Dimensional views
with application of the 5-dimensional model on this site:
As written in the introduction file:
If an interpretation of biological design
in accordance with principles in the dimension model have
some validity, it should reasonably also be the case for
organs of speech - and consequently for the phonemes too.
It would provide a basis for interpreting phonemes - the
individual sounds - in an equivalent manner.
Figure of the dimension chain from physics
here:
General complementary "poles" in production of
speech is
- the dorsal - ventral opposition, (back -
front, upper - lower) related animal - vegetative poles
in the embryonic development,
- air current - biological organs.
A general principle is the different polarizations
as divisions of the air stream by the organs, barriers and
demarcations of different structures.
(Fundamentally it's the organs that here
represent the polarizing forces, the 00-pole, in relation
to the air stream as the integrating 0-pole - in terms of
our model.)
Sketch of speech organs as a dimensional chain, from
inside - out:
- Tongue / Oral cavity illustrates in the design the
complementary poles 3b/3a of d-degree 3, Mass /Space in
a simple way,
- Jaws, upper/lower, curved (the dental ridges) forms
as demarcations of the cavity, a surface on this macroscale,
d-degree 2.
- Teeth illustrate d-degree 1 on this scale.. Built-in
into the jaws, as in the dimension model we have the outer
poles 2a/2b of d-degree 1,
depicted: 2a — 1 —2b.
- Lips, finally, opening / closing, representing a first
main expression for motions to and fro.
More detailed aspects and motivations below.
Lungs - windpipe with vocal cords - throat (pharynx):
The way from lungs to mouth and nose openings in ordinary
breathing may be regarded a a whole dimension chain from
centre to anticentre (c - ac), double directed in the process
on convergence - divergence in inhalation/exhalation.
(In fact, it also represents motions to
and fro, as in our model d-degree 0/00, equivalent with
5', starting point for a new dimension chain and also implying
a pole exchange.)
Medium of speech, the air, comes from
the lungs and is designed in the later steps on its way
out, mainly during exhalation (click sounds disregarded).
The windpipe (trachea) is the "stalk"
toward and from the lungs as centres. (It should possibly
be regarded as representing an underlying level.)
[Cf. the hypothetical aspect of atomic
breathing of empty space (Physics II), atomic centres
in communication with the surrounding "vacant space"
as "antimatter".]
Primarily, the "field level", that is d-degree
4 as double-direction inwards/outwards, is represented by
the duct system of the airways between the interior and
the surroundings and the air flow as a process in / out.
(Air and food ways for oxygen and food
represent the potentials between poles 0 / 00, giving the
combustion energy in the chain of chemical processes.)
Vocal cords:
The larynx is a complex structure with vocal cords as "radial"
within more or less circular "cricoid" and "thyroid"
cartilages, as a "complex centre" in our model.
The vocal cords as first barrier for production
of speech, from inside - out, is here proposed to represent
d-degree 4 of forces, a field level: open slit, a 00-pole
defined, representing barriers in inward direction (voiceless
sounds); "closed", narrow slit, defining a 0-pole,
the first "barrier" from inside out.
- The air stream is here still undivided, goes both to
nasal and oral cavities.
- The coordinate axis, the direction, is the one ventral
<==> dorsal: representing the main axis vegetative
- animal pole (0 - 00) of an embryo.
- The opening/closing, divergence/convergence are designed
through opposite, muscle drawing forces. See the figure
below.
- The vibration of the vocal cords should be compared
with the 1-dimensional vibration motions assumed in d-degree
4 in our model.
Figure to the left freely
after (WN). Right figure just a way to illustrate the principle.
Muscle pull in dorsal direction = outwards / upwards (the
00-pole) —> glottis
opens. Muscles pull in ventral direction inwards / downwards
(the 0-pole), — > glottis
closes
Hence, motion inwards defines glottis as blocking (a barrier),
as a centre, ~ 0-pole, motion outwards defines it as open,
as anticenter, ~ 00-pole, in accordance with the description
of last step in the dimension model: motions towards each
other defining a new 0-pole, a centre, motions from each
other a new 00-pole, an anticentre. (A "pole exchange"
in last degree 0/00.)
One might wonder if not a simpler arrangement of the muscles
could have given the same function, if there isn't laws
of a deeper geometry that led to this lever principle around
centre displaced axes of rotation.
