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: CHAPTER III. ON SOUND-CHANGE. Language is in a constant state of change; and the changes to which it is subject fall under two very different heads. In the first place, new words find their way into a language, whilst existing words become obsolete and drop out of existence: and, secondly, existing words remain, but gradually alter their pronunciation. It is the] second of these phenomena which we have to study in this chapter; and a clear idea of its nature, origin, and progress is indispensable to any real knowledge of philology. To gain this idea we must carefully consider the processes which occur when we speak. We have to take note of no less than five elements, all of which are present each time that we utter a sound, and these should be carefully distinguished. 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. This is equally true whether they are set in motion after a period of rest, or after a position rendered necessary by their utterance of some other sound. Let us take, for instance, the sound which in the wordfather we represent by the letter a. In pronouncing this Word we Begin by putting our lips, tongue, vocal chords, etc., all in such a position that, on the breath passing through them or coming into contact with them, the sound represented by f is produced; and as long as the vocal organs remain in that position, nothing but/ can be pronounced. In order, then, to pronounce the a sound, we must alter the position of our vocal organs: Our vocal chords must be approximated, our lips relaxed, our mouth opened wider, until the a position is attained. It…
