Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/17



 THE first symbol of every Indo-European alphabet, denotes also the primary vowel sound. This coincidence is probably only accidental. The alphabets of Europe, and perhaps of India also, were of Semitic origin, and in all the Semitic alphabets except one, this same symbol (in modified forms) holds the first place; but it represents a peculiar breathing, not the vowel a,—the vowels in the Semitic languages occupying a subordinate place, and having originally no special symbols. When the Greeks, with whom the vowel sounds were much more important, borrowed the alphabet of Phœnicia, they required symbols to express those vowels, and used for this purpose the signs of breathings which were strange to them, and therefore needed not to be preserved; thus the Phœnician equivalent of the Hebrew aleph became alpha; it denoted, however, no more a guttural breathing, but the purest vowel sound. Still, it would be too much to assume that the Greeks of that day were so skilled in phonetics that they assigned the first symbol of their borrowed alphabet to the a-sound, because they knew that sound to be the most essential vowel.

This primary vowel-sound (the sound of a in father) is produced by keeping the passage through which the air is vocalised between the glottis and the lips in the most open position possible. In sounding all other vowels, the air-channel is narrowed by the action either of the tongue or the lips. But here neither the back of the tongue is raised (as it is in sounding o and other vowels), so that a free space is left between the tongue and the uvula, nor is the front of the tongue raised (as in sounding e), so that the space is clear between the tongue and the palate. Again, no other vowel is pronounced with a wider opening of the lips; whereas the aperture is sensibly reduced at each side when we sound o, and still more when we sound u (that is, yoo). The whole channel, therefore, from the glottis, where the breath first issues forth to be modified in the oral cavity, to the lips, where it finally escapes, is thoroughly open. Hence arises the great importance of the sound, by reason of its thoroughly non-consonantal character. All vowels may be defined as open positions of the speech-organs, in which the breath escapes without any stoppage, friction, or sibilation arising from the contact of those organs, whereas consonants are heard when the organs open after such contact more or less complete. Now, all vowels except a are pronounced with a certain contraction of the organs; thus, in sounding the i (the English e-sound), the tongue is raised so as almost to touch the palate, the passage left being so close, that if the tongue were suffered for a second to rest on the palate, there would be heard not i but y; and a similar relation exists between u and w. This is commonly expressed by calling y and w semi-vowels. We might more exactly call i and u consonantal-vowels; and as an historic fact, i does constantly pass into y, and u into w, and vice versa. But no consonant has this relation to the a-sound; it has absolutely no affinity to any consonant; it is, as we have called it, the one primary essential vowel.

The importance of this sound may be shown by historical as well as by physiological evidence. We find by tracing the process of phonetic change in different languages, that when one vowel passes into another, it is the pure a-sound which thus assumes other forms, whereas other vowels do not pass into the a-sound, though sometimes the new sound may have this symbol. Roughly

speaking, we might express the general character of vowel change by drawing two lines from a common point, at which a is placed. One of these lines marks the progress of an original a (ah-sound) through e (a-sound), till it sinks finally to i (e-sound); the other marks a similar degradation, through o to u (oo-sound). This figure omits many minor modifications, and is subject to some exceptions in particular languages. But it represents fairly in the main the general process of vowel-change. Now, we do not assert that there ever was a time when a was the only existing vowel, but we do maintain that in numberless cases an original a has passed into other sounds, whereas the reverse process is excessively  I. — 1