The disorders of speech.

  • Wyllie, John, 1914-
Date:
1894
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The disorders of speech. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    of special sense have been transmitting their various forms of sensation ; the cutaneous sensibility has become more and more developed; and visceral sensations have been experienced, in connexion with the condition of the digestive and other internal organs. It is one of the far-reaching laws of Nature, that the child soon experiences pleasure or pain from the various sensa- tions thus produced; and, further, that the sensations which give it pleasure are for the most part produced by causes favourable to health, whereas those giving pain are for the most part produced by causes that are really hurtful. These sensations of pleasure and of pain may be regarded as the first- developed and the most rudimentary forms of emotion. It has been appointed by Nature, that the child is no sooner capable of experiencing them than it is capable also of expressing them to others. They find their natural expression in the language of vocal tone, facial expression, and bodily gesture. Here then is a Second Function that is subserved by voice-production : the func- tion of Expressing Emotion. How early the voice assumes this function, and how rapidly it acquires power in the performance of it, has been illustrated in the last chapter. Crying soon becomes wonderfully expressive: the shedding of tears converts it into pathetic weeping; and soon, as Preyer points out, by screaming, wailing, whimpering, and weeping, moods of grief, desire, hunger, wilfulness and fear are made easily intelligible. Crying thus gives expression to emotions of a more or less painful character; and with crying are closely associated the equally expressive movements of the features that form almost an integral part of the act. The pleasurable emotions find no less eloquent expression in the vocal cachinnations of laughter, and in the facial expression which is united with these. Crying and laughter are as strongly contrasted in their sounds as they are in the emotions they so efficiently express: no two sounds could be more different than the wailing cadences of weeping, and the merry, ringing, broken notes of laughter. Grunting, as shown in the last chapter, is another mode of inarticulate expression that is sometimes used by children. Sighing, groaning, and sobbing, are also sounds of a highly expres- sive character that are partly vocal. Further, in Ordinary Speech and in Public Speaking, the emotional colour, as we term it, depends very largely upon the p