1861.] 291 [Vowels. 



In addition to these three species of articulate sounds, there are 

 some sounds, viz., iv and v, which may be called vowel-consonants. 

 They form a sort of connecting link between the vowels and conso- 

 nants, as we shall see hereafter, § 7. 



[Rem. 1. — Concerning the application of the terra articulate sound 

 to the vowel, Professor Fowler says in his English Grammar, page 

 99, "A consonant is, in the strict sense, an articulation, or an articu- 

 late sound. But in use, the term is extended to vowel-sounds."] 



[Rem. 2. — The articulate sounds are usually divided by all lin- 

 guists and physiologists into two classes, viz., vowels and consonants, 

 and while the physiologists in general, including Dr. Briicke, make 

 no separate class at all of the sounds, r, I, m, and n, but class them 

 among the rest of the consonants, the linguists usually divide the 

 consonants into mutes and liquids; and the liquids are sometimes 

 called semi-vowels, as by Sextus Empirieus, and also in the Sanscrit^ 

 where, moreover, the vowel-consonants are included under this term. 

 My reason for making a separate class of the semi-vowels is, that, 

 although they agree in some important particulars with the conso- 

 nants, the history of language still shows that in the body of words 

 they display a very different power from the latter, making it ad- 

 visable to separate them entirely from them.] 



CHAPTER 11. 



ON VOWELS AND VOWEL-CONSONANTS. 



§ 4. In the formation of the vowels, the air, coming from the 

 lungs, is first rendered sonorous by striking against the contracted 

 inferior ligaments of the glottis ; it is afterwards modulated, in passing 

 out by the mouth, by changes wrought in the shape of the pharynx 

 and of the cavity of the mouth ; these modulations are what arc 

 called vowels. 



The changes wrought in the pharynx are of too interior a nature 

 to be distinctly noticed, but those which take place in the cavity of 

 the mouth can be very readily examined. They consist 1, in a 

 greater or lesser elevation of the middle portion of the tongue, either 

 in the anterior or posterior part of the mouth, and 2, in the enlarge- 

 ment, and greater or lesser contraction of the mouth. 



When the tongue is in its natural position, with none of its parts 



