THE FOREIGNER
§ 1. The Substratum Theory. § 2. French _u_ and Spanish _h_. § 3.
Gothonic and Keltic. § 4. Etruscan and Indian Consonants. § 5.
Gothonic Sound-shift. § 6. Natural and Specific Changes. § 7. Power
of Substratum. § 8. Types of Race-mixture. § 9. Summary. § 10.
General Theory of Loan-words. § 11. Classes of Loan-words. § 12.
Influence on Grammar. § 13. Translation-loans.
XI.--§ 1. The Substratum Theory.
It seems evident that if we wish to find out the causes of linguistic
change, a fundamental division must be into--
(1) Changes that are due to the transference of the language to new
individuals, and
(2) Changes that are independent of such transference.
It may not be easy in practice to distinguish the two classes, as the
very essence of the linguistic life of each individual is a continual
give-and-take between him and those around him; still, the division is
in the main clear, and will consequently be followed in the present
work.
The first class falls again naturally into two heads, according as the
new individual does not, or does already, possess a language. With the
former, i.e. with the native child learning his ‘mother-tongue,’ we
have dealt at length in Book II, and we now proceed to an examination
of the influence exercised on a language through its transference to
individuals who are already in possession of another language--let us,
for the sake of shortness, call them foreigners.
While some earlier scholars denied categorically the existence of mixed
languages, recent investigators have attached a very great importance
to mixtures of languages, and have studied actually occurring mixtures
of various degrees and characters with the greatest accuracy: I mention
here only one name, that of Hugo Schuchardt, who combines profundity
and width of knowledge with a truly philosophical spirit, though the
form of his numerous scattered writings makes it difficult to gather a
just idea of his views on many questions.
Many scholars have recently attached great importance to the subtler
and more hidden influence exerted by one language on another in those
cases in which a population abandons its original language and adopts
that of another race, generally in consequence of military conquest. In
these cases the theory is that people keep many of their speech-habits,
especially with regard to articulation and accent, even while using the
vocabulary, etc., of the new language, which thus to a large extent is
tinged by the old language. There is thus created what is now generally
termed a _substratum_ underlying the new language. As the original
substratum modifying a language which gradually spreads over a large
area varies according to the character of the tribes subjugated in
different districts, this would account for many of those splittings-up
of languages which we witness everywhere.
Hirt goes so far as to think it possible by the help of existing
dialect boundaries to determine the extensions of aboriginal languages
(Idg 19).
There is certainly something very plausible in this manner of viewing
linguistic changes, for we all know from practical everyday experience
that the average foreigner is apt to betray his nationality as soon
as he opens his mouth: the Italian’s or the German’s English is just
as different from the ‘real thing’ as, inversely, the Englishman’s
Italian or German is different from the Italian or German of a
native: the place of articulation, especially that of the tongue-tip
consonants, the aspiration or want of aspiration of _p_, _t_, _k_,
the voicing or non-voicing of _b_, _d_, _g_, the diphthongization
or monophthongization of long vowels, the syllabification, various
peculiarities in quantity and in tone-movements--all such things are
apt to colour the whole acoustic impression of a foreigner’s speech
in an acquired language, and it is, of course, a natural supposition
that the aboriginal inhabitants of Europe and Asia were just as liable
to transfer their speech habits to new languages as their descendants
are nowadays. There is thus a priori a strong probability that
linguistic substrata have exercised some influence on the development
of conquering languages. But when we proceed to apply this natural
inference to concrete examples of linguistic history, we shall see
that the theory does not perhaps suffice to explain everything that
its advocates would have it explain, and that there are certain
difficulties which have not always been faced or appraised according
to their real value. A consideration of these concrete examples will
naturally lead up to a discussion of the general principles involved in
the substratum theory.
XI.--§ 2. French _u_ and Spanish _h_.
First I shall mention Ascoli’s famous theory that French [y·] for
Latin _u_, as in _dur_, etc., is due to Gallic influence, cf. Welsh
_i_ in _din_ from _dun_, which presupposes a transition from _u_
to [y]. Ascoli found a proof in the fact that Dutch also has the
pronunciation [y·], e.g. in _duur_, on the old Keltic soil of the
Belgæ, to which Schuchardt (SlD 126) added his observation of [y] in
dialectal South German (Breisgau), in a district in which there had
formerly been a strong Keltic element. This looks very convincing at
first blush. On closer inspection, doubts arise on many points. The
French transition cannot with certainty be dated very early, for then
_c_ in _cure_ would have been palatalized and changed as _c_ before
_i_ (Lenz, KZ 39. 46); also the treatment of the vowel in French words
taken over into English, where it is not identified with the native
[y], but becomes [iu], is best explained on the assumption that about
1200 A.D. the sound had not advanced farther on its march towards the
front position than, say, the Swedish ‘mixed-round’ sound in _hus_.
The district in which [y] is found for _u_ is not coextensive with the
Keltic possessions; there were very few Kelts in what is now Holland,
and inversely South German [y] for _u_ does not cover the whole Keltic
domain; [y] is found outside the French territory proper, namely, in
Franco-Provençal (where the substratum was Ligurian) and in Provençal
(where there were very few Galli; cf. Wechssler, L 113). Thus the
province of [y] is here too small and there too large to make the
argument conclusive. Even more fatal is the objection that the Gallic
transition from _u_ to _y_ is very uncertain (Pedersen, GKS 1. § 353).
So much is certain, that the fronting of _u_ was not a _common_ Keltic
transition, for it is not found in the Gaelic (Goidelic) branch.[42]
On the other hand, the transition from [u] to [y] occurs elsewhere,
independent of Keltic influence, as in Old Greek (cf. also the Swedish
sound in _hus_): why cannot it, then, be independent in French?
Another case adduced by Ascoli is initial _h_ instead of Latin _f_ in
the country anciently occupied by the Iberians. Now, Basque has no
_f_ sound at all in any connexion; if the same aversion to _f_ had
been the cause of the Spanish substitution of _h_ for _f_, we should
expect the substitution to have been made from the moment when Latin
was first spoken in Hispania, and we should expect it to be found in
all positions and connexions. But what do we find instead? First, that
Old Spanish had _f_ in many cases where modern Spanish has _h_ (i.e.
really no sound at all), and this cannot be altogether ascribed to
‘Latinizing scribes.’ On the contrary, the transition _f_ > _h_ seems
to have taken place many centuries after the Roman invasion, since
the Spanish-speaking Jews of Salonika, who emigrated from Spain about
1500, have to this day preserved the _f_ sound among other archaic
traits (see F. Hanssen, _Span. Gramm._ 45; Wiener, _Modern Philology_,
June 1903, p. 205). And secondly, that _f_ has been kept in certain
connexions; thus, before [w], as in _fuí_, _fuiste_, _fué_, etc.,
before _r_ and _l_, as in _fruto_, _flor_, etc. This certainly is
inexplicable if the cause of _f_ > _h_ had been the want of power on
the part of the aborigines to produce the _f_ sound at all, while it is
simple enough if we assume a later transition, taking place possibly
at first between two vowels, with a subsequent generalization of the
_f_-less forms. Diez is here, as not infrequently, more sensible than
some of his successors (see _Gramm. d. roman. spr._, 4th ed., 1. 283
f., 373 f.).
XI.--§ 3. Gothonic and Keltic.
