Language And Linguistic Introduction To History

Vendryes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317657125
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

First Published in 2005. This is a work remarkable for its scholarship, originality and independence of though. As an introduction to philology it has never been surpassed in terms of combining scholarship or accessibility. Anyone who loves words or who is at all curious about language will appreciate this book, covering as it does all the ground from every useful angle. A level headed and erudite study.

Part I Sounds

I The Sound Mechanisms¹

DOI: 10.4324/9781315030159-1

¹ Cf. in general to the works cf Rousselot, Roudet, Poirot, Passy, Sweet, Jespersen, E. Wheeler, Scripture, Viëtor, Gutzmann, Sievers, Trautmann.

Bysound we mean the effect produced upon the ear by certain vibrations. In speech, the vibrations are produced by the vocal apparatus of the speaker. The science of sounds in language, otherwise called Phonetics, ought then to comprise three sections, devoted respectively to the study of the production, transmission, and reception of sound. The production and reception are phenomena of equal importance in language, since, in order that language may arise, there must be at least two people in communication and the spoken word must be intended to be heard. The reception of sound, also called audition, likewise plays an important part in linguistic changes; it is by means of the ear that each speaker acquires and establishes his phonetic system. Theoretically we cannot give audition too great a place in the study of language.

Nevertheless, phonetics has long been practically limited to the study of the production of sound.

Linguists hardly concern themselves with audition, but hand over that study to the physiologists. This limitation is justifiable. With regard to language, the auditory images received by the listener are of value only in so far as he is capable of transforming them into motor images, so that he may in his turn become the speaker. In other words, the listener must potentially possess what the speaker has transmitted into action. This it is that conditions language. Hence phonetics may ignore the auditory side of language, since when two persons converse in the same language audition presupposes the existence of an equal capacity for phonation on both sides. These are simply two aspects of the same function whose limits are identical. A careful study of the nerve centres would, undoubtedly, enable us to distinguish them; but such an analysis does not fall within the domain of phonetics.

At the present day the transmission of sound seems to be the principal concern of the phonetician; ² by preference he devotes himself to the analysis of vibrations—a vast field of research, tending toward pure physics which cannot be explored except by those who are well grounded in mathematics. Phonetics hence acquires a special precision; in particular it possesses the means of distinguishing sounds by the frequency and form of the vibrations which characterize them. In this book we shall adhere to the custom of the older school, limiting ourselves to the study of sound-production, that is to say, to phonation, and to the description of the results of phonation, that is, the phonemes.

² Cf. particularly Rousselot, CXV, and Poirot, CXCI.

Man’s phonetic apparatus consists essentially of a bellows, i.e. the lungs, and a sound-tube, the trachea, closed at its upper extremity by a two-fold swelling known as the vocal chords, or, in a single word, the glottis. It is, therefore, a wind instrument, and an instrument with a double reed. It is in this arrangement of the glottis that is manifested the superiority of the human apparatus to all other vocal instruments. The vocal chords have a flexibility which the necessarily rigid tubes of an oboe cannot attain. Thanks to a delicate mechanism which brings into play several pairs of muscles, they can assume different positions. They can either be kept closed or be more or less completely opened, made to vibrate throughout or in part, and modified as to their tension. All this gives language the variety of resources by which it profits.

At the same time, the sound apparatus would be most imperfect if it consisted solely of the glottis. It would only have been able to express vowels, and these would have been less differentiated than those we normally pronounce.

In fact, the current of air expelled by the lungs while causing the vocal chords to vibrate gives rise to the “voice”. As the vibrations are capable of lasting as long as the supply of air allows,³ and can vary, moreover, in amplitude and force, the “voice” has three characteristic qualities, namely, duration, musical pitch, and intensity. It also varies according to the individual vowel owing to the fact that the muscular play allows the glottis to rise or fall, and so to elongate or contract the sound-tube.

³ Roudet, “De la dépense d’air dans la parole et de ses conséquences phonétiques” (VII, vol. ii (1900), pp. 201–30).

