LAURA BRIDGEMAN. 9 



ticulate sounds. I once heard a colored preacher describing the torments of 

 future punishment. He rose, not ineloquently, from the description of one 

 anguish to another, when at last, carried away by uncontrollable excitement, he 

 merely uttered, for more than a minute, a succession of inarticulate sounds or 

 cries. 



Where, however, is the limit between articulate and inarticulate sounds.'' 

 What is articulation ? 



I beheve that, unconsciously, we generally consider sounds articulate when, 

 while we hear them, the mind can spell or trace them with our accustomed 

 alphabet. The clucking tones of some savages, the pure guttural sounds of 

 others, and those sounds which we cannot even indicate by a name, appear to 

 the missionary, who first hears them, as inarticulate, because he does not hear in 

 them the elements, called letters, to which he is accustomed. Yet these sounds 

 belong to languages, and are undoubtedly articulate. William von Humboldt, 

 on the other hand, says that we cannot give any other definition of articulate 

 sounds than that they are those sounds which man intentionally utters in order 

 to convey something thought. This seems to me equally erroneous. Thoughts 

 and feelings may be expressed, though intentionally, without articulate sounds; 

 and, however true it be, that we almost always express oar thoughts by articu- 

 late sounds, still the meaning of the term Articulation must be sought first of all 

 in the sound itself Now we can give no other definition of an articulate 

 sound than that it is an unbroken emission of a sound which is composed of 

 those elements for which we have not even a befitting name when uttered, but 

 which, when written, are called letters, and which are exclusively belonging to 

 the human organs of speech. Such sounds are called articulate, because their 

 succession divides or articulates the human speech into one-sounded parts — 

 into joints or single emissions, called syllables. These distinct sounds, their 

 combinations and repetitions, make it possible for man to have a phonetic lan- 

 guage, or a system of sounds by which he can convey ideas, and, so far, there 

 exists the closest connexion between Reflection and Articulation, between 

 Thought and Word; but there can be articulation without distinct thought or in- 

 tended conveyance of ideas, as was the case m that remarkable instance of the 

 sound Titnoss, of which mention will be made in a future note. 



Neither these, nor any remarks contained in the present memoir, have been 

 made to deny the close connexion between thought and word. So soon as 

 man has a distinct idea, he feels the yearning to speak it out, and if he has a 

 distinct idea of a single thing he longs to name it. This seems to be the chief 

 meaning of the 19th verse of the second chapter of Genesis. The necessity and 

 longing to name animals is placed thus early in the history of the creation, and 

 this implanted yearnmg is expressed in the remarkable line which says that the 

 Creator led the animals to Adam "fo see what he would call them.'''' By a 

 natural transposition, words are ascribed to animals so soon as we imagine 

 them with distinct thoughts similar to our own, as the early fable shows. I was 

 looking lately at a negro who was occupied in feeding young mocking birds by 

 Art. H.— 2 



