CAUSES OF CHANGE
§ 1. Anatomy. § 2. Geography. § 3. National Psychology. § 4. Speed
of Utterance. § 5. Periods of Rapid Change. § 6. The Ease Theory.
§ 7. Sounds in Connected Speech. § 8. Extreme Weakenings. § 9. The
Principle of Value. § 10. Application to Case System, etc. § 11.
Stress Phenomena. § 12. Non-phonetic Changes.
XIV.--§ 1. Anatomy.
In accordance with the programme laid down in the opening paragraph of
Book III, we shall now deal in detail with those linguistic changes
which are not due to transference to new individuals. The chapter on
woman’s language has served as a kind of bridge between the two main
divisions, in so far as the first sections treated of those women’s
dialects which were, or were supposed to be, due to the influence of
foreigners.
Many theories have been advanced to explain the indubitable fact that
languages change in course of time. Some scholars have thought that
there ought to be one fundamental cause working in all instances,
while others, more sensibly, have maintained that a variety of causes
have been and are at work, and that it is not easy to determine
which of them has been decisive in each observed case of change. The
greatest attention has been given to phonetic change, and in reading
some theorists one might almost fancy that sounds were the only thing
changeable, or at any rate that phonetic changes were the only ones in
language which had to be accounted for. Let us now examine some of the
theories advanced.
Sometimes it is asserted that sound changes must have their cause in
changes in the anatomical structure of the articulating organs. This
theory, however, need not detain us long (see the able discussion in
Oertel, p. 194 ff.), for no facts have been alleged to support it, and
one does not see why small anatomical variations should cause changes
so long as any teacher of languages on the phonetic method is able to
teach his pupils practically every speech sound, even those that their
own native language has been without for centuries. Besides, many
phonetic changes do not at all lead to new sounds being developed or
old ones lost, but simply to the old sounds being used in new places
or disused in some of the places where they were formerly found. Some
tribes have a custom of mutilating their lips or teeth, and that of
course must have caused changes in their pronunciation, which are said
to have persisted even after the custom was given up. Thus, according
to Meinhof (MSA 60) the Yao women insert a big wooden disk within the
upper lip, which makes it impossible for them to pronounce [f], and
as it is the women that teach their children to speak, the sound of
[f] has disappeared from the language, though now it is beginning to
reappear in loan-words. It is clear, however, that such customs can
have exercised only the very slightest influence on language in general.
XIV.--§ 2. Geography.
Some scholars have believed in an influence exercised by climatic
or geographical conditions on the character of the sound system,
instancing as evidence the harsh consonants found in the languages of
the Caucasus as contrasted with the pleasanter sounds heard in regions
more favoured by nature. But this influence cannot be established as
a general rule. “The aboriginal inhabitants of the north-west coast
of America found subsistence relatively easy in a country abounding
in many forms of edible marine life; nor can they be said to have
been subjected to rigorous climatic conditions; yet in phonetic
harshness their languages rival those of the Caucasus. On the other
hand, perhaps no people has ever been subjected to a more forbidding
physical environment than the Eskimos, yet the Eskimo language not
only impresses one as possessed of a relatively agreeable phonetic
system when compared with the languages of the north-west coast,
but may even be thought to compare favourably with American Indian
languages generally” (Sapir, _American Anthropologist_, XIV (1912),
234). It would also on this theory be difficult to account for the very
considerable linguistic changes which have taken place in historical
times in many countries whose climate, etc., cannot during the same
period have changed correspondingly.
A geographical theory of sound-shifting was advanced by Heinrich
Meyer-Benfey in _Zeitschr. f. deutsches Altert._ 45 (1901), and has
recently been taken up by H. Collitz in _Amer. Journal of Philol._
39 (1918), p. 413. Consonant shifting is chiefly found in mountain
regions; this is most obvious in the High German shift, which started
from the Alpine district of Southern Germany. After leaving the region
of the high mountains it gradually decreases in strength; yet it
keeps on extending, with steadily diminishing energy, over part of
the area of the Franconian dialects. But having reached the plains
of Northern Germany, the movement stops. The same theory applies to
languages in which a similar shifting is found, e.g. Old and Modern
Armenian, the Soho language in South Africa, etc. “However strange it
may appear at the first glance,” says Collitz, “that certain consonant
changes should depend on geographical surroundings, the connexion is
easily understood. The change of media to tenuis and that of tenuis to
affricate or aspirate are linked together by a common feature, viz.
an increase in the intensity of expiration. As the common cause of
both these shiftings we may therefore regard a change in the manner in
which breath is used for pronunciation. The habitual use of a larger
volume of breath means an increased activity of the lungs. Here we have
reached the point where the connexion with geographical or climatic
conditions is clear, because nobody will deny that residence in the
mountains, especially in the high mountains, stimulates the lungs.”
