Oral Words, etc.
indefinite number of species; the relations between the phonetic apparatus and the sounds produced, etc., would require volumes of discourse in any worthy attempt to unravel the mysteries. Yet I dare say, in all the different factors that produce the sounds, and in all their differential elements, there are principles which, if recognized and studied, would greatly aid us in our efforts to understand the phenomena involved.
Many analyses have been made of English word-sounds by specialists in phonetics. Unfortunately these analyses have discovered far too few of the principles entering the syntheses which we call words. For after all, it is the synthesis that clears the understanding; and it is the analysis, too often, that clouds it. Thus far, no study of isolated sounds seems to promise an explanation of the sound-flux which, in passing through cerebral processes, enters the mind as a word. The important elements of a word are not more marked in its sound than in its quality of registration
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