between them are the tonsils, and above these again the _uvula_, a sort of pendent valve which hangs downwards from the top of the anterior pillar towards the posterior pillar behind. The uvula is attached to a piece of yielding muscle known as the soft palate or _velum palati_, which with the uvula separates the throat from the entrance to the nostrils. The soft palate can move either backwards or forwards; in pronouncing the guttural (_ng_) for instance, it is pressed forward against the tongue, shutting off the throat; in pronouncing the vowels, on the other hand, it is pressed backward, and so cuts off the flow of breath to the nose. Above the soft palate comes the arch of the hard palate or roof of the mouth, and below this the tongue with its two roots and pointed tip. The teeth that enclose the mouth, along with their alveolars that form the front wall of the hard palate, have much to do with the formation of specific sounds, while it is hardly necessary to refer to the phonological importance of both nose and lips. As is well known, a leading characteristic of cultivated English is the little use it makes of the latter.

It is now time to consider the precise parts played by these different organs of speech, in producing the various elements of spoken language. We must begin by putting out of sight all inarticulate sounds or noises, such as the clicks of the Bushman or the Hottentot, which have entered into the composition and framework of actual speech. Such inarticulate sounds are but the stepping-stones to real language, the first steps of the ladder, as it were, which were eventually to lead to articulate words. They are the natural cries of man like the natural cries of the animals from which they in no way differ; and just as on the one side the barking of the dog and the mewing of the cat are said to be attempts to imitate the human voice, so on the other hand the inarticulate cries of the _infant_ or “non-speaker” are on the same level as the roar of the lion or the shriek of the cockatoo. We are told that the cynocephalic ape of the Upper Senegal, whose form is depicted on the monuments of ancient Egypt, utters clicks which sometimes contain a distinct _d_,[145] and the Bushmen themselves show a true instinct when they make the beasts in their fables talk not only with the clicks of the Bushman dialects, but even in the case of some animals with clicks that do not otherwise occur.[146] If we watch the first endeavours of children to speak, we may discover inarticulate noises gradually becoming articulate sounds with definite meanings, and we may even trace a recollection of the first efforts of man to create a language for himself in the guttural aspirates heard for instance in some of the Semitic dialects. Indeed, the name given to the hard breathing (_h_) by the Greeks, πνεῦμα δασύ or “rough aspirate,” reminds us of the guttural noises, not yet phonetic sounds, made by the child; in forming this sound we jerk out the breath at the same time that we narrow the glottis, adding if we like various degrees of hoarseness by further stopping its free flow. The glottal catch, which is heard in Danish after vowels, and according to Mr. Bell is substituted in the Glasgow pronunciation for “voiceless stops,” is really a mere cough. Even the _spiritus lenis_ or soft breathing, heard before a vowel, partakes in some measure of the nature of a noise. It is true that the rough breathing cannot be sung while the soft breathing may be; but this is because in the case of the latter the breath is checked near the vocal chords and can therefore be intoned. Professor Max Müller is doubtless right in holding that all that the Greeks meant by πνεῦμα ψιλόν as opposed to πνεῦμα δασύ was “a negative definition of another breath which is free from roughness,”[147] just as the ĕ-´psilon is negatively contrasted with the _êta_. Neither breathing was regarded as constituting as yet a true sound or “voice.”

The true sounds of language, however, were distinguished but roughly and imperfectly one from the other. Plato, in his Kratylus, divides them into φονηέντα or “vowels,” and ἄφωνα or “mutes,” these last being further subdivided into semi-vowels which are neither vowels nor mutes (φωνηέντα μὲν οὔ, οὐ μέντοι γε ἄφθογγα) and ἄφθογγα or real mutes. The term ἄφωνα, mutes, afterwards came to be restricted in its sense as a simple equivalent of Plato’s ἄφθογγα, its place being taken by the term σύμφωνα or “consonants,” letters, that is to say, which must be sounded along with a vowel. These consonants were next classed as ἡμίφωνα or semi-vowels (_l_, _m_, _n_, _r_, and _s_), ὑγρά or “liquids” which covered all the semi-vowels with the exception of _s_, and ἄφωνα or “mutes.” The mutes fall into three classes, the ψιλά or “bare” (_k_, _t_, _p_), the δασέα or “aspirates” (_kh_, _th_, _ph_) and the μέσα which stood, as it were, “between” them. The Latin translation of the latter term has given us the _mediæ_ of modern grammars.

Far more thorough-going and scientific were the phonological labours and classification of the Hindu _prâtiśâkhyas_. Instead of starting from written speech like the Greek grammarians, they had to do with an orally-delivered literature, and hence while the Greeks never got beyond the belief that the tongue, teeth, and lips were the sole instruments of pronunciation, the Hindus had carefully analyzed the organs of speech some centuries before the Christian era, and composed phonological treatises which may favourably compare with those of our own day. They knew, for example, that in sounding the _tenues_, or hard letters, the glottis is kept open, while in sounding the _mediæ_, or soft ones, it is closed; they knew also that _e_ and _o_ were diphthongs analyzable into _a_ + _i_ and _a_ + _u_; and they explained _k_ and _g_, _p_ and _b_, as formed by complete contact of the vocal organs. They had noted the _repha_ or “Newcastle burr,” and had divided the nasals into their several classes. The names they gave to the various sounds, and the groups into which they were classified, were descriptive of their mode of formation, like the names similarly applied by modern phonologists. Thus the guttural sibilant formed near the root of the tongue (χ) was called _Jihvâmûlîya_, “the tongue-root letter,” and the labial sibilant (φ) _Upadhmânîya_, “to be breathed upon.” The consonants were classed both according to the place where they were formed, and according to their _prayatna_, or “quality,” the mutes and nasals, for instance, being formed by “complete contact” of the vocal organs, the semi-vowels by “_slight_ contact” (_îshat sprishṭa_), the sibilants by “slight opening” (_îshad vivṛita_), and the vowels by complete opening. A controversy even sprung up among the grammarians as to the extent of this opening of the organs. “Some ascribe to the semi-vowels _duḥspṛishṭa_, imperfect contact, or _îshadaspṛishṭa_, slight non-contact, or _îshadvivṛita_, slight opening; to the sibilants _nemaspṛishṭa_, half-contact; _i.e._, greater opening than is required for the semi-vowels, or _vivṛita_, complete opening; while they require for the vowels either _vivṛita_, complete opening, or _aspṛishṭa_, non-contact.”[148]

Leaving the speculations of the past, let us now pass on to the results which have been obtained by modern research. Thanks to the labours of men like Alexander Ellis, Melville Bell, Helmholtz, Czermak, Brücke, Sweet, and others, the mechanism of speech has been fairly settled; and though many points are still open to discussion, the main facts have been thoroughly ascertained and adequately explained. We have learnt the real nature and causes of those phonetic elements of speech which the old grammarians first tried to separate and classify; we have cleared away the confusion from which even the Vedic scholars of India could not wholly escape, and have discovered that in phonology as elsewhere, the convenient systems of practical life do not bear a close scientific investigation. Even the ordinary distinction of vowels and consonants is exposed to more than one objection. It rests not upon the essential character of the sounds themselves, but upon mere differences of function, and its advocates have to invent a series of semi-vowels or semi-consonants, a name which of itself indicates how incomplete and unsatisfactory the distinction must be. The distinction, indeed, has a basis of fact, but the fact is one which has been misapprehended or overlooked.

Apart from the respiratory organs which supply the fuel, the chief agents in the manufacture of speech are the throat and mouth. The breath, as it makes its way upward, passes the vocal chords, causing these to vibrate; and while the forms taken by the vibrations determine the quality or timbre of the sound to be uttered, the very essence of a vowel, for instance, consisting in the quality of the voice, the number of the vibrations determines its pitch.

In the pitch we have to distinguish between two things, the chest or true notes and the head or falsetto notes, respectively due to the position and action of the vocal chords. In the chest notes the vocal chords are stiffened and laid side by side, so that when the flow of breath comes from the lungs, they are forced aside for a moment, to spring back the next and cause a series of intermittent puffs of breath. In the falsetto notes, on the other hand, the muscles of the vocal chords are not contracted, nor is the glottis wholly closed; hence only the inner membrane of the chords is set in motion by the breath, and instead of actually meeting one another, the chords merely narrow or enlarge the aperture of the glottis.[149]

The forms assumed by the vibrations depend, of course, on the anatomical structure of the vocal chords, their greater or less elasticity, and the like. Besides quality and pitch, however, we must also take account of the _intensity_ of the sound, this intensity or emphasis arising from the force with which the stream of breath is expelled from the lungs, and the corresponding strain of the muscles of the trachea and vocal chords.

In whispering, the amount of intensity is considerably diminished, though the pitch is quite as distinct as in loud voice. The glottis is not completely closed, but the upward flow of breath is not strong enough to do more than produce a sort of friction, or imperfect vibration in the vocal chords. The latter incline towards each other on the side furthest from the arytenoids, and so give the glottis a triangular shape; the larynx, however, may also assume other forms. Hence it is that we may distinguish three kinds of whispered voice. We may either have a soft whisper, where the whole glottis is narrowed, and the force with which the breath is emitted is very slight; or a medium whisper, where the force is greater, and only that part of the glottis left open which lies between the arytenoids; or a loud whisper, where the force is considerable, the false vocal chords are in close contact, and the epiglottis bent stiffly downwards, allowing but a very small opening for the escape of the breath. A loud whisper is rare; a medium whisper the most common. Sighing, it may be added, is produced above the larynx, which takes no part in its production; when the vocal chords are brought into action, the sigh becomes a groan.

It needs but a short experience to discover the numberless varieties of voice that may exist, and it is not uncommon for a blind man by this means not only to distinguish the age and sex of those he meets, but even to recognize his friends. In fact the human voice, from the deepest male to the highest female voice, has a range of nearly four octaves, the lowest note being E, produced by 80 vibrations per second, and the highest C, produced by 1,024 vibrations per second. But Vierordt has shown that in extreme cases its range is nearly 5½ octaves, from F (produced by 42 vibrations) to A (produced by 1,708 vibrations). In the same individual it is rare for the range of the voice to be more than two octaves, and in ordinary speech it is generally only half an octave. These different notes are due to changes in the length and tension of the vocal chords and their approximation or separation, the lower notes, for instance, requiring them to be longer, looser, and more widely separated than in the case of the higher notes, and consequently to admit a larger but less rapid current of air. It has been calculated that 240 different states of tension of the vocal chords must be accurately producible at will, in order to cause all the notes and intermediate tones heard in a perfect voice of ordinary range. Madame Mara could effect no fewer than 2,000 changes. The four chief varieties of the voice—the bass, the tenor, the contralto, and the soprano—are dependent on differences of pitch, that is ultimately on differences in the length of the vocal chords. The bass and the tenor with the intermediate baritone characterize the man, the contralto and soprano with the intermediate mezzo-soprano characterize the woman. The lowest note of the contralto is about an octave higher than the lowest note of the bass, the highest soprano about an octave higher than the highest tenor. Sometimes, however, we find a bass voice singing the higher notes of a tenor, and yet at the same time remaining bass. The reason of this is that the various kinds of voice differ not only in pitch, but also in timbre. This is caused by differences in the vocal organs. The larynx of women is smaller than that of men; the angle formed by it in front is less acute, and the cartilages are softer. The voice of boys is either contralto or soprano, like that of women, though generally different in tone. There is, however, no difference in the larynx of either boys or girls up to the age of puberty, when in the case of boys it rapidly increases in size, and the vocal chords become longer, thicker, and coarser.

The elevation or depression of the larynx exercises a certain modifying influence upon the voice. When the voice is raised from a low to a high pitch, the whole larynx, together with the trachea, is lifted towards the base of the skull. The exact way, however, in which the trachea and the parts above the glottis affect the voice is by no means clear. The thyro-arytenoid muscles, which extend from the arytenoids to the recessed angle of the thyroid cartilage, have much to do with the production of these higher tones. They narrow the diameter of the larynx just below the vocal chords, and the diminution of the calibre of the wind-tube nearest the chords thus occasioned heightens the pitch. On the other hand, the pitch is made to fall by semitones when the tube is lengthened. In short, the greater the strength of the current of air the higher is the pitch. The depression of the larynx produces the so-called veiled voice (_vox clandestina_), the larynx itself being then covered by the entire pharynx, the root of the tongue approximated to the palate, and the voice being thus made to resound in the upper part of the pharynx under the skull.

The precise nature of ventriloquism is not quite certain. J. Müller states that it may be produced by speaking through an extremely narrow glottis, during a very slow exspiration, performed only by the lateral walls of the chest, a deep inspiration having been first taken, so as to cause the protrusion of the abdominal viscera by the descent of the diaphragm. Magendie, however, considers it to be produced in the larynx by variously modifying the voice so as to imitate the changes otherwise effected in it by distance.

The character of the voice is necessarily modified by changes in the structure of the vocal organs, whether due to old age, to weather and climate, to exhaustion, or to disease. In old age the ossification of the cartilages, the diminution of muscular and nervous power, and the degeneration of the larynx, make the voice weak, tremulous, and “piping.” In damp chilly weather the voice is often lowered by as much as two or three notes: indeed, nothing affects it more rapidly than a damp and depressing atmosphere. Exhaustion, again, accounts for the dissonance sometimes perceived in the voice of singers, while inflammation of the lining membrane of the larynx, and other diseases, will impair or wholly destroy the power of utterance. Loss of voice during a bad cold is a familiar instance of the latter fact.

Lisping, stammering, and other kinds of imperfect speech, are mainly due to nervous disease, stammering being usually caused by temporary spasm of the glottis. Too high a palate is another cause of irregular utterance. Dumbness, when not occasioned by deafness, as is generally the case, must be ascribed either to malformation of the vocal organs, or, more commonly, to disease of the nervous centres. Whistling, it must be remembered, results from the vibration caused by the friction of the breath against the edges of the open lips, and is wholly formed in the mouth.

The mouth, or chamber of resonance, is especially important for the creation of articulate speech. On the one side there are a great many sounds which owe to it their origin, on the other side even the sounds which are formed in the throat are necessarily modified in passing through the mouth. While _t_, _p_, or _k_ have no existence until the voiced breath has reached the region of the mouth, the vowels which are formed in the throat cannot be heard in their pure and original state, but must pass through a chamber of resonance and so become more or less transformed. The throat, again, may remain passive, but the mouth must always be active. Of course the mouth forms a chamber of resonance not only for the sounds produced by the throat, but also for those produced by itself; the larger part of the mouth, for instance, forms a chamber of resonance for the palatal _ch_. We must remember, moreover, that a sound can be more variously changed and modified, the larger and more variable is the part of the mouth which serves as a chamber of resonance, that is to say, the further back the place is in which it is manufactured. The vowels consequently come first in capability of modification, then the gutturals and dentals, and finally the labials. It has often been observed that children when learning to speak are apt to change a guttural into a dental, and say _do_ instead of _go_, the guttural being formed further back than the dental, and so undergoing a greater amount of modification in its passage through the mouth.

A vowel is voice freely emitted through the throat and mouth without interruption, and modified only by the different positions assumed by the tongue. The essence of a vowel is the quality or timbre of the voiced breath, and this quality, as we have already seen, is due to the varying forms taken by the vibrating vocal chords when played upon by the breath. Necessarily, however, the quality of the voice as it leaves the throat must be always the same, since the throat is a musical instrument which possesses its own peculiar tone. What, then, is the cause of the differences we notice in the quality of the vowels? Simply the mobility of what we have called the chamber of resonance, the manifold shapes the organs of the mouth are able to assume being so many musical instruments, each with its peculiar tone. The partial tones or harmonics which go to make up the quality of the voiced breath are strengthened by the corresponding peculiar tones of the several shapes assumed by the mouth, while at the same time those harmonics which do not agree with the peculiar tones are dulled or deadened. Hence a vowel is the quality of voiced breath produced by a combination of the forms of the vibrations of the vocal chords with those of the vibrating air in the various shapes taken by the chamber of resonance. The pitch of the vowel depends of course on the number of vibrations during the time of utterance, and may be detected even when the vowel is whispered. Indeed, as Donders and Helmholtz have shown, every vowel has its characteristic pitch, whether it is voiced or whispered. The different vowels can be heard in cases of aphonia, where the vocal chords are more or less paralyzed, while the _vox clandestina_ is able to rise or fall. This is explained by the fact that even in whispering a certain friction is exercised on the vocal chords. If, for instance, we whisper the sound of _ü_, and then let the whisper gradually pass into a whistle, we shall always get the same tone, and Professor Max Müller thinks that the indications of musical pitch in the whispered vowels must be treated as “imperfect tones; that is to say, as noises approaching to tones, or as irregular vibrations, nearly, yet not quite, changed into regular or isochronous vibrations.”[150]

The number of possible vowel-sounds is almost infinite. The vocal chamber of resonance is almost infinitely variable in the forms it may assume, and it is in these forms, as we have seen, that we must find the origin of the vowels and their _nuances_ of sound. In Prince L.-L. Bonaparte’s alphabet, as given in Mr. A. J. Ellis’s “Early English Pronunciation,” seventy-five vowel-sounds (exclusive of _ḷ_ and _ṛ_) are distinguished from one another, ten of which occur in no actual language, and of the remaining sixty-five, fifty occur each in less than nine European dialects. For practical purposes, however, it is necessary to analyze the formation of those vowels only which are heard most usually in spoken language, always remembering that the _nuances_ of which these are capable are nearly unlimited, and that the same speaker is constantly varying what he intends and believes to be the same vowel-sound. Speaking generally, we may say that in pronouncing the vowels we invariably raise the tongue towards the palate, but not so as to touch it—as in the case of the consonants—the lips being passive in some instances, and rounded in others. It is needless to note that in phonology, as in all other departments of the science of language, the Italian pronunciation of the vowels must be adopted. Our erroneous pronunciation of the vowel-symbols is not one of the least important reasons for urging a reform of English spelling.

The three fundamental vowels, round which all the others group themselves, are _a_, _i_, and _u_; and though it is not necessary to hold that these were the first vowel-sounds articulated by man, it is necessary to regard them, for analytical purposes, as the primary elements to which the rest may be ultimately referred. According to Winteler, these three vowels must be arranged in a straight line, of which _i_ forms one end and _u_ the other, _a_ standing in the middle.

In forming _a_ the tongue is in a more constrained position than in the case of any other vowel; it lies flat and retracted, while the lips are wide open. Helmholtz makes its inherent tone B″ flat. Owing to the constrained position of the tongue, this vowel is more liable to be modified than any other; the “neutral” _a_ is scarcely ever heard, produced as it is by the gradual narrowing of the movement of the tongue from the back of the mouth, where the obscure _a_ of _father_ is heard, to the front of the mouth, where we get the broad _ä_ of _pair_. This neutral _a_ which may be heard in the Italian _ămātă_ is not the “natural” sound it is sometimes called; different parts of the mouth must be modified to create it, occasioning the nasal sound we perceive in moaning if the mouth remains passive, or the shrill _ä_ of the new-born child, if the nasal orifice is closed by the elevation of the soft palate.[151] The belief that language was once in a stage in which the neutral _a_ was the only vowel known is contradicted by the facts of phonology.

A stronger effort of articulation is required for _i_ and _u_. The lips must be slightly opened, the larynx raised, and the tongue pushed upward, so that its front approaches the hard palate, if we want to produce _i_, the natural pitch of which is said to be D⁗. The movement of the tongue from the back to the front of the mouth, with a gradual narrowing of the air passage, forms both the _i_ of _mill_, and the _i_ of _meal_.[152] As we shall see, the position of the tongue in forming _i_ approaches that required for forming the palatals, and thus explains the relationship that exists between them. For _u_ the tongue is raised towards the soft palate, the larynx lowered, and the lips rounded; hence the connection between this vowel and the labials. Its connection with the gutturals, as illustrated by the change of _werra_ into _guerre_, or _vespa_ into _guêpe_, is explained by the position of the tongue, which approaches the soft palate in forming _u_, and touches it in forming _k_ or _g_. The rounded shape of the mouth needed by _u_, as compared with its narrow neck-like appearance needed by _i_, strengthens the deep partial tones, and dulls the sharp ones, thus occasioning the converse effect of _i_. In fact, _u_ is essentially the vowel of the bass, _i_ of the soprano. The inherent tone of _u_ is F.

It is obvious that an almost endless series of modifications may be made in the primary vowels by slight changes in the position of the organs by which they are produced. Between _a_ and _i_ stands _e_; between _i_ and _u_, _o_. In pronouncing _e_ the tongue is less raised than in pronouncing _i_; for _o_, the back of the tongue is less raised and the lips more widely opened than for _u_. In _o_, however, as in _u_, the lips have to come into play; hence it is that these two sounds are so frequently weakened to _e_ and _i_, whereas the converse change never takes place. In _e_ and _i_ we have a simple and not a double action. According to Helmholtz, the inherent pitch of _o_ is B′ flat, of _e_, B‴ flat or F′.

But _e_ and _o_ may again undergo considerable change. If while pronouncing close _e_ (as in the French _été_ or German _see_) we round the lips, the sound is produced which is represented by _ö_ in Middle and Southern German and _eu_ in French, the short sound of which may be heard in the German _böcke_. It lies, it will be observed, between _e_ and _o_, and its inherent pitch is C‴ sharp. Closely related to this _ö_ is the German _ü_, French _u_. This sound is produced by rounding the lips when the organs of speech are in position for pronouncing _i_, which explains the use of _ü_ and _i_ as rhyming equivalents in German poetry. _Ü_ consequently lies between _i_ and _u_, though, from another point of view, it may be described as standing furthest from _a_ in a series of which _ö_ forms the centre. The inherent pitch of _ü_ is G‴.

Besides _o_, we have also the sound heard long in words like _bought_ or _aúgust_, and short in words like _not_ and _augúst_, formed by slightly depressing the tongue, widening the air-passage, and rounding the lips to a less extent than in the case of _o_.

