Guttural consonant

“ The German “soft” guttural aspirate or palatal spirant in words like ich, licht, is the result of the spiritus asper passing the middle of the tongue when raised against the hard palate, y in you or yet being due to a softening of the breath, the organs of speech remaining unchanged. The palatal sibilants will have to be considered separately.
The Gutturals.—Putting aside the cerebrals, which have been treated under the head of the dentals, we now [279] come to the gutturals, usually an important class of sounds in savage idioms. ”

“ Consonants have, in like manner, a double aspect as Articulations or Joints. In a rigorous and abstract sense, the Consonant has no sound of its own. It is simply a break or interruption of Sound. Etymologically, it is from the Latin con, WITH, and sonans, SOUNDING; as if it were a mere accessory to a (vowel) Sound; the Vowels being, in that sense, the only sounds. In this sense, the Consonants are analogous with the mere cracks or opening joints, which intervene between the bones of the Skeleton. In other words, they are no sounds, but mere nothings ”

“ The vowel sound is so intimately linked with the consonant—the con-sonant, implying this intimate relation in its very name—that it seemed extremely difficult to give it individual recognition. To set off the mere labial beginning of the sound by itself, and to recognize it as an all-essential element of phonation, was the feat at which human intelligence so long balked. The germ of great things lay in that analysis. It was a process of simplification, and all art development is from the complex to the simple. ”

“ The exact nature of vowels and consonants will be considered in the next chapter, but in the meantime it may be pointed out that a vowel is a free and open sound requiring for its production a certain form of the resonance-chambers. Neither vowels nor consonants are absolutely pure—that is, entirely free from foreign elements, from noise; but for all practical purposes a vowel is a pure sound, a consonant a sound accompanied inevitably by much noise. ”

“ Final consonants are easily slurred, especially in the case of words ending in two or more consonants, which present special difficulties of articulation. Such words are mends, seethes, thirsteth, breathed, etc. Sometimes, too, the careless reader fails to articulate two consonants separately when the first word ends with the consonant or consonant sound with which the second begins; for example, Sir Richard Grenville lay, Spanish ships; or when the first word ends with a consonant and the second begins with a vowel, as in eats apples, not at all, an ox, etc. ”

“ Hence, if such a mute is to be doubled, it is doubled by prefixing its own corresponding non-aspirate.
a. But in the manuscripts, both Vedic and later, an aspirate mute is not seldom found written double—especially, if it be one of rare occurrence: for example (RV.) , akhkhalī, jájhjhatī.
155. In a few roots, when a final sonant aspirate (घ् gh, ध् dh, भ् bh; also ह् h, as representing an original घ् gh) thus loses its aspiration, the initial sonant consonant (ग् g or द् d or ब् b) becomes aspirate. ”

“ The consonants, particularly the stops, seem to be much tenser than the vowels. All consonants occur both voiced and unvoiced except s, ʃ and ɲ. b, d, g are voiced; p, t, k, s are aspirated; unaspirated p, t, k and p′, t′, k′ occur with lax articulation after s, ʃ, χ. Nasal resonance is particularly strong. The glottal catch is altogether wanting. Palatal and non-palatal consonants arc contrasted, the quality of the consonants being apparently of greater relative importance than vowel-quality. ”

“ Meanwhile we have to consider what forms of music developed under this new method.
V
Regarding the relations of the voice parts, one is struck by the new attitude toward consonance and dissonance of which they give proof. In the old and in the free organum only four intervals were admitted as consonant—the unison, the fourth, the fifth, and the octave. The third and the sixth, which add so much color to our harmony, were appreciated and considered pleasant only just before the final unison or octave. The mensuralists admitted them as consonant, though they qualified them as imperfect. ”