Feist (KI 480 ff.: cf. PBB 36. 307 ff., 37. 112 ff.) applies the
substratum theory to the Gothonic (Germanic) languages. The Gothons
are autochthonous in northern Europe, and very little mixed with other
races; they must have immigrated just after the close of the glacial
period. But the arrival of Aryan (Indogermanic) tribes cannot be placed
earlier than about 2000 B.C.; they made the original inhabitants give
up their own language. The nation that thus Aryanized the Gothons
cannot have been other than the Kelts; their supremacy over the Gothons
is proved by several loan-words for cultural ideas or state offices,
such as Gothic _reiks_ ‘king,’ _andbahts_ ‘servant.’ The Aryan language
which the Kelts taught the Gothons was subjected in the process to
considerable changes, the old North Europeans pronouncing the new
language in accordance with their previous speech habits; instead of
taking over the free Aryan accent, they invariably stressed the initial
syllable, and they made sad havoc of the Aryan flexion.
The theory does not bear close inspection. The number of Keltic
loan-words is not great enough for us to infer such an overpowering
ascendancy on the part of the Kelts as would force the subjected
population to make a complete surrender of their own tongue. Neither
in number nor in intrinsic significance can these loans be compared
with the French loans in English: and yet the Normans did not succeed
in substituting their own language for English. Besides, if the
theory were true, we should not merely see a certain number of Keltic
loan-words, but the whole speech, the complete vocabulary as well as
the entire grammar, would be Keltic; yet as a matter of fact there is
a wide gulf between Keltic and Gothonic, and many details, lexical
and grammatical, in the latter group resemble other Aryan languages
rather than Keltic. The stressing of the first syllable is said to be
due to the aboriginal language. If that were so, it would mean that
this population, in adopting the new speech, had at once transferred
its own habit of stressing the first syllable to all the new words,
very much as Icelanders are apt to do nowadays. But this is not in
accordance with well established facts in the Gothonic languages: we
know that when the consonant shift took place, it found the stress on
the same syllables as in Sanskrit, and that it was this stress on many
middle or final syllables that afterwards changed many of the shifted
consonants from voiceless to voiced (Verner’s law).[43] This fact in
itself suffices to prove that the consonant shift and the stress shift
cannot have taken place simultaneously, and thus cannot be due to one
and the same cause, as supposed by Feist. Nor can the havoc wrought in
the old flexions be due to the inability of a new people to grasp the
minute _nuances_ and intricate system of another language than its own;
for in that case too we should have something like the formless ‘Pidgin
English’ from the very beginning, whereas the oldest Gothonic languages
still preserve a great many old flexions and subtle syntactical rules
which have since disappeared. As a matter of fact, many of the flexions
of primitive Aryan were much better preserved in Gothonic languages
than in Keltic.
XI.--§ 4. Etruscan and Indian Consonants.
In another place in the same work (KI 373) Feist speaks of the Etruscan
language, and says that this had only one kind of stop consonants,
represented by the letters _k_ (_c_), _t_, _p_, besides the aspirated
stops _kh_, _th_, _ph_, which in some instances correspond to Latin
and Greek tenues. This, he says, reminds one very strongly of the
sound system of High German (oberdeutschen) dialects, and more
particularly of those spoken in the Alps. Feist here (and in PBB 36.
340 ff.) maintains that these sounds go back to a Pre-Gothonic Alpine
population, which he identifies with the ancient Rhætians; and he sees
in this a strong support of a linguistic connexion between the Rhætians
and Etruscans. He finds further striking analogies between the Gothonic
and the Armenian sound systems; the predilection for voiceless stops
and aspirated sounds in Etruscan, in the domain of the ancient Rhætians
and in Asia Minor is accordingly ascribed to the speech habits of one
and the same aboriginal race.
Here, too, there are many points to which I must take exception. It is
not quite certain that the usual interpretation of Etruscan letters is
correct; in fact, much may be said in favour of the hypothesis that
the letters rendered _p_, _t_, _k_ stand really for the sounds of
_b_, _d_, _g_, and that those transcribed _ph_, _th_, _kh_ (or Greek
φ, θ, χ) represent ordinary _p_, _t_, _k_. However this may be, Feist
seems to be speaking here almost in the same breath of the first (or
common Gothonic) shift and of the second (or specially High German)
shift, although they are separated from each other by several centuries
and neither cover the same geographical ground nor lead to the same
phonetic result. Neither Armenian nor primitive Gothonic can be said to
be averse to voiced stops, for in both we find voiced _b_, _d_, _g_ for
the old ‘mediæ aspiratæ.’ And in both languages the old voiceless stops
became at first probably not aspirates, but simply voiceless spirants,
as in English _f_ather, _th_ing, and Scotch lo_ch_. Further, it should
be noted that we do not find the tendency to unvoice stops and to
pronounce affricates either in Rhæto-Romanic (Ladin) or in Tuscan
Italian; both languages have unaspirated _p_, _t_, _k_ and voiced _b_,
_d_, _g_, and the Tuscan pronunciation of _c_ between two vowels as
[x], thus in _la casa_ [la xa·sa], but not in _a casa_ = [akka·sa],
could not be termed ‘aspiration’ except by a non-phonetician; this
pronunciation can hardly have anything to do with the old Etruscan
language.
According to a theory which is very widely accepted, the Dravidian
languages exerted a different influence on the Aryan languages when
the Aryans first set foot on Indian soil, in making them adopt the
‘cacuminal’ (or ‘inverted’) sounds _ḍ_, _ṭ_, _ṇ_ with _ḍh_ and _ṭh_,
which were not found in primitive Aryan. But even this theory does not
seem to be quite proof against objections. It is easy to admit that
natives accustomed to one place of articulation of their _d_, _t_, _n_
will unconsciously produce the _d_, _t_, _n_ of a new language they
are learning in the same place; but then they will do it everywhere.
Here, however, both Dravidian and Sanskrit possess pure dental _d_,
_t_, _n_, pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching the upper
teeth, besides cacuminal _ḍ_, _ṭ_, _ṇ_, in which it touches the gum or
front part of the hard palate. In Sanskrit we find that the cacuminal
articulation occurs only under very definite conditions, chiefly
under the influence of _r_. Now, a trilled tongue-point _r_ in most
languages, for purely physiological reasons which are easily accounted
for, tends to be pronounced further back than ordinary dentals; and it
is therefore quite natural that it should spontaneously exercise an
influence on neighbouring dentals by drawing them back to its own point
of articulation. This may have happened in India quite independently
of the occurrence of the same sounds in other vernaculars, just as
we find the same influence very pronouncedly in Swedish and in East
Norwegian, where _d_, _t_, _n_, _s_ are cacuminal (supradental) in
such words as _bord_, _kort_, _barn_, _först_, etc. According to
Grandgent (_Neuere Sprachen_, 2. 447), _d_ in his own American English
is pronounced further back than elsewhere before and after _r_, as in
_dry_, _hard_; but in none of these cases need we conjure up an extinct
native population to account for a perfectly natural development.
XI.--§ 5. Gothonic Sound-shift.
Since the time of Grimm the Gothonic consonant changes have harassed
the minds of linguists; they became _the_ sound-shift and were
considered as something _sui generis_, something out of the common,
which required a different explanation from all other sound-shifts.
Several explanations have been offered, to some of which we shall have
to revert later; none, however, has been so popular as that which
attributes the shift to an ethnic substratum. This explanation is
accepted by Hirt, Feist, Meillet and others, though their agreement
ceases when the question is asked: What nationality and what language
can have been the cause of the change? While some cautiously content
themselves with saying that there must have been an original
population, others guess at Kelts, Finns, Rhætians or Etrurians--all
fascinating names to minds of a speculative turn.