Other vowel-sounds which may be noticed are the _e_ of the French _prêtre_, German _väter_, whose natural pitch is made G″ or D‴, the closely related open _e_ (_ä_) of the English _pair_, the short _a_ of English closed syllables like _hat_ or _happy_, the short _e_ of the English _men_, and the short _i_ of the English _hit_, _pill_. These short vowels are in great measure due to the little use made of the lips in articulation, and the compensatory exercise of the tongue, which characterize modern English. It is small wonder that we experience so much difficulty in pronouncing _ö_ and _ü_, when even our _u_ is uttered with lips scarcely at all rounded. On the other hand, whenever we find these sounds in a language, we may conclude that we have to do with a speech which gives the lips their full share in articulation. Sievers would call those vowels _passive_ in which all the organs of speech needed for their clear pronunciation are not brought into play, fully pronounced vowels being termed _active_.[153]

The same lazy pronunciation of cultivated English which has almost dispensed with the service of the lips is the cause of the increasing preponderance of the so-called neutral vowel heard in such words as _but_, _virtue_, _dove_, _bird_, _oven_. Except in affected pronunciation we may detect it in most unaccented syllables, especially if they happen to be final; thus we have _diligĕnce_, _muttŏn_, _ăgainst_, _finăl_, _evĭl_, _valuăblĕ_. So, too, as Professor Max Müller remarks, “_town_ sinks to _Paddingtŏn_, _ford_ to _Oxfŏrd_.” He believes it to be pronounced with non-sonant or whispered breath.[154] Mr. A. J. Ellis would make it voice in its least modified form; and Mr. Sweet regards it as a mere voice-glide. The “indistinct” vowel heard in Arabic words by travellers seems to be identical with it. Its existence in a language is a sign of age and decay; meaning has become more important than outward form, and the educated intelligence no longer demands a clear pronunciation in order to understand what is said. The participation of all the organs of speech in the creation of vowel-sounds is, on the contrary, a mark of linguistic freshness and youth. When we find both tongue and lips equally active in the formation of _u_ and _i_, we may feel pretty sure that we are in the presence of an uncultivated dialect. Vowels formed by combining the position of the tongue required for _u_ with that of the lips required for _i_ are extremely rare in Aryan speech; an exceptional instance is to be met with in the Russian _jery_ (_y_).

But we must never forget the infinite capability of modification possessed by a vowel. The same vowel-sound of the same word is not only apt to be pronounced differently by two natives of the same country, but even by the speaker himself at different times, particularly if his attention has been directed to his pronunciation of the sound in question. It is true that the shades of difference between the sounds may be so fine as to escape all but the specially trained ear; but this does not prove them to be any the less real. Putting aside quantity, accent, emphasis, or accidental alteration in the vocal organs, it is difficult to pronounce the same word twice over in exactly the same way, so far, at least, as its vowels are concerned. It is not wonderful, therefore, that it is in their vowels that dialects soonest and most easily alter, and that the vowel-system is the best guide in mapping out the several stages in the history of a language. Of course the character of a vowel-sound is materially affected by its position in a word, or by the consonants with which it is associated; the pronunciation of the same vowel varies in a closed or an open syllable. Long and short vowels, too, differ not only quantitatively, but qualitatively also. Every vowel has both its own peculiar pitch and a pitch dependent on the length of the vocal chords. The peculiar pitch is the result of the resonance-chamber in which the vowel is formed. The high pitch of _i_ is due to the narrow air-passage in the front of the mouth in which it is produced, while the lowered pitch of _a_ and _u_ is caused in the one case by the greater size of the resonance-chamber, and in the other by the narrow opening of the lips. The same pitch may be produced by different modifications of the same resonance-chamber. Thus the French _eu_ in _fleur_, produced by slightly raising the front part of the tongue and rounding the lips, has the same pitch as the English _e_ in _err_, produced without any rounding of the lips at all.

But we have not yet finished with the vowels. The mouth is not the only agent concerned with their production. Brücke[155] asserts that the bones of the skull itself participate in the vibration caused by the utterance of the high-pitched vowels. However this may be, the larynx, the posterior wall of the pharynx, and the _velum pendulum_, or soft palate, with the uvula attaching to it, have all to do with the creation of vowel-sounds. Czermak has proved by experiment that the _velum pendulum_ changes its place with each vowel that is uttered, rising successively for the pronunciation of _a_, _e_, _o_, _u_, and _i_. The nasal orifice, too, is closed during the pronunciation of some vowels, and more or less open during that of others. _A_ and _e_ were the only two vowels which a young man named Leblanc, whose larynx was completely closed, was able to utter; while, on the other hand, experiment has shown that with _i_, _o_, and _u_ the passage to the nose is shut, slightly open with _e_, and considerably open with _a_. From this it will be seen that the term “nasal vowel” is a misnomer. Nasal vowels, in fact, are produced by dropping the uvula, and so allowing the air to vibrate freely through the cavities which connect the nose with the pharynx. So far from a passage of the air through the nose being necessary, we may even increase the nasal twang by stopping the nostrils. The strength of the nasalization depends on the distance of the _velum pendulum_, or soft palate, from the tongue; and in languages like French, in which much use is made of nasalized vowels, the vowel is frequently followed by a true guttural nasal. It has often been noticed that French, in spite of its strong tendency to nasalize the vowels, has no nasalized _i_ or _u_. The cause of this deficiency is very simple. A nasalized vowel requires a free passage for the air from the pharynx to the nose; but this is rendered almost impossible in the formation of _i_, where the tongue is raised so high as to send most of the air through the mouth however much depressed the _velum_ may be, as well as in the formation of _u_, where the tongue is pushed backward towards the soft palate itself. A nasal _i_, however, occurs in Portuguese, and probably also in the Sanskrit _simha_, “lion.”

Every vowel-sound, then, demands three main conditions for its production—the exspiration of air from the lungs, the vibration of the vocal chords, and the formation of a chamber of resonance by the organs of speech. The three conditions must co-exist if we are to have a simple vowel of definite quality, though the exspiration of air need not last beyond the moment at which the vowel-sound is formed. But the position of the organs of articulation both before and after its formation occasions important differences in the manner in which it is introduced or ceases to be heard. In quick and lively utterance, the energy with which the stream of air is emitted makes it difficult for each exspiration to be exactly simultaneous with the corresponding vibration of the vocal chords, while if the exspiration is weak, the vocal chords are apt for a moment not to vibrate. In order to give the chords on the one side the resisting power requisite in energetic exspiration, and on the other side to make them vibrate without delay in weak exspiration, the windpipe must be contracted for a second, thus checking the outflow of breath and causing the chords to vibrate in unison. The sonant breath so produced is the _spiritus lenis_ of our old school-grammars, the slight noise produced by the check given in the throat to the uprush of air from the lungs. The noise may easily be detected in whispering, or in the pronunciation of a word like _’ear_, when a special effort is made to prevent it from degenerating into _year_, and the fact that it is a noise will explain the dislike felt by the sensitive Greek to what the grammarians term a _hiatus_. The _spiritus lenis_ varies according as it is the result of a compression of the _chordæ vocales_ alone, or of the false _chordæ vocales_ as well; but it is doubtful whether we can treat it as a distinct consonant and not rather as the pure tone of the voice. Perhaps it should most strictly be called a glide. It readily passes into the non-sonant aspirate or _spiritus asper_, by allowing the breath to pass through the throat without check or hindrance. The glottis, indeed, is in the latter case slightly narrowed and the larynx stiffened, but the difference between the rough and soft aspirates is that the one is a continuous sound, the other a checked breath. The vocal chords are brought together while the breath is passing through the throat, and since their movement may be either quick or gradual the hard aspirate or _h_ may correspondingly vary in character. As Czermak first pointed out, the more usual hard aspirate is that produced by the gradual compression of the vocal chords when they remain for a moment in a given contracted position.[156]

The same causes which produce the _spiritus lenis_ or the _spiritus asper_ at the beginning of the vowel-sound produce similar results at its end. It may terminate with a weak breathing, a firm breathing, or a non-sonant aspirate. In the case of a weak breathing the exspiration either ceases before the vocal chords have begun to vibrate, thus resulting in a long vowel, or at the very moment at which the windpipe is opened to admit the passage of air, the result being a short vowel. The weak breathing answers to what may be called the neutral vocalic utterance, so rarely heard in language, when the vowel-sound is introduced without either the soft or hard aspirate, the windpipe being merely narrowed sufficiently to set the vocal chords in motion at the same moment that the exspiration takes place. The firm breathing corresponds with the _spiritus lenis_, and is due to a sudden check given to the vibrating voice. Examples of it occur in words like _no!_ _bah!_ uttered abruptly, or where we wish to divide two similar vowels one from the other. The non-sonant aspirate is produced by continuing the exspiration for a while after the opening of the windpipe, and may be heard in final vowels which are at once short and strongly accented. The non-sonant aspirate is sometimes combined with the firm breathing, especially in Danish, where such words as _ti_, _nei_, are pronounced with a double exspiratory effort, the second consisting of a non-sonant breath of more or less strength, jerked up, as it were, after the vowel.

Now, let us stop for a moment to remind ourselves of the distinction between sonant and non-sonant. Non-sonant or surd sounds (also called “hard” and “breathed”) are breath as modified by the organs of speech; sonants, “soft” or “voiced” sounds, are voice similarly modified, voice being breath when played upon by the vibrating _chordæ vocales_ in its passage through the partially closed glottis. Voice, therefore, continues to be heard without interruption as long as we have a succession of sonants following one upon the other; the transition or “glide” from one sonant to another consisting simply in the change of position assumed by the organs of speech. In pronouncing the sound _al_, all that happens in passing from _a_ to _l_ is a transference of the tongue from the position required for forming _a_ to the position required for forming _l_; voice continues without interruption. Now it is clear that while voice is passing from _a_ to _l_, neither pure _a_ nor pure _l_ can be sounded, though the time occupied by its passage (that is, by the change in the position of the tongue) is so infinitesimally small that the sound or sounds actually produced cannot be heard, and all we can be conscious of is a modification of _a_ at its end or of _l_ at its beginning. If we have two successive vowels, each belonging to a different syllable, a separate effort of exspiration is needed for both, and the transition-sounds are apt to escape notice from the weakening of the exspiration during the interval between the two efforts; but if the vowels do not belong to distinct syllables, the result is wholly different. Diphthongs, as we term them, consist in the combination of two simple vowels, usually short, into a single syllable pronounced, therefore, with a single exspiratory effort, and with the stronger accent on the first vowel. The sound we hear is produced while the organs of speech are being changed from the position required for the one vowel to the position required for the other. We have only to sing the diphthongs _ai_ or _au_ on a long note to hear a distinct _i_ and _u_ at the end of each, and the Sanskrit grammarians discovered more than two thousand years ago that the diphthongs _ê_ and _ô_ were really combinations of _a_ + _i_ and _a_ + _u_. The primary condition of the existence of a diphthong is the rapid transition from one of the component vowels to the other, and this renders the true resolution of a diphthongal sound so extremely difficult except to the specially trained ear. Once acquainted with the two component vowels, we can easily determine the intermediate or transition sounds in which the diphthong really consists; but written documents rarely do acquaint us accurately with them. Diphthongs whose second element is _e_ or _o_ have sometimes been termed “imperfect” and considered of younger origin than those whose second element is _i_ or _u_, because of their greater fulness of tone and consequent inappropriateness to the unaccented place in the compound; but such a view does not seem to be correct. It appears certain, however, that languages show a tendency to form diphthongs the longer they live and the greater the extent to which they have been affected by phonetic decay. English is a prominent example of this tendency; our vowels are all becoming diphthongs; even the first personal pronoun _I_ (_ai_) has become one, and already we hear _aither_ and _naither_ more frequently than _either_ (_eether_) and _neither_. The so-called long vowels which occur in such words as _say_, _no_, _he_, are all diphthongal, and some of the local dialects have carried the tendency even further than the literary language.

The existence of triphthongs has been disputed, and no doubt most of the alleged cases, such as _iei_ or _ieu_ in the Romance idioms, are either dissyllables or consist of a semi-vowel followed by a diphthong. But, as Sievers remarks:[157] “the transition from the first to the second component element of a diphthong may be so prolonged that even the transition sounds themselves may be distinctly heard.” As for semi-vowels, they differ from the first element of a diphthong only in having lost the accent and being followed by a strongly accented vowel. Hence they come to assume the function of sonant consonants. Hence, too, the necessity that the vowels in which they originate should possess less fulness of tone than the vowels by which they are immediately followed. We may have _yá_ and _wá_, but hardly _ᵃᵢ_ and _ᵃᵤ_. Naturally _i_ and _u_ most readily pass into semi-vowels, partly from their comparatively weak tone, partly from the compression of the air-passage needed to produce them, partly from the similar position of the organs of speech in forming the spirants _y_ and _w_. These spirants, as we shall see, are not to be confounded with the semi-vowels _y_ and _w_.

A vowel, then, is the quality or timbre of voice as modified by the tongue and lips, and consists of the forms assumed by the vibrating air as it passes through the windpipe and vocal chords. But the tongue and lips naturally tend towards the same position whatever be the vowel sounded. A man who has been accustomed to give his tongue a particular position in pronouncing _i_ will give it much the same position in pronouncing _e_, for we must never forget that there is an almost infinite number of _i_’s or _e_’s varying with the slight changes of position of the tongue and lips when placed for enunciating those vowels. According to the greater or less use made of the lips in speaking will be the character of all the vowel-sounds of a language. The vowels, consequently, fall into systems, and in investigating the phonology of a dialect, we have to inquire not only what vowels it possesses, but more particularly what system these fall into. The basis of English vowel pronunciation is the passive position of the lips, just as in the Holstein dialect it is the withdrawal and flattening of the tongue. Sievers states, that in speaking the dialect of Lower Hesse the tongue must be relaxed and in a position of the slightest possible tension; while, on the contrary, in the Saxon dialects the whole tongue must be tense, the throat stiffened and the exspiration energetic. “Hence the hard, somewhat screaming impression made by this dialect in contrast with the dull, almost heavy and negative character of the Hessian.”[158]

But it is time to turn from the vowels to the consonants, the skeleton, as it were, of articulate utterance. A language could consist wholly of vowels; indeed, a Polynesian dictionary contains numbers of words which have not a single consonant in them, and children frequently mark the differences between words rather by the vowels than by the consonants they contain. The earliest systems of writing other than ideographic are syllabaries and not alphabets, while alphabets like the Sanskrit ascribe an “inherent” vowel to each of their consonants. But though vowels are indispensable to an organized language, it by no means follows that they were equally indispensable to the first attempts at speech. As a matter of fact, a preponderance of vowels such as characterizes the Polynesian dialects is a sign of phonetic decay and linguistic old age. “Consonants,” says Professor Max Müller, “are much more apt to be dropped than to sprout up between two vowels.” If we had only the Greek μέρμερος or the Latin _memor_ before us, we should have no idea that they have lost an initial sibilant; in fact, this only becomes apparent when we compare the Sanskrit _smar_, “to remember.” The endeavour sometimes made to reduce the Parent-Aryan alphabet to a small number of simple and easily pronounced consonants, is founded on the fallacy that the results of a phonetic analysis of the words we utter and a reduction of the sounds they contain into their leading types, is identical with the primitive alphabet of the Aryan race. On the contrary, the sounds of a language become more simplified and clearly marked the longer it continues to be spoken, and the primitive Aryan alphabet, instead of being a simple list of primary sounds, from which all that are harsh or indistinct have been carefully eliminated, must really have resembled the existing alphabets of barbarous or semi-barbarous tribes, and included a large variety of consonants, many of which we should find it extremely difficult to reproduce.

Consonants may be divided, in the first place, into hard and soft, or, as they are more usually termed, surd and sonant. A surd consonant consists of checked breath, a sonant consonant of checked voice. If, in the second place, either breath or voice is completely checked in its passage through the organs of speech, an explosive or momentary (also called a stopped or mute) consonant is heard at the moment the check is removed; if the check is not complete, and the organs of speech only approximate so that the breath cannot escape without friction, a fricative (spirant, “unstopped”) or continuous consonant is the result. Where a spirant or fricative is immediately preceded by an explosive, a double sound or affricative is the result (_e.g._ German _pf_, Armenian _t’š_); where the spirant follows the explosive we have the aspirated letters, which will be spoken of hereafter. Among the continuous consonants must be ranked the nasals, produced by dropping the uvula and so allowing some of the breath to make its way to the nostrils through the pharynx, and the trills produced by the vibration of the uvula, the lips, or more commonly the tongue. Distinct from the nasals and the trills are the central continuous consonants (_h_, _ch_, _y_, English _r_, _w_, _wh_, and the sibilants) formed by lifting the centre and point of the tongue to the centre and front of the palate, and the lateral continuous consonants (_l_, and, according to Bell, English _th_, _f_, _v_), in forming which the breath is allowed to escape along the edges of the tongue. A further cross division will be into liquids, gutturals, dentals, palatals, labio-dentals, and labials, to which may be added the linguals or cacuminals (cerebrals) of Sanskrit.

_The Liquids._—Among the liquids should properly be reckoned only those kinds of _r_ and _l_ which stand to the spirant _r_ and _l_ in the same relation that the vowel _i_ stands to the spirant _y_. In forming the vowels, as we have seen, the tongue assumes a dorsal position, that is, some part of its back is raised towards the palate; in forming the liquids, on the other hand, the tongue has either an oral (central) or a lateral position, the liquid _r_ requiring the articulation of the centre and tip, the liquid _l_ that of the sides. But there are several kinds of _r_, which may be classed as cacuminal, spirant, alveolar or dental, uvular or guttural, and laryngeal. The cacuminal _r_ is the purest liquid _r_ that we hear, inasmuch as it is wholly untrilled, and is especially common in cultivated English. In order to produce it, the front surface of the tongue is hollowed out into a spoon-like shape and raised towards the hard palate behind the alveolar teeth-roots of the upper jaw, while the edge of the tongue is stiffened and kept free from any sort of vibration. It will be clear from this how closely allied this cacuminal _r_ is to the vowels, and we can easily understand the readiness with which it combines with a vowel-sound when we remember that it may be formed in almost any part of the hard palate, while the lips have free play during its creation. Corresponding to the cacuminal _r_ is the spirant (or “buzzed”) _r_, which also occurs plentifully in English as in such words as _try_ or _dry_. The mouth is completely closed by the tongue when sounding _t_ or _d_, and if in passing to the position needed for _r_ the tongue is not removed from the palate quickly enough, or the exspiration is not sufficiently strong, a slight fricative sound like that of _sh_ is produced which results in the spirant _r_. As for the dental or alveolar _r_, all that is requisite to produce it is to raise the front part of the tongue, at the same time slightly arching its extreme edges, and so obtaining a constricted or “squeezed” chamber of resonance between the side of the tongue and the alveolars. This _r_ may be untrilled, but in German it is more frequently a trilled one. The trill is caused by the force of the exspiration which strikes the thin hollowed edge of the tongue in an outward direction, the tongue the moment after returning to its former position like a piece of india-rubber. If the two edges of the front part of the tongue be pressed against the teeth, the tip of the tongue between them being alone allowed free play, and accordingly vibrating in a very small and narrow space, a sound is heard approaching that of _s_ or _sh_. The stronger the uprush of breath and the vibration it occasions, the plainer will be the sibilated sound; indeed, a genuine sibilant can even attach itself to the liquid, as in the Polish _rz_. The uvular or guttural _r_ is supposed by Sievers to be a modern substitution for the trilled alveolar _r_. At any rate it is produced by lifting the back of the tongue to the soft palate and forming a deep groove along the middle of it, in which the uvula can vibrate freely. The groove, however, is frequently left wholly or nearly unformed, the consequence being a very grating character acquired by the _r_, which then passes over into the sonant guttural spirant heard in sounding the modern Greek γ. The laryngeal _r_ was first observed and described by Brücke, who makes it arise from sinking the voice so that the vocal chords cease to vibrate audibly, and merely produce intermittent and explosive sounds.

Each kind of _l_ is formed in the same way, by raising the tip of the tongue and so closing the orifice of the mouth, at the same time allowing the breath to pass along the two sides of the tongue in successive oscillations produced by the vibrations of the elastic edges of the tongue. We may distinguish the cacuminal _l_ in which the tip of the tongue is bent backwards as in the cacuminal _r_; the alveolar _l_ with the edge of the tongue laid against the alveolars; the dental or interdental _l_ in which the flattened surface of the tongue fills up the space between the two sides of the mouth; and the dorsal _l_ (as in the Spanish _llano_) in which the tip of the tongue presses against the lower incisors, while the centre of the tongue is raised towards the alveolars of the upper teeth. The best-known variety of the cacuminal _l_ is that of the Welsh _ll_ formed by pressing the flattened tip of the tongue against the gums of the upper teeth and allowing the breath to escape on its right side. The same sound is heard in the Icelandic _hl_ and _l_ before a _t_, and also in Cheroki,[159] though in Icelandic the tongue is pressed against both sides of the mouth. A half-sonant, spirant _l_ may be heard when the exspiration is strong; a surd _l_ often occurs at the end of a word or after surd consonants (particularly _t_ and _s_). The sound of the _l_ may be made clearer or obscurer by raising or depressing the front part of the tongue, and so narrowing or enlarging the space between its edges and the teeth, and since the vowels may be pronounced with the tip of the tongue on the palate, they may readily pass into _l_ by simply broadening the surface of the tongue.

We have already seen that the tongue is not the only organ of speech which may be “trilled.” In the Arabic _grhain_ (غ), the Northumberland _burr_ and the French Provençal _r_, _grasseyé_, the uvula which lies along the back of the tongue towards the teeth is very distinctly made to vibrate. “If,” Mr. A. J. Ellis says, “the tongue is more raised and the vibration indistinct or very slight, the result is the English _r_ in _more_, _poor_, while a still greater elevation of the tongue produces the _r_ heard after palatal vowels, as _hear_, _mere_, _fire_. These trills are so vocal that they form distinct syllables, as _surf_, _serf_, _fur_, _fir_, _virtue_, _honour_, and are with difficulty separable from the vowels.” The lips, too, may be trilled, the result being _brh_, a sound constantly heard from children.

_The Nasals._—The characteristic of a nasal is, as the name declares, the participation of the nose in producing the sound. The breath passes through the nose rather than through the mouth. Sometimes, however, all that happens is the removal of the membrane which separates the nasal orifice from the pharynx; this alone is indispensable to the formation of a nasal letter. Hence its resemblance to a vowel, the buccal tube being alike silent in both cases. If we try to converse when walking uphill we shall find that the nasals are longest heard. These nasals must be classified as labial, dental, palatal, and guttural, according to the part of the speaking apparatus in which the current of air is checked in its exit, and it will be best to treat them along with the other sounds formed in the same part. It should be noted, however, that the so-called surd nasal which we hear in _hm!_ has really, as Sievers remarks, not the slightest similarity to a nasal, but approximates to the aspirates or breathings.