About vibration:
According to the reference, the character of vibration of
the vocal cords in voiced phonemes may not be the change
between parallel cords to a V-opening as in speech versus
breathing. The vibration is perhaps instead produced only
through changes in the elasticity of the vocal cords. Some
photos (CEL) could be interpreted in that way. According
to this source, one don't know really (or didn't at that
time) how vibration in voiced sounds comes about. The latter
alternative would mean more of a linear change (as in L-waves),
more like assumed motional moment in d-degree 4, in a double-directed
"vector field", representing an underlying chemically
governed level as of higher d-degree.
Soft palate (velum) with uvula and step 4 →
3:
In the pharynx the airway gets branched, pharynx <——>
nasal cavities and pharynx <———>
oral cavity, as two angled coordinate axes in dimension
step 4→3: a polarization
into different directions ventrally / dorsally:
Dorsal - Ventral:
As said above, the dorsal side derives from the animal
pole of an embryo, the ventral side from the "vegetative
pole" in a simplified description.
The opposition ventral - dorsal
as medical concepts for front and back has the character
of 0- and 00-poles (see later files about Biology), of
internal / external (centre versus anticentre), and of
lower / upper.
In many respects, one finds a further
polarization dorsally - as lower dimensional degrees in
relation to higher have the character of 00-poles in relation
to the 0-pole:
- The nasal cavity is dual versus the single mouth opening.
- Upper (dorsal) jaws are often less grown together than
the lower (ventral) jaw.
- Upper lip has a cleaved wave form versus the simple
curve of lower lip.
- (Paired senses such as eyes and ears more dorsally and
"laterally" (= on the sides) versus senses as
taste, unpaired),
- Vocal cords open during breathing in a V shape (divergence)
outwards, in direction backwards towards the spine, i.e.
towards the dorsal side.
Soft palate (velum) forms a boundary between oral cavity
and pharynx. In its direction from the upper, inner palate
ceiling (dorsal, ~ 00-pole) in direction inwards (with uvula
downwards), it can be seen as a biological design of the
inward direction (pole 4a).
It has the function of closing the airway
towards the nasal cavities through a certain angle change
in direction inwards. It implies a polarization of the air
stream from pharynx to nose / mouth to the single direction
towards the oral cavity. Cf. that inward direction from
00-pole is assumed as a polarizing force in the dimensional
model.
The change in direction of the soft palate with uvula from
more or less vertical (hanging down) to lifted more horizontally
inwards can also be interpreted as an expression of the
angle step assumed in the model from 180° to 90°
of polarity.
[Something of a counterpart to the dorsal soft palate
is the epiglottis from ventral direction (the 0-pole).
It is apparently united by muscles with the tongue. It
closes the windpipe at swallowing (a sort of unidirection
inwards the body). This occurs however more through raise
of the larynx than by a direct change of epiglottis. The
raising gives side passages, implying a more radial closure.
Hence, both velum / uvula and epiglottis, interpreted
as at the border to "d-degree 3" (the oral cavity),
could be perceived as designing the primary hypothesis
in our model of lower d-degree acting polarizing on higher
d-degree: here the canals for airway to nose / mouth (velum)
and food / air (epiglottis). It's simultaneously expressed
in different geometries as from a- and b-poles in our
model, derived from 00- and 0-poles respectively.]
Oral cavity - Tongue, step 3 - 2:
After soft palate and uvula, the airway widens to the oral
cavity with the tongue:
Oral cavity - tongue becomes a
design of poles of d-degree 3, a relation Space - Mass in
terms of physical quantities, interpreted in their mutual
relationship (see Physics).
Tongue - Hard Palate becomes also
geometrically a relation radial (pole 3b) versus "circular"
(pole 3a), the elementary geometrical forms assumed in d-degree
step 3-2 in the model. The hard palate ceiling (dorsal ~
from 00-pole) gets the circular geometry (pole 3a), the
tongue (ventral ~ from 0-pole) represent roughly in this
relation the radial form (pole 3b).
The tongue, from the bottom of the oral cavity (the ventral
side, ~0-pole)), has muscle fibres in 3 perpendicular directions,
in this obviously a 3-dimensional structure.
It's also penetrated by muscle fibres
from the inner tongue-bone at pharynx, from the skull base
and from outer, lower jaw. We could suspect that these extra
muscles represents the outer poles 4b and 4a of d-degree
3:
(4b —>3 <—4a),
the double-direction in the dimension chain outwards/inwards
on the level of muscles, giving tongue an extra mobility.
