The Sounds of English Author:Henry Sweet Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SPEECH-SOUNDS 46. The most general test of a single sound as opposed to a group of sounds (sound-combination, sound-group) is that it can be lengthened withou... more »t change, as we see in lengthening a simple monophthongic as opposed to a diphthongic vowel. 47. As regards the place of articulation, no sound is really simple: every sound is the result of the shape of the whole configurative passage from the lungs to the lips ; and the ultimate sound-elements, such as breath and voice, are never heard isolated. The most indistinct voice-murmur is as much the result of the shape of the superglottal passages as the most distinct of the other vowels, and its organic formation (position) is as definite and fixed as theirs is; the only difference being that while in what we regard as unmodified voice-murmur all the organs except the vocal chords are in their passive or neutral positions, the other vowels are formed by actively modifying the shape of certain definite portions of the configurative passages. Thus if we pass from the neutral vowel-murmur to i we raise the front of the tongue close to the palate, the lips remaining neutral as before; while in forming u we narrow the lip-passage, and at the same time raise the back of the tongue. 48. Vowels and Consonants. The two most important elements of speech-sounds are those which depend on the shape of the glottis on the one hand, and of the mouth- and lip-passages on the other. 49. It is on the relation between these two factors that the familiar distinction between vowel and consonant depends. In vowels the element of voice is the predominant one: a vowel is voice modified by the different shapes of the superglottal passages, especially the mouth and lips. In consonants, on the other hand, the state of the glottis is only a secon...« less