The traditional division of the consonants into labial, dental, palatal, cerebral (cacuminal) and guttural, though not scientifically precise, is yet too familiar to be disregarded, and we shall therefore follow it so far as is possible. We must, however, remember at starting the primary distinction between the two classes of letters, called variously hard and soft, tenues and mediæ, surds and sonants, as well as between those called momentary (explosive) and continuous or checks and fricatives. What this distinction consists in has already been explained.

_The Labials._—The labials may be subdivided into pure labials, with the formation of which the lips only have to do, and the labio-dentals, in the formation of which the teeth also participate. In pronouncing the surd _p_, the sonant _b_, the nasalized _m_, or the middle German _w_, the lips are either wholly or (as in _wh_) almost wholly closed. _B_ only differs from _p_ in being pronounced with voice instead of breath, the voice partly preceding, partly following the check occasioned by the closure of the lips. As in all sonant letters, the exspiration is less forcible than in the case of surd letters. The labio-dentals _f_ and _v_ are merely modifications of the rough and soft aspirates by pressing the lower lip against the upper teeth. When the lips are brought together without any interference of the teeth the _spiritus lenis_ becomes the German _w_ as heard in a word like _Quelle_. Our _wh_, or rather _hw_, and _w_ are continuous sounds, the lips being slightly opened, the back of the tongue raised, and the breath passing over its central part.

_The Dentals._—The articulation needed for the dentals is partly oral, partly alveolar, partly dorsal. The common principle, however, involved in the formation of them all is the same; the tongue must be brought against the teeth. The so-called cerebral or cacuminal dentals of Sanskrit and the Dravidian tongues (_ṭ_, _ḍ_, _ṭh_, _ḍh_) are due to oral articulation, the tongue being made convex and the lower surface raised towards the palate. The English _t_ and _d_ are also said to be cerebral, though the tip of the tongue is not bent very sharply backwards in forming them. Alveolar articulation is needed for the dentals when they have to be pronounced with the edge of the flattened tongue pressed against the alveolars of the upper teeth, while in dorsal articulation the point of the tongue is simply turned back against the lower teeth, its convex being at the same time lifted to the palate. It is in this way that the Bohemian dorsal _t_ is formed. The dorsal dentals may be varied by raising the back of the tongue nearer to the mouth or the throat, the tip either resting behind the lower teeth or being raised to the upper alveolars. Besides the surd dental _t_ and sonant dental _d_, we have also a series of dental spirants which bear the same relation to _t_ and _d_ that _f_ and _v_ bear to _p_ and _b_. By slightly opening the teeth and stopping the aperture with the extended edges of the tongue we produce the interdental sounds heard in _breath_ or _think_ and _breathe_ or _then_. The first _th_ (or _thorn_ þ) differs from the second (ð)[160] in being pronounced with the rough breathing instead of the soft breathing. They stand midway between an oral and a dorsal articulation. How readily they may pass into the labio-dentals _f_ and _v_ is clear at a glance; we have only to raise the lower lip a little and curl back the tongue, and our _th_ becomes an _f_. Equally readily, as we shall see, is the passage from them to a sibilant. We seldom meet with an interdental consonant; Sievers, however, states that they exist in Servian and Armenian, where they regularly represent the whole class of dentals.

_The Palatals._—The palatals come next. They stand between the dentals and gutturals, and are formed by throwing the middle of the tongue, raised as it were into a hump, against that part of the roof of the mouth where the hard palate begins. The sound (_ch_) heard in the English _church_ or the Italian _cielo_ is now held to be, not a palatal, but a dental (_t_ followed by _sh_), and we must go to the Sanskrit (_ch_) as still pronounced to find a type of the whole palatal series. It “is formed most easily,” says Professor Max Müller, “if we place the tongue and teeth in the position for the formation of _sh_ in _sharp_, and then stop the breath by complete contact between the tongue and the back of the teeth.” It will be seen from this that the true _ch_ is not a double letter, a compound of _t_ and _sh_ or _s_, but a single consonant which ought to be denoted by a single character. The Sanskrit palatal _ch_ may have had the same pronunciation as the Armenian _t‘ sh_,[161] as Sievers thinks, or it may have been equivalent to _ky_. However this may be, it is plain from the great extent of the “chamber of resonance” in which the palatals are formed—the whole of the hard palate being available for the purpose—that a large number of palatal sounds is possible. They may range, in fact, from _ky_ to _tsh_. The guttural _k_ passes easily enough into the palatalized _ky_, as may be seen from the pronunciation of _kind_ and _cow_ as _kyind_ and _kyow_, not unfrequently heard in English; indeed, all that is requisite for the transition is for the front part of the tongue to assume the position needed for _y_, while the back part is in that needed for _k_. In the northern dialects of Jutland _j_ is heard after _k_ and _g_ when followed by _œ_, _e_, _o_, and _ö_. The German “soft” guttural aspirate or palatal spirant in words like _ich_, _licht_, is the result of the _spiritus asper_ passing the middle of the tongue when raised against the hard palate, _y_ in _you_ or _yet_ being due to a softening of the breath, the organs of speech remaining unchanged. The palatal sibilants will have to be considered separately.

_The Gutturals._—Putting aside the cerebrals, which have been treated under the head of the dentals, we now come to the gutturals, usually an important class of sounds in savage idioms. First of all we have the tenuis _k_, produced by bringing the root of the tongue against the soft palate, together with the deeper _k_ heard in the Semitic _koph_ or Georgian _q_. Next is the media _g_, to create which breath has to be changed into voice. Then will come the guttural nasal _ng_ (as in _sing_), and the continuous _ch_ and _g_ heard in the German _nach_ and _Tage_. The sound heard in _nach_ or the Scotch _loch_ is formed by raising the tongue against the soft palate or uvula, and so checking the uprush of breath, its sonant representative being the _g_ of _Tage_. The result of only slightly checking the uprush of breath in the latter case is the passage of the guttural into a semi-vowel. This sonant _g_ is the γ of modern Greek; it sometimes takes the place of the uvular _r_, though this office more properly belongs to the sonant _g_ of Armenian pronounced further back in the mouth. The surd _ch_ may be similarly modified by a posterior pronunciation, and so become the Armenian _xe_, the Russian _x_, the Polish _ch_, and the deep _ch_ of the Swiss.

_The Sibilants._—The main division of sibilated sounds is into the surd _s_ and _sh_, and the sonant _z_ and _j_. When the centre and tip of the tongue are raised to the centre and front of the palate, the breath or _spiritus asper_ is modified into _s_ (as in _sin_), the voice or _spiritus lenis_ into _z_ (as in _zeal_ or _rise_). When the tongue is turned back with its lower surface against the alveolars of the upper teeth, less of the palate being covered than is required for _s_ and _z_, breath becomes _sh_ (as in _sharp_), voice _j_ (as in _azure_, _pleasure_, French _jamais_). The ordinary German _s_ is a dorsal one, the current of air being allowed to pass between the upper alveolars and the lower surface of the uplifted tongue; in North German dialects, however, we frequently meet with an alveolar _s_, formed in much the same way as the alveolar _r_. The same _s_ also occurs in English, as well as a cacuminal _s_ distinguished by a more pronounced retraction of the tip of the tongue and narrower space between it and the palate. The palatal _ś_, found in Russian, for instance, before the weak vowels (_e_, _i_, &c.), only differs from the dorsal _s_ in the more retracted position of the tongue. _Sh_ (_j_) can be modified in three ways. The channel formed in the tongue when pronouncing _s_ may be so diminished as to allow the breath to strike against the lips, or the lips may form with it an approximately rectangular aperture, or, thirdly, the left (or more rarely the right) side of the tongue may be pressed against the palate, causing the breath to strike against the lips, which are generally raised a little on the side. Sievers declares that he has sometimes heard this unilateral _sh_ in England. However this may be, all three modifications of _sh_ may combine with the dorsal, alveolar, cacuminal, and palatal positions of the tongue to produce the cacuminal _sh_ of English (identical, probably, with the Sanskrit _ś_), the palatal _mouillé_ _ś_ and _ć_ of Polish and Russian, the alveolar _sh_ of the North German dialects, and the dorsal _sh_ of the Middle and Southern German dialects. It is one of the many evils of our defective and misleading mode of spelling that the surd _sh_, though a single sound, is represented by two letters, and so cannot be distinguished from the aspirated _sh_ (as in _gas-hole_), which is really a double sound.

These aspirated sounds consist, as we have seen, of an explosive followed by a spirant, and they occupied an important place in the older languages of our Aryan family of speech. A large number of roots contain them, and the Brahmans still pronounce each part of the compound sound distinctly, _ph_ and _th_, for instance, being pronounced as in our _up-hill_ and _ant-hill_. The compound nature of the sound caused sometimes the one element in it, sometimes the other, to fall away. Thus, to a Sanskrit _tubhy(am)_ corresponds a Latin _tibi_, and the Latin _mihi_ and Sanskrit _mahyam_ presuppose an earlier _mabhyam_, _mabhi_. The Athenian tendency to false aspiration which has produced the initial aspirate of ὑδώρ (Latin _unda_, _udus_) or ἵππος (Latin _equus_) has also occasionally affected the labial tenuis. φῦσα and its kindred, for instance, answer to the Latin _pustula_, the Lithuanian _pústi_, “to blow;” ἄφνος is the Sanskrit _apnas_, the Latin _ops_, and κεφαλὴ is the Sanskrit _kapâla_, the Latin _caput_. A curious metathesis of the aspiration may take place in both Sanskrit and Greek. In Sanskrit a final aspirated media before a following tenuis loses its aspirate, which is transferred to the initial of the root, provided that be _g_, _d_, or _b_ (as _bhut-karoti_, “he who knows acts,” for _budh-karoti_); and in Greek we find θρίξ becoming τριχὸς, τρέχω becoming θρέξω.

But it must be remembered that it is only the surd explosives (or tenues) that properly can thus be combined with the rough breathing (_h_). A difficulty occurs in the case of the sonant explosives (or mediæ); and it is a grave question whether we ought to transcribe _gha_, _dha_, and _bha_ by the side of _kha_, _tha_, and _pha_. In Greek, at any rate, we have only aspirated tenues, and while τ’ followed by an aspirate is written θ, this is never the case with δ’. At the same time, the existence of aspirated mediæ was recognized by the Prâtiśâkhyas by the side of the aspirated tenues, and the accuracy of the Prâtiśâkhyas is confirmed by the requirements of etymology.

Closely connected with the sibilants are the palatal and guttural sounds, already noticed, heard in the German _ich_, _tage_, and _acht_. The palatal _ch_, written χ by Sievers, _jh_ by Sweet; is of two kinds. What Sievers calls χ,[162] heard in the German _ich_, Icelandic _hjarta_, and sometimes in such words as our _hue_, is formed on the hard palate near the soft palate by the front part of the tongue. On the other hand, χ,[163] as in the Dutch _g_ before _e_ and _i_, is formed in the hollow of the arch. The guttural sonant heard in the North German _tage_, or the modern Greek γ, is formed between the back of the tongue and the middle of the soft palate, the tongue being lifted up towards the front of the mouth. As already remarked, it sometimes represents the uvular _r_; thus, Mr. Sweet says, “when the passage (of the voice) is widened so as to remove all buzzing, the sound of (_gh_)[162] no longer suggests (_kh_)[163] or (_g_), but rather a weak (_r_) sound.” Further back in the mouth is formed the Armenian sonant _g_, corresponding to χ.[163] The _ch_ of _acht_, again, may be divided into two varieties. _Ch_,[162] formed, as stated above, between the back of the tongue and the middle of the soft palate, is the guttural spirant usual in German after _a_, _o_, and _u_, and heard in Scotch _loch_. Further back is formed _ch_,[163] common in Swiss and other South German dialects. We have also _ch_,[163] noted by Mr. Sweet in Scotch after _e_ and _i_, formed between the back of the tongue and the place where the hard palate begins. It thus comes very near χ.[164]

Distinct from the exspiratory sounds, whether vowels or consonants, which have now been passed in review, are sounds formed either by inspiration or simply by the air in the mouth itself. Winteler[165] describes certain Swiss dialects which make use of inspiratory sounds to disguise the voice, and the clicks characteristic of the South African languages are examples of sounds produced without either taking in or emitting breath. The Kafirs have borrowed the three easiest clicks (the dental, the cerebral, and the lateral) from their Hottentot neighbours,[166] and there are reasons for thinking that the Hottentots themselves borrowed in turn from the more primitive Bushmen. At all events, the labial and compound dental clicks are wanting in Hottentot, and the Bushman fables put what Dr. Bleck calls “a most unpronounceable click,” which does not occur otherwise in any of the dialects, into the mouth of the hare, the anteater, and the moon.[167] These inarticulate clicks, thus adapted to the purposes of articulate speech, bridge over the gulf between the latter and the cries of animals, and we may see in them a survival of those primæval utterances out of which language was born. Traces of what may thus be termed the germs of language on its phonetic side are met with here and there all over the globe. Thus Haldeman describes at least three clicks heard in Texan, Chinook, and other North American languages, _t_ in the Anadahhas of Texas, for instance, being followed by “an effect as loud as spitting.”[168] According to Klaproth, clicks occur in Circassian; and Bleek states that two clicks are distinguished in the ǀikhe language of Guatemala—one somewhat resembling the Hottentot dental click, and the other the Hottentot palatal combined with some guttural. Mr. Whitmee has heard a click in certain dialects spoken by the Negritos of Melanesia. Clicks are also known among the Gallas; and Miss Lloyd has found a little boy from Lake Ngami using clicks resembling those of Nama Hottentot. Clicks are formed by placing the tongue or lips in the position required by an explosive, and then sucking out the air between the organs thus brought into play, the result being the “cluck” or “smack” with which grooms are accustomed to encourage a horse, but in combination with the explosive for which the organs of speech were set. According to Mr. Sweet, the labial click is an ordinary kiss; the dental click, “the interjection of impatience ordinarily written ‘tut.’”[169] In Káfir the clicks are not pure, as in Bushman—that is to say, they are always accompanied by an exspiratory consonant, which is formed at the same moment as the click. This affords an additional reason for thinking that the Káfir clicks are not survivals from the original condition of speech, but loans from another people, which have been attached by way of ornament to the existing exspiratory sounds of the language. Of the same nature as the clicks are the implosives peculiar to Saxon German, where no distinction is made between _d_ and _t_, or _b_ and _p_. Similar sounds are heard in Georgian and the Armenian of Tiflis, and they must have characterized ancient Accadian, since no distinction is made in writing between final _d_ and _t_, _g_ and _k_, or _b_ and _p_. These implosives are due to compression of the air between the closed glottis and the organs of speech when in position for an explosive, by forcing the glottis upwards. No sound is emitted until the sound is fully formed, when the final or transition sound is curiously modified.

We have hitherto dealt with the individual sounds in the same fashion as the lexicographer deals with individual words. But just as a word is really but one of the elements of a sentence, and to be thoroughly understood must be treated as such, individual sounds are but the elements of which syllables are composed. Whatever may be the nature of a sound when regarded apart and by itself, it is necessarily much modified when combined in actual speech with other sounds. The syllable, and not the single sound, is the starting-point of phonetic utterance.

A syllable must contain either a vowel or a semi-vowel, by which are meant such inspiratory utterances as that heard in the interjection _’m_, or the vocalic _r_ and _l_ of Slavonic and other tongues. One of the first achievements of the phonograph has been to show that an open syllable like _ga_ can be pronounced either backwards or forwards indifferently when once the organs of speech are in position; and not only so, but that when the waves of air set in motion by the pronunciation of a word are reversed, the word will be reproduced backwards—_əsoshiéshun_ (_association_), for instance, becoming _nushéshiosə_.

Mr. Sweet has pointed out that syllables are divided by the stress. Speech has to be carried on by a succession of exspirations or puffs of breath, and naturally the force with which the breath is emitted gradually diminishes during the continuance of the exspiration. Only in special cases—the interjections, for example—the force increases instead of diminishing. When the exspiration is spent, and a new breath is taken, a new syllable begins. Wherever, therefore, the stress is laid we must place the beginning of a new syllable. In “a name” the stress is on the nasal, where accordingly the syllable begins; in “an aim” it is, on the contrary, on the diphthong.

The passage from one sound to another, as has already been noticed, consists of a series of infinitesimal intermediate sounds, corresponding with the series of positions assumed by the vocal organs in passing from one position to another. These intermediate sounds have been conveniently termed “glides” by Mr. Ellis, and they play an important part in the formation of syllables. Glides are of two kinds, as the organs of speech may either be moved from one position to another in the shortest possible time, or be shifted, on the way, towards another position needed for the production of a third sound. Thus, in the syllable _ki_ we have the immediate glide required for the transition from _k_ to _i_; in the syllable _qui_, the indirect glide from _k_ to _i_ through the position needed for _u_. A glide may, of course, be described as either initial or final; in _ki_, the glide of _k_ is being final, that of _i_ initial. Some of the so-called consonants and vowels are really glides. The neutral vowel (_ə_) is termed the “voice-glide” by Mr. Sweet, as “produced by emitting voice during the passage to or from a consonant.” It may begin a word, as in “against,” and in English is very frequently replaced by a liquid, as in the words “little,” “possible.” It is also found plentifully in the Semitic languages, the Hebrew _sh’wa_, for instance, being simply the neutral vowel or voice-glide. In words like “follow,” when pronounced rapidly, we may hear it labialized. A diphthong, again, is a combination of a full vowel with a glide-vowel either before or after it, though the glide-vowels may be prolonged into full vowels without destroying the diphthong, by equalizing the stress upon the two elements of which it is made up. These glide-vowels (like the consonantal glides) are produced by putting the vocal organs into position for pronouncing a particular vowel, but not letting voice sound until this position is being shifted to that required by the full vowel which forms the second part of the compound, and reversing the process when the full vowel forms the first part. Consonantal glides (_y_, _w_, _r_, _l_, _m_, _n_) are illustrated by the sound of _y_ in _you_, and of _r_ in _here_, and in a common South-country pronunciation of words like _red_.[170] According to Mr. Sweet, the aspirate _h_ is a consonant in the glottis, but “a voiceless glide-vowel in the mouth.”[171]

At all events it is often difficult to distinguish the rough breathing from the glide which easily develops into it by the help of a little additional stress. This glide may be detected after mediæ, tenues, and _s_, whether initial or final, as in our _cold_ (when pronounced emphatically), _pack_, and _big_. The Irish and Danish aspirated consonants are formed by laying a separate stress on the glide apart from the stress laid upon the preceding consonant. The aspirated letters of Greek and Sanskrit, described above, are of course different, as here we have a combination of two independent sounds, though the latter of these (_h_) is in Mr. Sweet’s eyes a mere glide-vowel in the mouth.

Glides may be absent where two consonants formed in the same part of the vocal organs are united together (e.g. _and_, _its_), or even where they are formed in different parts. This is especially the case with English. Wherever homorganic sounds are produced, the vocal organs pass at once from the position required for the first to that required for the second, without first falling back into the “position of indifference.” Where an explosive is followed by a nasal, a sudden opening of the _velum pendulum_ is substituted for the usual “explosion,” as first pointed out by Kudelka.

Syllables may differ one from the other in respect of _pitch_ or _tone_, of _stress_, and of _quantity_. Pitch or tone is but little noticed by Englishmen, since with us it serves merely a logical or emotional purpose, such as the expression of surprise or the asking of a question, but in some languages, Chinese or Swedish or Lithuanian, for example, every word has its own separate tone, which helps to distinguish it from other words. This, too, was the case in Vedic Sanskrit, and in ancient Greek and Latin, what we call the Greek accents being really the marks of the pitch at which words were pronounced. Pitch or tone depends on the rapidity of the vibrations of sound, and may be either rising, level, or falling. The rising tone is that indicated by the acute accent. Tone may also be compound, marked in Greek by the circumflex. The compound or circumflex is heard when the tone of a vowel is again raised after it has already passed the moment of its greatest intensity, and it may therefore be described as composed of the acute and the grave, or of the rising and the falling. It may be noticed in Lithuanian as well as in several German dialects, such as the Thuringian, which have a singing character, and when it falls upon a diphthong the second element of the diphthong is distinctly raised in pitch. Naturally it is usually found with diphthongs and long vowels, but short vowels combined with a liquid may also carry the circumflex. In Greek it commonly implies a contraction, the circumflex resulting from the coalescence of a vowel which has the acute accent with one which has the grave.[172]

The Vedic system of accentuation best exhibits the fundamental character of accent of pitch. The _udâtta_ or acute denotes the highest pitch reached by the voice in a group of syllables or words. In the syllable immediately preceding the voice naturally sinks to its lowest, thus producing the _anudâtta_, or grave tone. After the _udâtta_, however, the voice falls gradually; consequently the syllable which follows has the _swarita_ or circumflex accent, and it is only the next syllable to that which is again _anudâtta_.