When this theory was first brought to my notice, I wrote a short
footnote on it (PhG 176), in which I treated it with perhaps too little
respect, merely mentioning the fact that my countrymen, the Danes, in
their flat country were developing exactly the same shift as the High
Germans (making _p_, _t_, _k_ into strongly aspirated or affricated
sounds and unvoicing _b_, _d_, _g_); I then asked ironically whether
that might be a consequence of the indubitable fact that an increasing
number of Danes every summer go to Switzerland and Norway for their
holidays. And even now, after the theory has been endorsed by so able
an advocate as Collitz, I fail to see how it can hold water. The
induction seems faulty on both sides, for the shift is found among
peoples living in plains, and on the other hand it is not shared by all
mountain peoples--for example, not by the Italian and Ladin speaking
neighbours of the High Germans in the Alps. Besides, the physiological
explanation is not impeccable, for walking in the mountains affects
the way in which we breathe, that is, it primarily affects the lungs,
but the change in the consonants is primarily one not in the lungs,
but in the glottis; as the connexion between these two things is not
necessary, the whole reasoning is far from being cogent. At any rate,
the theory can only with great difficulty be applied to the first
Gothonic shift, for how do we know that that started in mountainous
regions? and who knows whether the sounds actually found as _f_, _þ_
and _h_ for original _p_, _t_, _k_, had first been aspirated and
affricated stops? It seems much more probable that the transition was a
direct one, through slackening and opening of the stoppage, but in that
case it has nothing to do with the lungs or way of breathing.
XIV.--§ 3. National Psychology.
We are much more likely to ‘burn,’ as the children say, when, instead
of looking for the cause in such outward circumstances, we try to find
it in the psychology of those who initiate the change. But this does
not amount to endorsing all the explanations of this kind which have
found favour with linguists. Thus, since the times of Grimm it has
been usual to ascribe the well-known consonant shift to psychological
traits believed to be characteristic of the Germans. Grimm says that
the sound shift is a consequence of the progressive tendency and desire
of liberty found in the Germans (GDS 292); it is due to their courage
and pride in the period of the great migration of tribes (ib. 306):
“When quiet and morality returned, the sounds remained, and it may be
reckoned as evidence of the superior gentleness and moderation of the
Gothic, Saxon and Scandinavian tribes that they contented themselves
with the first shift, while the wilder force of the High Germans was
impelled to the second shift.” (Thus also Westphal.) Curtius finds
energy and juvenile vigour in the Germanic sound shift (KZ 2. 331,
1852). Müllenhof saw in the transition from _p_, _t_, _k_ to _f_,
_þ_, _h_ a sign of weakening, the Germans having apparently lost
the power of pronouncing the hard stops; while further, the giving
up of the aspirated _ph_, _th_, _kh_, _bh_, _dh_, _gh_ was due to
enervation or indolence. But the succeeding transition from the old
_b_, _d_, _g_ to _p_, _t_, _k_ showed that they had afterwards pulled
themselves together to new exertions, and the regularity with which all
these changes were carried through evidenced a great steadiness and
persevering force (_Deutsche Altertumsk._ 2. 197). His disciple Wilhelm
Scherer saw in the whole history of the German language alternating
periods of rise and decline in popular taste; he looked upon sound
changes from the æsthetic point of view and ascribed the (second)
consonant shift to a feminine period in which consonants were neglected
because the nation took pleasure in vocalic sounds.
XIV.--§ 4. Speed of Utterance.
Wundt gives a different though somewhat related explanation of the
Germanic shift as due to a “revolution in culture, as the subjugation
of a native population through warlike immigrants, with resulting new
organization of the State” (S 1. 424): this increased the speed of
utterance, and he tries in detail to show that increased speed leads
naturally to just those changes in consonants which are found in the
Gothonic shift (1. 420 ff.). But even if we admit that the average
speed of talking (tempo der rede) is now probably greater than
formerly, the whole theory is built up on so many doubtful or even
manifestly incorrect details both in linguistic history and in general
phonetic theory that it cannot be accepted. It does not account for the
actual facts of the consonant shifts; moreover, it is difficult to see
why such phenomena as this shift, if they were dependent on the speed
of utterance, should occur only at these particular historical times
and within comparatively narrow geographical limits, for there is much
to be said for the view that in all periods the speech of the Western
nations has been constantly gaining in rapidity as life in general has
become accelerated, and in no period probably more than during the last
century, which has witnessed no radical consonant shift in any of the
leading civilized nations.
