Speech sound

“ But in all races it may be surmised that the main determining cause in the first instance is that natural rise and fall of the voice which gives expressiveness and meaning to speech, even though contributory causes arising from the imitative faculty common to man may perhaps be admitted—such as the sound of the wind, the waves of the sea, the cries of animals, the notes of birds, the striking of one object against another, and finally the sounds made by primitive instruments. ”

“ VOICE (Fr. voix, from Lat. vox) , the sound produced by the vibrations of the vocal cords, two ligaments or bands of fibrous elastic tissue situated in the larynx. It is to be distinguished from speech, which is the production of articulate sounds intended to express ideas. Many of the lower animals have voice, but none has the power of speech in the sense in which man possesses that faculty. There may be speech without voice, as in whispering, whilst in singing a scale of musical tones we have voice without speech. ”

“ A slight change in any one of these adjustments gives us a new sound which is akin to the old one, because of the continuance of the other adjustments, but which is acoustically distinct from it, so sensitive has the human ear become to the nuanced play of the vocal mechanism. ”

“ The natural method of learning sounds is mainly a subjective one We listen patiently till our ears are steeped, as it were, in the sound; and then, after repeated trials, we hit on the exact position of the organs of speech by which we can reproduce the sound to the speaker's satisfaction. But the natural method admits also of objective control and criticism of the movements of the lips and Jaws by direct observation. ”

“ This means that one must use the muscles and organs of breath, sound, and speech in such manner as to produce the voice with ease and utter the words distinctly and with the desired force. Secondly, one should so master inflection, emphasis, pitch, and color as to be able to present the thought precisely as he conceives it. The whole vocal mechanism, in both its physical and mental parts, must be under perfect control, and this control can only be gained by patient practice. ”

“ This process, as we have seen, is a matter of sounds and of movements intended to produce these sounds. The sense of vision is not brought into play. But let us suppose that one not only hears the articulated sounds but sees the articulations themselves as they are being executed by the speaker. Clearly, if one can only gain a sufficiently high degree of adroitness in perceiving these movements of the speech organs, the way is opened for a new type of speech symbolism—that in which the sound is replaced by the visual image of the articulations that correspond to the sound. ”

“ The development of oral speech, following the path of least resistance, will naturally be from the simple to the complex. Combinations of five, six or more letters, representing as many elements of sound, will not generally be resorted to so long as there are abundant simpler combinations, consistent with the possibilities of vocal articulation, to draw from. ”

“ Most of the vowels in English are capable of being prolonged at pleasure, without varying the position of the organs.
2. No more than one simple sound can be formed by one aperture of the mouth, and one position of the organs of speech. The only difference that can be made with the same position of the organs, is, to prolong and shorten the same sound.
3. Two simple sounds, closely united in pronunciation, or following each other so rapidly that the distinction is scarcely perceptible, form a dipthong. ”

“ Hence it follows that if a man, though in the same room with another, can by any peculiar modifications of the organs of speech, produce a sound which, in faintness, tone, body, and every other sensible quality, perfectly resembles a sound delivered from the roof of an opposite house, the ear will naturally, without examination, refer it to that situation and distance; the sound which he hears being only a sign, which from infancy he has become accustomed, by experience, to associate with the idea of a person speaking from a house-top. ”

“ Oral speech is by no means the only way in which such intercommunication is secured, and even if no organs had existed by which sound could be produced, some other means would have been adopted. But man possessed sound-producing organs in common with nearly all animals. ”

“ If the muscles of the throat are constricted, the tone passage partially closed, and the mouth kept half-shut, how can you expect the tone to come out bright and clear, or even to come out at all? Sound is a series of waves, and if you make a prison of your mouth, holding the jaws and lips rigidly, it will be very difficult for the tone to squeeze through, and even when it does escape it will lack force and carrying power. Open your mouth wide, relax all the organs of speech, and let the tone flow out easily. ”

“ A feeling of vibration occurs when the medium, as water or air, is agitated in such manner as to produce sound. This feeling is especially produced in the self by speech; the origin of speech is the calling of the mate, which call is made by one and heard by the other, and hence heard by both. ”

“ An Elementary Sound is a simple, distinct sound made by the organs of speech.
The Elementary Sounds of the English language are divided into Vocals,
Subvocals, and Aspirates.
VOCALS. (12) Vocals are sounds which consist of pure tone only. They are the most prominent elements of all words, and it is proper that they should first receive attention. A vocal may be represented by one letter, as in the word hat, or by two or more letters, as in heat, beauty. A diphthong is a union of two vocals, commencing with one and ending with the other. ”

“ Then he distinguishes, what it is, that the Body contributes to Speech; examining in a Speaker, how the Air enters into his Lungs; why it makes a sound in issuing out of the Wind-pipe? What diversity the Muscles cause in sound? ”

“ It increased the range of the unassisted human voice, with the difference that, while the intensifying of the sound through the use of the instrument carried it over larger spaces, there was a loss of that delicacy, flexibility, and capacity to convey emotions which belong to the unaided human organs of speech. ”

“ Anyone familiar with the theories and principles of speech sounds knows that it is an impossibility to render accurately the multitude of sounds occurring in even a short typical passage. Different plans for writing speech sounds have been tried with varying success. ”

“ But, as our speech-organs are not capable of giving a perfect imitation of all ‘unarticulated’ sounds, the choice of speech-sounds is to a certain extent accidental, and different nations have chosen different combinations, more or less conventionalized, for the same sounds ”