The latest treatment of the question that I have seen is by K. Wessely
(in _Anthropos_, XII-XIII 540 ff., 1917). He assumes the following
different substrata, beginning with the most recent: a Rhæto-Romanic
for the Upper-German shift, a Keltic for the common High-German shift,
and a Finnic for the first Germanic shift with the Vernerian law.
This certainly has the merit of neatly separating sound-shifts that
are chronologically apart, except with regard to the last-mentioned
shift, for here the Finns are made responsible for two changes that
were probably separated by centuries and had really no traits in
common. It is curious to see the transition from _p_ to _f_ and from
_t_ to _þ_--both important elements of the first shift--here ascribed
to Finnic, for as a matter of fact the two sounds _f_ and _þ_ are
not found in present-day Finnish, and were not found in primitive
Ugro-Finnic.[44]
When Wessely thinks that the change discovered by Verner is also due
to Finnic influence, his reasons are two: an alleged parallelism with
the Finnic consonant change which he terms ‘Setälä’s law,’ and then the
assumption that such a shift, conditioned by the place of the accent,
is foreign to the Aryan race (p. 543). When, however, we find a closely
analogous case only four hundred years ago in English, where a number
of consonants were voiced according to the place of the stress,[45]
are we also to say that it is foreign to the Anglo-Saxon race and
therefore presupposes some non-Aryan substratum? As a matter of fact,
the parallelism between the English and the old Gothonic shift is much
closer than that between the latter and the Finnic consonant-gradation:
in English and in old Gothonic the stress place is decisive, while in
the Finnic shift it is very doubtful whether stress goes for anything;
in both English and old Gothonic the same consonants are affected
(spirants, in English also the combinations [tʃ, ks], but otherwise no
stops), while in Finnic it is the stops that are primarily affected.
In old Gothonic, as in English, the change is simply voicing, and we
have nothing corresponding to the reduction of double consonants and
of consonant groups in Finnic _pappi_ / _papin_, _otta_ / _otat_,
_kukka_ / _kukan_, _parempi_ / _paremman_, _jalka_ / _jalan_, etc.
On the whole, Wessely’s paper shows how much easier it is to advance
hypotheses than to find truths.
XI.--§ 6. Natural and Specific Changes.
Meillet (MSL 19. 164 and 172; cf. _Bulletin_ 19. 50 and _Germ._ 18)
thinks that we must distinguish between such phonetic changes as are
natural, i.e. due to universal tendencies, and such as are peculiar
to certain languages. In the former class he includes the opening and
the voicing of intervocalic consonants; there is also a natural and
universal tendency to shorten long words and to slur the pronunciation
towards the end of a word. In the latter class (changes which are
peculiar to and characteristic of a particular language) he reckons the
consonant shifts in Gothonic and Armenian, the weakening of consonants
in Greek and in Iranian, the tendency to unround back vowels in English
and Slav. Such changes can only be accounted for on the supposition of
a change of language: they must be due to people whose own language had
habits foreign to Aryan. Unfortunately, Meillet cannot tell us how to
measure the difference between natural and peculiar shifts; he admits
that they cannot always be clearly separated; and when he says that
there are some extreme cases ‘relativement nets,’ such as those named
above, I must confess that I do not see why the change from the sharp
tenuis, as in Fr. _p_, _t_, _k_, to a slightly aspirated sound, as in
English (_Bulletin_ 19. 50),[46] or the relaxing of the closure which
finally led to the sounds of [f, þ, x], should be less ‘natural’ than
a hundred other changes and should require the calling in of a _deus
ex machina_ in the shape of an aboriginal population. The unrounding
of E. _u_ in _hut_, etc., to which he alludes, began about 1600--what
ethnic substratum does that postulate, and is any such required, more
than for, say, the diphthongizing of long _a_ and _o_?
Meillet (MSL 19. 172) also says that there are certain speech sounds
which are, as it were, natural and are found in nearly all languages,
thus _p_, _t_, _k_, _n_, _m_, and among the vowels _a_, _i_, _u_,
while other sounds are found only in some languages, such as the two
English _th_ sounds or, among the vowels, Fr. _u_ and Russian _y_.
But when he infers that sounds of the former class are stable and
remain unchanged for many centuries, whereas those of the latter
are apt to change and disappear, the conclusion is not borne out by
actual facts. The consonants _p_, _t_, _k_, _n_, _m_ are said to have
remained unchanged in many Aryan languages from the oldest times till
the present day--that is, only initially before vowels, which is a
very important reservation and really amounts to an admission that in
the vast majority of cases these sounds are just as unstable as most
other things on this planet, especially if we remember that nothing
could well be more unstable than _k_ before front vowels, as seen in
It. [tʃ] and Sp. [þ] in _cielo_, Fr. [s] in _ciel_, and [ʃ] in _chien_,
Eng. and Swedish [tʃ] in _chin_, _kind_, Norwegian [c] in _kind_,
Russian [tʃ] in _četyre_ ‘four’ and [s] in _sto_ ‘hundred,’ etc. As
an example of a typically unstable sound Meillet gives bilabial _f_,
and it is true that this sound is so rare that it is difficult to find
it represented in any language; the reason is simply that the upper
teeth normally protrude above the lower jaw, and that consequently the
lower lip articulates easily against the upper teeth, with the natural
result that where we should theoretically expect the bilabial _f_
the labiodental _f_ takes its place. And _s_, which is found almost
universally, and should therefore on Meillet’s theory be very stable,
is often seen to change into _h_ or [x] or to disappear. On the whole,
then, we see that it is not the ‘naturalness’ or universality of a
consonant so much as its position in the syllable and word that decides
the question ‘change or no change.’ The relation between stability
and naturalness is seen, perhaps, most clearly in such an instance
as long [a·]: this sound is so natural that English, from the oldest
Aryan to present-day speech, has never been without it; yet at no time
has it been stable, but as soon as one class of words with long [a·]
is changed, a new class steps into its shoes: (1) Aryan _māter_, now
_mother_; (2) lengthening of a short _a_ before _n_: _gās_, _brāhta_,
now _goose_, _brought_; (3) levelling of _ai_: _stān_, now _stone_; (4)
lengthening of short _a_: _cāld_, now _cold_; (5) later lengthening of
_a_ in open syllable: _nāme_, now [neim]; (6) mod. _carve_, _calm_,
_path_ and others from various sources; and (7) vulgar speech is now
developing new levellings of diphthongs in [ma·l, pa·(ə)] for _mile_,
_power_.
XI.--§ 7. Power of Substratum.