XIV.--§ 5. Periods of Rapid Change.
All these theories, different though they are in detail, have this
in common, that they endeavour to explain one particular change, or
set of changes, from one particular psychological trait supposed to
be prevalent at the time when the change took place, but they fail
because we are not able scientifically to demonstrate any intimate
connexion between the pronunciation of particular sounds and a certain
state of mind, and also because our knowledge of the fluctuations
of collective psychology is still so very imperfect. But it is
interesting to contrast these theories with the explanation of the
very same sound shifts mentioned in a previous chapter (XI), and
there shown to be equally unsatisfactory, the explanation, namely,
that the fundamental cause of the consonant shift is to be found in
the peculiar pronunciation of an aboriginal population. In both cases
the Gothonic shifts are singled out, because since the time of Grimm
the attention of scholars has been focused on these changes more than
on any others--they are looked upon as changes _sui generis_, and
therefore requiring a special explanation, such as is not thought
necessary in the case of the innumerable minor changes that fill most
of the pages of the phonological section of any historical grammar.
But the sober truth seems to be that these shifts are not different
in kind from those that have made, say, Fr. _sève_, _frère_, _chien_,
_ciel_, _faire_, _changer_ out of Lat. _sapa_, _fratrem_, _canem_,
_kælum_, _fakere_, _cambiare_, etc., or those that have changed the
English vowels in _fate_, _feet_, _fight_, _foot_, _out_ from what they
were when the letters which denote them still had their ‘continental’
values. Our main endeavour, therefore, must be to find out general
reasons why sounds should not always remain unchanged. This seems more
important, at any rate as a preliminary investigation, than attempting
offhand to assign particular reasons why in such and such a century
this or that sound was changed in some particular way.
If, however, we find a particular period especially fertile in
linguistic changes (phonetic, morphological, semantic, or all at once),
it is quite natural that we should turn our attention to the social
state of the community at that time in order, if possible, to discover
some specially favouring circumstances. I am thinking especially of
two kinds of condition which may operate. In the first place, the
influence of parents, and grown-up people generally, may be less than
usual, because an unusual number of parents may be away from home, as
in great wars of long duration, or may have been killed off, as in the
great plagues; cf. also what was said above of children left to shift
for themselves in certain favoured regions of North America (Ch. X §
7). Secondly, there may be periods in which the ordinary restraints on
linguistic change make themselves less felt than usual, because the
whole community is animated by a strong feeling of independence and
wants to break loose from social ties of many kinds, including those
of a powerful school organization or literary tradition. This probably
was the case with North America in the latter half of the eighteenth
century, when the new nation wished to manifest its independence of
old England and therefore, among other things, was inclined to throw
overboard that respect for linguistic authority which under normal
conditions makes for conservatism. If the divergence between American
and British English is not greater than it actually is, this is
probably due partly to the continual influx of immigrants from the old
country, and partly to that increased facility of communication between
the two countries in recent times which has made mutual linguistic
influence possible to an extent formerly undreamt-of. But in the
case of the Romanic languages both of the conditions mentioned were
operating: during the centuries in which they were framed and underwent
the strongest differentiation, wars with the intruding ‘barbarians’
and a series of destructive plagues kept away or killed a great many
grown-up people, and at the same time each country released itself from
the centralizing influence of Rome, which in the first centuries of the
Christian era had been very powerful in keeping up a fairly uniform
and conservative pronunciation and phraseology throughout the whole
Empire.[56] There were thus at that time various forces at work which,
taken together, are quite sufficient to explain the wide divergence in
linguistic structure that separated French, Provençal, Spanish, etc.,
from classical Latin (cf. above, XI § 8, p. 206).
In the history of English, one of the periods most fertile in change
is the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: the wars with France, the
Black Death (which is said to have killed off about one-third of the
population) and similar pestilences, insurrections like those of Wat
Tyler and Jack Cade, civil wars like those of the Roses, decimated the
men and made home-life difficult and unsettled. In the Scandinavian
languages the Viking age is probably the period that witnessed the
greatest linguistic changes--if I am right, not, as has sometimes been
said, on account of the heroic character of the period and the violent
rise in self-respect or self-assertion, but for the more prosaic reason
that the men were absent and the women had other things to attend to
than their children’s linguistic education. I am also inclined to think
that the unparalleled rapidity with which, during the last hundred
years, the vulgar speech of English cities has been differentiated
from the language of the educated classes (nearly all long vowels
being shifted, etc.) finds its natural explanation in the unexampled
misery of child-life among industrial workers in the first half of the
last century--one of the most disgraceful blots on our overpraised
civilization.
