1897-98.] Mr R. J. Lloyd on Consonant-Sounds. 
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On Consonant-Sounds. By R. J. Lloyd, D. Lit., M.A., Hon. 
Reader in Phonetics at the University College, Liverpool. 
(With a Plate.) 
(Read May 2, 1898.) 
The prime object of the following paper is to assist in decipher- 
ing the irregular traces which represent the consonants in a 
phonographic record, by investigating a priori , from the causes 
which create the consonant, the elements which probably lie 
entangled in the tracing to be interpreted. Accurately speaking, 
the difference between vowel and consonant is not one of nature, 
but of function. To define either vowel or consonant, it is 
necessary first to define a syllable. All human speech proceeds in 
rapid alternations of louder and softer, more sonorous and less 
sonorous. These alternations vary considerably in energy; any 
one of them may be twice as long, or twice as loud, or twice as 
sudden in its rise or in its fall as its next neighbour. They seem, 
in fact, to tend both in duration and in form and in energy rather 
to a successive change than to any regularity ; but each of them is 
a syllable. A syllable, then, is a wave of sonority, one climax of 
sound, with its accompanying rise and fall. Accurately speaking, 
this climax is a subjective one. It usually has its objective 
counterpart in a climax of amplitude, which again has its counter- 
part in a maximum of depth in the phonographic furrow ; but this 
is not always the case. Noise does not produce the cumulative 
subjective effects of tone ; it is therefore less loud than tone, when 
proceeding from vibrations of equal amplitude. Every speech- 
sound is a mixture of noise and tone ; in vowels the proportion of 
noise is very small, though never quite negligible ; but in conso- 
nants it ranges from a very small to a very large proportion. 
Hence the irregularity of consonantal phonograms reaches its 
height in those consonants which contain the largest amount of 
noise, that is, of more or less irregular vibration. Still there is a 
difference between noise and noise, though it is less definite and 
less assignable than the difference between tone and tone. Noises 