But the tone is regulated by three different conditions, which sometimes act antagonistically. It may be either a syllable-tone, determined by the relative force with which the syllables of a word can be uttered, dependent on the nature of the sounds of which they are composed; or a word-tone, determined in great measure by the meaning, and serving to distinguish words from one another; or a sentence-tone, mostly determined by logic or the feelings. The Greek accents, like the Vedic ones, were used to denote all three varieties of tone; while the acute and the circumflex sometimes represent the syllable-accent (as in θῖνα, ἔτυπον), sometimes the word-accent (as in νυμφή, νύμφα, ποδῶν), the grave, as Sievers remarks, “is a concession to the requirements of the sentence-tone.” Similarly in Vedic Sanskrit, the _udâtta_ which ordinarily indicates the word-accent, falling as it does upon the syllable (commonly the flection) to which the signification caused the attention to be chiefly directed, seems also to have indicated the sentence-tone, since the verb of the principal clause has no accent whatever attached to it. Previously, however, both in Greek and Sanskrit the accents denoted the word-tone, and the remarkable agreement between the accentuation of the two languages enables us to restore in great measure the accentuation of the undivided parent-speech. It cannot be an accident, for instance, which makes the numeral seven (_saptán_, ἑπτά) oxyton in both languages, and the numeral five (_pánchan_, πέντε) paroxyton, or places the acute accent on the last syllable of adjectives in -_us_; the accentuation in each instance must have been that of the Parent-Aryan. Where the accentuation of the two languages differs, it can generally be explained by the disturbing influence of analogy. Thus while there is so remarkable an agreement between the accentuation of Vedic and Greek nouns, there is next to none between that of the verbs. But an explanation of this is forthcoming. The verb of the principal clause in the Veda loses its accent, as has just been remarked, unless it stand at the beginning of the sentence; in fact, it is regarded as an enclitic, and throws its tone back upon the preceding word however many syllables it may contain. Now in Greek a rule gradually grew up forbidding the accent to be placed further back than the antepenultimate; the accent, accordingly, which in the case of verbal forms of more than two syllables would have been on the last syllable of the preceding word in the Veda fell on the penultima of the corresponding verbal form itself in Greek. The accentuation which thus fixed itself in the verb of the principal clause was extended by analogy to the verb of the subordinate clause, and eventually to verbal forms of less than three syllables; φημι, εἰμι, and ἐστι, however, remained unaccented to bear witness to the process whereby the Greek language had changed the original accentuation of the Aryan verb.[173] This, like the accentuation of the noun, was mostly (and probably at the outset altogether) on the flection-suffix to which it called attention, and thus marked out the symbols that expressed the grammatical relations of the sentence. In the Semitic languages, on the contrary, the primitive accentuation was on the penultima, though there may possibly have been an earlier time when it was upon the ultima.[174] The tendency to throw back the accent set in early in Aryan speech; in Latin, as in the Æolic dialect of Greece, it was uniformly as near the beginning of a word as possible, and the preservation of the original pitch-accent in Lithuanian is one of the most curious marks of archaism in that most conservative of West-Aryan tongues.

In Aryan the word-tone, we have seen, was primarily used in the service of grammar. In Chinese, Siamese, and other Taic languages, however, its use is lexical rather than grammatical; here it serves to distinguish the senses of words which would otherwise be pronounced in the same way. Dr. Edkins has shown that modern Mandarin Chinese is an exceedingly decayed speech; its initial consonants have been worn away; and all its final consonants reduced to the same monotonous nasal. To prevent the confusion that would thus have been occasioned in a monosyllabic language, where the possible number of different syllables denoting words was limited even before the corroding action of phonetic decay, tones were adapted to the expression of meaning, and as old letters disappeared new tones came into existence. To create a new tone, says Dr. Edkins, requires about 1,200 years.

The sentence-tone is inseparable from speech even of the most lifeless character. Each sentence has its own key, and the several parts of it their own pitch. The tone rises when we ask a question, it falls when we answer it, it reaches the “level” point of neutrality when we speak in monotone. But there are dialects and languages in which monotone is either acute or grave. “Thus in Scotch the rising tone is often employed monotonously, not only in questions but also in answers and statements of facts. In Glasgow Scotch the falling tone predominates.”[175] In French, too, the rising tone is often used in making statements of fact.

Quite distinct from accent of pitch is accent of stress, though the close connection between the two may be gathered from the fact that in modern Greek the stress accent regularly answers to the acute and circumflex of the ancient language. Much of this regularity, however, may be due to the same pedantic revival which has resuscitated the dialect of Plato and Thucydides and substituted it for the “modern Greek” spoken half a century ago. Stress is the force with which the different syllables of words are uttered, and increased force is naturally accompanied by increased pitch. Stress, in fact, corresponds to syllable-tone and word-tone, emphasis—the stress of a sentence—corresponding to sentence-tone. Like pitch, it may be regarded as either rising, level, or falling. Stress, however, differs from pitch in its variability; there is no gradual fall, but a tendency “to sway to and fro,” as Mr. Sweet expresses it. Rising stress may consequently be of varying degrees of force and falling stress of weakness, level stress, even in French, being practically unknown. Stress and pitch together give to speech its rhythmic character, and make it the lyric utterance in which man expresses his thoughts and his emotions. Where the rhythm is regular we have poetry and song, where it is irregular the language of ordinary prose. Stress is the great conservator of language; the chief counterpoise to the action of phonetic decay. The accented syllable will be preserved though all the other syllables by which it is surrounded may disappear in pronunciation, just as the idea upon which emphasis is laid will hold out successfully against the attacks of age and forgetfulness. Winteler[176] has laid down the law that in accented syllables, liquids, nasals, and spirants are always long after a short vowel if followed by a consonant (e.g. _man̄ly_, Germ. _al̄t._)

The loss of the accent of pitch in modern English and the consequent extension of the accent of stress have made us less observant of _quantity_ than the grammarians of India or the poets of ancient Greece. All syllables, however, may be classed as long, half-long, or short, due to the duration of the force with which they are uttered. According to Brücke, the duration needed for the production of a long vowel is to that needed for the production of short vowels in the proportion of five to three, but Sievers remarks that this only applies to the oratorical pronunciation of modern literary German. In any case, the length of the same vowel may vary according to circumstances; it is long, for instance, in the English _sīz_ (_seize_), short in _sĭs_ (_cease_). Several of the Scotch dialects possess no long vowels at all, while in French most vowels are half-long, distinctly short accented vowels being final, as in _oui_.[177] Like vowels, consonants, too, may be long or short. In our own language final consonants are long after short vowels (as _hill_), short after long vowels (as _heel_), and _l_ and the nasals are lengthened before sonants (as _build_), shortened before surds (as _built_). Short final consonants after short vowels make the pronunciation appear clipped, as in German words like _mann_.

Accent has considerable influence upon quantity. On the one side short vowels may be lengthened and pure vowels converted into diphthongs by the accent falling upon them. This is partly the origin of the Sanskrit _guṇa_ and _vṛiddhi_, according to which a simple _ă_ is raised to _â_, an _ĭ_ to _ê_ (_ai_) and _ai_ (_âi_), and an _u_ to _o_ (_au_) and _au_ (_âu_).[178] The lengthening of short vowels in Hebrew in a “pause,” that is at the end of a sentence, is another example. In the German dialects monosyllables which end in a consonant frequently have their vowel changed into a diphthong by the accent, the original vowel appearing again as soon as an additional syllable is added. In our own English the short vowel of a monosyllable which ends in a sonant frequently becomes half-long when accented (compare _fog_ with _fóggy_, _god_ with _góddess_). On the other side, the absence of the accent may bring with it a diminution of quantity. Thus a diphthong may be shortened by being pronounced in the same period of time as is required for the pronunciation of a short vowel, or may even be reduced to the short vowel which lies midway between the two elements of which the diphthong consists. A short vowel, again, may be reduced to a vocalic consonant like the Slavonic _r_. Since much movement of the lips in speaking implies an energetic enunciation, shortened syllables are naturally pronounced with passive lips. To this fact we must ascribe the numerous short syllables of modern cultivated English.

There is but little difference between a long or “strong” consonant and a doubled one. In the first case, the position of the vocal organs for pronouncing the consonant is retained with gradually decreasing force, until it is suddenly shifted to the position needed for the following vowel; in the second case it is shifted back again, when the force required to produce it is half spent. Strictly speaking, therefore, the consonant cannot be said to be doubled; there is simply a break or pause in the utterance of it, the force necessary to produce it being renewed before it has been fully exhausted. In English, French, German, or Slavonic the double consonants have become long ones; to find them still pronounced we must turn to Italian, Swedish, Finnic, or Magyàr. Analogous to a double consonant is the combination of a sonant with a surd, when assimilation does not take place, as in _has to do_ or _has seen_. In Sanskrit and Greek aspirated letters could not be doubled, Sanskrit permitting only _kkh_, _tth_, and _pph_, and Greek only κχ, τθ, and πφ; hence it seems plain that there was either no glide or a glide practically inaudible.

It is obvious that the combination of a consonant and a vowel admits of an almost infinite series of variations according as the formation of the one or other sound is made prominent in pronunciation. The consonant may, as it were, swallow up the vowel; on the other hand, the vocal organs may be shifted to form the vowel while they are still in the act of forming the consonant. Hence arise _mouillé_ and labialized letters. If the front part of the tongue be raised and the lips opened while a consonant is being uttered, a palatalized or _mouillé_ letter is the result, of which the Italian _gl_ and _gn_, the Spanish _ll_ and _ñ_, or the Portuguese _lh_ and _nh_, may be regarded as examples. Still better examples, according to Sievers, are combinations of consonants with an original _i_ in many Slavonic languages (_e.g._ Russian _nikto_). Certain consonants are incapable of being _mouillé_; gutturals, for instance, in whose formation the back part of the tongue plays so prominent a part can only be so by becoming palatals. Labialized sounds are those in which the lips are rounded while the pronunciation of a consonant is in process. Labials and gutturals show the same fondness for this labialization or “rounding,” that the palatals and dentals do for mouillation; and a comparison of the derived languages proves that the primitive Aryan speech must have possessed a row of labialized or “velar” gutturals—_kw_, _gw_, _ghw_—of which the Latin _qu_ and our own _cw_, _qu_ are descendants. There is nothing to show that these velar gutturals were ever developed out of the simple gutturals; so far back as we can go in the history of Indo-European speech the two classes of guttural exist side by side, and the groups of words containing them remain unallied and unmixed. Γυνή and _queen_ (_quean_) must be separated from γένος, _genitrix_, _kinder_, and other derivations of the root which we have in the Sanskrit _janâmi_, the Greek γίγνομαι, γείνομαι, and the Latin _gigno_; and the labialized _quies_ can have nothing to do with the Greek κεῖμαι and κώμη (κύμη), our own _home_ and _ham-let_.[179] Both rounding and mouillation may be combined, as in the Danish _kyst_, _pynte_, and when occurring at the end of a word may frequently be explained from the analogy of cases in which the word is followed by a syllable beginning with _u_ and _i_. Such an explanation, however, is more likely to be true of mouillation than of rounding; indeed, an _i_ or _y_ sound is very apt to develop itself after consonants in affected pronunciation, as in the English _kyind_, _duke_ (for _dook_), or the Greek ζορκάς (δyορκας) for δορκάς and the Magyàr _ágy_, “bed.” Conversely a palatal _i_ or _y_ may develop a dental sonant before it: thus the Italian _diacere_ comes from the Latin _jacere_, the Low Latin _madius_ from _majus_,[180] and the Greek ζειά (δyειά) and ζυγόν (δyυγόν) from _yava_ and _jugum_ (Sansk. _yugam_). In these instances we may trace the influence of emphasis; the parasitic letter is due to the attempt to speak with greater distinctness and solemnity.

But whether it be emphasis or the other two causes of change described in an earlier chapter, the pronunciation of sounds, like the meaning they convey, is in a constant state of flux. Nowhere is the dogma of Herakleitus, πάντα ῥεῖ, truer than in the history of speech. No two people pronounce exactly alike, nor does the same person always pronounce the same word or group of words in exactly the same way. Apart from the changes undergone by the pronunciation of words according to the sounds of the other words with which they may be associated, it is difficult to pronounce the same word when uttered singly twice in precisely the same way. The very effort to do so produces modification of the sound. Such shades of difference in utterance, however, are imperceptible to any but an unusually sensitive ear; it is only when the difference becomes considerable that it attracts notice. It then constitutes what we may term a variety, and such varieties we may hear sometimes from the lips of a single individual, sometimes from the members of a family, sometimes from those who live in daily contact and under the same conditions of life. The faculty of imitation is strong within us, and a particular pronunciation once started soon spreads, as it were instinctively, amongst those who are much together. It has often been observed how like the members of a family are to each other, not only in general appearance and manner, but still more in the use of similar expressions and idioms and the pronunciation of sounds. It is the same with schools, and to a less degree with universities to which the students come with their habits of phonetic utterance more or less formed: it has been said that the handwriting betrays the school at which the man has been educated; it may be said with equal justice that the mode of speaking does so too. In a savage state of existence, where tribe-life and village-life are on the one hand strict and intense, and the husband on the other hand sees but little of his wife and children, the conditions favourable to the growth of varieties in pronunciation are more numerous than among civilized men. The language of the nursery becomes in time the language of the tribe.

This phonetic variety may be broadly stated as mainly due to differences in the structure of the vocal organs. Putting aside imitation and analogy, putting aside, too, all wilful and conscious changes of pronunciation such as those enumerated on page 205, a particular sound or a particular way of pronouncing a sound may be easier to one speaker than to another. Very slight differences in the physical formation of the organs of speech may produce the most important consequences. And when a habit of pronunciation has once been fixed, it is difficult to alter it. The child who is learning to speak will as readily learn Chinese as English, the Japanese _r_ as the Northumberland _burr_; it is quite another matter when the attempt to catch the sounds of a new language has to be made in adult years.

Climate and food have, doubtless, an important effect in producing changes in the formation of the vocal organs; but at present we have no means of knowing the nature and extent of their influence. Professor March remarks of the change of _i_ to _g_ in Anglo-Saxon,[181] that “the movement (of consonants to vowels) is sometimes reversed, as when a nation moves northward, or northern peoples mix with a vowel-speaking race.” The Rev. W. Webster has drawn attention to the nasal twang which distinguishes not only American English, but American Spanish, Portuguese, and French as well; and which seems to be due to the dryness and the extremes of the American climate, while he further suggests climatic influences for the origin of the loss of the aspirate in Spanish words like _hijo_, pronounced _ijo_, the Latin _filius_, which in the fourteenth century still had _f_, and for the intensification of the aspirate in the corresponding Gascon words. We are all well acquainted with the hoarseness and roughness that exposure to the atmosphere lends to the voice, and the exercise and strength that a mountainous region gives to the lungs produce their effect in the vigour with which sounds are uttered. In cold countries the respiration is accelerated, while the air being denser contains a larger volume of oxygen.[182] The prognathism of the lower and older races of men, again, must have considerably modified their powers of utterance. “The lower jaw,” says Dr. Rolleston, “which in every well-marked variety of the human species contributes very importantly towards the making up of its distinctive character, was in the brachycephalous Briton usually a very different bone from the lower jaw of his Silurian predecessor.”[183] The strange fashions, too, which lead the savage to mutilate and deform his person, have frequently a very direct bearing upon phonology. Thus the loss and confusion of the labials and the excessive nasalization in the languages of the natives of the Pacific coast of America must be traced to the rings that are worn through the nostrils and lips of the people.[184] The Otyi-herero of South Africa is lisping in consequence of the custom of knocking out the four lower teeth, and partly filing off the upper front ones, to which also Professor Max Müller suggests the occurrence of the English, _th_ and _dh_ in the language may be due, and the Dinkas, who, like all the negroes of the White River, extract the front teeth of the lower jaw, have no sibilants.[185]

Whatever may be the causes which bring about varieties in pronunciation, certain it is that they are as continually making their appearance as varieties in the realm of natural history. Where they are unrestrained by the conservative tendencies of literature and education, they soon spread from the individual and the household and become species or dialects. The dialect itself may in course of time assume so marked a character of its own, and be so widely spoken as to be accounted a separate language; and will stand to the varieties and species destined to grow out of it in the relation of a genus to its species. But with this further development phonology has little to do.

It is otherwise with the changes which result in the rise of a new dialect. Comparative philology is based on the recognition that the same word will be represented by different combinations of sounds in a group of allied dialects or languages, and that each combination will be governed by a fixed phonetic law. An English _h_, for example, will answer to a Greek and Latin _k_, an English _t_ to a German _z_ and a Sanskrit _d_. When once a sound is given in a language, we may know the sounds which must correspond to it in the cognate languages. Now and then, of course, subordinate laws will interfere with the working of the general law; but unless such an interference can be proved, we must never disregard the general law for the sake of an etymological comparison, however tempting. To compare the Greek θεός with the Latin _deus_ and the Sanskrit _devas_, rests upon almost as unstable a foundation as the old derivation of _whole_ from ὅλος, and _call_ from καλέω.[186] We must never forget that the laws of phonology are as undeviating in their action as the laws of physical science, and where the spelling does not mislead us will display themselves in every word of genuine growth. Even the vowels cannot be changed and shifted arbitrarily; they, too, follow definite laws of development, and though it is not yet possible to state their equivalence in the several languages of a single family with the same precision as in the case of the consonants, we may feel quite sure that this is the fault of our ignorance and not of the facts themselves.

It was the great Grimm who, following in the wake of Rask, first formulated the empiric law of that regular _Lautverschiebung_, or shifting of sounds, in our Indo-European family of speech which has since gone under his name. Since his time the law has been the subject of much discussion and examination;[187] his statements have been amended and amplified, and an endeavour made to apply the same law to the vowels that has been applied to the consonants. The following table[188] exhibits the equivalence of sounds in the Aryan family of speech:—

+---------+---------------+-------------+-----------+--------------+ | | Sanskrit. | Zend. | Greek. | Latin. | +---------+---------------+-------------+-----------+--------------+ | K | ś (ç) | ç | κ | c | | Kw }| k, ch, p | k, ch, p | κ, π, τ | qu, c, v | | (K²) }| | | | | | G | j, sh | z, sh | γ | g | | Gw }| g, j, k | g, j, zh, k | β, γ[189] | [g]v, b | | (G²) }| | | | | | G H | h | z | χ | h, g | | G Hw }| [g] h | g, j, zh | χ, φ | v, gv, g | | (G H²) }| | | | | | T | t | t | τ | t | | D | d | d | δ | d, l | | D H | [d] h | d | θ | f, d, b[190] | | P | p | p | π | p | | B | b | b? | β | b | | B H | [b] h | b | φ | f, b | | N G | ṅ | ñ | γ | ng | | N | n | n | ν | n | | M | m | m | μ | m | | R | r, l | r | ρ, λ | r, l | | Y | y | y | y, ζ, δ | j | | V | v | v | ϝ, υ, ῾ | v | | S | s | h, s | σ, ῾ | s, r | | A | a | a | ε | ĕ | | A² | â, a | — | ο | ŏ, ĕ | | A³ | a, i, u, î, û | — | α, ο | a, o | | Â | â | â | ᾱ, ω | ā, ō | | I | i | i | ῑ | i | | U | u | u | ῠ | u, o, i | +---------+---------------+-------------+-----------+--------------+

+---------+---------------+-------------+-----------+--------------+ | | Oscan and | Gothic. | English. | Modern High | | | Umbrian. | | | German. | +---------+---------------+-------------+-----------+--------------+ | K | k | h, g | h, g | h, g | | Kw }| p | hv, f(p), h | wh, f | w, f | | (K²) }| | | | | | G | g | k | k, ch | k, ch | | Gw }| b | kv | qu, c | qu, k | | (G²) }| | | | | | G H | h | g | g, y | g | | G Hw }| ? | g, v? | g, w? | g, w? | | (G H²) }| | | | | | T | t | th, d | d, th | d, t | | D | d | t | t | z, ss, sz | | D H | f | d | d | t, th | | P | p | f, b | f, b | f, b | | B | b | p? | p? | pf?, f? | | B H | f | b | b | b | | N G | ng | ng | ng | ng | | N | n | n | n | n | | M | m | m | m | m | | R | r, l | r, l | r, l | r, l | | Y | j | j | y | j | | V | v | v | w | w | | S | s, r, z | s, z | s, r | s, r | | A | e | e | — | — | | A² | — | — | — | — | | A³ | — | a | — | — | | Â | — | — | — | — | | I | i | i | — | — | | U | u | u, au | — | — | +---------+---------------+-------------+-----------+--------------+

+---------+-------------+-----------+----------+--------+------------+ | | Lithuanian. | Church | Gaulish. | Old | Old | | | | Slavonic. | | Irish. | Welsh. | +---------+-------------+-----------+----------+--------+------------+ | K | sz | s | c | c, ch | c | | Kw }| k, p | k, p | p | c, ch | p | | (K²) }| | | | | | | G | ż | z | g | g | g | | Gw }| g | g | b? | b, m? | b, m? | | (G²) }| | | | | | | G H | z | z | g | g | g | | G Hw }| g | g | b? | b | b | | (G H²) }| | | | | | | T | t | t | t | t, th | t | | D | d | d | d | d | d | | D H | d | d | d | d | d | | P | p | p | ... | ... | ...[191] | | B | b | b | b | b, m | b, m | | B H | b | b | b | b, m | b, m | | N G | ng | -n | ng | ng | ng | | N | n | n, -n | n | n | n | | M | m | m, -n | m | m, b | m, b | | R | r, l | r, l | r, l | r, l | r, l | | Y | j | j | j | ... | j, ddj, dd | | V | v | v | v | f, b | gu, u | | S | s | s, ch | s | s | h | | A | e | e | — | — | — | | A² | o, à | o | — | — | — | | A³ | a | a | — | — | — | | Â | — | — | — | — | — | | I | i | i | — | — | — | | U | u | u, o, ŭ | — | — | — | +---------+-------------+-----------+----------+--------+------------+

Some of the changes of sound recorded in the above table are as old as the undivided Aryan speech itself. They go back to the dialects that existed in the earliest period of which our materials allow us to know. Instead of clinging, with Fick, to a genealogical tree, and deriving the Aryan languages of Europe and Asia from two parent-stems, Western and Eastern Aryan, and these again from a single _Ursprache_ or primitive speech, it is better to follow J. Schmidt in tracing the later languages to co-existent dialects, which by the loss or absorption of intermediate dialects and the migration of the speakers became more and more distinct and divergent one from the other. It is, of course, quite possible that the speakers of the most western of these dialects moved across the Ural range into Europe in a compact body, and there settled for a while in a district westward of a line drawn from Königsberg to the Crimea, where the beech grew, and that it was from this second home of the Aryan race that the waves of European emigrants successively broke off. Certainly Professor Fick seems to have shown the common possession of certain phonetic peculiarities, such as the vowel _e_, by the Western as distinguished from the Eastern Aryans, and the Eastern or Indic branch of the family clearly once formed a single whole which subsequently divided into Iranian and Hindu. Unfortunately the position of Armenian and the allied dialects is still a matter of doubt; and there are scholars who would regard them as a link between the European and the Asiatic sections of the Aryan group. But Fick labours hard, and apparently with success, to prove that the Aryan dialects of Asia Minor, such as we know them from glosses and inscriptions, belonged to the European, not the Asiatic section, while Armenian, on the other side, is an Iranian tongue. Fick’s conclusion is confirmed by the evidence of the cuneiform inscriptions. Up to the eighth century B.C. Armenia was still inhabited by tribes who spoke non-Aryan languages, and it was only a century previously that the Medes had first forced their way into the country regarded by the agglutinative Accadians as the cradle of their race, but which was afterwards to be the seat of the Aryan Medes. Eastward of the Halys there was nothing Aryan until long after the occupation of Armenia by the new-comers.

