LANGUAGE. 



his great work (published 1833-52) on the Com- 

 parative Grammar of the Sanscrit, Zend, Greek, 

 Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavonian, Gothic, and 

 German. In this work it is shewn that the gram- 

 matical forms the endings of the declensions 

 and conjugations, &c. and the methods by which 

 words are built up from other words, are funda- 

 mentally the same in all ; these tongues, therefore, 

 must have been inherited by all from a common 

 source. This formed the foundation of the science 

 of language, and the edifice has since been rising 

 steadily under the hands of quite an army of 

 workers. The method of investigation, thus in- 

 vented and perfected in the field of the Aryan 

 tongues, has been applied to other languages, and 

 considerable progress has been made in forming 

 the principal varieties of human speech into 

 groups, which, again, fall into subdivisions or 

 branches, according to the different degrees of 

 nearness in the relationship. 



We will now proceed to give some account of 

 the kind of facts and reasonings by which these 

 results are arrived at. 



THE VOICE. 



A necessary preliminary to the study of speech 

 itself is that of the organs that produce it. They 

 consist of the same organs that serve for breathing, 

 chewing, and swallowing, with certain additions 

 and modifications. The sounds that compose 

 speech are made out of emitted breath by means 

 of mechanical modifications. As emitted breath 

 proceeds from the lungs, that organ, together with 

 the chest which compresses it, and the windpipe, 

 may be considered as the fundamental organ of 

 speech the bellows. When the breath issues 

 gently and without constraint, as in ordinary 

 breathing, it is almost noiseless ; by constricting 

 the throat, and thus roughening the stream, we 

 give it that kind of audibility known as a whisper. 

 But in speaking aloud, the breath is chiefly 

 sonorous. This quality it receives in the larynx, 

 a kind of cartilaginous box between the windpipe, 

 or trachea, and the throat. It is a complex 

 structure ; but the essential parts for our purpose 

 are two membranous bands, called the vocal chords, 

 running parallel from before, backwards, across 

 the glottis or opening of the larynx into the throat. 

 In a state of rest there is a considerable opening 

 between the chords, and the air passes freely ; but 

 when we wish to speak or sing aloud, the chords 

 become tightened, their edges approach, the 

 stream of air makes them vibrate, and a sound is 

 produced of the nature of a musical note or tone, 

 on the same principle as in a reed instrument. 

 The pitch of the sound depends mainly on the 

 tension of the parts ; and by varying this tension, 

 a series of musical notes is produced. But it is 

 not this kind of modification that produces articu- 

 late speech. For this purpose, the sounds pro- 

 duced in the larnyx, whether of high or low pitch, 

 must be further modified by the throat, the tongue, 

 the teeth, the lips, the nose, which constitute, there- 

 fore, the remaining organs of speech. 



Although loud speech is mostly made up of 

 vocalised breath or tones, yet the indistinct sounds, 

 or rather noises called breathings, of which whis- 

 pering is made up, enter largely into its texture. 

 By careful attention to the movements of the 

 organs we are sensible of when producing the 



several sounds, and by means of the laryngo- 

 scope, an instrument which lays bare what takes 

 place in the larynx, much has been done to render 

 the mechanism of the elementary sounds of speech 

 plain. We can only give the results in outline. 



When the mouth is sufficiently open to allow 

 the breath to flow without obstruction or roughen- 

 ing, the air is moulded into the various qualities 

 of vowel-sound. When the channel of the mouth 

 is obstructed so as to stop the current of breath, 

 or so narrowed at any part as to produce a rushing 

 or hissing sound, consonant-sounds are produced. 

 Vowels. The fundamental vowel may be con- 

 sidered as the open, Italian a, heard m. father; it 

 seems to issue full as it comes from the throat, 

 without any special movement in the oral pas- 

 sage. This fundamental sound becomes modified 

 into two divergent series, the one produced by the 

 tongue, the other by the lips. By raising the con- 

 vexity of the tongue a little towards the roof of the 

 mouth, the breath column becomes flattened or 

 thinned, and yields the vowel heard in an; still 

 greater degrees of convexity yield the e of ell, 

 and the a of ale; while the greatest degree possi- 

 ble, without actual contact or friction, yields the ee 

 of eel. In all this the lips take no share ; but 

 in the other series they are the active modifiers, 

 and the tongue is passive. When the aperture 

 of the lips is gradually contracted, the open ah is 

 converted successively into aw, the o of ore, the 

 o of no, and the oo of ooze. A third series of 

 vowels is formed by combining elevated positions 

 of the tongue and contracted positions of the lips, 

 or retracted positions of the tongue and expanded 

 positions of the lips. Of this labio-lingual series, 

 the German is the most contracted, and the 

 English sound heard in the word err the most 

 open. 



The following table shews the principal vowels 

 of each class : 



Close... 

 Medial.. 

 Open... 



Lingual. 



e(re) 

 ah. 



Labio-lingual. Labial 



t(rr) 



The possible modifications of the oral channel 

 are endless, and untraceably minute, as are the 

 shades of vowel-quality heard in dialects, and 

 among individual speakers. In English, there are 

 altogether thirteen established varieties, as heard 

 in the words eel, ill, ale, ell, an, ask, ah, err, up, all, 

 ore, old, ooze. Besides these, which a perfect 

 alphabet must represent, we have the diphthongal 

 sounds heard in the words isle, owl, oil, and the 

 asperated compound yoo the sound of the letter 

 in use which is often, but erroneously, supposed 

 to be a diphthongal voweL 



The Aspirate //".The letter h represents an 

 expulsive breathing, modified by the form of the 

 vocal element which follows it as in he, hay, 

 high, hoe, &c. in which the H will be observed to 

 have the quality of e, a, i, o, &c. but without the 

 laryngeal contraction, and consequent asperation 

 of the breath, which forms a whispered vowel. 



Consonants. The most characteristic of the 

 consonants are those that altogether stop the 

 emission of breath. When the tongue is raised 

 convexly against the back of the palate so as to 

 stop the breath, the separation of the parts is 

 accompanied by a percussive effect, represented 



