96 



NATURE 



[October 4, 191 7 



EXPERIMENTAL PHONETICS AND ITS 

 UTILITY TO THE LINGUIST.^ 



THE art of speaking a foreign language demands 

 (among other things) an ability to perform all 

 kinds of difficult movements with the tongue and other 

 parts of the speech-mechanism. Such ability may be 

 acquired by the learner, if he is provided with precise 

 instructions as to what he must do. It is the function 

 of the phonetician to supply these instructions. 



Instructions as to how to pronounce must, in order 



Palatogram of j 



Fig. 3. — Palatogram of the 

 English sound of sh. 



to be efficacious, be based on accurate analysis of the 

 pronunciation. Many of the facts of pronunciation can 

 be ascertained by direct observation (by auditive, visual, 

 tactile, and muscular sensation) on the part of those 

 who have a specially trained ear and a highly developed 

 Control over their vocal organs. These methods are 

 extremely important, and no satisfactory analysis of a 

 language can be made without them. Other methods, 

 however, may be used to supplement these, namely, 



mechanical analysis 

 by means of a 

 specially designed 

 apparatus. Analysis 

 of this kind con- 

 stitutes the branch 

 of phonetics known 

 as experimental 

 phonetics. It is 

 with these mechan- 

 ical aids to analysis 

 >that we are here 

 concerned. 



It will be well to 

 give first a few 

 examples to show 

 how information re- 

 garding tongue- 

 positions may be 

 ascertained experi- 

 mentally. 



One way of get- 

 ting information is 

 that known as 

 palatography. _ 1 1 

 consists in using a 

 special kind of arti- 

 fi c i a 1 palate, in 

 order to find out 

 what parts of the 

 roof of the mouth 

 are touched by the 

 tongue in the production of different speech-sounds. 



The requirements of this special type of artificial 

 palate are that it should be very thin, should fit very 

 accurately, should be dark coloured, and should cover 

 the whole of the hard palate, alveolars, and the under- 

 side of the upper front teeth. Such palates may be 

 made of vulcanite, or metal, or other substances. 



When the palate is to be used, it • is dusted over 



1 Abridged from a discourse delivered at the Royal Institution on 

 February g by Mr. Dadiel .J< 



Tig. 3. — Atkinson's mouth-measurer. ACB, 

 tube ; D, handle of wire ; E, tooth-stop ; 

 FGH, handle. 



with powdered chalk; it is then inserted into the 

 mouth; the sound to be studied is pronounced, and the 

 palate is taken out. It will be found that the chalk 

 has been removed by the tongue at every point which 

 the tongue has touched in articulating the sound. So 

 the areas touched by the tongue appear dark, while 

 the parts of the palate which are not touched remain 

 white. 



The shapes of the dark areas may be recorded by 

 photography if desired, but it is generally sufficiently 

 accurate, and a good deal more convenient, simply to 

 copy the dark areas on to a previously prepared outline 

 diagram of the palate. (The re- 

 sult is, of course, a projection of 

 the true shape.) The finished 

 diagrams are called palatograms. 

 Palatograms will be found t-o cor- 

 roborate observations of tongue- 

 positions made by other methods 

 Figs. I and 2 are examples of 

 palatograms. 



We will now turn to methods 

 of ascertaining the shapes. 

 \ assumed by the tongue in the fig. 4--Atkinsons mouth- 

 articulation of speech-sounds, and measurer in position. 



more particularly the shapes of a _ 



section of the tongue down the mesial line, and their 



relations to the centre-line of the palate. 



One method of ascertaining these shapes was in- 

 vented by Dr. E. A. Meyer, of Stockholm. It consists 

 in using an artificial palate down the middle line of 

 which are fixed some lead threads which hang vertic- 

 ally. These threads are of such a thickness that the 

 pressure from the tongue will bend them when a 

 speech-sound is produced; but they are strong enough 

 to remain in the position into which they are pushed. 

 So that if the palate is taken out of the mouth after 

 pronouncing a speech-sound, the lead wires show the 



Fig. 5.— Tongue-positions of the English vowels in lath 

 and ieai as ascertained by Atkinson's mouth-measurer. 



outline of the tongue-position compared with that of 

 the palate. There is a means of transferring these 

 outlines to paper. 



A second apparatus for obtaining similar results is 

 the "mouth-measurer" invented by H. W. Atkinson.^ 

 There is a tube of the shape ACB, shown in Fig. 3, 

 and inside the tube is a wire which can be pushed 

 along (by means of the handle D) and made to project 

 to different lengths from the end of the tube. A pro- 

 jecting piece of metal, called a "tooth-stop" (E), <s 



'^ Obtainable from Mr. H. W. Atkinson, West View, Eastbury Avenu«, 

 Northwood, Middlesex. (Price 51. 6rf. for set of two mouth-measurers, with 

 accessories.) 



NO. 2501, VOL. 100] 



