Physiology. — "Contributions to an e.rperiinenta/ phonetic investigation 

 of the Dutch I(in(/U(((je. 1. 1'he short o" . ^). By Miss L. Kaiskr. 

 (Communicated bv Prof. G. van Ri.inberk). 



(Communicated at the meeting of September 29, 1923). 



When listening carefully to the pronunfiation of the "o" in closed 

 syllables in Dutch, we perceixe that — apart from the influence 

 which all sounds undergo tVoni preceding and following vowels or 

 consonants — two comjilelely different ways of pronunciation can 

 be distinguished '). 



One of these two pronunciations is heard in words like : kok, tot, 

 hoi; the other in words like pop, iiot, vol, hond. At the suggestion 

 of my former master Dr. Pr.OM?, I have fried to go further into 

 this question. 



1 first tried lo determine experimentally this difference, suggested 

 by linguistic feeling and observed by simple hearing. 



Experimental phonetic iiaalysis of the speecJi movements. 



Several methods used in experimental phonetics were consecutively 

 applied in order lo determine the essential movements and positions 

 of the vocal organs during I he pronouncing of o and o »). In doing 

 so I chiefly made use of one trial person, while the results were 

 afterwards tested to those obtained with other speakers. 



1. Observation and measuring of the mouth opening while pronounc- 

 ing different sounds proved that in this I'espect a, o, oo, o, oe form 

 a series in which the mouthopening gradually decreases, the height 



1) From investigations made at the Physiol. Lab. of the Amsterdam university 

 and at the Phonet. Lab. of the Czech university at Prague. 



-) I am aware of the fact that so called educated speech varies considerably 

 in different parts of this country. As far as I know facts mentioned here hold 

 good for the pronunciation of Amsterdam and surroundings and probably not or 

 only partially e. g. for that of the Hague and surroundings in which the o-sound 



o 



seems to predominate. 



'l The o of kok is represented by o. that of pop by o. 



o 



49 



Proceedings Royal Acad. Amsterdam. Vol. XXVI. 