We have certain proof that the series of changes which resulted in the formation of High German took place subsequently to the overthrow of the Roman Empire. Latin words for instance like (_via_) _strata_ or _campus_, adopted by the Teutons during the era of their wars with Rome, are found in both Low and High German in the very forms which the application of Grimm’s law would require them to have were they native words. Thus _strata_, Low German _strata_, our _street_, becomes _straza_ in Old High German, _campus_, our _camp_, similarly becomes _kamph_, _kampf_. The Hessians were called Catti in Roman times, and though now High Germans, had the same ancestors as the Batavi, from whom the modern Dutch draw their descent, while the Malbergian glosses show the language of the Franks to have been Low German, although the Franconians of to-day, who are descended from the same stock as the Suabians and Ripuarians, speak High German. Here, at any rate, we have an instance of a series of varieties finally resulting in a new language in historical times.

It must not be supposed that all the changes of pronunciation that serve to distinguish one branch of the Aryan stock from another took place simultaneously. On the contrary, they were slow and gradual; first one and then another new fashion in sounding words sprang up and became general: when once the new pronunciation had, from any cause, taken a firm hold of the community, analogy caused every word to be submitted to its influence, unless special reasons, such as accent, stood in the way, until in course of time the process of shifting the sounds was completed. An instructive illustration of this shifting of sounds has lately been going on almost under our eyes. In the Samoan Islands of the Pacific only fifteen years ago _k_ was an unknown sound except in one small island of the group, where it replaced _t_. Since then it has practically disappeared from all of them, and _t_ has taken its place. What makes the rapidity of the change the more extraordinary is that the speakers of the language live on separate islands, and that intercourse between them is less intimate now, according to Mr. Whitmee, than it was in the days of heathenism. And yet in spite of books and schools, in spite of education and every effort to check it, the change has come about. The natives will ridicule the foreigner who pronounces in the new fashion, they will themselves take pains to sound the _k_ when reading aloud or making a set speech, but in conversation it has ceased to be heard. The tendency to put _k_ for _t_ seems to be irresistible; it is in the air, like an epidemic, and the spelling, so recently introduced, no longer represents the common pronunciation of the people.[192]

We must be on our guard against thinking that the sounds represented by the same letter of the alphabet in different languages are really identical. We have seen of what numberless variations each sound that we utter is capable, and it does not follow that because the Sanskrit _cha_ and the English _church_ are written with the same palatal _ch_, that therefore they are to be pronounced alike. And what is true of the consonants is still more true of the vowels. There is much to show that the European scale of three short vowels—_ă_, _ĕ_, _ŏ_—is more primitive than the Indic single vowel _ă_, in which three distinct vowel-sounds of the parent-speech have coalesced, but we cannot infer from this that the three vowel-sounds of the parent-speech were actually _ă_, _ĕ_, and _ŏ_. Indeed, when we remember that the Greek ἕκατον (for ἕν-καντον) corresponds to the Latin _centum_, while _ferentis_ is represented by φέροντος, it is quite clear that the Latin _ĕ_ must have developed out of one or more sounds which were distinct from it. In dealing with the hypothetical Parent-Aryan it is best, with Brugman, to symbolize these three primitive vowels as _a_¹, _a_², and _a_³.[193] It is possible that some at least of the earlier sounds out of which more than one articulate sound have afterwards developed, were of a vague indeterminate character, not properly-formed vowel utterances. Professor Max Müller[194] quotes authorities to prove that in the Sandwich Islands _k_ and _t_ are undistinguished, and that “it takes months of patient labour to teach a Hawaian youth the difference between _k_ and _t_, _g_ and _d_, _l_ and _r_.”[195] The confusion between _k_ and _t_, however, has already been explained by the similar fact observed in Samoan where the sound has actually changed within the last fifteen years, a distinctly-articulated _k_ becoming an equally distinctly-articulated _t_. But even in English we find people saying _a cleast_ instead of _at least_, while at Paris and elsewhere the lower classes say _amikié_ for _amitié_, _charkier_ for _charretier_, _crapu_ for _trapu_.[196] So in the old Paris argot _j’équions_ stood for _j’étais_, and in Canada the uneducated part of the population says _mékier_ for _métier_, _moikié_ for _moitié_. Bleek, again, writes of the Setshuana dialects: “One is justified to consider _r_ in these dialects as a sort of floating letter, and rather intermediate between _l_ and _r_, than a decided _r_ sound.”[197] To these instances of confusion between two consonants which Professor Max Müller believes to be “a characteristic of the lower stages of human speech,” may be added the fluctuation between two forms of the same sound in the North German dialects, where no distinction is made between surd and sonant _mediæ_, as well as in many of the Armenian dialects.[198] But we must bear in mind that this childlike inability to distinguish between sounds may be due to two very different causes. It may be a result either of the sound being formed at the neutral point, as it were, intermediate between two distinct sounds, or of the ear being unable to discriminate between different articulations. The latter cause is analogous to colour-blindness, and has most to do with the imperfections of childish utterance or the substitution of _r_ for _l_ so often heard; the other cause is of a purely phonetic character, and takes us back to the time when man was gradually fashioning the elements of articulate speech. This infantile state of language had probably been long left behind by the cultivated speakers of the Parent-Aryan; indeed, the very existence of the three vowels marked _a_₁, _a_₂, and _a_₃, would imply that such was the fact. If there was any confusion in the pronunciation of their words it would have to be ascribed rather to sound-blindness than to imperfection of utterance.

The regular action of Grimm’s law may be interfered with by the influence of other laws, just as in physical science the regular action of the law of attraction may be interfered with from time to time. Foremost among these disturbing agencies is the accent. K. Verner has shown[199] that the position of the accent has occasioned that apparent disregard of Grimm’s law in the Teutonic languages which has produced _mutter_ and _vater_ (O. H. G. _muotar_ and _fatar_) by the side of _bruder_ (O. H. G. _brôpar_), _sieben_ (Goth. _sibun_) by the side of _fünf_ (Anglo-Saxon _fîf_), _schwieger_ (O. H. G. _swigar_ = ἑκυρὰ, _so-cru-s_) by the side of _heil_ (Greek καλός), or such a curious change in the conjugation of the same verb as the Anglo-Saxon _lîðe_,“I sail,” but _liden_, “sailed.” The same cause has brought about the varying representation of an original _ſ_ now by _s_, and now by _z_ or _r_. In the Veda, _bhrâtar_ is accented on the first syllable, like the Greek φράτηρ, _mâtár_ and _pitár_ on the last, again like the Greek μητήρ and πατήρ. _Sieben_ answers to the Vedic _saptán_, the Greek ἑπτά, whereas _fünf_ is the Vedic _pánchan_ and Greek πέντε. _Schwieger_ similarly goes back to the Vedic _´swa´srû´_, Greek ἑκυρά, just as the O. H. G. _snura_ from _snuza_ goes back to the Vedic _snushâ´_, Greek νυός, in contradistinction to _nase_, _nose_, the Vedic _nâ´sa_, the Lithuanian _nósis_. If we turn to the verb, we find that in Anglo-Saxon, whereas the present _lîðe_, “(I) sail,” corresponds with a Vedic _bhédâmi_, and the singular of the past tense _lâð_ with a Vedic _bibhéda_, the plural of the preterite _lidon_ corresponds with a Vedic _bibhidús_.[200]

There are other influences besides that of the accent which may change and mar the face of words. Although every change takes place in strict accordance with phonetic laws, and is consequently capable of explanation, the occurrence of the changes is more or less sporadic and arbitrary. That is to say, they may act upon one word and not upon its neighbour. In _should_ or _would_, for instance, _l_ has been assimilated to _d_, but in _fold_ and _cold_ it still maintains its existence. Such changes may be either independent or dependent on the action of surrounding sounds. The diversification of the Teutonic _a_ into _e_ and _o_, or the transition of the Latin _ĭ_ and _ŭ_ into Romanic _e_ and _o_ are instances of independent change. So, too, the modern English pronunciation of the vowels with passive lips, and the consequent loss of the intermediate vowels _ü_ and _ö_, is another example of the same facts. Wherever, indeed, these intermediate vowel-sounds exist, we may feel sure that the lips take an active part in articulation. In all these cases the change happens in the formation of the sound, uninfluenced by the neighbourhood of other sounds. The extension of a simple vowel into a diphthong may also be brought under this head, though the presence of the circumflex accent seems to have much to do with it. On the other hand, changes in the dentals, the passage of _z_ into _r_ and _r_ into _l_, or the transition from a guttural to a palatal and a dental, are all examples of purely independent change. When we find an Aryan _kw_ (_k_²) and _gw_ becoming _ch_ and _j_ in Sanskrit or τ in Greek, we merely see the gradual forward movement of the tongue, which is moved with less exertion towards its tip than towards its root. The change of Aryan _kw_ and _gw_ into _p_ and _b_ in Greek (as in πίσυρες and βίος[201]) is held by Sievers to be due to a sudden “leap” in the articulation, _k_ and _g_ partially assimilating the second part of each compound into _p_ and _b_, and then falling away altogether.

Most of the changes recorded in Grimm’s law may be brought under the head of independent change. No doubt the transition of _g_, _d_, _b_, into _k_, _t_, and _p_ in German is partially dependent upon the accent, but the growth of an aspirate out of a _tenuis_, as exemplified in the Irish pronunciation of English, is probably due to nothing but an increase in the energy and duration with which our breath is expired. The want of the stress accent brings about the shortening and loss of final vowels, the tonic accent, on the other hand, tending to lengthen them.

The changes caused by the action of one sound upon another may be divided into those which are due to assimilation, and those that are not. In either case the time occupied in pronouncing the changed sound remains the same as it was before; it is only in cases of independent change that it may differ. Assimilation is effected in one of two ways. The relative positions of the vocal organs needed for the pronunciation of two sounds may be made to approximate, as in the reduction of _ai_ (_a_ + _i_) to _e_, or the time that elapses between the pronunciation of two sounds may be reduced or destroyed altogether, as when _supmus_ becomes _summus_. Where the change is not due to assimilation, it will be found to depend on an alteration in the time needed for the formation of two or more sounds.

Assimilation may be regressive, progressive, or reciprocal. Regressive assimilation is where a sound is assimilated to that which follows it, as in ἕννυμι for ϝεσ-νυμι, from the root _vas_, or ποσσί, for ποδ-σι (ποδ-σϝ-ι), and γράμμα for γράφ-μα(τ). Progressive assimilation is the converse of this, as in στέλλω for στελ-yω, μᾶλλον for μαλ-ιον, _mellis_ for _melv-is_, or the Æolic ἔστελλα for ἔστελ-σα. Regressive assimilation largely preponderates in our Aryan languages, progressive assimilation in the Ural-Altaic ones; and it is very possible that Sievers is right[202] in tracing this contrast to the difference of the accentuation, which in Ural-Altaic falls upon the first syllable of the word, while in the parent-Aryan it fell for the most part on the final syllable. Böhtlingk[203] says, very appositely: “An Indo-Germanic word is a real whole of such a kind that the speaker has uttered the whole word, as it were, in spirit, as soon as he has pronounced the first syllable. Only in this way can it be explained how a syllable (or sound) is modified in order to assist the pronunciation of the syllable (or sound) that follows it. A member of the Ural-Altaic race forces out the first syllable of a word—that part of it, namely, which has the accent—little caring for the fortune of the rest; on this he next strings in more or less rude fashion a few more significant syllables, only thinking of a remedy at the moment when he first feels the want of one.” As for reciprocal assimilation, an example of it may be found in the reduction of _ai_ to _e_ quoted above, where both sounds influence one another.

Assimilation may be either complete or partial. There are sounds which can never be thoroughly assimilated to each other, _bn_, for instance, can never at once become _nn_, only _mn_. Partial regressive assimilation meets us very frequently in the classical languages; _e.g._, λεκ-τός from the root λεγε, ἤνυσμαι from ἀνυτ-, δόγμα from δοκ-; partial progressive assimilation is rarer; e.g., πάσχω for πάσκω from παθ-σκω.

The changes dependent on the presence of a second sound, which are not due to assimilation, are necessarily produced by varying the time needed for pronunciation. Of these the most striking is metathesis. Metathesis must be referred rather to a mental than to a phonetic origin. Our thought and will outstrip our pronunciation, the result being that the sound which ought to follow is made to precede, or else the vocal organs are shaped prematurely for the formation of a sound which ought to be heard later, the consequence being that the sound which should come first has to come last. Metathesis, in fact, is similar to the rapidity, or rather relaxation, of thought which leads us sometimes to write or speak a word which belongs to a subsequent part of the sentence; and it may be of two kinds: either the place of two sounds may be simply inverted, or the second sound may be made to precede the first by two or three syllables. How easily the first case can happen is shown by the phonograph, where each syllable that has been uttered can be reproduced backward by merely turning the handle of the machine the wrong way. _R_ and _l_ are the most subject to metathesis, then the nasals; the other consonants vary according to their relationship to the vowels. More regular than metathesis are the insertion and omission of consonants, as in ἀν-δ-ρὸς, ἄ-μ-β-ροτος, τέτυφθε for τέτυφσθε, _rêmus_ for _resmus_. Somewhat different are the insertion and omission of vowels, the first of which goes under the technical name of _Swarabhakti_. This name was imported from the Hindu grammarians by Johannes Schmidt,[204] to mark the growth of a short or reduced vowel from a liquid or nasal, when accompanied by another consonant. Thus _ănman_, “name,” became _ănă-man_, and then, by the loss of the first vowel and the compensatory lengthening of the second, _nômen_ and _nâmâ_. _Swarabhakti_ is, however, incompatible with the acute accent. We may find examples of it in the slow pronunciation which in English turns _umbrella_ into _umbĕrella_, and _Henry_ into _Henĕry_.[205] Prosthesis, or prothesis, the insertion of a short vowel at the beginning of a word before two consonants, is another illustration of _Swarabhakti_. There are many nations which find a difficulty in pronouncing two consonants at the beginning of a word. Thus the Bengali calls the English _school_ _yschool_, the Arab says _Iflatún_ for _Platon_, and the Ossete uses _a_ for the same purpose. In other cases, one of the consonants is dropped altogether, as so frequently by children and systematically by the natives of Polynesia. In Latin inscriptions and MSS. later than the fourth century we find forms like _istatuam_, _ispirito_, just as in the Romanic tongues we have _estar_ and _espée_ (_épée_) for _stare_ and _spada_, or in Welsh _ysgol_ from _schola_, _yspryd_ from _spiritus_. According to Wentrup,[206] _a_ is often used as a prothetic vowel in Sicilian; Lithuanian has forms like _iszkadà_, German “_schade_,” and Basque and Hungarian prefix a similar aid to the pronunciation. No trace of a prothetic vowel can be found in Latin; in Greek, however, such vowels are very plentiful. Thus we have ἄσταχυς by the side of στάχυς, ἐχθές by the side of χθές, ἰγνύη by the side of γόνυ, Ὀβριαρευς by the side of Βριαρεύς. In Greek, too, as in other languages where prothesis occurs, the complementary vowel may be inserted before a liquid, more especially _r_, as well as before a strictly double consonant, _e.g._, ἀμύνω by the side of μύνη, ἐρυθρός by the side of _ruber_, ὀρέγω by the side of _rego_. Even the digamma may perhaps take the prefix as in the Homeric ἔεδνον. But it is probable that no other single consonant does so, the apparent exceptions being really explained by the loss of a consonant which once existed along with the one that is left. Ὀκέλλω, for instance, presupposes ὀ-κϝέλλω (Latin _pellere_), Ἀπόλλων presupposes Α-κϝολιων, “the son of the revolving one” (Sanskrit _char_, Greek πέλομαι). In other cases we are dealing not with a prothetic vowel, but with a part of the primitive root: ὄνομα, for example, is shown by the Irish _aimn_ and Old Prussian _emnes_ to be more original than the Sanskrit _nâmâ_ or the Latin _nomen_, and to stand for an earlier _an-man_; and ὄνυξ, the Latin _unguis_, the Irish _inga_, is earlier in form than the Sanskrit _nakha_ and the English _nail_ (_nagel_)[207]. We may discover a tendency in Greek to adapt the prothetic vowel to that of the root, though it is hardly so regular as in Zend roots beginning with _r_, where we find _i-rith_ for _rith_, but _u-rud_ for _rud_. Sanskrit, like Latin, shows an inclination rather to drop initial vowels than to add them, but even in Sanskrit, Curtius has pointed out[208] the Vedic _i-raj-yâmi_ from _raj_ (_rego_) and _i-radh_, “to seek to obtain,” from _râdh_. As for the loss of a vowel, it is too familiar to every one to need any illustration.

More akin to metathesis is epenthesis, which closely resembles the Teutonic _umlaut_. Epenthesis is especially plentiful in Greek, where κτέν-yω becomes κτείνω, χερ-ιων χείρων, λόγοσι λόγοις, ἐλαν-ϝω ἐλαύνω, νερϝον νεῦρον. Probably λέγει for λεγειτ is to be explained as resulting from the epenthesis of ι (λεγειτ for λεγετι), just as λέγεις stands for an earlier λεγεσι. Epenthesis thus presupposes a mouillation or labialization in which the articulation of the consonant is absorbed, as it were, by that of the _i_ and _u_. The greater the participation of the lips and tongue in the formation of these vowels, the greater will be the tendency towards epenthesis.

Lastly, we have to consider the lengthening of vowels, either by way of compensation or before certain consonants. By compensation is meant the additional force with which a vowel is pronounced after the loss of a consonant which followed or preceded it. Thus in Greek the loss of the digamma in βασιλεϝ-ος produced the Ionic βασιλῆος on the one side and the Attic βασίλεως on the other, just as the loss of the _yod_ in πολιy-ος similarly produced πολῆος and πόλεως. So, too, πάνς became πᾶς, δαιμονς δαίμων, ἐφαν-σα ἔφηνα, _rĕs-mus_ _rémus_, _pĕds_ _pês_, _exăgmen_ _exâmen_, _măgior_ _mâjor_. In certain cases the vowel was raised into a diphthong, as in φέρουσι for φεροντι, τιθείς for τιθενς, ἔστειλα for έστελσα. But a vowel may also be lengthened before liquids, nasals, and spirants when combined with another consonant. If the grave or the circumflex accent fall upon the preceding vowel, the tendency is to lengthen the vowel at the expense of the sonant or spirant following. Hence it is, that whereas in our English _tint_, or _hilt_, where the vowel has the acute, the nasal and liquid are long; in _kind_ and _mild_, on the other hand, where the vowel is circumflexed, it is the vowel (or rather the diphthong) that is long. The vowel, again, may be lengthened to compensate for the loss of a double letter. Thus in Latin we find _vīlicus_ by the side of _villicus_, from _villa_, and whereas the grammarians lay down that when _ll_ is followed by _i_, single _l_ must be written, we find _millia_ in the famous inscription of Ancyra. So, too, the inscriptions vary between _Amulius_ and _Amullius_, _Polio_ and _Pollio_, and good MSS. have _loquella_, _medella_, instead of _loquēla_, _medēla_.

There is another fact to be remembered when we are looking for the application of Grimm’s law—a fact which the law itself ought to bring to our minds. Different languages have different phonetic tendencies; the same sound is not equally affected by phonetic decay in two different dialects or modified in the same way; each language has phonetic laws and phænomena peculiar to itself. Thus, in Greek, σ between two vowels is lost, in Latin it becomes _r_; in Greek a nasal preserves, or perhaps introduces, the vowel _a_, in Latin it prefers the vowel _e_. Because τ between vowels becomes σ in Greek, or _sr_ in Latin is changed into _br_ (as in _cerebrum_ for _ceresrum_, κέρας, _śiras_), we are not justified in expecting similar changes in other tongues. In fact we have only to look at the table of sound-changes, known as Grimm’s law, to see that it is just because two languages do not follow the same course of phonetic modification that a scientific philology is possible.

To speak of Grimm’s law being “suspended,” of “exceptions to Grimm’s law,” and the like, is only to show an ignorance of the principles of comparative philology. Grimm’s law is simply the statement of certain observed phonetic facts, which happen invariably, _so far as we know_, unless interfered with by other facts which, under given conditions, equally happen invariably. The accidental has little place in phonology, at all events in an illiterate and uncultivated age. Literature and education are no doubt disturbing forces: a writer may borrow a word without modifying its sound according to rule; and the word may be adopted into the common speech through the agency of the schoolmaster; but such words are mere aliens and strangers, never truly naturalized in their new home, and the philologist must treat them as such. Native words, as well as words which, though borrowed from abroad, have been borrowed by the people and so given a native stamp, undergo, and must undergo, all those changes and shiftings of sound which meet us in Grimm’s law, in the phonetic laws peculiar to individual languages, or in any other of the generalizations under which we sum up the phænomena of spoken utterance. False analogy, it is true, may divert a word from the path it would naturally have taken; one word may be assimilated to another regardless of its real etymology, or words whose real origin has been forgotten may be modified so as to convey a new meaning to the speaker. But, in such cases, the worst that could happen would be the loss of the true etymology; Grimm’s law would still hold good, and the originals of the existing sounds would be those demanded by the regular _Lautverschiebung_. So far as the present form of a word like _Shotover_ (for _château vert_) is concerned, it is to the mere phonologist, as to the ordinary speaker, a compound of _shot_ and _over_, and in comparing these two words with allied words in other languages the prescribed letter-change holds good. It is only the comparative philologist, who has to deal with the psychological as well as with the phonetic side of language, that needs to know more, and to determine that _Shotover_ is not what it professes to be, but the product of a more or less conscious imagination. In most cases of analogy we have to do with mental as opposed to phonetic assimilation, and they fall, therefore, under sematology, the science of meanings, rather than under phonology, the science of sounds. No doubt we find instances of analogy, like the Greek accusative βεβαῶτα, modelled after the nominative βεβαώς,[209] or the Latin genitives _diei_, _dierum_, modelled after the accusative _diem_ for _diam_, but such instances fall under the laws and conditions of that phonetic assimilation which has been already described. Let us hold fast to the fact that the generalizations, the chief of which are summed up in the formula known as Grimm’s law, are at once uniform and unvarying. If an etymology is suggested, which violates these generalizations, that etymology must be rejected, however plausible or attractive. It is upon the fixed character of these generalizations that the whole fabric of scientific philology rests.