V. Bröndal has made the attempt to infuse new blood into the substratum
theory through his book, _Substrater og Laan i Romansk og Germansk_
(Copenhagen, 1917). The effect of a substratum, according to him, is
the establishment of a ‘constant idiom,’ working “without regard to
place and time” (p. 76) and changing, for instance, Latin into Old
French, Old French into Classical French, and Classical French into
Modern French. His task, then, is to find out certain tendencies
operating at these various periods; these are ascribed to the Keltic
substratum, and Bröndal then passes in review a great many languages
spoken in districts where Kelts are known to have lived in former
times, in order to find the same tendencies there. If he succeeds in
this to his own satisfaction, it is only because the ‘tendencies’
established are partly so vague that they will fit into any language,
partly so ill-defined phonetically that it becomes possible to press
different, nay, in some cases even directly contrary movements into
the same class. But considerations of space forbid me to enter on a
detailed criticism here. I must content myself with taking exception to
the principle that the effect of the ethnic substratum may show itself
several generations after the speech substitution took place. If Keltic
ever had ‘a finger in the pie,’ it must have been immediately on the
taking over of the new language. An influence exerted in such a time
of transition may have far-reaching after-effects, like anything else
in history, but this is not the same thing as asserting that a similar
modification of the language may take place after the lapse of some
centuries as an effect of the same cause. Suppose we have a series of
manuscripts, A, B, C, D, etc., of which B is copied from A, C from B,
etc., and that B has an error which is repeated in all the following
copies; now, if M suddenly agrees with A (which the copyist has never
seen), we infer that this reading is independent of A. In the same way
with a language: each individual learns it from his contemporaries,
but has no opportunity of hearing those who have died before his own
time. It is possible that the transition from _a_ to _æ_, in Old
English (as in _fæder_) is due to Keltic influence, but when we find,
many centuries later, that _a_ is changed into [æ] (the present sound)
in words which had not _æ_ in OE., e.g. _crab_, _hallow_, _act_, it
is impossible to ascribe this, as Bröndal does, to a ‘constant Keltic
idiom’ working through many generations who had never spoken or heard
any Keltic. ‘Atavism,’ which skips over one or more generations, is
unthinkable here, for words and sounds are nothing but habits acquired
by imitation.
So far, then, our discussion of the substratum theory has brought us
no very positive results. One of the reasons why the theories put
forward of late years have been on the whole so unsatisfactory is that
they deal with speech substitutions that have taken place so far back
that absolutely nothing, or practically nothing, is known of those
displaced languages which are supposed to have coloured languages
now existing. What do we know beyond the mere name of Ligurians or
Veneti or Iberians? Of the Pre-Germanic and Pre-Keltic peoples we
know not even the names. As to the old Kelts who play such an eminent
rôle in all these speculations, we know extremely little about their
language at this distant date, and it is possible that in some cases,
at any rate, the Kelts may have been only comparatively small armies
conquering this or that country for a time, but leaving as few
linguistic traces behind them as, say, the armies of Napoleon in Russia
or the Cimbri and Teutoni in Italy. Linguists have turned from the
‘glottogonic’ speculations of Bopp and his disciples, only to indulge
in dialectogonic speculations of exactly the same visionary type.
XI.--§ 8. Types of Race-mixture.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that the conditions, and
consequently the linguistic results, are always the same, whenever two
different races meet and assimilate. The chief classes of race-mixture
have been thus described in a valuable paper by George Hempl
(_Transactions of the American Philological Association_, XXIX, p. 31
ff., 1898).
(1) The conquerors are a comparatively small body, who become the
ruling class, but are not numerous enough to impose their language
on the country. They are forced to learn the language of their
subjects, and their grandchildren may come to know that language
better than they know the language of their ancestors. The language
of the conquerors dies out, but bequeaths to the native language its
terms pertaining to government, the army, and those other spheres of
life that the conquerors had specially under their control. Historic
examples are the cases of the Goths in Italy and Spain, the Franks
in Gaul, the Normans in France and the Norman-French in England. Of
course, the greater the number of the conquerors and the longer they
had been close neighbours of the people they conquered, or maintained
the bonds that united them to their mother-country, the greater was
their influence. Thus the influence of the Franks on the language of
France was greater than that of the Goths on the language of Spain, and
the influence of the Norman-French in England was greater still. Yet in
each case the minority ultimately succumbed.
(2_a_) The conquest is made by many bodies of invaders, who bring with
them their whole households and are followed for a long period of time
by similar hordes of their kinsmen. The conquerors constitute the
upper and middle classes and a part of the lower classes of the new
community. The natives recede before the conquerors or become their
slaves: their speech is regarded as servile and is soon laid aside,
except for a few terms pertaining to the humbler callings, the names of
things peculiar to the country and place-names. Examples: Angles and
Saxons in Britain and Europeans in America and Australia, though in the
last case we can hardly speak of race-mixture between the natives and
the immigrants.
(2_b_) A more powerful nation conquers the people and annexes its
territory, which is made a province, to which not only governors
and soldiers, but also merchants and even colonists are sent. These
become the upper class and the influential part of the middle class.
If centuries pass and the province is still subjected to the direct
influence of the ruling country, it will more and more imitate the
speech and the habits and customs of that country. Such was the history
of Italy, Spain and Gaul under the Romans; similar, also, is the story
of the Slavs of Eastern Germany and of the Dutch in New York State;
such is the process going on to-day among the French in Louisiana and
among the Germans in their original settlements in Pennsylvania.
(3) Immigrants come in scattered bands and at different times; they
become servants or follow other humble callings. It is usually not to
their advantage to associate with their fellow-countrymen, but rather
to mingle with the native population. The better they learn to speak
the native tongue, the faster they get on in the world. If their
children in their dress or speech betray their foreign origin, they are
ridiculed as ‘Dutch’ or Irish, or whatever it may be. They therefore
take pains to rid themselves of all traces of their alien origin and
avoid using the speech of their parents. In this way vast numbers
of newcomers may be assimilated year by year till they constitute a
large part of the new race, while their language makes practically no
impression on the language of the country. This is the story of what is
going on in all parts of the United States to-day.
It will be seen that in classes 1 and 3 the speech of the natives
prevails, while in the two classes comprised under 2 it is that of the
conqueror which eventually triumphs. Further, that, in all cases except
type 2_b_, that language prevails which is spoken by what is at the
time the majority.
Sound substitution is found in class 3 in the case of foreigners
who come to America after they have learnt to speak, and of the
children of foreigners who keep up their original language at home.
If, however, while they are still young, they are chiefly thrown with
English-speaking people, they usually gain a thorough mastery of the
English language; thus most of the children, and practically all of
the grandchildren, of immigrants, by the time they are grown-up, speak
English without foreign taint. Their origin has thus no permanent
influence on their adopted language. The same thing is true when a
small ruling minority drops its foreign speech and learns that of the
majority (class 1), and practically also (class 2_a_) when a native
minority succumbs to a foreign majority, though here the ultimate
language may be slightly influenced by the native dialect.
It is different with class 2_b_: when a whole population comes in the
course of centuries to surrender its natural speech for that of a
ruling minority, sound substitution plays an important part, and to a
great extent determines the character and future of the language. Hempl
here agrees with Hirt in seeing in this fact the explanation of much
(N.B. not all!) of the difference between the Romanic languages and of
the difference between natural High German and High German spoken in
Low German territory, and he is therefore not surprised when he is told
by Nissen that the dialects of modern Italy correspond geographically
pretty closely to the non-Latin languages once spoken in the Peninsula.
But he severely criticizes Hirt for going so far as to explain the
differentiation of Aryan speech by the theory of sound substitution.
Hirt assumes conditions like those in class 1, and yet thinks that the
results would be like those of class 2_a_. “It is essential to Hirt’s
theory that the conquering bodies of Indo-Europeans should be small
compared with the number of the people they conquered.... If we wish
to prove that the differentiation of Indo-European speech was like
the differentiation of Romance speech, we must be able to show that
the conditions under which the differentiations took place were alike
or equivalent. But even a cursory examination of the manner in which
the Romance countries were Romanized ... will make it clear that no
parallel could possibly be drawn between the conditions under which the
Romance languages arose and those that we can suppose to have existed
while the Indo-European languages took shape.” Hempl also criticizes
the way in which the Germanic consonant-shift is supposed by Hirt to be
due to sound-substitution: when instead of the original
t th d dh
Germanic has
þ þ t ð,
these latter sounds, on Hirt’s theory, must be either the native sounds
that the conquered people substituted for the original sounds, or else
they have developed out of such sounds as the natives substituted. If
the first be true, we ask ourselves why the conquered people did not
use their _t_ for the Indo-European _t_, instead of substituting it
for _d_, and then substituting _þ_ for the Indo-European _t_. If the
second supposition be true, the native population introduced into the
language sounds very similar to the original _t_, _th_, _d_, _dh_, and
all the change from that slightly variant form to the one that we find
in Germanic was of subsequent development--and must be explained by the
usual methods after all.
