SIGNIFICANCE OF ERRORS IN SPEECH. 35 



Maintained I Meclianicall)'' 



nntil f Decreasing Effort - 



Imitation <! j ' Voluntarily 



which is Modified ^ 



1^ ]yy ( Differentiatively 



l^ Increasing Significance I 



[ Analogically 



The process of Decreasing Effort, operating mechanically, 

 is familiar under the term " phonetic decay." It is exempli- 

 fied by the loss of gutturals and aspirates in English where the 

 spelling attests their former sound, as k in kfiozc and /cfiec and 

 g/i in //g-/if and )uight. So also, where the spelling does 

 not suggest it, // has been dropped from loaf, Anglo-Saxon 

 hlaf, and from lean, A.-S. lilac nan. The same cause produces 

 the modern error of omitting the aspirate in ivhat, zvhcn, tv/iy, 

 zvhich, where and ivhether. This omission of the aspirate, 

 which is characteristic of English, is an error when extended 

 to the latter words, but is sanctioned in the former. 



Where a sonant, such as v or z, is brought immediately 

 before a surd, as /, such as would occur in the compound five- 

 ten, the difficulty in changing the tension of the vocal chords 

 between two consonants uttered together is relieved by doing 

 so between the preceding vowel and the consonants, where it 

 is naturally easy to do : ivt and izt become ift and isi. Hence, 

 five, in combination with a suffix beginning with /, appears as 

 fifteen and fifty, drive as drift, bereave as bereft. The same 

 cause produces colloquially, " we haf to," "he has to," and 

 jewsharp (the i' losing its z sound). So, conversely, we give 

 the same pronunciation to past and passed to avoid the effort 

 of making d sonant after the surd ss. Another such combi- 

 nation is dy or ty before a vowel. Here the position of the 

 vocal organs for the production of y is difficult to assume 

 quickly after that required for d or /. Effort is saved b}^ 

 accommodating tongue and ear to intermediate or compromised 

 positions and sounds. Thus, ty becomes ch and dy becomes j . 

 We still try to say natyure and literatyicre, where the u is really 

 yii long, but picture and future with the ch sound are now 