Necessarily similar generalizations may be made in the case of other languages which, like the Aryan, can be grouped into single families of speech; nay, they must be made before we are justified in grouping them together, or in comparing and explaining their grammar and vocabulary. It is not always, however, that the changes of sound are so marked and violent as in the Indo-European. A group of allied languages may be as closely related to one another as the modern Romanic dialects of Europe, and various causes may have combined to give a stability and fixity to their phonology which has made it change but slightly in the course of centuries. This is the case with the Semitic dialects, whose laws of sound-change are extremely simple. Practically the sound shiftings are confined to the sibilants, where the equivalence of sounds is as follows:—

Assyrian. Hebrew. Ethiopic. Arabic. Aramaic. _s_ (_sh_) _s_ (_sh_) _s_, _´s_ _sh_, _s_, _th_ _´s_, _s_, _th_ _´s_ _´s_ _s_, _´s_ _s_, _sh_ _´s_ _ts_ _ts_ _ts_ _ts_, _ds_, _dhs_ _ts_, _dh_, _’e_ _z_ _z_ _z_ _z_, _dh_ _z_, _d_[210]

One or two other general laws of phonetic change may be laid down for special members of the Semitic group; thus, in Assyrian, _s_ before a dental becomes _l_, and _kh_ is dropped when it answers to the Arabic and Ethiopic weak _kh_. In the Babylonian dialect, again, _k_ took the place of _g_, and the _n_ of the other dialects is sometimes replaced by _r_ in Aramaic.

But the Semitic idioms are dialects rather than languages, so intimate is the connection between them, so slight the differences by which they are separated. It is quite otherwise if we turn to a group like the Malayo-Polynesian, where the word _oran_, “man,” may be represented in the different dialects by _rang_, _olan_, _lan_, _ala_, _la_, _na_, _da_, and _ra_.[211] But here, too, the law of equivalence is fixed and determinate: the Samoan _s_ is changed into _h_ in Tongan and Maori, while the Maori _k_ is dropped in Samoan.

Equally extensive is the series of changes undergone by sounds in the Ugro-Finnic tongues, and when the law of sound-shifting has been determined not only for the Ugro-Finnic division of the Turanian family, but for the whole Turanian family, comprising Turkish, Mongol, and Mandshu, we may expect it to include a far larger number of changes of sound than that summed up in Grimm’s law. So far as the Ugro-Finnic dialects are concerned, M. de Ujfálvy, in continuance of the investigations of Riedl,[212] has been able to lay down the following rules for the phonetic permutations observable in these idioms: (1) The Finnish and Bulgar _k_ becomes _kh_ in Ostiak, Vogul, and Old Magyár, and _h_ in modern Magyár; (2) _k_ = _ts_; (3) _k_ or _g_ = _s_, _z_, _ṣ_, _j_, _ts_, &c.; (4) Finnish _ks_ = Votiak _hs_ (earlier _ht_); (5) Finnish _kl_, _pl_ = Lapp _vl_; (6) Medial Finnish _k_ and _h_ = Bulgar and Ugrian _v_ and _f_; (7) Initial Finnish _h_ disappears in Livonian and Lapp (in Lapp also becomes _v_ before a dental); (8) Finnish _h_ = _s_, _ṣ_, _ts_, _sy_, _ts_ (_c_), _ẓ_, _tsy_, &c.; (9) Finnish and Bulgar _k_, _g_, _h_ = Lapp and Ostiak _ng_, _n_ = Magyar _g_; (10) Medial Finnish _nk_ = Lapp _gg_; (11) Finnish _nt_ = Lapp _dd_; (12) _gy_, _ny_ = _y_, _v_; (13) _t_ = _s_ (Finnish _t_ = _s_, _ṣ_, _sy_, _ts_, _z_, _ẓ_, &c.); (14) Finnish _s_, _h_ = Ostiak and Vogul _t_; (15) Finnish _p_ = Votiak _b_ = Magyar _b_, _f_; (16) Finnish _t_ = Magyar _s_, _z_, _ts_; (17) Finnish _m_ = Lapp _bm_; (18) Lapp _dn_ = Finnish _nn_ or _n_; (19) Finnish _mb_ = Lapp _bb_; (20) Finnish _kk_, _tt_, _pp_ = Vêpse and Livonian _k_, _t_, _p_; (21) Finnish _k_, _t_, _p_ = Vêpse and Livonian _g_, _d_, _b_. This list of phonetic equivalents will make it clear that the original phonology of the Ugro-Finnic group is generally best represented by Suomi or Finnish; in some cases, however, Vêpse (or Tchude) is more archaic than Finnish, and in one case, that of the change of _t_ into _s_, Ostiak and Vogul are more primitive than Suomi. Vêpse, again, shows that the long vowels of Suomi are due to contraction. Within Suomi itself _kk_, _tt_, and _pp_, after a liquid are softened into simple _k_, _t_, and _p_. The diphthongal consonants of Magyár (_ly_, _my_, _ty_, &c.), are the result of a contraction of a consonant and a vowel or diphthong following. The changes undergone by sounds within the Ugro-Finnic group may be summed up as a whole in the two formulæ: (1) The Finnish hard explosives are represented by soft explosives in the other languages of the group; (2) spirants, and the sounds derived from them, answer in the allied dialects to the explosives of Finnish. As for the Samoied idioms, similar phonetic permutations may be discovered in them also. In the Yurak dialect _h_ = _s_, _ng_ = _nr_, and _k_ = _ts_; in Tavghi _k_ and _t_ tend to become _g_ and _d_; in Yenissei _dd_ = _md_ (_nt_, _nd_, _ntt_, _ltt_), _gg_ = _rk_ (_rg_) or _nk_, and _tt_ = _bt_, while in Ostiak-Samoied and Kamassinche the hard explosives pass into the soft _g_, _d_, _b_.[213]

Quite as regular as the permutations of sounds in the Finnic group is the law of sound-change discovered by Bleek to exist in the Bâ-ntu or Kafir family. The following table gives it for the principal members of the group:—

Kafir. Setshuana. Herero. Ki-suahili. Ki-nika. Mpongwe. Bunda.

_k_ _kh_, _h_ _k_ _k_, _g_ _k_, _g_ _k_, _g_ _k_

_ng_ _k_ _ng_ _ng_ _ng_ _ng_ _ng_

_t_ _r_, _s_ _t_ _t_ _h_ _r_, _ty_ _t_

_d_ _l_, _r_ _t_ _nd_ _nd_ _nd_, _l_ _nd_, _r_

_p_ _p_, _f_, _p_ _p_ _v_, _h_ _v_ _b_ _h_

_b_ _b_, _p_ _v_ _b_, _w_ _b_, ’ _v_ —

_s_ _ts_, _s_ _t_, _ty_ _s_, _k_ _s_, _dz_ _z_, _s_, _k_ _k_, ’

_z_ _ts_, _l_, _z_, _h_ _z_, _dz_ _z_, _ts_ _dz_, _g_, _sh_, _g_ _r_ _s_

_f_ _f_, _h_, _s_ _f_ _f_ _w_ _f_ _s_

_v_ _b_, _r_ _s_ _f_ _f_ — _f_

_l_ _l_, _r_ _r_ _l’_ _r_, _l_ _l_, _nl_ _l_

_n_ _n_ _n_ _n_ _n_ _n_ _n_

_m_ _m_ _m_ _m_ _m_ _m_ _m_

The Bâ-ntu law of sound-shifting has the advantage over its Aryan analogue, that it deals with actually existing sounds which can still be heard and noted by the scientifically trained ear, whereas many of the Aryan languages and sounds recorded in Grimm’s law are now extinct. The Aryan philologist, accordingly, has to assume that the spelling of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Gothic words is a fair approximation to their pronunciation. It is upon this assumption that the whole fabric of historical grammar is built; nay, comparative philology itself, which began with the comparison of allied forms and words in the classical languages of India and Europe, is also based upon it. The assumption offers little difficulty to the Italian, whose spelling accurately represents his pronunciation, or to the German, who writes pretty much as he speaks; but it need not be pointed out how strange and unnatural it seems to the Englishman. English spelling, under the guidance of the printers, has become a mere system of marks and symbols, arranged upon no principle, selected with no rational purpose, each of which by a separate effort of the memory is associated with some sound or word.

For the scientific philologist, no less than for the practical teacher, a return to the phonetic spelling of our English language is of the highest importance. What the philologist wishes to know is not how words are spelt, but how they are pronounced, and this end can be obtained only by means of an alphabet in which all the chief sounds of the language are represented, and each character represents but one sound. No doubt the practical man does not want the alphabet required by the phonologist, who must denote every shade of sound and have separate symbols for the sounds heard not in English only, but in other languages as well, but the alphabet of the practical man should be based on that of the phonologist. The reformed alphabet should be one which would enable the child or the foreigner to recognize at once the sound of the word he is reading, and the philologist to determine the pronunciation of the writer.

Thanks to Messrs. Ellis, Pitman, and others, the question of reforming our English spelling has not only been brought before the public, but the conditions under which it is practicable have been discussed and ascertained, and the merits of rival schemes put to the test. The sounds of the English language have been analyzed, and the great work of Mr. A. J. Ellis on the “History of English Pronunciation” has shown how our absurd and anomalous spelling grew up. At the present time we have in the field the phonology of Mr. Pitman—an alphabet of thirty-eight letters—a large proportion of which have new forms; the palæotype and glossic of Mr. Ellis, the former retaining the type now used by the printers, but enlarging the alphabet by turning the letters, and similar devices, the latter by its likeness to the present spelling intended to bridge over the passage from the present or “Nomic” mode of spelling to the reformed one; the narrow and the broad Romic of Mr. Sweet, the second an adaptation of the first to practical use; the ingenious system of Mr. E. Jones, which by the employment of optional letters for the same sound contrives to introduce little _apparent_ difference in the spelling of English words; and several other English and American systems that have been proposed, more especially the reformed alphabet of the American Philological Association, together with the transitional alphabet intended to lead on to it. Some of these are true phonetic alphabets, words spelt in them varying according to the pronunciation of the writer, others are merely attempts to reform the present spelling of English words by making it more consistent, and bringing it more into harmony with their actual pronunciation. Such attempts would only substitute a less objectionable mode of spelling for the existing one, a mode of spelling, too, that would in course of time become as stereotyped and far removed from the pronunciation of the day as is the present system. With such attempts, therefore, the scientific philologist can have but little sympathy; his efforts must rather be directed towards the establishment of a phonetic alphabet, based on a thorough analysis of English sounds and conformed to practical requirements.

The question of spelling reform is nothing new. Mr. Ellis has brought to light a MS. written in 1551 by John Hart of Chester, and entitled “The Opening of the unreasonable writing of our inglish toung: wherin is shewed what necessarili is to be left, and what folowed for the perfect writing therof.” This the author followed up by a published work in 1569, called “An Orthographie, conteyning the due order and reason, howe to write or painte thimage of mannes voice, most like to the life or nature.”[214] The object of this, he says, “is to vse as many letters in our writing, as we doe voyces or breathes in our speaking, and no more; and neuer to abuse one for another, and to write as we speake.” Hart, however, it would seem, tried to amend the pronunciation as well as the spelling of English. The year before (1568) Sir Thomas Smith, Secretary of State in 1548, and successor of Burleigh, had published at the famous press of Robert Stephens in Paris, a work, “De recta et emendata linguæ anglicæ scriptione, dialogus.” In this he had suggested a reformed alphabet of thirty-four characters, _c_ being used for _ch_, ð for _th_ (in _then_), and θ for _th_ (in _think_), long vowels being indicated by a diæresis. In 1580 came another book in black letter on the same subject, by William Bullokar. His alphabet consisted of thirty-seven letters, most of which have duplicate forms, and in which _c’_, _g’_, and _v’_, represent _s_, _j_, and _v_. He composed a primer and a short pamphlet in the orthography he advocated. In 1619, Dr. Gill, head-master of St. Paul’s School, published his “Logonomia Anglica,” which was quickly followed by a second edition in 1621. His alphabet contained forty characters, and, as might be expected from his position, his attempt to reform English spelling was a more scholarly one than those of his predecessors. He found a rival in the Rev. Charles Butler, an M.A. of Magdalen College, Oxford, who brought out at Oxford, in 1633, “The English Grammar, or the Institution of Letters, Syllables, and Words in the English Tongue.” He printed this phonetically, according to his own system, as well as another book, “The Feminine Monarchy or History of the Bees” (Oxford, 1634). “These,” says Mr. Ellis, “are the first English books entirely printed phonetically, as only half of Hart’s was so presented. But Meigret’s works were long anterior in French.” Butler represents the final _e_ mute by ’. In 1668 Bishop Wilkins published his great work, the “Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language.” In this he has a good treatise on phonetics, in which he probably made use of an important work on the physiological nature of sounds, brought out by John Wallis, Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, in 1653;[215] and he has transcribed the Lord’s Prayer and Creed in his phonetic alphabet of thirty-seven letters. After Bishop Wilkins the matter rested for a while; but in 1711 the question of reforming English spelling was once more raised, this time, however, in a practical direction. Dean Swift appealed to the Prime Minister to appoint a commission for “the Ascertaining, Correcting, and Improving of the English Tongue.”[216] His appeal, however, was without effect; and the next to apply himself to the subject was Benjamin Franklin, who, in 1768, put forth “A Scheme for a New Alphabet and reformed mode of Spelling, with Remarks and Examples concerning the same, and an Enquiry into its Uses.” Franklin embodied his views in a letter to Miss Stephenson (dated September 20th, 1768), written in his phonetic alphabet, and intended to meet objections to the proposed reform. It is curious to find the wholly mistaken objection already put forward that “all our etymologies would be lost” by a reform of spelling.

But spelling reformers have not been confined to England. Ninety years ago a reform of Dutch spelling was successfully carried out, though the result was unsatisfactory, as might have been expected from the ignorance of phonology that existed at the time. Spanish spelling has recently undergone revision on the part of the Academy; and even German, which seems to the Englishman so far advanced on the road towards perfection, is in process of reformation. The work was begun by Schleicher, who not only struck out the aphonic _h_ and other useless letters, but even emulated the Emperor Claudius by inventing a new character. A committee was lately appointed by the Minister of Education to decide upon such changes of spelling as seemed to them desirable, and a thorough-going system of reform, with a new alphabet, like that of Mr. Pitman, has been inaugurated through the exertions of Dr. Frikke and others.[217]

Of scientific alphabets, also, the phonologist has now his choice. Putting aside Melville Bell’s “Visible Speech,” in which each character symbolizes by lines the action of the vocal organs in forming the sound it represents, the best are the well-known “Standard” and “Missionary Alphabets” of Lepsius and Max Müller, the alphabets of Ellis and Prince L-L. Bonaparte, and the alphabet of Sweet. Max Müller’s alphabet is founded on that of Sir W. Jones, and he brings with justice the charge against Lepsius’s “Standard Alphabet” that its physiological analysis is sometimes wrong, and that many of its characters have been found too complicated for use. Sweet’s alphabet has the advantage of avoiding new type, of having special signs for voice and whisper, for quantity and stress, force, pitch, and glide, and of indicating by a full stop the place of a “force-impulse.” Prince L-L. Bonaparte’s alphabet, however, as edited by Ellis, is the most complete; indeed, out of his 385 characters, there occur a few which have not been detected in any known language. The two last alphabets will be found in the Appendix to the present chapter.

It is possible that the phonograph may hereafter assist us in constructing a more perfect alphabet than is now possible. Just as Melville Bell’s letters have a physiological origin, so the letters of the alphabet of the future may be derived from the forms assumed by sounds on the sensitive plate of the phonograph. The phonautograph had already informed us that every sound we utter has a distinct shape and pattern; it only remained to apply this fact practically by the invention of the phonograph.

The phonautograph as constructed by Barlow, Léon Scott, and König, is made to record the sounds of the human voice by the help either of a pencil or of a gas-flame. The pencil is set in motion by a thin membrane, against which sounds and words are spoken, and draws on a cylinder covered with sand the curves which delineate the sounds uttered. When a gas-flame is employed, the forms assumed by it take the place of those drawn on the sand. In Edison’s phonograph the fact that the form of every sound can thus be imprinted on a tangible substance has been utilized for the reproduction of speech. A plate of tin-foil is folded round a revolving cylinder indented from one end to the other with a spiral groove. As the cylinder revolves the groove is kept constantly beneath a needle, which is attached to a membrane or sounding-board, against which the voice is impinged through a conical aperture: with each sound that is uttered the needle presses the tin-foil into the furrow below, imprinting upon it at the same time the form of the sound. By reversing the process the needle is made to travel once more over the indented tin-foil, and the sounding-board being thus set in motion reproduces the sounds originally spoken. Before the tin-foil is thus reduced to its original smoothness, a cast of it may be taken, and at any subsequent period another piece of tin-foil may receive the impression of the cast, and so reproduce the words which first caused the indentations. It is needless to point out the assistance which the phonograph is likely to render to phonology. It is still, of course, new and faulty, and unable, for instance, to reproduce sibilants; but it cannot fail to be improved and become almost as perfect a speaking-machine as the human throat itself. Already it has contributed some facts of importance to phonetic science. Thus we find that all sounds may be reproduced backwards by simply beginning with the last forms indented on the tin-foil, _sociability_, for example, becoming _ytilibaishos_. Diphthongs and double consonants may be reversed with equal clearness and precision, so that _bite_, which the phonograph pronounces _bâ-eet_, becomes _tee-âb_ In this way we have learnt that the _ch_ of _cheque_ is really a double letter, the reversed pronunciation of the word being _kesht_.

The problem of reproducing human speech has thus been approached more successfully from the physical and acoustic side than from the physiological side, where it was attacked by Faber, Kempelen, and others. They attempted to construct instruments in which the vocal organs could be represented with the greatest exactness attainable, the lungs being replaced by a pair of bellows, the trachea by a hollow tube, and so on. But though these instruments spoke, it was not in human speech, or anything like it. The utmost they could do was to imitate the first utterances of a child, or the imperfect and laboured syllables of one who is learning a foreign tongue.

Nevertheless, it is not in the organs of the human voice any more than in the mechanism of a lifeless instrument that we have to discover the source and creator of speech. All that the vocal organs can do is to supply the skeleton into which the mind breathes the breath of life. Unmeaning sounds do not constitute language: until a signification has been put into them, the sounds that have been described and analyzed are no better than the singing of the birds, the stirring of the trees, or even the dead utterances of a machine. Phonology, like anatomy, deals only with the dry bones which have yet to be clothed upon with living flesh.

But by its very nature a science of meanings, sematology, as it has been named, can never have the same certitude, the same exactness, as a science of sounds. The laws of sematology are far less distinct and invariable; significant change cannot be reduced to the same set of fixed rules as phonetic change. The phenomena with which sematology deals are too complicated, too dependent on psychological conditions; the element of chance or conscious exertion of will seems to enter into them, and it is often left to the arbitrary choice of an individual to determine the change of meaning to be undergone by a word. Still this meaning must be accepted by the community before it can become part of language; unless it is so accepted it will remain a mere literary curiosity in the pages of a technical dictionary. And since its acceptance by the community is due to general causes, influencing many minds alike, it is possible to analyze and formulate these causes, in fact, to refer significant change to certain definite principles, to bring it under certain definite generalizations. Moreover, it must be remembered that the ideas suggested by most words are what Locke calls “mixed modes.” A word like _just_ or _beauty_ is but a shorthand note suggesting a number of ideas more or less associated with one another. But the ideas associated with it in one mind cannot be exactly those associated with it in another; to one man it suggests what it does not to another. So long as we move in a society subjected to the same social influences and education as ourselves we do not readily perceive the fact, since the leading ideas called up by the word will be alike for all; but it is quite otherwise when we come to deal with those whose education has been imperfect as compared with our own. A young speaker often imagines that he makes himself intelligible to an uneducated audience by using short and homely words; unless he also suits his ideas to theirs, he will be no better understood than if he spoke in the purest Johnsonese. If we are suddenly brought into contact with experts in a subject we have not studied, or dip into a book on an unfamiliar branch of knowledge, we seem to be listening to the meaningless sounds of a foreign tongue. The words used may not be technical words; but familiar words and expressions will bear senses and suggest ideas to those who use them which they will not bear to us. It is impossible to convey in a translation all that is meant by the original writer. We may say that the French _juste_ answers to the English _just_, and so it does in a rough way; but the train of thoughts associated with _juste_ is not that associated with _just_, and the true meaning of a passage may often depend more on the associated thoughts than on the leading idea itself. Nearly every word, in fact, may be described as a complex of ideas which is not the same in the minds of any two individuals, its general meaning lying in the common ideas attached to it by all the members of a particular society. The significations, therefore, with which the comparative philologist has to concern himself, are those unconsciously agreed upon by a body of men, or rather the common group of ideas suggested by a word to all of them alike. Here, again, some general causes must be at work which may yet be revealed by a careful analysis. The comparative philologist has not to trouble himself, like the classical philologist, with discovering the exact ideas connected with a word by some individual author; it is the meaning of words as they are used in current speech, not as they illustrate the idiosyncrasies of a writer, which it is his province to investigate.

“The genealogies of words,” says Pott,[218] “are the genealogies of concepts.” As in phonology we have the growth or decay of sounds, so in sematology we have the growth or decay of ideas. The three principles of linguistic change, imitation, emphasis and laziness, are incessantly at work on the meanings as well as upon the sounds of words. Analogy is ever lending them new senses, and the metaphorical senses may come to be used to the utter forgetfulness of the original one. The Latin who spoke of his “mind” or “soul” as _animus_ had altogether forgotten that at the outset _animus_ was merely the “wind” or “breath.” Here analogy or imitation is helped by laziness, which makes us forget a little-used meaning. _Impertinent_ has almost lost its prior and proper signification, and our children will have to seek it in the records of an obsolescent literature. But a dead meaning may again rise to life; the early meaning of a word, whether recovered from books or from the fresh spring of a local dialect, may once more impress itself upon a community anxious to emphasize and mark out an idea by an unfamiliar term.

