Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/96

 memory by repetition extended into habit. Some earlier alphabets were so admirably constructed that each graphic symbol stood for a single invariable sound. There were no letters representing double sounds, and none for sounds that vary according to the position of the letters. This was an ideal means of phonetic writing from which later methods generally have diverged.

Leaving out of this discussion the various alphabetic schemes to designate the concatenation of single and syllabic sounds which flux into an homogeneous word-sound, and making no attempt to add anything to the special work that has been ably done on the principles and elements of phonetics, yet it is evident that the characteristics and the relations of words are many and complex. The time-factor in the succession of sounds entering an oral word; the rhythmic impulse affecting sound-words separately, giving them a significant unity in combination; the relations between classes of words falling into an