S. Porter on the Vowel Elements in Speech. 315 
but a slight change to pass from one to the — favor the use 
of this vowel before the r,—as in cases just cited. Again, it 
often occurs that 7 gives way for a w in its ois : as Fr. autre 
from alter, sauf—salvus, faux—falsus, Et 2 chevaux for’ 
chevals, du—de le, au—a le, &e. ; North- -English awmost, awd, 
for almost, old; Scottish se hauf, tas shouther, &c. for 
hold, half, alms, shoulder, &c. In the English would, walk, t talk, 
&ec. the 1 ‘probably first gave way to a u pail which with the 
vowel preceding coalesced into one intermediate; and the / still 
heard in aliar, ball, &c. probably had influence in the change 
from an a toan a sound. It sometimes occurs that w is prefixed, 
the / being retained, of which would, from wolde, must have been 
originally ; an example. Now, as / is nota labial but a lingual 
consonant, this relation cannot be accounted for at all, if we re- 
foam 
ise] 
S 
lar] 
5 
i 
So 
‘0g 
ct 
= 
oO 
=~ 
= 
of 
ig 
“oO 
ct 
pete 
“2 
° 
ey 
et 
or 
oO 
uy 
o) 
o 
aq 
es 
fae) 
Lag 
o 
Ss 
oO 
BE 
® 
a 
ot 
3 
fa*) 
"S 
25 
2 
es 
S 
sonant. But, in certain other cases, ] passes into 7: as Italian 
piano from planus, fiamma—flamma, chiaro—clarus, ptacere— 
placere, — mare, bianco—Fr. blane— ng. é 
Here / follows a consonant and precedes a vowel,—and the 4 
whose sien reaches nearly to the wf of the tongue, results natu- 
rally from the weakened / in this 
The frequent intarihaags between male vowel w and the corso- 
nants w and v is of course to be explained by reference to labial 
action. 
In the case of the palatal, or gutturo-palatal, mutes, k, 9, ch, 
(tenuis, media, asper,) with the related sibilants feloded, the 
variation induced by association th different vowels is alto- 
gether accordant with our scheme. Thus, in German, the differ- 
ag articulation is Seer or me deep—near = ise: that 1 tte 
in the order of our groups, @, 4, 0, %, 3, a, So with 
(hard) in English, fae sound is really different ‘nt cori 
produced at a different place, in gape, gone, go, a girl, gar. 
Ish, gay, gear. In Egypt, we find it difficult, if we try, to gi 
the hard sound at all to the g, coming thus between two tr 
of the extreme anterior group. In words like kind, guile, 
guard, &e. a precession and partial softening of the consonant 
necessarily changes the succeeding vowel, in accordance with a 
quite prevalent style (Princ. of Pron. §7 2, Note), either by in- 
terposing a yowel from a forward group, or, as may with 
o 
‘as 
4 