“ Consonants. growth.
The palatals are, as a rule, derived from original gutturals, the modification being generally due to the influence of a neighbouring palatal sound i or y, or ĕ (ä) . The surd aspirate ch, in words of Indo-Germanic origin, almost invariably goes back to original sk: e.g. chid- (chind-) = scindo, σχίζω: chāyā = σκιά (O.E. scin, shine) ; Sans. acchati =βάσκει.
The palatal sibilant ś (pronounced sh) likewise originated from a guttural mute k, but one of somewhat different phonetic value from that represented by Sanskrit k or c. ”

“ We do not, in fight, hear the sound of ee; nor the sound of oo in cube. The consonant compresses the organs and closes the sound of the word so suddenly, that the ear can distinguish but a simple vocal sound: And notwithstanding these letters are dipthongs, when considered by themselves, yet in combination with consonants, they are often marks of simple sounds or vowels.
The short sound of i and y, is merely short ee. The sound of u in tun, is a separate vowel, which has no affinity to any other sound in the language. ”

“ They make their sounds with the vocal organs, and [Pg 202] modulate them with the teeth, tongue and lips, in the same manner that man controls his vocal sounds. The fundamental sounds appear to be pure vowels, but faint traces of consonants are found in many words, especially those of low pitch; and since I have been able to develop certain consonant sounds from a vowel basis, the conclusion forces itself upon me that the consonant elements of human speech are developed from a vowel basis. ”

“ The original sound which this symbol represented, and which it still represents in most European languages, is a closed labial, i.e., one in which perfect closure of the lips is necessary, the sound being heard as the lips open. Like all closed sounds, it is not capable of prolongation. It differs from p, which is also a closed labial, as a sonant from a surd. A sonant is heard when the breath, as it passes through the glottis, is vocalised by the tension or approximation of its edges. When there is no such action of the glottis, mere breath alone passes through ”

“ One group of consonant-sounds, chiefly the non-aspirates and the aspirates, was actually provided with two letter symbols for each sound, the two letters indicating different tonal quality. The two parallel sets so formed were the so-called "high" and "low" letters. Each naturally gave its tone to the vowel which followed it. These two "inherent" tones were further susceptible of different modification by the use of two accent marks, the "ek" and the "tho," and also to some extent by final consonants ”

“ A notable instance is the old Gothonic consonant shift: Aryan b, d, g cannot have become Gothonic p, t, k till after primitive p, t, k had already become fricatives [f, þ, x (h) ] , for had the shift taken place before, intolerable confusion would have reigned in all parts of the vocabulary. Another instructive example is seen in the history of English long vowels. Not till OE. long a had been rounded into something like [ɔ·] (OE. stan, ME. stoon, stone) could a new long a develop, chiefly through lengthening of an old short a in certain positions. ”

“ Mediæ are therefore accompanied by the tone of the voice, and this may even, where they begin a syllable, set in a moment before, and where they end a syllable, continue a moment after the opening of the mouth, because some air may be driven into the closed cavity of the mouth, and support the sound of the vocal chords of the larynx. Because of the narrowed glottis, the rush of the air is more moderate, the noise of the air less sharp than with the tenuis, so that a great mass of air may rush at once from the chest. ”

“ The reduplication of the consonant is, in English and the generality of languages, a [90] conventional mode of expressing in writing the shortness or dependence, of the vowel preceding.
§ 131. Real reduplications of consonants, i.e., reduplications of their sound, are, in all languages, extremely rare. In English they occur only under one condition. In compound and derived words, where the original root ends, and the superadded affix begins, with the same letter, there is a reduplication of the sound and not otherwise. In the word soulless, the l is doubled to the ear as well as to the eye ”

“ A syllable may be made long by the very fact of its being short. It is the practice of the English language to signify the shortness of a vowel by doubling the consonant that follows. Hence we get such words as pitted, knotty, massive, &c.—words in which no one considers that the consonant is actually doubled. For do we not pronounce pitted and pitied alike? Consonants that appear double to the eye are common enough. Really double consonants—consonants that sound double to the ear—are rarities, occurring in one class of words only—viz. ”

