The Organs of Speech: And Their Application in the Formation of Articulate Sounds (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

Excerpt from The Organs of Speech: And Their Application in the Formation of Articulate Sounds

If, now, we ask in what this wonderful and priceless gift of the human race consists, and in what manner it is produced, we obtain an answer which gives us a fresh example of the humble means by which in nature the greatest and most important results are obtained.

If we analyze Speech, we find that it is nothing more than a combination of separate sounds; that these sounds are noises which are produced by the expired air, with which tones of a musical kind, produced by the same means, can unite as Supplementary components.

The power of producing sounds by the current of expired air is by no means a peculiar property of man kind; rather it is possessed in a more or less pronounced form by all vertebrata performing respiration by means of lungs; the noises thus produced being used by them, partly to give expression to their feelings, partly to make communications to each other. What an immense differ ence between the sounds and the meaning attached to them, in the angry hiss of a snake and the song of a nightingale, in the warning whistle of a marmot and the various accents of the bay of a hound!

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