70 THE STUDY OF SPEECH CURVES. 



convex melody, beginning low, rising steadily to a maximum, and then 

 steadily falling. This form is varied for purposes of expression. For 

 example, an interrogative sentence requiring the answer "yes" or "no" 

 does not fall at the end, but rises higher than at the middle. Other 

 interrogative sentences keep the convex form, unless there is some special 

 change to produce expression. Exclamatory sentences retain in general 

 the convex form. Rehgious speech is characterized by comparative even- 

 ness of melody, by small convexity, and by general low pitch. In conver- 

 sation, characteristic variations are introduced to express irritation, sarcasm, 

 solemnity, etc. 



The melody plot for the beginning of the record of Depew's " Speech 

 on Forefathers' Day" is given in plate xii. It contains the words "My 

 ancestors, having arrived in this country among the early settlers, on the 

 one side in New York, on the other in New England, and, having fallen 

 in love and married in the old-fashioned way"; the sentence concludes 

 " without regard to race or creed, I can claim the membership of nearly 

 every one of the National Society." (The thought in the mind of the 

 speaker was evidently "relationship of nearly every member," etc.) 



The measurements and the plot were made as described above; the 

 scale for the X-axis in plate xii is 1mm. = 0.025s. A small scale is desirable 

 when the general course of melody is to be studied, as with the large scale 

 the eye gets no definite picture from the plot; for the same reason a 

 smooth Une is drawn among the dots instead of a zigzag from dot to dot. 



The first line of text in plate xii gives the phonetic letters, the left edge 

 of each being placed under the point of the curve at which its sound 

 began. The second line of text gives the words spoken; the third line 

 gives the numbers of the hues in the original plates of the speech curve. 



Confining ourselves on the present occasion to the general features 

 of the melody, we note that in the first phrase the melody rises somewhat 

 suddenly at the start according to the typical convex form for the Amer- 

 ican sentence. Instead, however, of completing the convexity it rises 

 suddenly at the end. The average tone is rather low. This form of 

 melody gives a special emotional character to the phrase, for which no 

 appropriate terms exist. In fact, our language is almost totally deficient 

 in terms for emotional expression, and we can define the expressive character 

 of the melody here only by saying that it is the one appropriate for a 

 solemn statement in an oration. The evenness of the melody gives it 

 solemnity, the steady rise through the phrase gives it pomposity, the 

 sudden rise at the end makes it somewhat brusque and challenging. As 

 only a few researches on speech melody have been made, little can be said 