Professor Whitney[219] has summed up significant change under the two heads of specialization of general terms and generalization of special terms, but a more thorough-going attempt to determine its laws and distinguish its causes has been made by Pott.[220] First of all, he points out, words may be more accurately defined either by widening or by narrowing their signification. While in the Neo-Latin languages _caballus_, “a nag,” has taken the wider meaning of “horse” in general, under the form of _cavallo_ or _cheval_, the modern Greek ἄλογον is no longer the “irrational beast,” but is narrowed into the specific sense of “horse.” Like our _deer_, which once meant “wild animals” generally (German _thier_), so _emere_ has narrowed its primary signification of “taking” into the special one of “buying.” But, on the other hand, when we speak of “going to town,” it is not “town” in general or any town whatsoever that is meant, but London alone.

Then, secondly, there is metaphor, with its ceaseless play upon speech. Language is the treasure-house of worn-out similes, a living testimony to the instinct of man to find likeness and resemblance in all he sees. The Tasmanians, who had no general terms, had yet the power of seeing resemblances between things: though they could not form the concept “round,” they said “like the moon” or some other round object. All the words which have a spiritual or moral meaning go back to a purely sensuous origin: _Divus_, _Deus_, _Dieu_ was once “the bright sky;” _soul_ was nothing but the “heaving” sea. It is only by likening such ideas to the objects of sense that we can imagine them at all, or convey a hint of our meaning to others. The vocabulary of a language on its significant side grows by metaphor and analogy. We have only to take a word like _post_, once the Latin _positum_, “what is fixed” or “placed,” and trace it through its many derived meanings of “stake,” “position,” “office,” “station,” “public medium of correspondence,” and “receptacle for letters,” to see how endless are the shades of colour which a single word may catch from those with which it is associated. To know the idioms of a language and the conditions under which its speakers live, is often to know the history of the changes in signification undergone by its vocabulary. The mere expression “send to the post” gave to the word _post_ its last meaning of a building in which letters are deposited and sorted, and the conditions of schoolboy life are a clue to many of the metaphorical uses of words which bear quite another meaning in school life from what they do in ordinary language. Where else but in a country of examinations could “pass” signify to go through an examination with success? Each craft, each industry has its own store of technical words, many of which are merely words in common use employed in particular senses intelligible only to those who belong to it.

Words, thirdly, will vary in meaning according to their application to persons or things, to what is good or bad, great or small. What a difference there is, for instance, between a “beautiful woman” and a “beautiful picture,” “a fine day” and “a fine fellow.” _Silly_, again, is simply the German _selig_, “blessed,” and such is still its meaning in Spenser’s “silly sheep;” but in modern English it has long lost its favourable sense, and is used only in an unfavourable one. Diminutives, originally the symbols of affection, have in many cases become the symbols of contempt, while “childishness” is as much a compliment when applied to a child as it is the reverse when applied to a man.

In the fourth place, words change their signification according to their use as active or passive, as subjects or as objects. “The sight of a thing” has a very different meaning from “the enjoyment of a sight,” as different, in fact, as is the meaning of _venerandus_ when applied to the object of veneration or to his admirer. The passive has been evolved from the middle τύπτομαι, “I beat myself” passing gradually into “I am beaten.” In English we may say indifferently “a matter is reflected,” or “a matter reflects itself,” after the usage of French. Similarly a neuter verb may be regarded as an active followed by the reflective pronoun; our “to be silent,” or “to walk,” for example, are the French “se taire,” “se promener.”

Fifthly, an idea may be expressed either by a compound or periphrasis, or by a single word. The Latin _nepos_ is the French _petit fils_, our “ninety” the French _quatre-vingt-dix_. The Taic languages of Further India preserve the primitive habit of denoting a new idea by comparing it with some other to which it stands in the relation of species to genus. Thus in Siamese “a heifer” is _lúk nghoa_, “child (of a) bull;” “a lamb” is _lúk-ké_, “child (of a) sheep,” much as in English _inkstand_ is “a stand for ink.” It is only by comparison that an object can be known, its limits marked and determined; it is equally only by comparison that an idea can be defined and made intelligible. But when this has once been done, there is no longer any need of setting genus and species side by side in speech and thought; to do so is but a survival of the early machinery of language. The fact that the derivatives of the Aryan speaker are replaced by compounds, or rather antithetic words, in Taic, shows not only the mental superiority of the former, but also the fundamental contrast that exists between the two modes of thought. Collectives imply no small power of abstraction, and the collectives formed by antithesis in Taic are as much a proof of it as the existence of our “contentment” by the side of the Siamese _arói chái_, literally “pleasant heart.”

In the sixth place, we must always keep steadily in view the relativity of ideas and of the words which denote them. The same word may be applied in a variety of senses, the particular sense which it bears being determined by the context. The manifold shades of meaning of which each word is capable, the different associations of ideas which it may excite, give rise to varieties of signification which in course of time develop into distinct species. Hence come the idioms that form the characteristic feature of a dialect or language, and make exact translation into another language so impossible. Hence, too, that diversification of synonyms which causes words like _womanly_ and _feminine_ gradually to assume different meanings, and prevent us from saying “I am very obliged,” or “I am much tired.”

Seventhly and lastly, change of signification may follow in the wake of change of pronunciation or the introduction of new words. Phonetic decay may cause the old form of a word to be forgotten, and so allow it to assume the new meaning which has gradually been evolved out of its earlier one. This is the history of most of those inflections which can be traced back to independent words, such as the sign of the past tense in English, once the reduplicated perfect of _do_. The signification of _jeopardy_ has travelled far from that of _jeu parti_, but preparation had first been made by the change of pronunciation. There are many myths and mythological beings which owe their existence to the same cause. It was not till Promêtheus had lost all resemblance in outward name to the _pramanthas_ or “fire-machine” of India that he borrowed his attributes from προμήδομαι, and became the wise benefactor of mankind, the gifted seer of the future, whose brother was Epimêtheus, or “Afterthought.” It is the same with the legends that group themselves round the distorted name of a locality. The nose of brass or gilt which adorns Brasenose College at Oxford could never have come into existence until the old _Brasinghouse_ or “Brewery” had been transformed, and the phœnix that stands in the centre of the Phœnix Park at Dublin, would have been impossible without the assistance of Saxon lips, which turned the Irish _fion uisg_ or “fine water” into _phœnix_. But change of pronunciation is especially serviceable in increasing the wealth of a language by producing two co-ordinate forms out of a single original one. In course of time the two forms assume different meanings, due to the different contexts in which they may be used, and when once all memory of the original identity has perished, the distinction of meaning becomes fixed and permanent, and tends to grow continually sharper. In the second century B.C. a Latin writer could still use _prior_ as a neuter, _prios_ or _prius_ as a masculine; but a time soon came when _prior_ was classed exclusively with other masculine nouns in -_or_ or -_tor_, _prius_ with neuter nouns like _genus_. So, again, the Latin infinitive active _amare_ and the infinitive passive _amari_ were at the outset one and the same—the dative singular of a verbal noun in -_s_ (_amas_-), and one verb, _fio_, the Greek φυ(ι)ω, continued to the last to preserve a recollection of the fact by the length of the final syllable in _fieri_ or _fiesei_, “to become.” But the shortening of final syllables which characterizes Latin was early at work, and out of the dative _amasei_ soon originated the two co-existing forms _amase_ (_amare_) and _amasi_ (_amari_). For a while they were used indifferently, but when the distinction that exists between the German _waren zu haben_ and the English “were to be had” came to make itself felt, one form remained the property of the active, while the other was appropriated to the passive. But a consciousness of the origin of _amari_ seems to have long survived in the language, since there was a tendency to associate it more closely with the other forms of the passive voice by affixing to it the characteristic of the passive, _r_ (_amarier_). What is here effected by the diversification of the same word, may also be effected by the diversification of two synonyms, one of which has come from abroad. Sometimes both may come from abroad, but at different times, the result being that whereas one of them has been naturalized in the language, the other is but the nurseling of a learned age. _Priest_ and _presbyter_, for instance, have both descended from the same source, and were once identical in meaning. But not only may the old words of a dialect be thus affected by new comers, the foreign words may even succeed in destroying the native ones altogether. The same natural selection which has wellnigh extirpated many of the native plants of Central America in the presence of the imported cardoon, is also at work in language. Our Old English _sicker_ has had to give way before _sure_, the Old French _sëur_, Provençal _segur_, Latin _securus_, and the Latin _equus_ has been replaced in the Romanic dialects by _caballus_, “a nag.” _Caballus_ is at once an example of the way in which the meaning of a word may be widened, and of the operation of natural selection in the field of speech.

The etymologist must keep before him the laws both of phonology and of sematology before he can venture to group words together and refer them to a common root. For the etymologist is not merely a historian, or student of historical grammar; above and beyond the words which can be traced back, step by step, to their early forms, by the help of contemporaneous records, there are many more, the derivation of which has to be constructed much in the same way that a palæontologist reconstructs a fossil animal by the help of a single bone. The task is often a difficult and a delicate one, and the best trained scholars may sometimes fail. The result of false analogy may be regarded as an organic form, or a foreign word, conformed possibly to the genius of the language which has borrowed it, may be mistaken for a native. The præ-Aryan populations of Greece or of Britain must have left some remains of their languages in the vocabulary of Greek and Keltic, and Greek and Keltic words which have been counted as Aryan may, after all, be but aliens. Apart from these dangers, there is further the double one of assuming a connection between ideas which have nothing to do with one another, and of separating ideas which start from a common source. On the one hand, we are apt to judge of primitive man by ourselves, and to fancy that the ideas which we associate together were equally associated together by him. On the other hand, we have only to turn to the Ugrian idioms, with their greater transparency and openness to analysis to see the passage of one signification in a root into another of a wholly different kind, accompanied by a modification of the vowel. Thus _karyan_ is “to ring,” and “to lighten;” _kar-yun_ and _kir-yun_, “to cry,” but _kir-on_, “to curse;” _kah-isen_, _koh-isen_, _kuh-isen_, “to hit,” “stamp;” _käh-isen_, _köh-isen_, “to roar;” _keh-isen_, _kih-isen_, “to boil.”[221] We have here the same symbolization of a change of meaning by a change of vowel as in the Greek perfect δέδωκα by the side of the present δίδωμι.

The four facts to be remembered in etymology are thus summarized by Professor Max Müller.[222] (1.) The same word takes different forms in different languages. Each language or dialect has its peculiar phonetic laws and tendencies; because a particular interchange of sounds takes place in one language it does not follow that it does so in another. In Greek, for instance, _s_ between two vowels is lost, in Latin it becomes _r_. Our English _two_ is the same word, so far as origin is concerned, as the German _zwei_, the Latin and Greek _duo_, the Sanskrit _dwi_; the English _silly_ is the German _selig_, “blessed.” As words are carried down the stream of time, they change in both outward form and inward meaning, and this change is in harmony with the physiological and psychological peculiarities of the particular people that uses them. (2.) The same word, again, takes different forms in one and the same language. _Brisk_, _frisky_, and _fresh_ all come from the same fountain-head, and _bank_ and _bench_ are the differentiated forms of which _banquet_ is the Romanized equivalent. So, too, in French _noël_ and _natal_ are but forms of the same word of different ages, like _naïf_ and _native_, _chétif_ and _captif_. Then (3) different words take the same form in different languages. The Greek καλέω and the English _call_ have as little connection as the Latin _sanguis_ and the Mongol _sengui_, “blood,” or the modern Greek _mati_ for ὀμμάτιον, and the Polynesian _mata_, “an eye.” To compare words of different languages together because they agree in sound is to contravene all the principles of scientific philology; agreement of sound is the best possible proof of their want of connection, since each language has its own phonology and consequently modifies the forms of words in a different fashion. The comparison even of roots is a dangerous process, not to be indulged in unless the grammar of the languages to which they belong has been shown to be of common origin. What we call roots are only the hypothetical types to which we can reduce the words of a certain group of tongues; they are, therefore, merely the expression of the phonetic laws common to all the members of the group. But it does not follow that the selected phonetic laws which all the members of a certain group of tongues have in common are the same as the phonetic laws of another language or another group. Roots, moreover, owing to their shortness, their vagueness, and their consequent simplicity, are necessarily limited in number, while the ideas they convey are so wide and general as to cover an almost infinite series of derived meanings; to say nothing of the probability that many of them are to be traced to imitations of natural sounds. (4.) Different words, in the fourth place, may take the same form in one and the same language. The French _feu_, “fire,” is the Latin _focus_; _feu_, “late,” the Low Latin _fuitus_ (from _fui_). So too the English _page_, in the sense of a servant, comes ultimately from the Greek παίδιον, _page_, in the sense of a leaf of a book, from the Latin _pagina_. An arbitrary and antiquated spelling may often keep up a distinction between such words in writing when in speaking all distinction has long since disappeared. The French _sang_, _cent_, _sans_, _sent_, _s’en_, the English _sow_, _sew_, _so_, are respectively pronounced in the same way. That no inconvenience would be caused by writing them in the same way is shown not only by the fact that many words of similar sound but varying sense, such as _sound_, _box_, or _lie_, are not distinguished in writing, but also by the ease with which we can distinguish between them in conversation, although in conversation we are unable to dwell upon a word or view it by the light of the completed sentence, as is the case in reading. The scientific etymologist would welcome the accurate representation of sounds by symbols, his object is to know what sounds pass into others in the course of centuries, and this he can only ascertain when the spelling represents the pronunciation; the amateur etymologist had better leave the subject alone. Etymology is not a plaything for the amusement of the ignorant and untrained; it is a serious and difficult study, not to be attempted without much preparation and previous research. The etymologist must be thoroughly trained in the principles of scientific philology, he must have mastered both phonology and sematology, and he must be well acquainted with more than one of the languages with which he deals. Then and then only can his labours be fruitful; then, and then only will his work be a gain and not a hindrance. False etymologies stand in the way of true ones, and the charlatans who have brought the name of etymology into contempt have discredited the labours of better men. There is much in etymology which must always defy analysis, there is much which will have to be corrected hereafter, but this will matter little if we have once learnt the lesson that change of sound and meaning can only take place in accordance with fixed and invariable law. Etymology is but a means to an end, and that end is partly the history of the development of thought and civilization as reflected in the fossil records of speech, partly the discovery and illustration of the laws which govern the shifting and decay of sounds and the modifications of sense.

APPENDIX I. TO CHAPTER IV.

THE VOCAL ORGANS OF ANIMALS.

Comparative anatomy is the foundation of modern physiology: to understand the human organism we must compare it with the organisms of the lower animals. This is as true of the organs of speech as of the organs of locomotion or sensation, and we shall find that, in spite of varying degrees of development, the vocal organs of both man and beast present a general resemblance to each other. Some of the quadrumana have large sacs between the thyroid cartilage and the _os hyoideum_, which have much to do with modifying and increasing the resonance of the voice. The laryngeal sacs possessed by some of the monkeys of Africa cause the acuteness of tone and hoarseness of cry that characterize them. The great intensity of the voice in the American “howlers” is due to the size of the epiglottis and the existence of large cavities in the thyroid cartilage and _os hyoideum_ which communicate with the ventricles of the larynx and the laryngo-pharyngeal sacs. The bray of the ass has been traced to two large sacs existing between the vocal chords and the inner surface of the thyroid cartilage. Some of the marsupials, such as the kangaroo, have membranous vocal chords which stretch upon themselves and so cannot be stretched by the arytenoid muscles. A few of the mammalia, _e.g._ the giraffe, the porcupine, and the armadillo, have no vocal chords, and are therefore mute. This is also the case with the cetacea, the bellowing of the whale being produced by the expulsion of water through the nostrils during the act of exspiration.

Birds possess a superior larynx which differs considerably from that of the mammalia, and has nothing to do with the production of sound. Below this is the inferior larynx at the lower end of the trachea, just before it bifurcates into the two bronchi. This is the organ of voice, and differs a good deal, both in form and structure, in the several species of birds. It is double, except in the parrot and a few other birds, and is almost always symmetrical. It is composed of the lower rings of the trachea united so as to form a tube, at the lower end of which are two protuberances, one in front of the other, and joined together in most birds by a thin rod of bone (the _os transversale_). To the upper edge of this bone is attached a delicate membrane (the _membrana semilunaris_), which is turned upwards, and to the lower edge another membrane (the _membrana tympaniformis_), formed of the membranous wall of the bronchus. The latter membrane is highly developed in singing birds, and still more so in speaking birds, and it can render the first-mentioned membrane (with which it is connected) tense when made to vibrate. In some birds the inferior larynx has as many as five muscles, in others none. It is wanting altogether in vultures. It will be seen that the two membranes correspond to the vocal chords in the mammalia, sounds being produced by the vibration of their margins. The various notes are caused by changes in the degree of tension of the membranes, by differences in the force of the air-current, and by changes in the length and degree of tension of the trachea and other parts. The range of the voice in birds is usually within an octave, but may be much greater.

Serpents have no vocal chords, and their hiss is the result of breath being forcibly driven through a soft glottis. Frogs have no trachea, so that their larynx opens into the bronchial tubes; but the loudness of the croaking of male frogs is due to the distension of two membranous sacs at the sides of the neck. Some frogs have membranous vocal chords: others two reed-like bodies, the anterior ends of which are fixed, while the posterior ends looking into the bronchi are free.

We must wait for the microphone to confute or confirm the statement of M. Langlois, of Freiburg, that ants communicate with one another by means of audible sounds. The recent observations of Sir John Lubbock seem to show the contrary. At all events, the sounds produced by most insects are produced externally and not internally. The stridulation of the cricket or grasshopper is made by rubbing certain file-like organs against the edges of membranous drums on the wings. The pitch of the sounds produced by the cricket is high, consisting of 4,096 vibrations per second. The shriek of the death’s-head moth is produced by the friction of parts connected with the mouth and proboscis, the buzzing of flies and gnats by the rapid vibration of two rudimentary posterior wings called _halteres_. The humming of humble-bees, beetles, and the like is due to the passage of the air through the spiracles.

Fish, with few exceptions, have no special sonorous apparatus. The noise they make when taken out of the water is caused by the sucking or flapping movements of their mouth or gill coverings. It is possible that the air-bladder opening into the pharynx which is possessed by some fish, may enable them to emit sounds.

APPENDIX II. TO CHAPTER IV.

THE ALPHABETS OF PRINCE L-L. BONAPARTE (MR. A. J. ELLIS) AND MR. H. SWEET.

Prince L-L. Bonaparte’s Alphabet, as edited (and amplified) by Mr. A. J. Ellis in palæotype (“Early English Pronunciation,” pp. 1293-1307, and 1352-1357).

THE VOWELS

(_as heard in European languages only_).

1. a (in _fAther_). 2. a⸲ (in Gaelic _math_, “good”). 3. aʌ (in Fr. _dent_, Port. _lã_). 4. Ǝ (in Eng. _thE book_). 5. `a⸲ (in Dan. _mand_, “man”). 6. ah (in Eng. _ass_). 7. ə (in Eng. _charActer_). 8. æ (in Eng. _man_). 9. aʌ (in Port. _cAma_). 10. ɐ (in Eng. _pOllute_). 11. _œ_ (in Gael. _laogh_ “calf”). 12. _œ_⸲ (in Gael. _mAOdal_, “tripe”). 13. ᴔ (in Eng. _bird_). 14. ɹ (in Eng. _ear_) 15. _ɹ_ (not found) 16. ’h (in Eng. _opEN_, Germ. _muttER_). 17. ‘’h (not found). 18. ‘h (in Dan. _hat’_, Eng. _bit’_). 19. əh (not found) 20. _ɑ_ (in Fr. _diAble_). 21. Œ (in Roumanian _tatĂ_, “father.”) 22. E₁ (not found) 23. E (in Finnic _pää_, “the head”). 24. e₁ (not found) 25. _e_₁ (in Fr. _père_, Germ. _fett_). 26. _e_₁⸲ (in Gael. _freumh_, “root”). 27. _e_₁ʌ (in Fr. _vin_). 28. e (in Eng. _bed_). 29. _e_ (in Fr. _dé_, Germ. _Ehre_). 30. _e_ʌ (in Port. _sENha_, “sign”). 31. e¹ (in Port. _cEar_, “to sup”). 32. _e_¹ (in Dan. _een_, “one”). 33. _y_ (in Welsh _dyn_, “man”). 34. Y₂ (in Polish _bYli_, “they have been”). 35. _i_ (in Eng. _milk_). 36. _i_¹ (in Eng. _fill_). 37. i (in Eng. _bee_). 38. i⸲ (in Gael. _sINNsreadh_, “ancestors”). 39. iʌ (in Port. _sim_, “yes”). 40. ’j (in Eng. _gate_). 41. ɔ (in Eng. _God_). 42. ɔh (not found) 43. A (in Eng. _all_). 44. _a_h (not found). 45. o₁ (not found). 46. _o_₁ (in Germ. _Gott_). 47. _o_₁⸲ (in Gael. _didOmhnaich_, “Sunday”). 48. _o_₁ʌ (in Fr. _bon_). 49. o (in Eng. _more_). 50. oh (in Esthonian _wõlg_, “debt”). 51. _o_ (in Eng. _Omit_). 52. _o_ʌ (in Port. _sOnho_, “dream”). 53. _o_h (not found). 54. _u_h (in Port. _o_, “the”). 55. _o_¹ (in Dan. _stor_, “great”). 56. u₁ (in Finnish _Suomi_). 57. _u_ (in Eng. _book_). 58. u (in Eng. _pool_). 59. u⸲ (in Gael. _déanADH_, “doing”). 60. uʌ (in Port. _um_, “one”). 61. ’_w_ (in Eng. _home_). 62. _u_¹ (in Swed. _skuld_, “cause”). 63. u¹ (in Lap. _jUkkim_, “I parted”). 64. U (in Swed. _hus_, “house”). 65. y (in Fr. _lune_, Germ. _brÜder_). 66. yʌ (in Basque _sü̃ hĩa_, “son-in-law”; Albanian _hü̃ni_, “he entered”). 67. I (in Dan. _nYde_, “to enjoy”). 68. æh (in Lap. _buÖrre_, “good”). 69. _ə_h (in Fr. _veuf_). 70. _ə_hʌ (in Fr. _un_). 71. œ (in Germ. _böcke_). 72. _ə_ (in Fr. _feu_). 73. _ə_ʌ (not found). 74. œ¹ (in Gael. _keayn_, “sea”). 75. _ə_¹ (in Swed. _sYster_). 76. ’l (in Bohemian _vlk_, “wolf”). 77. ’r (in Bohemian _prst_, “finger”).

CONSONANTS.