I have dwelt so long on Hempl’s paper because, in spite of its (to
my mind) fundamental importance, it has been generally overlooked by
supporters of the substratum theory. To construct a true theory, it
will be necessary to examine the largest possible number of facts
with regard to race-mixture capable of being tested by scientific
methods. In this connexion the observations of Lenz in South America
and of Pușcariu in Rumania are especially valuable. The former found
that the Spanish spoken in Chile was greatly influenced in its sounds
by the speech of the native Araucanians (see _Zeitschr. f. roman.
Philologie_, 17. 188 ff., 1893). Now, what were the facts in regard
to the population speaking this language? The immigrants were chiefly
men, who in many cases necessarily married native women and left
the care of their children to a great extent in the hands of Indian
servants. As the natives were more warlike than in many other parts
of South America, there was for a very long time a continuous influx
of Spanish soldiers, many of whom, after a short time, settled down
peacefully in the country. More Spanish soldiers, indeed, arrived in
Chile in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than in
the whole of the rest of South America. Accordingly, by the beginning
of the eighteenth century the Indians had been either driven back or
else assimilated, and at the beginning of the War of Liberation early
in the nineteenth century Chile was the only State in which there was
a uniform Spanish-speaking population. In the greater part of Chile
the population is denser than anywhere else in South America, and
this population speaks nothing but Spanish, while in Peru and Bolivia
nearly the whole rural population still speaks more or less exclusively
Keshua or Aimará, and these languages are also used occasionally, or
at any rate understood, by the whites. Chile is thus the only country
in which a real Spanish people’s dialect could develop. (In Hempl’s
classification this would be a typical case of class 2_a_.) In the
other Spanish-American countries the Spanish-speakers are confined to
the upper ruling class, there being practically no lower class with
Spanish as its mother-tongue, except in a couple of big cities. Thus
we understand that the Peruvian who has learnt his Spanish at school
has a purer Castilian pronunciation than the Chilean; yet, apart from
pronunciation, the educated Chilean’s Spanish is much more correct
and fluent than that of the other South Americans, whose language is
stiff and vocabulary scanty, because they have first learnt some Indian
language in childhood. Lenz’s Chileans, who have often been invoked
by the adherents of the unlimited substratum theory, thus really
serve to show that sound substitution takes place only under certain
well-defined conditions.
Pușcariu (in _Prinzipienfragen der romanischen Sprachwissenschaft_,
_Beihefte zur Zschr. f. rom. Phil._, 1910) says that in a Saxon village
which had been almost completely Rumanianized he had once talked
for hours with a peasant without noticing that he was not a native
Rumanian: he was, however, a Saxon, who spoke Saxon with his wife, but
Rumanian with his son, because the latter language was easier to him,
as he had acquired the Rumanian basis of articulation. Here, then,
there was no sound substitution, and in general we may say that the
less related two languages are, the fewer will be the traces of the
original language left on the new language (p. 49). The reason must be
that people who naturally speak a closely related language are easily
understood even when their acquired speech has a tinge of dialect:
there is thus no inducement for them to give up their pronunciation.
Pușcariu also found that it was much more difficult for him to rid
himself of his dialectal traits in Rumanian than to acquire a correct
pronunciation of German or French. He therefore disbelieves in a direct
influence exerted by the indigenous languages on the formation of the
Romanic languages (and thus goes much further than Hempl). All these
languages, and particularly Rumanian, during the first centuries
of the Middle Ages underwent radical transformations not paralleled
in the thousand years ensuing. This may have been partly due to an
influence exerted by ethnic mixture on the whole character of the young
nations and through that also on their language. But other factors have
certainly also played an important rôle, especially the grouping round
new centres with other political aims than those of ancient Rome, and
consequent isolation from the rest of the Romanic peoples. Add to this
the very important emancipation of the ordinary conversational language
from the yoke of Latin. In the first Christian centuries the influence
of Latin was so overpowering in official life and in the schools that
it obstructed a natural development. But soon after the third century
the educational level rapidly sank, and political events broke the
power not only of Rome, but also of its language. The speech of the
masses, which had been held in fetters for so long, now asserted itself
in full freedom and with elemental violence, the result being those
far-reaching changes by which the Romanic languages are marked off from
Latin. Language and nation or race must not be confounded: witness
Rumania, whose language shows very few dialectal variations, though the
populations of its different provinces are ethnically quite distinct
(ib. p. 51).
XI.--§ 9. Summary.
The general impression gathered from the preceding investigation must
be that it is impossible to ascribe to an ethnic substratum all the
changes and dialectal differentiations which some linguists explain as
due to this sole cause. Many other influences must have been at work,
among which an interruption of intercourse created by natural obstacles
or social conditions of various kinds would be of prime importance.
If we take ethnic substrata as the main or sole source of dialectal
differentiation, it will be hard to account for the differences between
Icelandic and Norwegian, for Iceland was very sparsely inhabited when
the ‘land-taking’ took place, and still harder to account for the
very great divergences that we witness between the dialects spoken
in the Faroe Islands. A mere turning over the leaves of Bennike and
Kristensen’s maps of Danish dialects (or the corresponding maps of
France) will show the impossibility of explaining the crisscross of
boundaries of various phonetic phenomena as entirely due to ethnical
differences in the aborigines. On the other hand, the speech of Russian
peasants is said to be remarkably free from dialectal divergences, in
spite of the fact that it has spread in comparatively recent times over
districts inhabited by populations with languages of totally different
types (Finnic, Turkish, Tataric). I thus incline to think that sound
substitution cannot have produced radical changes, but has only played
a minor part in the development of languages. There are, perhaps,
also interesting things to be learnt from conditions in Finland.
Here Swedish has for many centuries been the language of the ruling
minority, and it was only in the course of the nineteenth century that
Finnish attained to the dignity of a literary language. The sound
systems of Swedish and Finnish are extremely unlike: Finnish lacks many
of the Swedish sounds, such as _b_, _d_ (what is written _d_ is either
mute or else a kind of weak _r_), _g_ and _f_. No word can begin with
more than one consonant, consequently Swedish _strand_ and _skräddare_,
‘tailor,’ are represented in the form of the loan-words _ranta_ and
_räätäli_. Now, in spite of the fact that most Swedish-speaking people
have probably spoken Finnish as children and have had Finnish servants
and playfellows to teach them the language, none of these peculiarities
have influenced their Swedish: what makes them recognizable as hailing
from Finland (‘finska brytningen’) is not simplification of consonant
groups or substitution of _p_ for _b_, etc., but such small things
as the omission of the ‘compound tone,’ the tendency to lengthen the
second consonant in groups like _ns_, and European (‘back’) _u_ instead
of the Swedish mixed vowel.
