DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20134#0173
limits to physical accubacy.
141
3. LIMITS TO PHYSICAL ACCURACY.
For all practical purposes, in reference to the Asiatic languages, I think that
the use of Sir William Jones's alphabet, with a few modifications, perhaps as indi-
cated below, will be sufficient even as a phonetic medium for the aboriginal Indian
languages, Tibetan, &c, although a most detailed transliteration is in general necessary
for philological questions.1 In some instances a phonetic transcription, with even more
minute distinctions than the native alphabets will allow of, may be desirable for
ethnographical considerations. A perfectly accurate physical distinction between all
the modifications of vowels, and particularly of consonants, really existing, is an object
which comparative philology has as yet not taken up. Such an inquiry may be highly
interesting as regards physiological ethnography, though the distinctions would be
decidedly too minute for practical use. Sufficient accuracy can only be attained, it
seems to me, when such questions can be connected with a graphic representation of
sound. Thus, the vibrations of a membrane against which one is speaking might
communicate themselves to a mechanical hand registering their motion on a sheet of
paper which is passed along by clockwork. Several experiments of the kind have
already been made, but as yet without the success anticipated.2
Even in the languages possessing the most rational orthography, the distinctions
made are not complete. This soon becomes apparent when we attempt to define the
sound more closely by the assistance of physical experiments, such as the application of
acoustic tubes to the larynx, the prolongation of sound for decomposing diphthongs, &c.
In the first volume we have already had occasion to mention the respective experi-
ments made with the miinshi in Professor Bbucke's3 laboratory, when, on our return
1 For Hindostani especially the practical mode of transcription may be easily chosen so as only to differ in
reference to the number of distinctions made from the complete transliteration. In the transcription generally
used by us we found it practically unavoidable in some cases to sacrifice critical accuracy to simplicity.
2 I especially allude to some curves produced by a similar method, which our friend M. Nicolai de Khanikoff,
the well-known traveller in Bokhara and Persia, showed us in 1860 at the Oxford Meeting of the British Association;
these experiments had been made by Mr. Scott at Paris. Also the mechanical principles of machines imitating
human speech, may be. with advantage, kept in view when defining the elements of speech in any language, par-
ticularly those of unusual sound.
3 Ueber die Ausspraehe der Aspiraten im Hindostani: Sitzungsberichte der philosophish-historischen Classe der
Wiener Academie, 1859.
141
3. LIMITS TO PHYSICAL ACCURACY.
For all practical purposes, in reference to the Asiatic languages, I think that
the use of Sir William Jones's alphabet, with a few modifications, perhaps as indi-
cated below, will be sufficient even as a phonetic medium for the aboriginal Indian
languages, Tibetan, &c, although a most detailed transliteration is in general necessary
for philological questions.1 In some instances a phonetic transcription, with even more
minute distinctions than the native alphabets will allow of, may be desirable for
ethnographical considerations. A perfectly accurate physical distinction between all
the modifications of vowels, and particularly of consonants, really existing, is an object
which comparative philology has as yet not taken up. Such an inquiry may be highly
interesting as regards physiological ethnography, though the distinctions would be
decidedly too minute for practical use. Sufficient accuracy can only be attained, it
seems to me, when such questions can be connected with a graphic representation of
sound. Thus, the vibrations of a membrane against which one is speaking might
communicate themselves to a mechanical hand registering their motion on a sheet of
paper which is passed along by clockwork. Several experiments of the kind have
already been made, but as yet without the success anticipated.2
Even in the languages possessing the most rational orthography, the distinctions
made are not complete. This soon becomes apparent when we attempt to define the
sound more closely by the assistance of physical experiments, such as the application of
acoustic tubes to the larynx, the prolongation of sound for decomposing diphthongs, &c.
In the first volume we have already had occasion to mention the respective experi-
ments made with the miinshi in Professor Bbucke's3 laboratory, when, on our return
1 For Hindostani especially the practical mode of transcription may be easily chosen so as only to differ in
reference to the number of distinctions made from the complete transliteration. In the transcription generally
used by us we found it practically unavoidable in some cases to sacrifice critical accuracy to simplicity.
2 I especially allude to some curves produced by a similar method, which our friend M. Nicolai de Khanikoff,
the well-known traveller in Bokhara and Persia, showed us in 1860 at the Oxford Meeting of the British Association;
these experiments had been made by Mr. Scott at Paris. Also the mechanical principles of machines imitating
human speech, may be. with advantage, kept in view when defining the elements of speech in any language, par-
ticularly those of unusual sound.
3 Ueber die Ausspraehe der Aspiraten im Hindostani: Sitzungsberichte der philosophish-historischen Classe der
Wiener Academie, 1859.