XIV.--§ 6. The Ease Theory.
If we now turn to the actuating principles that determine the general
changeability of human speech habits, we shall find that the moving
power everywhere is an impetus starting from the individual, and that
there is a curbing power in the mere fact that language exists not for
the individual alone, but for the whole community. The whole history
of language is, as it were, a tug-of-war between these two principles,
each of which gains victories in turn.
First of all we must make up our minds with regard to the disputed
question whether the changes of language go in the direction of
greater ease, in other words, whether they manifest a tendency
towards economy of effort. The prevalent opinion among the older
school was that the chief tendency was, in Whitney’s words, “to make
things easy to our organs of speech, to economize time and effort
in the work of expression” (L 28). Curtius very emphatically states
that “Bequemlichkeit ist und bleibt der hauptanlass des lautwandels
unter allen umständen” (_Griech. etym._ 23; cf. C 7). But Leskien,
Sievers, and since them other recent writers, hold the opposite view
(see quotations and summaries in Oertel 204 f., Wechssler L 88 f.),
and their view has prevailed to the extent that Sütterlin (WW 33)
characterizes the old view as “empty talk,” “a wrong scent,” and
“worthless subterfuges now rejected by our science.”
Such strong words may, however, be out of place, for is it so very
foolish to think that men in this, as in all other respects, tend to
follow ‘the line of least resistance’ and to get off with as little
exertion as possible? The question is only whether this universal
tendency can be shown to prevail in those phonetic changes which are
dealt with in linguistic history.
Sütterlin thinks it enough to mention some sound changes in which
the new sound is more difficult than the old; these being admitted,
he concludes (and others have said the same thing) that those other
instances in which the new sound is evidently easier than the old one
cannot be explained by the principle of ease. But it seems clear that
this conclusion is not valid: the correct inference can only be that
the tendency towards ease may be at work in some cases, though not in
all, because there are other forces which may at times neutralize it or
prove stronger than it. We shall meet a similar all-or-nothing fallacy
in the chapter on Sound Symbolism.
Now, it is sometimes said that natives do not feel any difficulty in
the sounds of their own language, however difficult these may be to
foreigners. This is quite true if we speak of a _conscious_ perception
of this or that sound being difficult to produce; but it is no less
true that the act of speaking always requires some exertion, muscular
as well as psychical, on the part of the speaker, and that he is
therefore apt on many occasions to speak with as little effort as
possible, often with the result that his voice is not loud enough, or
that his words become indistinct if he does not move his tongue, lips,
etc., with the required precision or force. You may as well say that
when once one has learnt the art of writing, it is no longer any effort
to form one’s letters properly; and yet how many written communications
do we not receive in which many of the letters are formed so badly that
we can do little but guess from the context what each form is meant
for! There can be no doubt that the main direction of change in the
development of our written alphabet has been towards forms requiring
less and less exertion--and similar causes have led to analogous
results in the development of spoken sounds.
It is not always easy to decide which of two articulations is the
easier one, and opinions may in some instances differ--we may also
find in two neighbouring nations opposite phonetic developments, each
of which may perhaps be asserted by speakers of the language to be in
the direction of greater ease. “To judge of the difficulty of muscular
activity, the muscular quantity at play cannot serve as an absolute
measure. Is [d] absolutely more awkward to produce than [ð]? When a man
is running full tilt, it is under certain circumstances easier for him
to rush against the wall than to stop suddenly at some distance from
it: when the tongue is in motion, it may be easier for it to thrust
itself against the roof of the mouth or the teeth, i.e. to form a stop
(a plosive), than to halt at a millimetre’s distance, i.e. to form a
fricative” (Verner 78). In the same sense I wrote in 1904: “Many an
articulation which obviously requires greater muscular movements is yet
easier of execution than another in which the movement is less, but has
to be carried out with greater precision: it requires less effort to
chip wood than to operate for cataract” (PhG 181).
