oft,
pointed, and easily movable organ that depends from the rear of the
palate; the palate, which is divided into a posterior, movable "soft
palate" or velum and a "hard palate"; the tongue; the teeth; and the
lips. The palate, lower palate, tongue, teeth, and lips may be looked
upon as a combined resonance chamber, whose constantly varying shape,
chiefly due to the extreme mobility of the tongue, is the main factor in
giving the outgoing breath its precise quality[13] of sound.

[Footnote 12: Purely acoustic classifications, such as more easily
suggest themselves to a first attempt at analysis, are now in less favor
among students of phonetics than organic classifications. The latter
have the advantage of being more objective. Moreover, the acoustic
quality of a sound is dependent on the articulation, even though in
linguistic consciousness this quality is the primary, not the secondary,
fact.]

[Footnote 13: By "quality" is here meant the inherent nature and
resonance of the sound as such. The general "quality" of the
individual's voice is another matter altogether. This is chiefly
determined by the individual anatomical characteristics of the larynx
and is of no linguistic interest whatever.]

The lungs and bronchial tubes are organs of speech only in so far as
they supply and conduct the current of outgoing air without which
audible articulation is impossible. They are not responsible for any
specific sound or acoustic feature of sounds except, possibly, accent or
stress. It may be that differences of stress are due to slight
differences in the contracting force of the lung muscles, but even this
influence of the lungs is denied by some students, who explain the
fluctuations of stress that do so much to color speech by reference to
the more delicate activity of the glottal cords. These glottal cords are
two small, nearly horizontal, and highly sensitive membranes within the
larynx, which consists, for the most part, of two large and several
smaller cartilages and of a number of small muscles that control the
action of the cords.

The cords, which are attached to the cartilages, are to the human speech
organs what the two vibrating reeds are to a clarinet or the strings to
a violin. They are capable of at least three distinct types of movement,
each of which is of the greatest importance for speech. They may be
drawn towards or away from each other, they may vibrate like reeds or
strings, and they may become la