_Labials._

_He._[223]

78. p[224] (in Eng. _pea_). 79. pȷ (in Kasikumuk _p’orun_, “glass”). 80. pp (in Italian coppa). 81. pꞁh (in Bav. Germ. _pfard_). 82. ⌊pꞁh (in Thush _p`e_, “side”). 83. wh (in Eng. _which_). 84. pj (in Pol. _gap_, “lounger”). 85. p_w_ (in Fr. _pois_). 86. p_w_j (in Fr. _puits_).

_Se._[225]

87. b (in Eng. _bee_). 88. bȷ (in Kasikumuk _b’ar_, “pond”). 89. bb (in Ital. _gobba_). 90. ‘p (in Saxon Germ.). 91. w (in Eng. _wine_). 92. bj (in Pol. _jedwaB_, “silk”). 93. b_w_ (in Fr. _bois_). 94. b_w_j (in Fr. _buis_).

_Ne._[226]

95. m (in Eng. _me_). 96. mh (in Eng. _tempt_). 97. mm (in Ital. _fiamma_). 98. mȷ (in Kas. _’maq_, “thirst”). 99. b⸲ (in Westmoreland _sebm_, “seven”). 100. w⸲ (in Erse _saṀrad_, “summer”). 101. mj (in Polish _karM_, “feeding”). 102. m_w_ (in Fr. _moi_). 103. m_w_j (in Fr. _muid_).

_Hc._[227]

104. ph (whispered bh; ? in Greek φ).

_Sc._[228]

105. bh (in Spanish _haba_). 106. bh_w_ (Dutch _w_).

_Ht._[229]

107. prh (whispered brh).

_St._[230]

108. brh (made by children with the lips). 109. ɯ (in Eng. _veRy_). 110. ɹ_w_ (in Eng. _our_ occ.).

_Labio-Dentals._

_He._

111. P (not found).

_Se._

112. B (lower lip against the teeth).

_Hc._

113. f (in Eng. _foe_). 114. ff (in Ital. _schiaffo_). 115. _f_ (not found). 116. ·fh (not found). 117. fj (in Guernsey _fyaïz_, “flee ye”). 118. f_w_ (in Fr. _foie_). 119. f_w_j (in Fr. _fuite_).

_Sc._

120. v (in Eng. _vine_). 121. vȷ (in Kas. _‘warta_, “plate”). 122. vv (in Ital. _avventura_). 123. ⌊v (in Dan. _KjöBenhavn_). 124. _v_ (not found). 125. ‘v (Dutch _v_). 126. vH (not found). 127. vj (in Pol. _paW_, “peacock”). 128. v_w_ (in Fr. _voix_).

_Nc._[231]

129. v⸲ (in Erse _feiṀ_,“mild”).

_Labio-Linguals._

_He._

130. ˎp (in Abasian _aTà_, “hay”). 131. ˎpˎp (in Ab. _yTa_, “sit down”).

_Se._

132. ˎb (in Ab. _aDỳ_, “field”).

_Sl._[232]

133. ˎlw (in Gaelic _Lamh_, “hand”).

_Dentals._

_He._

134. ˎˎt (in Erse _Talain_, “earth”). 135. ˎˎtj (in Erse _tirm_, “dry”).

_Se._

136. ˎˎd (in Erse _donn_, “brown”). 137. ˎˎdj (in Erse _dia_, “God”).

_Hc._

138. th (in Eng. _thin_). 139. c (not found).

_Sc._

140. dh (in Eng. _then_). 141. _c_ (not found).

_Hl._[233]

142. Ʇh (not found). 143. Ʇ (in Manx _ooyL_, “apple”).

_Alveolo-Dentals._

_Hc._

144. c (in West Nyland Finnish _metsä_, “forest”). 145. ⸲th (in Ital. _viZio_).

_Sc._

146. _c_ (in Albanian _Zot_, “lord”). 147. ⸲dh (in Span. _liD_).

_Double Alveolars._

_Hc._

148. ˎs (in Ital. _lo Zio_). 149. ˎsˎs (in Ital. _pazzo_). 150. .ˎs (in Ab. _aca_, “granary”). 151. ɾ̣ɾ̣ (in Ab. _aC´abyrg_, “truth”). 152. .ɾ̣ (in Ab. _ácá_, “wild cherry”). 153. .ɾ̣ȷ (in Kas. _čabre_, “much”). 154. ˎsj (in Pol. _siaC´_, “to sow”). 155. ˎs_w_ (in Abasian _aC´a_, “apple”). 156. .ˎsw (in Ab. _ac`_, “ox”).

_Sc._

157. ˎz (in Ital. _lo zelo_). 158. ˎzˎz (in Ital. _rozzo_). 159. ˎzj (in Pol. _jedz´_, “go”). 160. ˎz_w_ (in Ab. _az´y_, “some one”).

_Alveolars._

_He._

161. ˎt (in Fr. _tas_). 162. ˎtȷᴶ (in Kas. _t’ai_, “colt”). 163. ˎtˎt (in Ital. _matto_). 164. tꞁh (in Dan. _til_, “to”). 165. tȷꞁh (in Kas. _ja’t‘olṣa_, “red”). 166. ⌊tꞁh (in Thush _t‘uix_, “salt”). 167. ˎtj (in Russ. _poot’_, “way”). 168. ˎt_w_ (in Fr. _toi_). 169. ˎt_w_j (in Fr. _étui_).

_Se._

170. ˎd (in Fr. _doux_). 171. ˎdȷ (in Kas. _d’oxlu_, “freshness”). 172. ˎdˎd (in Ital. _Iddio_). 173. ‘d (in Saxon). 174. ˎdj (in Russ. _loshad’_, “horse”). 175. ˎd_w_ (in Fr. _doigt_). 176. ˎd_w_j (in Fr. _conduire_).

_Ne._

177. ˎn (in Fr. _nain_). 178. ˎnȷ (in Kas. _n’ak_, “blue”). 179. ˎnˎn (in Ital. _canna_, “reed”). 180. d⸲ (in Irish _bean_, “woman”). 181. ˎnj (in Russ. _lên’_, “tench”). 182. ˎn_w_ (in Fr. _noix_). 183. ˎn_w_j (in Fr. _nuit_).

_Hc._

184. s (in Eng. _so_). 185. ss (in Ital. _cassa_). 186. sȷsȷ (in Kas. _ṣ’ât_, “hour”). 187. sH (= the Arab. ص). 188. sj (in Pol. _koś_,“mow”). 189. s_w_ (in Fr. _soie_). 190. s_w_j (in Fr. _suie_).

_Sc._

191. z (in Eng. _zeal_). 192. zz (in Hungarian _azzal_, “with the”). 193. .z (in Ab. _zaqa_, “how much”). 194. zj (in Pol. _leź_, “go up”). 195. z_w_ (in Fr. _rasoir_). 196. z_w_j (in Fr. _dix-huit_).

_Nc._

197. zh⸲ (not found).

_Hl._

198. l_w_h (not found).

_Sl._

199. ˎl (in Fr. _lait_). 200. lȷ (in Kas. _l’ap_, “shine”). 201. ˎlˎl (in Ital. _stella_). 202. ˎlj (in Russ. _korol’_, “king”). 203. ˎl_w_ (in Fr. _loi_). 204. ˎl_w_j (in Fr. _lui_).

_St._

205. ˎr (in Span. _rey_).

_Whishes (Chuintantes)._

_Hc._

206. sh (in Eng. _she_). 207. shȷ (in Kas. _š’arabuču_ [_š’_], “fellow-countryman”). 208. shsh (in Ital. _pesce_). 209. shȷshȷ (in Kas. _ṣ̆’oldi_, “green”). 210. .sh (in Ab. _aša_, “rope”). 211. shj (in Russ. _vosh’_, “louse”). 212. sh_w_ (in Fr. _choix_). 213. sh_w_j (in Fr. _chuinter_). 214. sh_w_sh_w_ (in Ab. _aṣ̌`_, “plane-tree”). 215. .sh_w_ (in Ab. _aš`_, “door”).

_Sc._

216. zh (in Eng. _pleasure_). 217. zhzh (in Hung. _a’zseb_, “the pocket”). 218. .zh (in Ab. _aža_, “hare”). 219. zhj (in Basque [Soule] _jin_, “come”). 220. zh_w_ (in Fr. _joie_). 221. zh_w_zh_w_ (in Ab. _aẓ̌`_, “cow”). 222. .zh_w_ (in Ab. _ž`aba_, “ten”). 223. zh_w_j (in Fr. _juin_).

_Ht._

224. rsh (in Polish _przez_, “through”).

_St._

225. rzh (not found).

_Palatal Whishes._

_Hc._

226. ˎsh (in Ital. _pece_). 227. ˎshˎsh (in Ital. _caccia_). 228. .ˎsh (in Ab. _ača_, “quail”). 229. ɾ̣hɾ̣h (in Ab. _ač̣´y_, “mouth”). 230. .ɾ̣h (in Ab. _ač`y_, “horse”). 231. .ɾ̣hȷ (in Kas. _č’an_, “early”). 232. ˎshj (in Russ. _noch’_, “night”). 233. ˎsh_w_ (in Louisiana Creole _choui_, “to cook”). 234. ˎsh_w_j (in Trinidad Creole _chouite_, “to cook”).

_Sc._

235. ˎzh (in Ital. _regio_). 236. ˎzhˎzh (in Ital. _maggio_). 237. ˎzhj (in Basque [Soule] _espundja_, “sponge”). 238. ˎzh_w_j (in Louisiana Creole _néjuî_, “needle”).

_Double Palatals._

_Hc._

239. ʇs (in Basque _otso_, “wolf”).

_Palatals._

_Hc._

240. t (in Eng. _tea_). 241. ⌊t (in Dan. _huset_, “the house”). 242. Jh (in Eng. _hue_). 243. tj (in Hung. _tyúk_, “hen”). 244. tjtj (in Hung. _a’ tyúk_, “the hen”).

_Se._

245. d (in Eng. _do_). 246. dd (in Sardinian _beddu_, “beautiful”). 247. ⌊d (in Span. _lado_). 248. ⌊d⌊d (in Jutland _Gud_, “God”). 249. J (in Eng. _yet_). 250. JJ (in Hung. _ejjel_, “night”). 251. dj (in Hung. _gyöngy_, “pearl”). 252. djdj (in Hung. _a’ gyöngy_, “the pearl”).

_Ne._

253. n (in Eng. _no_). 254. nh (in Eng. _tent_). 255. J⸲ (in Basque [Roncal] _azkoỹa_, “badger”). 256. nj (in Fr. _digne_). 257. njnj (in Hung. _a’ nyul_, “the hare”). 258. njh (not found).

_Hc._

259. ˏs (in Sp. Basque _su_, “fire”).

_Sc._

260. ˏz (in Port. _zagal_, “young shepherd”).

_Hl._

261. lh (in Eng. _felt_). 262. ljh (in Saintongeais _glas_, “knell”).

_Sl._

263. l (in Eng. _low_). 264. lj (in Ital. _figlio_). 265. ljlj (in Hung. _melly_, “which”).

_Ht._

266. ↋ʰ (not found). 267. _h_ (= Arab. ح). 268. _h_ȷ (in Kas. _ḥ’olu_, “orphan”). 269. _h_ȷ_h_ȷ (in Kas. _ḥ´i_, “pigeon”). 270. rH (in Kas. _ḥ˘aba_, “fish”).

_St._

271. r (in Eng. “_ray_”). 272. rr (in Ital. _terra_). 273. ↋ (= Arab. ع). 274. rj (in Lusatian _wuhor´_, “eel”). 275. r_w_ (in Fr. _roi_). 276. r_w_j (in Fr. _bruit_).

_Ultra-Palatals._

The whole of this set of letters comes originally from Lepsius’s Alphabet, and “must be considered, therefore, very doubtful.”

_He._

277. T (in Sansk.).

_Se._

278. D (in Sansk.).

_Ne._

279. N (in Sansk.). 280. Nh (in Dravidian).

_Hc._

281. _s_h (in Sansk.). 282. Thh (in Drav.).

_Sc._

283. _z_h (theoretical). 284. Dhh (in Drav.).

_Hl._

285. Lh (in Drav.).

_Sl._

286. L (in Sansk.).

_Ht._

287. Rh (theoretical).

_St._

288. R (in Sansk.). 289. Rhh (in Drav.).

_Gutturo-Labials._

_He._

290. _p_ (in Peruvian). 291. wjh (in Ab. _ih´y_, “speak”).

_Se._

292. _b_ (not found). 293. wj (in Fr. _huile_).

_Hc._

294. fh (not found).

_Sc._

295. vh (not found).

_Gutturo-Dentals._

_Hc._

296. _t_h (in Surgut Ostiak _kat’_, “day”). 297. _t_h_t_h (in S. Ost. _wat’t’ak_, “without”). 298. _t_hj (in Low S. Ost. _sit̄’a_, “gunpowder”). 299. _t_hj_t_hj (not found).

_Sc._

300. _d_h (in S. Ost. _âd’an_, “morning”). 301. _d_h_d_h (in S. Ost. _wad’d’ax_, “without”). 302. _d_hj (in High S. Ost. _sid̄’a_, “gunpowder”). 303. _d_hj_d_hj (not found).

_Guttural Whishes._

_Hc._

304. ˏˏsh (in Tempiese Sardinian _la chjai_, “the key”). 305. ˏˏshˏˏsh (in Temp. Sard. _vecchju_, “old”). 306. ˏˏsh_w_j (in Picard _kyuir_, “leather”).

_Sc._

307. ˏˏzh_w_j (in Temp. Sard. _la ghjesgia_, “the church”). 308. ˏˏzh_w_jˏˏzh_w_j (in Temp. Sard. _ogghji_, “to-day”).

_Gutturo-Palatals._

_He._

309. _t_ (= Arab. ط). 310. tj (in Basque [Labourd] _ttorttoil_, “turtle-dove”).

_Se._

311. _d_ (= Arab. ض). 312. _d_j (in Basque [Labourd] _yaun_, “lord”).

_Ne._

313. _n_ (not found).

_Hc._

314. ˏ_s_ (not found). 315. _s_ (in Basque [Labourd] _su_, “fire”).

_Sc._

316. ˏ_z_ (not found). 317. _z_ (in Basque [Labourd] _Jesus_).

_Double Guttural._

_Hc._

318. ˏkh (in Gaelic _mac_, “son”).

_Gutturals._

_He._

319. k (in Eng. _key_). 320. kȷ (in Kas. _k’orn_, “nest”). 321. kk (in Ital. _bocca_). 322. kꞁh (in Upper Germ. _komm_). 323. kȷꞁh (in Kas. _k‘’ala_, “white”). 324. ⌊kꞁh (in Thush _k’ok_, “foot”). 325. Hh (in Germ. _hand_). 326. HhHh (in Hung. _ahhoz_, “thereto”). 327. H (in Eng. _hand_). 328. ; (= Arab. _hemza_). 329. kj (in Ital. _la chiave_). 330. kjkj (in Ital. _occhio_). 331. Hhj (in Florentine Ital. _la chiave_). 332. k_w_ (in Fr. _quoi_). 333. H_w_h (an ordinary whistle). 334. H_w_ (a voiced whistle). 335. k_w_j (in Fr. _biscuit_).

_Se._

336. g (in Eng. _go_). 337. gg (in Ital. _veggo_). 338. ‘g (in Ostiak _argem_, “I sing”). 339. H’_w_ (in Span. _huevo_). 340. gj (in Ital. _la ghianda_). 341. gjgj (in Ital. _ragghiare_). 342. g_w_ (in Fr. _goître_). 343. g_w_j (in Fr. _aiguille_).

_Ne._

344. q (in Eng. _singer_). 345. qh (in Eng. _sink_). 346. H‘h⸲ (in Scutari Albanian _halk_, “multitude”). 347. qj or qɈ (in Sanskr.)

_Hc._

348. kh (in Germ. _dach_). 349. x (existence doubtful). 350. khkh (in Sassarese Sard. _palchi_, “because”). 351. khȷkhȷ (in Kas. _x´’ot_, “shade”). 352. khH (not found). 353. kjh (in Germ. _milch_). 354. k_w_h (in Scotch _loch_).

_Sc._

355. gh (in Germ. _tage_). 356. _x_ (existence doubtful). 357. ghgh (in Sass. Sard. _olganu_, “organ”). 358. .gh (existence doubtful). 359. gjh (in Germ. _selig_). 360. g_w_h (in Germ. _auge_).

_Nc._

361. gh⸲h (in Avar _ẋonkodize_ [ẋ] “to snore”).

_Hl._

362. _l_h (not found). 363. lhh (in Welsh _llaw_, “hand”). 364. lhhj (not found). 365. _lw_h (not found).

_Sl._

366. _l_ (in Pol. _łamac_, “to break”). 367. _l_hh (theoretical voiced Welsh _ll_). 368. _l_hhj (not found). 369. _lw_ (not found).

_Hl._

370. krh (= Arab. خ). 371. ._r_h (not found).

_Sl._

372. grh (= Arab. غ). 373. .r (= Newcastle “burr”). 374. ⌊_r_ (in Jutland _var_, “was”). 375. _r_ (in Parisian _Paris_). 376. _rr_ (in Parisian _irregulier_).

_Ultra-Gutturals._

_He._

377. K (= Arab. ق). 378. Kȷ (in Kas. _q’apa_, “hat”).

_Sc._

379. G (not found). 380. G_w_ (not found).

_Ne._

381. Q (not found).

_Hc._

382. _k_h (in Dutch _nacht_). 383. _k_hȷ (in Kas. _x̣’ort_, “pear”). 384. ._k_h (in Kas. _x̣’ata_, “house”). 385. K_w_h (not found).

_Sc._

386. Gh (in Dutch _God_). 387. G_w_h (not found).

_Ht._

388. Ꞁh (not found).

_St._ 389.

Ꞁ (in Dan. _ret_, “right”). 390. ȴꞀ (in Dan. _var_, “was”).

J denotes palatalized or _mouillées_ characters, _w_ labialized or _veloutées_ characters, _w_j labio-palatalized or _mixtes_ characters, ⌊ a weakened consonant, a doubled letter or group of letters an emphasized consonant, a prefixed . a semi-emphasized consonant, prefixed ˎ an alveolarized or dentalized or “advanced” consonant, a prefixed ˏ a “retracted” consonant, and ȷ a semi-palatalized or semi-mouillée consonant.[234]

MR. SWEET’S NARROW ROMIC ALPHABET AND LIST OF SYMBOLS.[235]

1. a (in _father_). 2. ɐ (in _bat_). 3. _ɑ_ (broad a). 4. _ɒ_ (broad ɐ). 5. A } Ɐ } (varieties of ɐ). 6. æ (in _men_). 7. _əe_ (in _man_). 8. æh (in _turn_). 9. _əe_h (in _opener_). 10. b (in _bee_). 11. bh (German w). 12. bh_j_ (palatalized bh). 13. d (in _day_). 14. dh (in _then_). 15. dh_j_ (palatalized dh). 16. D (palatal d). 17. e (close e). 18. ə (French close eu). 19. _e_ (variety of open e). 20. _ə_ (variety of French open eu). 21. eh } _e_h } (German unaccented e). 22. f (in _fee_). 23. g (in _go_). 24. gh (voiced kh). 25. gh_r_ (trilled gh). 26. gh_w_ (labialized gh). 27. g_j_ } G } (palatalized g). 28. h (general diacritic). 29. H (aspirate). 30. Hh (open glottis). 31. i (narrow i). 32. _i_ (wide i). 33. ih (Welsh u). 34. _i_h (wide ih). 35. j (in _you_). 36. jh (voiceless j). 37. jh_w_ (labialized jh). 38. kh (Scotch ch). 39. kh_r_ (trilled kh). 40. kh_w_ (labialized kh). 41. kH (aspirated k). 42. k_j_ } K } (palatalized k). 43. l (in _lee_). 44. lh (voiceless l). 45. L (palatal l). 46. Ꞁ (guttural l). 47. m (in _may_). 48. mh (voiceless m). 49. n (in _now_). 50. nh (voiceless n). 51. _n_ (nasality). 52. N (palatal n). 53. o (close o). 54. _o_ (open o). 55. oh (between o and ə). 56. _o_h (between _o_ and _ə_). 57. ɔ (open o in _all_). 58. ɔh (between ɔ and œ). 59. _ɔ_ (open o in _not_). 60. _ɔ_h (between _ɔ_ and _œ_). 61. œ (open French eu). 62. _œ_ (wide œ). 63. p (in _pay_). 64. ph (voiceless bh). 65. ph_j_ (palatalized ph). 66. pH (aspirated p). 67. q (in _sing_). 68. qh (voiceless q). 69. _q_ (French nasality). 70. r (in _red_). 71. _r_ (trilled letter). 72. r_r_ (trilled r). 73. rh (voiceless r). 74. rh_r_ (trilled rh). 75. r_j_ (palatalized r). 76. R (laryngal r). 77. Rh (voiceless R). 78. s (in _say_). 79. s_j_ (palatalized s). 80. sh (in _fish_). 81. sh_j_ (palatalized sh). 82. sh_w_ (labialized sh). 83. t (in _tea_). 84. th (in _thing_). 85. th_j_ (palatalized th). 86. tH (aspirated t). 87. T (palatal t). 88. u (narrow u). 89. uh (Swedish u). 90. _u_ (English u). 91. _u_h (wide uh). 92. v (in _vie_). 93. ʌ (denotes voice). 94. ʌh } ‘Ʌ } (whisper). 95. w (in _we_). 96. wh (in _why_). 97. _w_ (labialization). 98. x (glottal catch). 99. y (French u). 100. _y_ (wide y). 101. z (in _zeal_). 102. zh (in _rouge_). 103. (a)I (denotes length). 104. a II (extra length). 105. a· (stress or force). 106. a¨ (extra stress). 107. a: (half stress). 108. a̿ (level force). 109. a᷾ (increasing force). 110. a͐ (diminishing force). 111. — (level tone). 112. / (rising tone). 113. \ (falling tone). 114. ∨ (falling and rising tone). 115. ∧ (rising and falling tone). 116. [i] (glide). 117. ‘z (whispered s). 118. aˏ (inner or away from the teeth). 119. aˎ (outer). 120. r† (protruded). 121. r⸸ (inverted or cerebral). 122. * (denotes simultaneity of two sounds it comes between). 123. eˡ (raised tongue). 124. oˡ (narrowed lip-opening). 125. — (beginning of sound-group on weak stress).