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BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL 



then, consists of a succession of continuants and stops and a physical 

 interpretation of speech consists, therefore, of a description of these 

 continuants and a discussion of the manner of joining the continuants 

 together either directly or by means of stops. 



Melodic Streams of Speech 

 As an example of how this analysis of speech may be made consider 

 the sentence, "Joe took father's shoe bench out," an oscillogram of 

 which is shown in Fig. 1.^ This silly sentence was chosen because it 



.J I Oi ' ' ' ' ' ' i 



■ ' 1 1 I 1 I I ' 2 



f ■ I ■ r - I 



R 





( 6 



2 7 SH 



'\-'-' 



.^.•H'V/V,'\/v'V^yV^/.A,,AA/^^/ 



V^A-,^■'-:V''A^■.,V-'K '.•\''-X"/-^"'x-."/-'^^-- '.■••' 



I I 



Fig. 1— Oscillogram: "Joe took Father's shoe bench out" — spoken. 



is used in our laboratory for making tests on the efficiency of telephone 



transmitters. This sentence together with its mate "She was waiting 



at my lawn" contains all of the fundamental sounds in the English 



iThis oscillogram and the others following it were taken with the new high 

 quality and high speed oscillograph which has recently been developed m our labora- 

 tory. It has an approximately uniform response for amplitude and phase from 20 

 to 10,000 cycles per second. 



