Introduction to the science of language, Volume 1 (of 2)

by A. H. Sayce

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]