It could be noted how biologists describe the tongue as
"angled outwards relative the tongue body". It
implies that the tongue - as primarily radial in design
from d-degree 4, also in its further design illustrates
an angle step, to next, lower d-degree.
The palate is soft inwards, 1/3 of it, while 2/3 outwards
are hard through bone in the tissue (at a tissue level a
shift towards lower d-degrees).
Tongue - Palate, from velum to dental ridge, can thus be
seen as designed after geometries in d-degree step 3 <==>2.
Tongue forms:
In its shape the tongue changes form at speech, depicting
dimensionally the steps 3-2-1:
- It can contract to the form of 3-dimensional "spherical"
blob.
- It may take the form of a flat "2-dimensional"
surface, as "whole broadened', a "tongue blade"
- and get more bowl- or dish-shaped, "convex"
/ "concave" à la poles of d-degree 2.
- It may taper to "1-dimensional" with a tip as
in a front l-sound - or vibrate in an apical r-sound, illustrating
the "d-degree of motions 0/00", cf. vibration
of the vocal cords.
Dental ridge - teeth, step 2 - 1:
The jaws with dental ridge and teeth encloses and mark off
the oral cavity. They illustrate at the same time a "polarization"
of the mouth as circular structure - in upper/lower cavity.
In these senses, they correspond to the d-degree step 2-1,
where the teeth get the role of d-degree 1 - a breakdown
into separate units.
(32 = 25 in humans - the number
that according to previous hypotheses correspond to a
dimension chain from the polarizing pole 00 inwards. )
Teeth are said to originate from skin carapace in the history
of evolution, later becoming scales, on sharks for instance,
later immigrating into teeth.
(Compare jaws-teeth as demarcations, with the forms of lipids
in demarcating cell membranes |_|_|.)
Lips - 0/00:
The surface cell layers of the lips may be described as a
meeting between the two poles, between epidermis ("ectoderm")
from the animal pole and mucous membranes ("endoderm")
in the digestive system from the vegetative pole, which on
the embryonic level implies a meeting between farthest out
and farthest in, 00- and 0-poles.
Lips consist of striated muscle tissue (from
mesoderm, the embryonic tissue layer developed between the
outer and the inner, ectoderm and endoderm).
From these aspects, they could be viewed
as d-degree 0 / 00 relative to other parts of the speech organs.
Perhaps also from the point of view of mobility: the mobility
of lips is the first developed by babies - essential for sucking
- and for first sound generation.)
Two gradients:
The apparatus for articulation should perhaps be described
as two opposite gradients:
a) all the cavities, rooms for resonances
and air currents,
b) the organ-building biological matter.
This gives a polarity of the type of matter - antimatter,
or Space versus Mass in similarity with the one between
tongue and palate, but on a more general level.
For language however, it's the "matter"
which becomes anticentra, in this sense "antimatter",
while the air currents in the cavities constitute the "matter".
The speech is the interaction between them.
Two organ levels?
If the root of the tongue, as mentioned above, has muscles
both from inside the tongue-bone (attached with ligaments
to the thyroid cartilage of larynx) and from outside the
lower jaw, it gives one reason for interpreting the speech
apparatus in accordance with the loop version of the dimension
model, type 5→0/00, 5→4/1,
5→3/2:
The tongue could be regarded as "stored into"
step 3 - 2, as an organ level II compared with the one defined
by the coordinate axis from pharynx with vocal cords to
dental ridge, teeth and lips as an organ level I?
The tongue could thus be interpreted as
something like a radial vector field at the new level. Compare
the tongue directions inwards - outwards, upwards - downwards
and its many shapes and position changes for different consonants
and vowels.
Lip-sounds as plosives - the ones at organ
level I - belong to children's first consonants.
A biologically very suspect note:
Mouth as an "angle rest":
According to the aspect on a dimension
chain as angle steps, the apparatus of speech becomes as
a whole with mouth and throat, an "angle rest"
- the resulting angle after for instance 5 halvings from
360°. (Like the open vocal cords when breathing further
in.)
It is noteworthy then that the mouth gap opens along another
coordinate axis than the vocal cords, as along the x-axis
relative the y-axis.
*
To Phonemes
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