“ Voice is produced in the larynx, the voice box, but it must be immediately brought into the mouth, converted into speech, and sent on its way to perform its mission. The breath acting on the vocal cords causes them to vibrate, and this vibration is called voice. ”

“ All vocal expression is the revelation of the processes of thinking or the elemental actions of the mind. The meaning of the expressive modulations of the voice must be gained from a study of the actions of the mind and their expression in common conversation. While words are conventional symbols, modulations of the voice are natural signs, which accompany the pronunciation of words, and are necessary elements of natural speech. ”

“ The human speaking voice is full of changes; unlike the notes from a musical instrument, there is no uniformity in it; the rise and fall of inflection, the varying sound of the vowels and consonants, the combinations of words and syllables—each produces a different vibration and different tone. ”

“ By modulation we mean the wavelike rise and fall of the voice that always occurs in some degree in speech,—sometimes called melody—and the change of key, or general pitch, in passing from one sentence, or part of a speech, to another. Frequently, novices in speaking and in reading, will swing the voice upward in the first part of every sentence, give it perhaps another rise or two as the sentence proceeds, and swing it down, always in precisely the same way, at the end. ”

“ After a time men discovered that all the sounds of the human voice were really decomposable into a very few and that all human speech, consisting as it does of combinations of these sounds, could be represented by combinations of simple phonograms each of which should represent neither an idea nor a syllable but one of the primary sounds. ”

“ And the first and most important principle which we have to notice, the one which lies at the bottom of nearly all phonetic change in language, is the tendency, already alluded to and briefly illustrated in our first lecture, to make the work of utterance easier to the speaker, to put a more facile in the stead of a more difficult sound or combination of sounds, and to get rid altogether of what is unnecessary in the words we use. All articulate sounds are produced by effort, by expenditure of muscular energy, in the lungs, throat, and mouth. ”

“ What we call words are simply breath sounds and voice-box sounds chopped into convenient lengths by the movements of the tongue and lips and throat. So when we come to the question of clear and pleasant speaking, or, as we term it, articulation, the lips and tongue have almost everything to do with making the difference between a clear, musical, and refined enunciation, which is so easy to understand that it is a pleasure to listen to it, and a slurred, drawling, squeaky, nasal kind of speech, which is as hard to understand as it is unpleasant to listen to. ”

“ Another reason for our lack of phonetic imagination is the fact that, while our ear is delicately responsive to the sounds of speech, the muscles of our speech organs have early in life become exclusively accustomed to the particular adjustments and systems of adjustment that are required to produce the traditional sounds of the language. ”

“ Articulate speech, which separates the language of man from that of the lower animals, is divided, as grammar teaches, into sounds and articulations. The sounds or vowels are made up of all the continuous and uniform noises that the vocal organs can emit. ”

“ These are the sounds which are distinguished from one another by the most marked differences, which our organs most readily utter, and which are most universally found in human speech: all others are of later origin, having grown out of these in the course of the phonetic changes which words necessarily undergo, as they pass from one generation's keeping to another's. ”

“ We have seen that speech consists essentially in a modification of the vocal sounds by the accessory organs, or by parts above the larynx, the latter being the essential vocal instrument.
Many animals have the power of making articulated sounds; a few have risen, like man, to the dignity of sentences, but these are only by imitation of the human voice. ”

“ It is necessary at the outset to insist on this fact of the speaker’s unconsciousness, both of the elements of sound which make up the word, and of the movements of his vocal organs; for, once fully grasped, it will guard against an error which is too prevalent, viz. that sound-change is the result of conscious volition in those who speak. ”

“ We call attention to only a few of the simpler and more common vocal manifestations of feeling, counselling the student who is to deliver a selected speech, to adapt his speaking to the style of that speech. In so doing he will get a varied training, and at length will find his own most effective style.
The speech which is matter-of-fact and commonplace only, has characteristically much short, sharp inflection of voice, with the rapidly varying intervals of pitch that we notice in one's everyday talking. ”

“ Nothing is more remarkable than the extraordinary delicacy of the ear in this respect. Amongst all our scores of friends and acquaintances we recognize each by a quality of voice which we speak of as harsh, melodious, sympathetic, rasping, penetrating, or clear. This is not altogether a matter of enunciation or vocalization, for if different persons pronounce correctly the same vowel-sound, we can detect a great difference between their voices. ”

“ The voice should fall of itself with only that degree of force which is legitimately given by the breath tension, produced easily, though firmly, by the breathing muscles. Breadth will be given to the tone by some degree of expansion at the back of the mouth, or in the pharynx. As soon as can be, the speech should be brought down to the utmost of simplicity and naturalness, so that the thought of literature can be expressed with reality and truth ”

“ A good reader or speaker will vary his or her voice in the elements of emotional expression (that is, pitch, quality, movement, stress, force) , on words, phrases, and sentences, in such a manner that the listeners get a suggestion of the meaning of a word by the sound of it. For instance, the words bright, glad, joyful, dull, sad, weak, may be pronounced in such a manner as to suggest by the quality of voice used their meaning; and, in the same manner, phrases and whole sentences may have variation in voice so as to suggest their meaning. This is modulation. ”

“ In the first place, whether we break silence and begin to speak, or proceed in the course of speaking to any particular sound, our vocal organs must move towards a certain position, in which they must remain during the time of the utterance of the sound. ”