172 S. Porter on the Vowel Elements in Speech. 
ploy. In all our modern tongues we have many more than the 
three original vowels of the Sanskrit and the Gothic,—though 
we can hardly doubt that these three admitted severally consid- 
erable latitude of variation. In English, we recognize as 
distinct many more than we have separate characters for; while 
over and above these, we may notice slight variations, as due to 
the influence of associated consonants, or in connection with 
varying accentuation or emphasis; and, in the pronunciation of 
different persons, and even of the same person at different times, 
we observe appreciable shades of difference in what will be 
usually regarded as the same vowel. 
n all the vowels alike, the sound proceeds from the larynz, 
being struck out upon the chords of the glottis, which, when 
drawn near each other to the proper interval and duly con- 
tracted, are set into vibration by air forced through from the 
lungs; the sound is then modified into this or that vowel by 
reverberation through a passage of this or that description. In 
Sound produced in the larynx, intonated or aspirated, does 
not always take the form of a vowel. So it does not in the 
sound (hm) made in clearing the throat; in which case it under- 
goes a peculiar modification, but makes no vowel. Laryngeal 
. The larynx opens directly into the pharynx, which is 4 
musculo-membranous sac through which the breath from the 
that it is, moreover, essentially modified by varying adjustments 
of the velum,* so far my theory involves, indeed, a modification 
of the pharynx itself, and one that differs more or less for differ- 
ent vowels. That there is an action of the fore-part of the 
* See the positions of the soft- iagram this mat- 
ter, my independett <cmhne Ee shaping not aera sg oe those 
established by the elaborate and ingenious experiments of Dr. Gostteinh, of Viens. 