In other cases, however, no such doubt is possible: [s], [f] or [x]
require more muscular exertion than [h], and a replacement of one of
them by [h] therefore necessarily means a lessening of effort. Now, I
am firmly convinced that whenever a phonologist finds one of these oral
fricatives standing regularly in one language against [h] in another,
he will at once take the former sound to be the original and [h] to
be the derived sound: an indisputable indication that the instinctive
feeling of all linguists is still in favour of the view that a movement
towards the easier sound is the rule, and not the exception.
In thus taking up the cudgels for the ease theory I am not afraid of
hearing the objection that I ascribe too great power to human laziness,
indolence, inertia, shirking, easygoingness, sloth, sluggishness, lack
of energy, or whatever other beautiful synonyms have been invented for
‘economy of effort’ or ‘following the line of least resistance.’ The
fact remains that there _is_ such a ‘tendency’ in all human beings, and
by taking it into account in explaining changes of sound we are doing
nothing else than applying here the same principle that attributes many
simplifications of form to ‘analogy’: we see the same psychological
force at work in the two different domains of phonetics and morphology.
It is, of course, no serious objection to this view that if this had
been always the direction of change, speaking must have been uncommonly
troublesome to our earliest ancestors[57]--who says it wasn’t?--or
that “if certain combinations were really irksome in themselves, why
should they have been attempted at all; why should they often have been
maintained so long?” (Oertel 204)--as if people at a remote age had
been able to compare consciously two articulations and to choose the
easier one! Neither in language nor in any other activity has mankind
at once hit upon the best or easiest expedients.
XIV.--§ 7. Sounds in Connected Speech.
In the great majority of linguistic changes we have to consider the
ease or difficulty, not of the isolated sound, but of the sound in
that particular conjunction with other sounds in which it occurs in
words.[58] Thus in the numerous phenomena comprised under the name of
assimilation. There is an interesting account in the _Proceedings of
the Philological Society_ (December 17, 1886) of a discussion of these
problems, in which Sweet, while maintaining that “cases of saving of
effort were very rare or non-existent” and that “all the ordinary
sounds of language were about on a par as to difficulty of production,”
said that assimilation “sprang from the desire to save space in
articulation and secure ease of transition. Thus _pn_ became _pm_, or
else _mn_.” But in both these changes there is saving of effort, for
in the former the movement of the tip of the tongue required for [n],
and in the latter the movement of the soft palate required for [p],
is done away with[59]: the term “saving of space” can have no other
meaning than economy of muscular energy. And the same is true of what
Sweet terms “saving of time,” which he finds effected by dropping
superfluous sounds, especially at the end of words, e.g. [g] after [ŋ]
in E. _sing_. Here, of course, one articulation (of the velum) is saved
and this need not even be accompanied by the saving of any time, for in
such cases the remaining sound is often lengthened so as to make up for
the loss.[60]
If, then, all assimilations are to be counted as instances of saving
of effort, it is worth noting that a great many phonetic changes
which are not always given under the heading of assimilation should
really be looked upon as such. If Lat. _saponem_ yields Fr. _savon_,
this is the result of a whole series of assimilations: first [p]
becomes [b], because the vocal vibrations continue from the vowel
before to the vowel after the consonant, the opening of the glottis
being thus saved; then the transition of [b] to [v] between vowels may
be considered a partial assimilation to the open lip position of the
vowels; the vowel [o] is nasalized in consequence of an assimilation
to the nasal [n] (anticipation of the low position of the velum), and
the subsequent dropping of the consonant [n] is a clear case of a
different kind of assimilation (saving of a tip movement); at an early
stage the two final sounds of _saponem_ had disappeared, first [m] and
later the indistinct vowel resulting from _e_: whether we reckon these
disappearances as assimilations or not, at any rate they constitute
a saving of effort. All droppings of sounds, whether consonants (as
_t_ in E. _castle_, _postman_, etc.) or vowels (as in E. _p’rhaps_,
_bus’ness_, etc.), are to be viewed in the same light, and thus by
their enormous number in the history of all languages form a strong
argument in favour of the ease theory.
There is one more thing to be considered which is generally overlooked.
In such assimilations as It. _otto_, _sette_, from _octo_, _septem_,
a greater ease is effected not only by the assimilation as such, by
which one of the consonants is dropped--for that would have been
obtained just as well if the result had been _occo_, _seppe_--but also
by the fact that it is the tip action which has been retained in both
cases, for the tip of the tongue is much more flexible and more easily
moved than either the lips or the back of the tongue. On the whole,
many sound changes show how the tip is favoured at the cost of other
organs, thus in the frequent transition of final _-m_ to _-n_, found,
for instance, in old Gothonic, in Middle English, in ancient Greek, in
Balto-Slavic, in Finnish and in Chinese.
