The physiological & pathological relations of the voice and speech / by John Syer Bristowe.

Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The physiological & pathological relations of the voice and speech / by John Syer Bristowe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    44/172 (page 28)
    It seems to me, then, that (excluding for the present the French nasal modifications) the fifteen vowels before narrow, but somewhat broad aperture alone is left for the passage of air between the tongue and the fore-part of the palate. But here again it appears that although there are certain positions which the tongue naturally assumes during the utterance of the several vowels, these positions admit of a good deal of variety within certain limits with little or no detriment to correct enuncia- tion. Thus, provided the general form of the oral cavity due to each vowel be maintained, it is quite possible to pronounce all, or nearly all of them with the tip of the tongue touching the lower incisor teeth ; and again (to take a particular example), although in the ordinary mode of producing the sound e (mrte), the anterior part of the tongue is rounded from above downwards and forwards, and so placed that while its tip touches, or almost touches, the lower incisors, the anterior portion of the dorsum slopes obliquely upwards to the anterior upper bicuspids and the lateral portions of the hard palate between them, it is quite possible to sound a very good e by reverting the tip of the tongue so as to make it extend across the upper part of the mouth from one bicuspid to its fellow, and thus exposing, through the oral aperture, the under instead of the upper surface of the organ. The fact seems to be that it is essential in the production of the vowel-sounds to have a certain form and size of some special part or parts of the oral cavity for each vowel, but that it is a matter of secondaiy or of comparatively little importance by what means these peculiarities are attained, or what modifications are given to regions not thus specially engaged. ' Ur vocal,' ' the natural vowel of the reed,' ' the voice least modified,' may be taken as the starting-point from whence to describe the conditions of the oral cavity in the formation of the several vowel-sounds. In pronouncing this letter (as, indeed, in pronouncing all the vowels with the exception of the French nasal vowels) the communication between the fauces and the nose is closed by the ascent of the soft palate ; there is no apparent modification in the form of the fauces, and the tongue lies some-