“ If we utter a single vowel-sound and interrupt it by a consonant, we 108 get an articulation. Consonants, then, not only give speech its articulation or joints, but they help words to stand and have form, just as a skeleton keeps the animal from falling into a shapeless mass of flesh; therefore, consonants are the bones of speech. The consonant is the distinguishing element of human speech. Man has been defined in various ways according to various attributes, functions and habits. He might well be called the consonant-using animal. He alone of all animals uses consonants. ”

“ Y follows the same rule.
A consonant is an articulate sound; but, like an old bachelor, if it exist alone it exists to no [Pg 22] purpose. It cannot be perfectly uttered without the aid of a vowel; and even then the vowel has the greatest share in the production of the sound. Thus a vowel joined to a consonant becomes, so to speak, a “better half:” or at all events very strongly resembles one.
Consonants are divided into mutes and semi-vowels.
The mutes cannot be sounded at all without the aid of a vowel. Like young ladies just “come out,” they are silent as long as you let them alone. ”

“ The sound of a consonant may be ascertained by pronouncing a word containing it in a slow and forcible manner.
Vocal Consonants are those uttered with a slight degree of vocality, but less than that of a vowel. They are formed with a vibration of the vocal chords.
Aspirate Consonants are those in which the pure breath alone is heard. They are formed without any vibration of the vocal chords.
[12]
Q has the sound of k, and is always followed by u, which, in this position, commonly has the sound of w, but is sometimes silent. ”

“ The absence of doubling may be relied on only when a softened consonant continues soft, e. g. ܐܷܬ݂ܳܐ ʾethā "came", not ʾeththā, for this softening, or assibilation, is inadmissible in a doubled letter; while on the contrary the hard sound in such a consonant after a vowel is a sure token of doubling, e. g. ܢܱܦܝܩ nappīq "gone forth". How far the gutturals ܥ‍ and ܗ underwent a real doubling is a matter of question; but the treatment of the vocalisation for the most part is the same as if such doubling had occurred (cf. Hebr. בִעַר,‎ מַהֵר) . ”

“ They need the help of a vowel, or of a voiced consonant, in order to express themselves fully. This circumstance, together with the fact of vocalised breath entering into the formation of many consonants, will probably account for the common notion that no consonant can be uttered without a vowel accompaniment. The independence of the sibilant s, offers alone a sufficient refutation of the assumption. It is in Polynesia that savages are found who cannot put two consonants together without a vowel between them. ”

“ The ear and not the eye must be the guide in the observance of the rule "caol le caol ⁊ leaṫan le leaṫan."
Two consonants may come together, one naturally broad and the other naturally slender. When this happens, Irish speakers, as a general rule, give the consonants their natural sounds, i.e., they keep the broad consonant broad, and the slender one slender. For instance, the ṁ of coṁ is naturally broad, and the l of líon is naturally slender. ”

“ The representative figure of the consonant will indicate it.
Usually, the first consonant of every word is radical. Still there might be other radical consonants in the same word. But the first would rise above the others.
The radical designates the substance of being, and the last consonant the manner.
The whole secret of expression lies in the time we delay the articulation of the initial consonant. This space arrests the attention and prevents our catching the sound at a disadvantage.
Latin Prosody.
1. The final of a word of several syllables is usually short. ”

“ Toneless syllables consist of consonant followed by a neutral vowel which we write as a without a tone mark. A toneless syllable never stands alone and is never final in a group.
Consonants, 8–15
8. Stop, affricate, and sibilant consonants occur in five positions: velar stop, prepalatal affricate, normal sibilant, alveolar stop, and labial stop; and in three orders: plain voiceless, aspirated voiceless, and plain voiced.
Examples:
9. ”

“ The vowel-attack is clear, precise and distinct. Not only is the voice-emission pure, but there is no needless fatigue of voice, because all superfluous movement of the glottis is avoided.
The "check glottid" or glottic shock, on the other hand, involves an undue effort of the vocal muscles, and the compression of the vocal cords causes irritation. The audible shock of the glottis cannot be avoided when it is necessary to accentuate a word beginning with an initial vowel. Constantly used, however, it is part of the misuse of the voice. ”