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]