In the discussion referred to above Sweet was seconded by Lecky, who
said that “assimilations vastly multiplied the number of elementary
sounds in a language, and therefore could not be described as
facilitating pronunciation.” This is a great exaggeration, for in
the vast majority of instances assimilation introduces no new sounds
at all (see, for instance, the lists in my LPh ch. xi.). Lecky was
probably thinking of such instances as when [k, g] before front vowels
become [tʃ, dʒ] or similar combinations, or when mutation caused by
[i] changes [u, o] into [y, ø], which sounds were not previously found
in the language. Here we might perhaps say that those individuals
who for the sake of their own ease introduced new sounds made things
more difficult for coming generations (though even that is not quite
certain), and the case would then be analogous to that of a man who
has learnt a foreign expression for a new idea and then introduces it
into his own language, thus burdening his countrymen with a new word
instead of thinking how the same idea might have been rendered by means
of native speech-material--in both cases a momentary alleviation is
obtained at the cost of a permanent disadvantage, but neither case can
be alleged against the view that the prevalent tendency among human
beings is to prefer the easiest and shortest cut.
XIV.--§ 8. Extreme Weakenings.
When this lazy tendency is indulged to the full, the result is an
indistinct protracted vocal murmur, with here and there possibly one
or other sound (most often an _s_) rising to the surface: think, for
instance, of the way in which we often hear grace said, prayers mumbled
and other similar formulas muttered inarticulately, with half-closed
lips and the least possible movement of the rest of the vocal organs.
This is tolerated more or less in cases in which the utterance is
hardly meant as a communication to any human being; otherwise it will
generally be met with a request to repeat what has been said, the
social curb being thus applied to the easygoing tendencies of the
individual. Now, as a matter of fact, there are in every language a
certain number of word-forms that can only be explained by this very
laziness in pronouncing, which in extreme cases leads to complete
unintelligibility.
Russian _sudar’_ (_gosudar’_), ‘sir,’ is colloquially shortened into
a mere _s_, which may in subservient speech be added to almost any
word as a meaningless enclitic. And curiously enough the same sound is
used in exactly the same way in conversational Spanish, as _buenos_
for _bueno_ ‘good,’ only here it is a weakening of _señor_ (Hanssen,
_Span. gramm._ 60): thus two entirely different words, from identical
psychological motives, yield the same result in two distant countries.
Fr. _monsieur_, instead of [mɔ̃sjœ·r], as might be expected, sounds
[mɔsjø] and extremely frequently [msjø] and even [psjø], with a
transition not otherwise found in French. _Madame_ before a name is
very often shortened into [mam]; in English the same word becomes
a single sound in _yes’m_. The weakening of _mistress_ into _miss_
and the old-fashioned _mas_ for _master_ also belong here, as do It.
forms for _signore_, _signora_: _gnor si_, _gnor no_, _gnora si_,
_sor Luigi_, _la sora sposa_, and Sp. _usted_ ‘you’ for _vuestra
merced_. Formulas of greeting and of politeness are liable to similar
truncations, e.g. E. _how d(e) do_, Dan. [gda’] or even [da’] for
_goddag_, G. [gmɔ̃in, gmɔ̃] for _guten morgen_, [na·mt] for _guten
abend_; Fr. _s’il vous plaît_ often becomes [siuplɛ, splɛ], and the
synonymous Dan. _vær så god_ is shortened into _værsgo_, of which
often only [sgo’] remains. In Russian popular speech some small words
are frequently inserted as a vague indication that the utterance or
idea belongs to some one else: _griu_, _grit_, _grim_, _gril_, various
mutilated forms of the verb _govorit’_ ‘say,’ _mol_ from _molvit’_
‘speak,’ _de_ from _dejati_ (Boyer et Speranski, _Manuel_ 293 ff.); cp.
the obsolete E. _co_, _quo_, for _quoth_. In all the Balkan languages
a particle _vre_ is extensively used, which Hatzidakis has explained
from the vocative of OGr. _mōrós_. Modern Gr. _thà_ is now a particle
of futurity, but originates in _thená_, from _thélei_, ‘he will’ + _nà_
from _hína_, ‘that.’ These examples must suffice to show that we have
here to do with a universal tendency in all languages.
XIV.--§ 9. The Principle of Value.
