247 
1897-98.] Mr R. J. Lloyd on Consonant- Sounds. 
in their character of independent, self-sustaining sounds, it is 
impossible to endorse this statement in its literal meaning. But to 
anyone starting from the phonographic end of the evidence, it 
may well seem that the vowel so interpenetrates the consonant 
that the latter is only a modification of it. But we have seen, I 
think, that the consonant also interpenetrates the vowel, and has 
also its own independent acoustic foundation. 
It is unfortunate that M. Marichelle’s beautiful enlargements 
do not comprise one single specimen of a spirate fricative, either 
singly or in combination, though for f, at any rate, he has evidently 
(note, p. 87 ) some legible phonograms. Only four of his numerous 
diagrams contain any consonants at all : they are phonograms of 
the combinations aja (Fr. ay a ), aha , ba, and wa (Fr. oi). But j, 
h, b , and w are all too complex to be taken as initial studies of 
consonant-sounds : j is fricative, but toned : h is not toned, but it 
is plosive, and therefore essentially gliding : b and w are both 
toned and gliding. Rone of these could be profitably studied till 
the simpler case of the spirate fricatives had been dealt with. I 
am sorry that they can be only dealt with here so imperfectly. 
The need of precise phonographic evidence is manifest in every 
detail : and even in principle there are probably lurking errors 
which will only be corrected by objective facts. Even there, how- 
ever, the refutation of a wrong hypothesis may at once reveal the 
alternative and true view of the case. The notes on which this 
article is based were made about four years ago, but they seemed 
to be, in parts, so perilously deductive — it seemed, in short, so 
rash a thing to construct phonograms a priori, when the real 
thing might be published any day and confute them — that they 
were laid aside, to await objective confirmation. Direct objective 
confirmation has not yet come; but the fine phonograms just 
mentioned have a certain relationship, though disguised and 
broken, to those of the sounds studied here ; and they have 
prompted me at length to publish these notes, in the hope chiefly 
that they may direct the attention of those engaged on phonograms 
to these simplest consonants, hitherto universally neglected, though 
by far the most likely subjects for successful analysis. I hope 
now, after this necessary preface, to be able shortly to take up the 
more complex sounds which remain. 
