ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 61 



Porter maintains that the place of constriction is not on tongue 

 and palate, but between the back wall of the pharynx and the 

 tongue at or just above the epiglottis. It belongs, therefore, 

 not among the "back" vowels, but in a class by itself; and with 

 this agrees the fact that the more open form of this vowel is the 

 naturally long, while for all others the open, or "wide," is the 

 naturally short. It is important to notice that the guttural passage, 

 the fauces, may be so adjusted as to make a compartment distinct 

 from the fore part of the mouth, and separated on the anterior 

 edge of the ramus of the lower jaw. With the tongue for a floor, 

 pharyngeal muscles for side walls, the elastic curtain of the soft 

 palate for a roof, the muscular "pillars of the fauces" flanking the 

 entrance, we have a chamber highly dilatable and contractible and 

 adjustable in various ways. Prof. Porter holds that, for the Italian 

 a, the resonance chamber is limited to the compartment made by 

 this passage and the lower part of the pharynx. For the proper 

 "back" vowels, oo, o, and au, the soft palate is curved forward 

 toward the tongue, contracting the entrance and at the same time 

 the walls of the passage, and extending the resonance chamber 

 forward. 



The number of possible vowel-modifications being theoretically 

 . infinite, a perfect system will mark just so many distinctions as will 

 seem to be necessary and sufficient, considered as approximative 

 points of reference. 



Mr. Ward called attention to the similarity of the conclusions 

 reached by Prof. Porter to those which he had announced in a paper 

 read before the Society on the 21st of December last, and read a 

 paragraph from the abstract of that paper as printed in the "Abstract 

 of Transactions," (p. 106). He also testified to the general ration- 

 ality and correctness of the order in which Prof. Porter had 

 arranged the principal vowels with respect to the probable location 

 of the sound in the mouth and pharynx. He commented upon 

 Bell's chart representing his system of vowel sounds, and pointed 

 out a number of inconsistencies in it. 