But if sound substitution as a result of race-mixture and of conquest
cannot have played any very considerable part in the differentiation
of languages as wholes, there is another domain in which sound
substitution is very important, that is, in the shape which loan-words
take in the languages into which they are introduced. However good the
pronunciation of the first introducer of a word may have been, it is
clear that when a word is extensively used by people with no intimate
and first-hand knowledge of the language from which it was taken, most
of them will tend to pronounce it with the only sounds with which they
are familiar, those of their own language. Thus we see that the English
and Russians, who have no [y] in their own speech, substitute for it
the combination [ju, iu] in recent loans from French. Scandinavians
have no voiced [z] and [ʒ] and therefore, in such loans from French or
English as _kusine_, _budget_, _jockey_, etc., substitute the voiceless
[s] and [ʃj], or [sj]. The English will make a diphthong of the final
vowels of such words as _bouquet_, _beau_ [bu·kei, bou], and will slur
the _r_ of such French words as _boulevard_, etc. The same transference
of speech habits from one’s native language also affects such important
things as quantity, stress and tone: the English have no final short
stressed vowels, such as are found in _bouquet_, _beau_; hence their
tendency to lengthen as well as diphthongize these sounds, while the
French will stress the final syllable of recent loans, such as _jury_,
_reporter_. These phenomena are so universal and so well known that
they need no further illustration.
The more familiar such loan-words are, the more unnatural it would be
to pronounce them with foreign sounds or according to foreign rules
of quantity and stress; for this means in each case a shunting of the
whole speech-apparatus on to a different track for one or two words and
then shifting back to the original ‘basis of articulation’--an effort
that many speakers are quite incapable of and one that in any case
interferes with the natural and easy flow of speech.
XI.--§ 10. General Theory of Loan-words.
In the last paragraphs we have already broached a very important
subject, that of loan-words.[47] No language is entirely free from
borrowed words, because no nation has ever been completely isolated.
Contact with other nations inevitably leads to borrowings, though their
number may vary very considerably. Here we meet with a fundamental
principle, first formulated by E. Windisch (in his paper “Zur Theorie
der Mischsprachen und Lehnwörter,” _Verh. d. sächsischen Gesellsch. d.
Wissensch._, XLIX, 1897, p. 107 ff.): “It is not the foreign language
a nation learns that turns into a mixed language, but its own native
language becomes mixed under the influence of a foreign language.”
When we try to learn and talk a foreign tongue we do not introduce
into it words taken from our own language; our endeavour will always
be to speak the other language as purely as possible, and generally
we are painfully conscious of every native word that we intrude into
phrases framed in the other tongue. But what we thus avoid in speaking
a foreign language we very often do in our own. Frederick the Great
prided himself on his good French, and in his French writings we do not
find a single German word, but whenever he wrote German his sentences
were full of French words and phrases. This being the general practice,
we now understand why so few Keltic words were taken over into French
and English. There was nothing to induce the ruling classes to learn
the language of the inferior natives: it could never be fashionable for
them to show an acquaintance with a despised tongue by using now and
then a Keltic word. On the other hand, the Kelt would have to learn the
language of his masters, and learn it well; and he would even among his
comrades like to show off his knowledge by interlarding his speech with
words and turns from the language of his betters. Loan-words always
show a superiority of the nation from whose language they are borrowed,
though this superiority may be of many different kinds.
In the first place, it need not be extensive: indeed, in some of the
most typical cases it is of a very partial character and touches
only on one very special point. I refer to those instances in which
a district or a people is in possession of some special thing or
product wanted by some other nation and not produced in that country.
Here quite naturally the name used by the natives is taken over along
with the thing. Obvious examples are the names of various drinks:
_wine_ is a loan from Latin, _tea_ from Chinese, _coffee_ from Arabic,
_chocolate_ from Mexican, and _punch_ from Hindustani. A certain type
of carriage was introduced about 1500 from Hungary and is known in most
European languages by its Magyar name: E. _coach_, G. _kutsche_, etc.
_Moccasin_ is from Algonquin, _bamboo_ from Malay, _tulip_ and _turban_
(ultimately the same word) from Persian. A slightly different case is
when some previously unknown plant or animal is made known through
some foreign nation, as when we have taken the name of _jasmine_
from Persian, _chimpanzee_ from some African, and _tapir_ from some
Brazilian language. It is characteristic of all words of this kind that
only a few of them are taken from each foreign language, and that they
have nearly all of them gone the round of all civilized languages, so
that they are now known practically all over the world.
Other loan-words form larger groups and bear witness to the cultural
superiority of some nation in some one specified sphere of activity or
branch of knowledge: such are the Arabic words relating to mathematics
and astronomy (_algebra_, _zero_, _cipher_, _azimuth_, _zenith_, in
related fields _tariff_, _alkali_, _alcohol_), the Italian words
relating to music (_piano_, _allegro_, _andante_, _solo_, _soprano_,
etc.) and commerce (_bank_, _bankrupt_, _balance_, _traffic_, _ducat_,
_florin_)--one need not accumulate examples, as everybody interested
in the subject of this book will be able to supply a great many from
his own reading. The most comprehensive groups of this kind are those
French, Latin and Greek words that have flooded the whole world of
Western civilization from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and have
given a family-character to all those parts of the vocabularies of
otherwise different languages which are concerned with the highest
intellectual and technical activities. See the detailed discussion of
these strata of loan-words in English in GS ch. v and vi.
When one nation has imbibed for centuries the cultural influence of
another, its language may have become so infiltrated with words from
the other language that these are found in most sentences, at any
rate in nearly every sentence dealing with things above the simplest
material necessities. The best-known examples are English since the
influx of French and classical words, and Turkish with its wholesale
importations from Arabic. Another example is Basque, in which nearly
all expressions for religious and spiritual ideas are Romanic. Basque
is naturally very poor in words for general ideas; it has names
for special kinds of trees, but ‘tree’ is _arbolia_, from Spanish
_árbol_, ‘animal’ is _animale_, ‘colour’ _colore_, ‘plant’ _planta_
or _landare_, ‘flower’ _lore_ or _lili_, ‘thing’ _gauza_, ‘time’
_dembora_. Thus also many of its names for utensils and garments,
weights and measures, arms, etc., are borrowed; ‘king’ is _errege_,
‘law’ _lege_, _lage_, ‘master’ _maisu_, etc. (See _Zs. f. roman.
Phil._, 17. 140 ff.)
In a great many cases linguistic borrowing must be considered a
necessity, but this is not always so. When a nation has once got into
the habit of borrowing words, people will very often use foreign words
where it would have been perfectly possible to express their ideas by
means of native speech-material, the reason for going out of one’s own
language being in some cases the desire to be thought fashionable or
refined through interlarding one’s speech with foreign words, in others
simply laziness, as is very often the case when people are rendering
thoughts they have heard or read in a foreign tongue. Translators
are responsible for the great majority of these intrusive words,
which might have been avoided by a resort to native composition or
derivation, or very often by turning the sentence a little differently
from the foreign text. The most thoroughgoing speech mixtures are due
much less to real race-mixture than to continued cultural contact,
especially of a literary character, as is seen very clearly in English,
where the Romanic element is only to a very small extent referable to
the Norman conquerors, and far more to the peaceful relations of the
following centuries. That Greek and Latin words have come in through
the medium of literature hardly needs saying. Many of these words
are superfluous: “The native words _cold_, _cool_, _chilly_, _icy_,
_frosty_, might have seemed sufficient for all purposes, without any
necessity for importing _frigid_, _gelid_ and _algid_, which, as a
matter of fact, are found neither in Shakespeare nor in the Authorized
Version of the Bible nor in the poetical works of Milton, Pope, Cowper
and Shelley” (GS § 136). But on the other hand it cannot be denied
that the imported words have in many instances enriched the language
through enabling its users to obtain greater variety and to find
expressions for many subtle shades of thought. The question of the
value of loan-words cannot be dismissed offhand, as the ‘purists’ in
many countries are inclined to imagine, with the dictum that foreign
words should be shunned like the plague, but requires for its solution
a careful consideration of the merits and demerits of each separate
foreign term viewed in connexion with the native resources for
expressing that particular idea.