To explain such deviations from normal phonetic development some
scholars have assumed that a word or form in frequent use is liable to
suffer exceptional treatment. Thus Vilhelm Thomsen, in his brilliant
paper (1879) on the Romanic verb _andare_, _andar_, _anar_, _aller_,
which he explains convincingly from Lat. _ambulare_, says that this
verb “belongs to a group of words which in all languages stand as
it were without the pale of the laws, that is, words which from
their frequent employment are exposed to far more violent changes
than other words, and therefore to some extent follow paths of their
own.”[61] Schuchardt (_Ueber die lautgesetze_, 1885) turned upon
the ‘young grammarians,’ Paul among the rest, who did not recognize
this principle, and said that one word (or one sound) may need
10,000 repetitions in order to be changed into another one, and that
consequently another word, which in the same time is used only 8,000
times, must be behindhand in its phonetic development. Quite apart from
the fact that this number is evidently too small (for a moderately
loquacious woman will easily pronounce such a word as _he_ half a dozen
times as often as these figures every year), it is obvious that the
reasoning must be wrong, for were frequency the only decisive factor,
G. _morgen_ would have been treated in every other connexion exactly
as it is in _guten morgen_, and that is just what has not happened.
Frequency of repetition would in itself tend to render the habitude
firmly rooted, thus really capable of resisting change, rather than
the opposite; and instead of the purely mechanical explanation from
the number of times a word is repeated, we must look for a more
psychological explanation. This naturally must be found in the ease
with which a word is understood in the given connexion or situation,
and especially in its worthlessness for the purpose of communication.
Worthlessness, however, is not the moving power, but merely the
reason why less restraint than usual is imposed on the ever-present
inclination of speakers to minimize effort. A parallel from another,
though cognate, sphere of human activity may perhaps bring out my
point of view more clearly. The taking off of one’s hat, combined
with a low bow, served from the first to mark a more or less servile
submissiveness to a prince or conqueror; then the gesture was gradually
weakened, and a slight raising of the hat came to be a polite greeting
even between equals; this is reduced to a mere touching of the hat
or cap, and among friends the slightest movement of the hand in the
direction of the hat is thought a sufficient greeting. When, however,
it is important to indicate deference, the full ceremonial gesture is
still used (though not to the same extent by all nations); otherwise
no value is attached to it, and the inclination to spare oneself all
unnecessary exertion has caused it to dwindle down to the slightest
muscular action possible.
The above instances of the truncation of everyday formulas, etc.,
illustrate the length to which the ease principle can be carried when
a word has little significatory value and the intention of the speaker
can therefore be vaguely, but sufficiently, understood if the proper
sound is merely suggested or hinted at. But in most words, and even in
the words mentioned above, when they are to bear their full meaning,
the pronunciation cannot be slurred to the same extent, if the speaker
is to make himself understood. It is consequently his interest to
pronounce more carefully, and this means greater conservatism and
slower phonetic development on the whole.
There are naturally many degrees of relative value or worthlessness,
and words may vary accordingly. An illustration may be taken from my
own mother-tongue: the two words _rigtig nok_, literally ‘correct
enough,’ are pronounced ['recti 'nɔk] or ['regdi 'nɔk] when keeping
their full signification, but when they are reduced to an adverb with
the same import as the weakened English _certainly_ or _(it is) true
(that)_, there are various shortened pronunciations in frequent use:
['rectnɔg, 'regdnɔg, 'regnɔg, 'renɔg, 'renəg]. The worthlessness may
affect a whole phrase, a word, or merely one syllable or sound.
XIV.--§ 10. Application to Case System, etc.
Our principle is important in many domains of linguistic history.
If it is asked why the elaborate Old English system of cases and
genders has gradually disappeared, an answer that will meet with the
approval of most linguists of the ordinary school is (in the words of
J. A. H. Murray): “The total loss of grammatical gender in English,
and the almost complete disappearance of cases, are purely phonetic
phenomena”--supplemented, of course, by the recognition of the action
of analogy, to which is due, for instance, the levelling of the nom.
and dative plural OE. _stanas_ and _stanum_ under the single form
_stones_. The main explanation thus is the following: a phonetic
law, operating without regard to the signification, caused the OE.
unstressed vowels _-a_, _-e_, _-u_ to become merged in an obscure _-e_
in Middle English; as these endings were very often distinctive of
cases, the Old English cases were consequently lost. Another phonetic
law was operating similarly by causing the loss of final _-n_, which
also played an important rôle in the old case system. And in this way
phonetic laws and analogy have between them made a clean sweep of it,
and we need look nowhere else for an explanation of the decay of the
old declensions.