But the indispensable complement of the phonetic apparatus is supplied by the cavities into which the glottis opens—the pharynx, the nasal fossæ, and above all, the buccal cavity. The walls of these cavities, for the most part elastic, act as a resonator for the “voice” and give to each vowel its proper timbre. In this resonator are flexible and ductile organs capable of modifying its size and capacity. In the first place there is the velum palati or soft palate, which can close the access to the nasal fossæ, and prevent all resonance on that side. But it is the tongue which, together with the glottis, plays the most essential rôle in sound production. In enunciating the vowel a, the tongue is extended and lies almost flat in the mouth. But in the case of other vowels the tongue is displaced in order to act in each case as the proper afferent resonator. Sometimes the tongue moves forward and upward, thus decreasing the size of the anterior part of the mouth; sometimes it moves backward and decreases the size of the posterior part. In the first case it forms the resonator for the vowels known as anterior or palatal, which begin with a and continue with open e, closed e, open i, closed i. In the second place it forms the vowels known as posterior or velar, that is to say, starting again from a, open o, closed o, open u, closed u.⁴ In each of these anterior and posterior series the i and u are the most closed, and in forming them the tongue assumes the highest possible position and consequently that closest to the palate, a is the most open of all the vowels. For each vowel, moreover, there are several varieties of timbre corresponding to the different resonances and hence to the different positions assumed by the tongue. Parisian French, for example, admits of three varieties of a, easily distinguishable by the ear. a is closed in pâte, open in patte, and intermediate in carotte.

⁴ All vowels have their continental value.

But the tongue is not the only organ to play a role in the formation of the resonance proper to each vowel. We must also take into account the different positions of the lips in each case. There is a well-known scene in the Bourgeois Gentilhomme in which we obtain fairly clear information about the movements of the lips in the production of vowels, and from a passage in Dionysius of Halicarnassus we learn that the Greeks, although poor phoneticians, already knew as much about this question as the contemporaries of Molière (∏ερì συνθέσεως òνoμáτωv, chap. xvi). As a matter of fact it is easy to see that in pronouncing u the lips move forward and become rounded as though in a pout, and that in pronouncing i the corners of the mouth retract and pull the lips backward. These are the two extreme positions between which lie those corresponding to the pronunciation of o (open and closed) and e (open and closed). Language has utilized this simultaneous lip and tongue position in order to create a hybrid series, that of the French eu. By combining the tongue position in the anterior vowels (è, é, i) and the lip position in the posterior vowels (ò, ó, u), we obtain almost exactly the three French sounds, open eu (beurre), closed eu (queue), and u (flûte), the last generally written ü phonetically.

Between one language and another the differences in the varieties of vowels are very great; English, for example, has scarcely a single vowel in common with French.

Phonemes are usually divided into consonants and vowels. Practically speaking, this distinction is justified by the definition of the syllable (see p. 54). At the same time, the same phoneme is often capable of acting in the syllable either as a consonant or a vowel. Though there may be a difference of function between these two, there is none in the actual nature of the sounds and no definite boundary separates them. Consonants and vowels form part of a “natural series whose extremes alone are clearly separated ”.⁵

⁵ Rousselot, cited by Roudet, CXIII, p. 76.

At one extremity of the series stand the vowels a, e, and o, as just defined. At the other are the consonantal occlusive surds p, t, k. These consonants are simply noises and are formed when the air is momentarily stopped by some obstacle. This obstacle is generally in the mouth, and is formed sometimes by the lips, sometimes by the tip or the back of the tongue. In the first case the stop is a labial, in the second a dental, and in the third a guttural. But there are other stops whose point of articulation is in the back of the mouth; these are the laryngeal, pharyngeal, and glottal.

