11. Vocalisation.-1. Song-voice. The song condition of voice seldom presents any difficulty to stammerers. Cases of stammer in the song. voice occur but rarely.
2. Speech roicc.—Stammer occurs in all parts of the speech-note, more frequently, however, in the middle than towards the end, but most commonly at the initial.
3. Pitch of Voire.—Changes of pitch, whether concrete or discrete (slide or skip), through narrow intervals of the scale, present difficul ties which wider changes of pitch do not. Stammerers can mostly declaim, if they cannot converse or quietly read and it is well known that wider intervals of pitch occur in declamation than in ordinary conversation.
4. Loudness of Voice.—When the loudness of the speech-note is of the form of the musical diminuendo, which begins abruptly and gradually diminishes in loudness, as thus figured a difficulty is presented to the stammerer which does not occur if the form be the musical crescendo, where the note begins feebly, and gradually increases in loudness, as thus 5. of Voice.—The conversation tone presents a greater difficulty than the falsetto, or than the full enriched voice of epic declamation.
6. Quantity or Duration of Syllables.—Short and inextensible syl lables present a greater difficulty than the long and extensible.
7. unaccented syllables of discourse seldom offer any difficulty to stammerers. The element, or combination of elements, which is difficult to utter with accent, is easy to utter without accent. The accent given by stress is infinitely more difficult than that given by extended duration.
S. Phytbmus.—The measured movement of verso is easier for the stammerer than the unmeasured inovereeut of prose and conversation.
III. Enunciation.—Syllables are of two kinds, namely : 1. Those composed of one elementary sound.
2. Those composed of more than one elementary sound.
1. Vowels.—A vowel alone may constitute an accented syllable, and even a whole word, of which the pronoun I and the article a are familiar examples. Stammer often occurs on such syllables.
2. Consonants.—When two or more are combined together without a vowel to form a syllable, they occur only as unaccented final syllables of words. The stammerer's difficulty is less to utter tho elementary
sounds singly than to articulate them so as to form syllables.
IV. Articulation.—The elementary sounds are articulated in three orders of succession : 1. The vowel followed by a consonant.
2. The consonant followed by a vowel.
3. The consonant followed by a consonant.
Stammer occurs in each of these modes of articulation. There is seldom any difficulty in articulating two consonants together; some, however, is felt in postfixing n consonant to a vowel, and the greatest is felt in adding a vowel to a consonant.
To these general conditions of voice and speech under which stammer occurs, maybe added other conditions, each asses and age. A majority of stammerers are males; and few of either sex stammer from their infancy; children commonly speak freely until about five years of age. An occasional difficulty is first observed, which becomes more frequent up to the tenth year, when it is commonly at its maximum ; although the spasm frequently increases in severity up to manhood. In the decline of life sometimes the stammer spontaneously diminishes, and it has becu known to entirely disappear. The voices of childhood and old age differ in several respects from that of the intermediate period of life. The speech melody of infancy is set in a high pitch, which often runs into the falsetto, and is much intersected with wide intervals both concrete and discrete. The loudness is chiefly of the crescendo form on long whining quantities. The voice of old age often falls into the tremulous scale, the rate of utterance is slow, steady, and uniform. The loudness is not often of the diminuendo form, and is on extended quantities. The accent is given to syllables by quantity rather than by stress, deliberate pauses are made, and the whole style is marked by the self-possession of experienced age conversing with a consciousness of superiority, if in nought else, in a longer reach of memory. Sudden changes of temperature, especially from a high to a low likewise tend to increase a stammer.