XI.--§ 11. Classes of Loan-words.
It is quite natural that there should be a much greater inclination
everywhere to borrow ‘full’ words (substantives, adjectives, notional
verbs) than ‘empty’ words (pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions,
auxiliary verbs), to which class most of the ‘grammatical’ words
belong. But there is no hard-and-fast limit between the two classes.
It is rare for a language to take such words as numerals from another
language; yet examples are found here and there--thus, in connexion
with special games, etc. Until comparatively recently, dicers and
backgammon-players counted in England by means of the French words
_ace_, _deuce_, _tray_, _cater_, _cinque_, _size_, and with the English
game of lawn tennis the English way of counting (fifteen love, etc.)
has been lately adopted in Russia and to some extent also in Denmark.
In some parts of England Welsh numerals were until comparatively recent
times used in the counting of sheep. Cattle-drivers in Jutland used
to count from 20 to 90 in Low German learnt in Hamburg and Holstein,
where they sold their cattle. In this case the clumsiness and want of
perspicuity of the Danish expressions (_halvtredsindstyve_ for Low
German _föfdix_, etc.) may have been one of the reasons for preferring
the German words; in the same way the clumsiness of the Eskimo way of
counting (“third toe on the second foot of the fourth man,” etc.) has
favoured the introduction into Greenlandic of the Danish words for 100
and 1,000: with an Eskimo ending, _untritigdlit_ and _tusintigdlit_.
Most Japanese numerals are Chinese. And of course _million_ and
_milliard_ are used in most civilized countries.
Prepositions, too, are rarely borrowed by one language from another.
Yet the Latin (Ital.) _per_ is used in English, German and Danish, and
the French _à_ in the two latter languages, and both are extending
their domain beyond the commercial language in which they were first
used. The Greek _kata_, at first also commercial, has in Spanish found
admission into the ordinary language and has become the pronoun _cada_
‘each.’
Personal and demonstrative pronouns, articles and the like are scarcely
ever taken over from one language to another. They are so definitely
woven into the innermost texture of a language that no one would think
of giving them up, however much he might like to adorn his speech with
words from a foreign source. If, therefore, in one instance we find
a case of a language borrowing words of this kind, we are justified
in thinking that exceptional causes must have been at work, and
such really proves to be the case in English, which has adopted the
Scandinavian forms _they_, _them_, _their_. It is usual to speak of
English as being a mixture of native Old English (‘Anglo-Saxon’) and
French, but as a matter of fact the French influence, powerful as it
is in the vocabulary and patent as it is to the eyes of everybody,
is superficial in comparison with the influence exercised in a much
subtler way by the Scandinavian settlers in the North of England. The
French influence is different in extent, but not in kind, from the
French influence on German or the old Gothonic influence on Finnic;
it is perhaps best compared with the German influence on Danish in
the Middle Ages. But the Scandinavian influence on English is of a
different kind. The number of Danish and Norwegian settlers in England
must have been very large, as is shown by the number of Scandinavian
place-names; yet that does not account for everything. A most important
factor was the great similarity of the two languages, in spite of
numerous points of difference. Accordingly, when their fighting was
over, the invaders and the original population would to some extent be
able to make themselves understood by one another, like people talking
two dialects of the same language, or like students from Copenhagen
and from Lund nowadays. Many of the most common words were absolutely
identical, and others differed only slightly. Hence it comes that in
the Middle English texts we find a great many double forms of the same
word, one English and the other Scandinavian, used side by side, some
of these doublets even surviving till the present day, though now
differentiated in sense (e.g. _whole_, _hale_; _no_, _nay_; _from_,
_fro_; _shirt_, _skirt_), while in other cases one only of the two
forms, either the native or the Scandinavian, has survived; thus the
Scandinavian _sister_ and _egg_ have ousted the English _sweostor_ and
_ey_. We find, therefore, a great many words adopted of a kind not
usually borrowed; thus, everyday verbs and adjectives like _take_,
_call_, _hit_, _die_, _ill_, _ugly_, _wrong_, and among substantives
such non-technical ones as _fellow_, _sky_, _skin_, _wing_, etc. (For
details see my GS ch. iv.) All this indicates an intimate fusion of the
two races and of the two languages, such as is not provided for in any
of the classes described by Hempl (above, § 8). In most speech-mixtures
the various elements remain distinct and can be separated, just as
after shuffling a pack of cards you can pick out the hearts, spades,
etc.; but in the case of English and Scandinavian we have a subtler and
more intimate fusion, very much as when you put a lump of sugar into a
cup of tea and a few minutes afterwards are quite unable to say which
is tea and which is sugar.
XI.--§ 12. Influence on Grammar.
The question has often been raised whether speech-mixture affects
the grammar of a language which has borrowed largely from some other
language. The older view is expressed pointedly by Whitney (L 199):
“Such a thing as a language with a mixed grammatical apparatus has
never come under the cognizance of linguistic students: it would
be to them a monstrosity; it seems an impossibility.” This is an
exaggeration, and cannot be justified, for the simple reason that
the vocabulary of a language and its ‘grammatical apparatus’ cannot
be nicely separated in the way presupposed: indeed, much of the
borrowed material mentioned in our last paragraphs does belong to the
grammatical apparatus. But there is, of course, some truth in Whitney’s
dictum. When a word is borrowed it is not as a rule taken over with
all the elaborate flexion which may belong to it in its original home;
as a rule, one form only is adopted, it may be the nominative or some
other case of a noun, the infinitive or the present or the naked
stem of a verb. This form is then either used unchanged or with the
endings of the adopting language, generally those of the most ‘regular’
declension or conjugation. It is an exceptional case when more than
one flexional form is taken over, and this case does not occur in
really popular loans. In learned usage we find in older Danish such
case-flexion as gen. _Christi_, dat. _Christo_, by the side of nom.
_Christus_, also, e.g., _i theatro_, and still sometimes in German we
have the same usage: e.g. _mit den pronominibus_. In a somewhat greater
number of instances the plural form is adopted as well as the singular
form, as in English _fungi_, _formulæ_, _phenomena_, _seraphim_, etc.,
but the natural tendency is always towards using the native endings,
_funguses_, _formulas_, etc., and this has prevailed in all popular
words, e.g. _ideas_, _circuses_, _museums_. As the formation of cases,
tenses, etc., in different languages is often very irregular, and the
distinctive marks are often so intimately connected with the kernel of
the word and so unsubstantial as not to be easily distinguished, it
is quite natural that no one should think of borrowing such endings,
etc., and applying them to native words. Schuchardt once thought that
the English genitive ending _s_ had been adopted into Indo-Portuguese
(in the East Indies), where _gobernadors casa_ stands for ‘governor’s
house,’ but he now explains the form more correctly as originating in
the possessive pronoun _su_: _gobernador su casa_ (dem g. sein haus,
_Sitzungsber. der preuss. Akademie_, 1917, 524).
