The London phonetics training of Masao Kanehiro (1883-1978)

The first page of the phonetics section of the catalogue C. F. Palmer Ltd., 1932, showing the phonetic kymograph as supplied to Masao Kanehiro, together with some of its accessories.

A typical kymogram showing an utterance of the word signal. From top: nose, mouth and larynx traces (Kanehiro 1932/3: 187). Though the plosive and the nasal are heterorganic, the release is visibly a nasal one, implying-as Kanehiro's transcription indicates-a brief velar nasal segment (or a double-articulated alveolarvelar nasal).

The fundamental frequency (F0) curve of a fall-rise pattern applied to the syllable Yes, derived kymographically (Kanehiro, 1932/3:305). Painstaking analysis has picked up the brief reversal of direction at the end, as the voicing fades-a phenomenon now known to be common, though still not fully explained. This furnishes a good example of an event which escapes unaided auditory analysis, but is detected by objective measurement.