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.