As the lips always close in the same place, there is only one occlusive labial surd. In fact as regards the place of closure, and apart from differences in stress, p is the same in all languages. On the other hand, the tip of the tongue remains mobile, and the back of the tongue is able to move along the entire length of the hard and soft palate, hence there is scope for numerous contacts, and we can understand how there may be several kinds of dentals and gutturals according to the point of closure. Most often the tip of the tongue is pressed against the upper teeth, and that is why the consonant thus produced is called a dental as, for example, the French t. But the tip of the tongue may likewise press against the alveolae, as in the case of the English dental in take or tire, and it is then an alveolar consonant. Finally, by curling backward, the tip of the tongue can touch the palate and give rise to what some linguists call the cacuminals or cerebrals. These, like the alveolars, are merely special kinds of dentals.

The sounds known as gutturals admit of still greater variety. Any point of the back of the tongue touching any point on the palate will produce a guttural. If the occlusion takes place on the hard palate, we get a palatal (the k in the French qui); if on the soft palate, toward the velum, we get a velar k as in German Kuh. Velars and palatals, in turn, admit of several varieties; and we distinguish, for example, the pre-palatals and the post-palatals according to the distance of the point of contact from the hard palate.

Having thus defined the point of contact, let us examine the mechanism of the occlusion. Air is expelled from the lungs; it passes through the glottis, which is open and tense, and enters the buccal cavity, where it is abruptly stopped at the lips, the teeth, or the palate in the manner just described. The contact then ceases abruptly, and the air can continue to escape. Thus, in every occlusive consonant, there are three distinct stages; a closure or implosion, a retention of longer or shorter duration, and a release or explosion.⁶ In pronouncing a simple consonant, t for example, the explosion follows immediately upon the implosion, and the retention is reduced to a scarcely appreciable fraction of time. On the other hand, the three periods are clearly marked in what we call the double consonants, which are merely long consonants pronounced with greater force than the short ones. Apart from the question of stress, a group atta is distinguished from a group ata by the fact that between the implosion and the explosion of breath there is a retention appreciable to the ear. It is incorrect to say that atta is composed of two consonants and ata of only one. Exactly the same elements lie between the two vowels in both groups : an implosive element followed by an explosive element. But while in ata the implosive is followed immediately by the explosive, in atta the explosive is prevented from following immediately by the retention, which prolongs the length of the closure.

⁶ Rosapelly, “Valeur relative de l’implosion et de l’explosion dans les consonnes occlusives,” VI, vol. x, pp. 347–63.

The difference between the implosive and explosive consonants is very marked when there is a change in the point of contact. Let us imagine that the tip of the tongue is pressed against the teeth at the moment when the air is passing through, but that once the closure is effected, the back of the tongue is pressed rather abruptly against the palate, and that the release of the breath takes place in this position. We then have an implosive t followed by an explosive k, that is to say, a cluster tk, as for example in atka. Conversely, if the contact originally took place at the back of the tongue, and the tip of the tongue was pressed against the teeth during the occlusion, we should obtain an implosive k followed by an explosive t, as in the cluster akta.

The above will enable us to appreciate the difference between a vowel such as a, and a consonant such as t. Physiologically speaking, there is nothing in common between these two phonemes except that both are formed by a current of air expelled from the lungs. But between these two extremes in the sound series there is room for many intermediate sounds.

Let us imagine that the closure is not absolute in the first place, and offers some sort of passage, however narrow, to the air. Instead of an occlusive or momentary stop we shall obtain a spirant or durative, called also a fricative, because it is characterized by a frictional sound. Instead of a closed aperture opening abruptly in order to allow the accumulated air to pass through we have an opening which remains exceedingly narrow and allows the air to hiss through it. Naturally the spirants may have all the points of articulation possessed by the occlusives. At every point of contact where the latter are formed, we can imagine a corresponding spirant, as soon as the lips, or the tip or back of the tongue permit the escape of air. Spirants may be dentolabial spirants (French f), dental (French s), alveolar (English th in thank or thick), palatal (German ch in ich), medio-palatal (French ch in ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Contents
• Language: A Linguistic Introduction to History
• Dedication
• Preface
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I: SOUNDS
• PART II: GRAMMAR
• PART III : VOCABULARY
• PART IV : THE STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGES
• PART V: WRITING
• CONCLUSION THE PROGRESS OF LANGUAGE
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• APPENDIX
• INDEX