following extracts. Note that in the first the pauses are longer than in the second spirited selection. We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives Captain of our fairy band, Helena is here at hand; And the youth, mistook by me, Pleading for a lover's fee. Shall we their fond pageant see ? Lord, what fools these mortals be! Shakespeare: Midsummer Night's Dream, III, ii. 2. Change of pitch. (With change in thought in passing` from one group to another there is normally a resultant change in the pitch of the voice. The more vividly im-' ages are pictured in the mind and the more definite and vigorous the thinking the more pronounced will be the change in pitch. Monotony is evidence of failure on the part of the speaker to grasp the meaning of the individual ideas or to discover their relative importance. Test the statements by reading aloud the following sentences:1— 1 It will be observed that the underlined phrases in the illustrations given above carry the principal thought of the sentence. If the utterance is monotonous, read only the main part of the sentence, omitting the explanatory or qualifying phrases. When the principal thought is clearly in mind, read the sentence as a whole, adding the amplifying ideas of the phrases not read before. This exercise often proves helpful in awakening a sense of the thought value of phrases and of their relation to each other. When these values are understood, the fact will be evident in change of pitch between thought groups and in the variety of utterance characteristic of conversation. The space intervals allowed between sections of the above sentences are meant merely to indicate thought divisions, not definite intervals of pitch. 3. Uninterrupted utterance.1 The appearance of words in print, set apart by spaces, leads easily to the idea that they should be separated in speech. (One of the most common faults of the beginner is the practice of pausing after each word. In conversation and all ordinary forms of speech, the words of a phrase are bound together and merged into one continuous sound, broken only by stop consonants like t, b, p, k, the enunciation of which slightly obstructs the tone passage. We do not say "How-are-you?" but "Howareyou?" The truth of this statement will be obvious if the following sentences are spoken, first as separate words, then as one word, with all sounds merged: 2 1 "No amount of study of the sounds only of a sentence will enable us to recognize the individual words of which it consists." Henry Sweet: Primer of Phonetics. 2 The classification of utterance into "effusive," "expulsive," and "explosive," while it has some justification in fact, has led to a good deal of elocutionary unnaturalness. It is often true that exclamations of alarm, anger, exultation, and the like, and those occasional utterances in which individual words are of great weight- as, for example, Hamlet's last speech, "The rest-is-silence!" -are marked by separate voicing of each word, but it will be observed that such utterance is the result of abnormal states of feeling or of rare and exceptional conditions. The application of the expulsive and explosive utterance to the delivery of orations and declamations is perhaps the cause of much of the disfavor into which elocution has fallen. One can hardly imagine Lincoln as saying, "Fourscore (!) and seven (!) years (!) ago (!) our (!) fathers (!) brought forth (!) upon this continent (!) a new (!) nation (!)"; yet students are still being taught to declaim the speech in this way. An unassuming, simple, conversational style suits the Gettysburg Speech. There is no rant, declamation, expulsiveness, or explosiveness about it. This may be said in general of the unpretentious utterance of all earnest men. May-I-have-your-answer? May Ihaveyouranswer? We-are- -no - - longer — any for- hope. Thereisnolongeranyroomforhope. Practice the lines quoted below, applying the principles of pause, change of pitch, and uninterrupted tone in the voicing of each phrase.1 The moan of doves in immemorial elms and the murmur of innumerable bees. changed in all Thy shores are empires save thee. By Nebo's lonely mountain on this side Jordan's wave in the land of Moab In a vale there lies a lonely grave. that of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard these were the blithest to Scrooge said often afterwards his ear. 8. Causes of faulty grouping Two frequent sources of faulty grouping are (1) haphazard breathing, and (2) punctuation. 1. Grouping and breathing. In normal speech the rhythm 1 To prove the validity of these principles the lines may be read again with " the omission of the modulations, first without pause, then in a monotone, and, finally, with each word spoken separately. Indeed, the value and function of any expressive variation of the voice may be tested by deliberately eliminating it in the utterance of a particular sentence. 4 of breathing is controlled by the rhythmic progress of thought. When we have an idea to express, we instinctively take the breath and retain it in preparation for speech. The breath is naturally replenished during pauses between ideas. The thoughtless reader is prone to hasten over words, pronouncing them as fast as breathing and articulation permit. But the breathing of the reader who thinks clearly, and whose breath is controlled by his thinking, does not interrupt the utterance of word groups. Gasping and catching of breath during the utterance of phrases prevent the easy and clear rendering of thought, make listening difficult, and indicate failure on the part of the speaker to think clearly or to coördinate the action of the mind and the voice. Read the following lines aloud, taking breath only at the points indicated by dashes, and observe the peculiar and chaotic effect produced by the lack of correspondence between thinking and breathing. Then re-read the lines, allowing the breath to be governed by the thought. The dealer stooped· once more this time to replace — the glass upon the shelf his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so. Markheim moved. a little nearer with one hand in the pocket of his great coat. The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon the shelf, - his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so. Markheim moved a little nearer with one hand in the pocket of his great coat. Stevenson: Markheim.1 Punctuation cannot be 2. Grouping and punctuation. relied on as a guide to grouping. It often happens that pauses coincide with punctuation marks; often they do not. Punctuation helps to indicate the structure of the sentence to the eye. Grouping is not determined by gram 1 Used with the kind permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. matical structure but by ideas and images. It is for the ear and the mind of the auditor. The sense of the unpunctuated passage may be clear to the eye, while the same passage, if read aloud without pauses, would be difficult to understand. A sentence from Tennyson's In Memoriam illustrates this: As dear to me as sacred wine To dying lips was all he said. Conversational usage observes no pause in "Yes, sir," though the structure requires a comma. We write, "He said that, if the rain stopped, he would resume his journey"; but we speak the sentence thus: "He said - that if the rain stopped- he would resume his journey." "He said" is one idea; what he said another, in fact, two others. The lack of coincidence between grouping and punctuation is further illustrated in the following quotations: It was felt. that the loyal element in the border states ought to be recognized — and, therefore it was that, for the vice-presidency - was named a man who began life in the lowest station. This is the very coinage of your brain : Is very cunning in. Shakespeare: Hamlet, III, iv. 3. Examples of faulty grouping. Knowledge of the author's meaning is the only guide to correct and clear grouping. The following illustrations represent actual classroom errors. Correct the grouping. Silas Marner decided to keep the child who was frozen one evening outside his house in the snow. George Eliot: Silas Marner. |