It was at one time commonly held that the English plural ending _s_,
which in Old English was restricted in its application, owes its
extension to the influence of French. This theory, I believe, was
finally disposed of by the six decisive arguments I brought forward
against it in 1891 (reprinted in ChE § 39). But after what has been
said above on the Scandinavian influence, I incline to think that E.
Classen is right in thinking that the Danes count for something in
bringing about the final victory of _-s_ over its competitor _-n_,
for the Danes had no plural in _-n_, and _-s_ reminded them of their
own _-r_ (_Mod. Language Rev._ 14. 94; cf. also _-s_ in the third
person of verbs, Scand. _-r_). Apart from this particular point, it is
quite natural that the Scandinavians should have exercised a general
levelling influence on the English language, as many niceties of
grammar would easily be sacrificed where mutual intelligibility was so
largely brought about by the common vocabulary. Accordingly, we find
that in the regions in which the Danish settlements were thickest the
wearing away of grammatical forms was a couple of centuries in advance
of the same process in the southern parts of the country.
Derivative endings certainly belong to the ‘grammatical apparatus’ of
a language; yet many such endings have been taken over into another
language as parts of borrowed words and have then been freely combined
with native speech-material. The phenomenon is extremely frequent
in English, where we have, for instance, the Romanic endings _-ess_
(_shepherdess_, _seeress_), _-ment_ (_endearment_, _bewilderment_),
_-age_ (_mileage_, _cleavage_, _shortage_), _-ance_ (_hindrance_,
_forbearance_) and many more. In Danish and German the number of
similar instances is much more restricted, yet we have, for instance,
recent words in _-isme_, _-ismus_ and _-ianer_; cf. also older
words like _bageri_, _bäckerei_, etc. It is the same with prefixes:
English has formed many words with _de-_, _co-_, _inter-_, _pre-_,
_anti-_ and other classical prefixes: _de-anglicize_, _co-godfather_,
_inter-marriage_, _at pre-war prices_, _anti-slavery_, etc. (quotations
in my GS § 124; cf. MEG ii. 14. 66). _Ex-_ has established itself in
many languages: _ex-king_, _ex-roi_, _ex-konge_, _ex-könig_, etc. In
Danish the prefix _be-_, borrowed from German, is used very extensively
with native words: _bebrejde_, _bebo_, _bebygge_, and this is not the
only German prefix that is productive in the Scandinavian languages.
With regard to syntax, very little can be said except in a general
way: languages certainly do influence each other syntactically, and
those who know a foreign language only imperfectly are apt to transfer
to it methods of construction from their own tongue. Many instances
of this have been collected by Schuchardt, SlD. But it is doubtful
whether these syntactical influences have the same _permanent_ effects
on any language as those exerted on one’s own language by the habit
of translating foreign works into it: in this purely literary way
a great many idioms and turns of phrases have been introduced into
English, German and the Scandinavian languages from French and Latin,
and into Danish and Swedish from German. The accusative and infinitive
construction, which had only a very restricted use in Old English, has
very considerably extended its domain through Latin influence, and the
so-called ‘absolute construction’ (in my own grammatical terminology
called ‘duplex subjunct’) seems to be entirely due to imitation
of Latin syntax. In the Balkan tongues there are some interesting
instances of syntactical agreement between various languages, which
must be due to oral influence through the necessity imposed on border
peoples of passing continually from one language to another: the
infinitive has disappeared from Greek, Rumanian and Albanian, and the
definite article is placed after the substantive in Rumanian, Albanian
and Bulgarian.
XI.--§ 13. Translation-loans.
Besides direct borrowings we have also indirect borrowings or
‘translation loan-words,’ words modelled more or less closely on
foreign ones, though consisting of native speech-material. I take some
examples from the very full and able paper “Notes sur les Calques
Linguistiques” contributed by Kr. Sandfeld to the _Festschrift
Vilh. Thomsen_, 1912: _ædificatio_: G. erbauung, Dan. opbyggelse;
_æquilibrium_: G. gleichgewicht, Dan. ligevægt; _beneficium_: G.
wohltat, Dan. velgerning; _conscientia_: Goth. miþwissi, G. gewissen,
Dan. samvittighed, Swed. samvete, Russ. soznanie; _omnipotens_:
E. almighty, G. allmächtig, Dan. almægtig; _arrière-pensée_:
hintergedanke, bagtanke; _bien-être_: wohlsein, velvære; _exposition_:
austellung, udstilling; etc. Sandfeld gives many more examples, and as
he has in most instances been able to give also corresponding words
from various Slavonic languages as well as from Magyar, Finnic, etc.,
he rightly concludes that his collections serve to throw light on
that community in thought and expression which Bally has well termed
“la mentalité européenne.” (But it will be seen that English differs
from most European languages in having a much greater propensity to
swallowing foreign words raw, as it were, than to translating them.)
FOOTNOTES:
[42] Cf. against the assumption of Keltic influence in this instance
Meyer-Lübke, _Die Romanischen Sprachen, Kultur der Gegenwart_, p. 457,
and Ettmayer in Streitberg’s _Gesch._ 2. 265. H. Mutschmann, _Phonology
of the North-Eastern Scotch Dialect_, 1909, p. 53, thinks that the
fronting of _u_ in Scotch is similar to that of Latin _ū_ on Gallic
territory, and like it is ascribable to the Keltic inhabitants: he
forgets, however, that the corresponding fronting is not found in the
Keltic spoken in Scotland. Moreover, the complicated Scotch phenomena
cannot be compared with the French transition, for the sound of [u]
remains in many cases, and [i] generally corresponds to earlier [o],
whatever the explanation may be.
[43] Curiously enough, Feist uses this argument himself against Hirt in
his earlier paper, PBB 37. 121.
[44] Feist, on the other hand (PBB 36. 329), makes the Kelts
responsible for the shift from _p_ to _f_, because initial _p_
disappears in Keltic: but disappearance is not the same thing as being
changed into a spirant, and there is no necessity for assuming that the
sound before disappearing had been changed into _f_. Besides, it is
characteristic of the Gothonic shift that it affects all stops equally,
without regard to the place of articulation, while the Keltic change
affects only the one sound _p_.
[45] ME. _knowleche_, _stonës_ [stɔ·nes], _off_, _with_ [wiþ] become
MnE. _knowledge_, _stones_ [stounz], _of_ [ɔv, əv], _with_ [wið],
etc.; cf. also _possess_, _discern_ with [z], _exert_ with [gz], but
_exercise_ with [ks]. See my _Studier over eng. kasus_, 1891, 178 ff.,
now MEG i. 6. 5 ff., and (for the phonetic explanation) LPh p. 121.
[46] Sharp tenues and aspirated tenues may alternate even in the life
of one individual, as I have observed in the case of my own son, who
at the age of 1.9 used the sharp French sounds, but five months later
substituted strongly aspirated _p_, _t_, _k_, with even stronger
aspiration than the usual Danish sounds, which it took him ten or
eleven months to learn with perfect certainty.
[47] I use the terms _loan-words_ and _borrowed words_ because they
are convenient and firmly established, not because they are exact.
There are two essential respects in which linguistic borrowing differs
from the borrowing of, say, a knife or money: the lender does not
deprive himself of the use of the word any more than if it had not been
borrowed by the other party, and the borrower is under no obligation to
return the word at any future time. Linguistic ‘borrowing’ is really
nothing but imitation, and the only way in which it differs from a
child’s imitation of its parents’ speech is that here something is
imitated which forms a part of a speech that is not imitated as a whole.