Here I beg to differ: a ‘phonetic law’ is not an explanation, but
something to be explained; it is nothing else but a mere statement of
facts, a formula of correspondence, which says nothing about the cause
of change, and we are therefore justified if we try to dig deeper and
penetrate to the real psychology of speech. Now, let us for a moment
suppose that each of the terminations _-a_, _-e_, _-u_ bore in Old
English its own distinctive and sharply defined meaning, which was
necessary to the right understanding of the sentences in which the
terminations occurred (something like the endings found in artificial
languages like Ido). Would there in that case be any probability that
a phonetic law tending to their levelling could ever have succeeded
in establishing itself? Most certainly not; the all-important regard
for intelligibility would have been sure to counteract any inclination
towards a slurred pronunciation of the endings. Nor would there have
been any occasion for new formations by analogy, as the formations were
already sufficiently analogous. But such a regularity was very far
from prevailing in Old English, as will be particularly clear from the
tabulation of the declensions as printed in my _Chapters on English_,
p. 10 ff.: it makes the whole question of causality appear in a much
clearer light than would be possible by any other arrangement of the
grammatical facts: the cause of the decay of the Old English apparatus
of declensions lay in its manifold incongruities. The same termination
did not always denote the same thing: _-u_ might be the nom. sg. masc.
(_sunu_) or fem. (_duru_), or the acc. or the dat., or the nom. or acc.
pl. neuter (_hofu_); _-a_ might be the nom. sg. masc. (_guma_), or the
dat. sg. masc. (_suna_), or the gen. sg. fem. (_dura_), or the nom.
pl. masc. or fem., or finally the gen. pl.; _-an_ might be the acc. or
dat. or gen. sg. or the nom. or acc. pl., etc. If we look at it from
the point of view of function, we get the same picture; the nom. pl.,
for instance, might be denoted by the endings _-as_, _-an_, _-a_, _-e_,
_-u_, or by mutation without ending, or by the unchanged kernel; the
dat. sg. by _-e_, _-an_, _-re_, _-um_, by mutation, or the unchanged
kernel. The whole is one jumble of inconsistency, for many relations
plainly distinguished from each other in one class of words were but
imperfectly, if at all, distinguishable in another class. Add to this
that the names used above, dative, accusative, etc., have no clear
and definite meaning in the case of Old English, any more than in the
case of kindred tongues; sometimes it did not matter which of two or
more cases the speaker chose to employ: some verbs took indifferently
now one, now another case, and the same is to some extent true with
regard to prepositions. No wonder, therefore, that speakers would often
hesitate which of two vowels to use in the ending, and would tend
to indulge in the universal inclination to pronounce weak syllables
indistinctly and thus confuse the formerly distinct vowels _a_, _i_,
_e_, _u_ into the one neutral vowel [ə], which might even be left out
without detriment to the clear understanding of each sentence.[62]
The only endings that were capable of withstanding this general rout
were the two in _s_, _-as_ for the plural and _-es_ for the gen. sg.;
here the consonant was in itself more solid, as it were, than the
other consonants used in case endings (_n_, _m_), and, which is more
decisive, each of these terminations was confined to a more sharply
limited sphere of use than the other endings, and the functions for
which they served, that of the plural and that of the genitive, are
among the most indispensable ones for clearness of thought. Hence we
see that these endings from the earliest period of the English language
tend to be applied to other classes of nouns than those to which they
were at first confined (_-as_ to masc. _o_ stems ...), so as to be at
last used with practically all nouns.
If explanations like Murray’s of the simplification of the English case
system are widely accepted, while views like those attempted here will
strike most readers of linguistic works as unfamiliar, the reason may,
partly at any rate, be the usual arrangement of historical and other
grammars. Here we first have chapters on phonology, in which the facts
are tabulated, each vowel being dealt with separately, no matter what
its function is in the flexional system; then, after all the sounds
have been treated in this way, we come to morphology (accidence,
formenlehre), in which it is natural to take the phonological facts as
granted or already known: these therefore come to be looked upon as
primary and morphology as secondary, and no attention is paid to the
_value_ of the sounds for the purposes of mutual understanding.
But everyday observations show that sounds have not always the same
value. In ordinary conversation one may frequently notice how a
proper name or technical term, when first introduced, is pronounced
with particular care, while no such pains is taken when it recurs
afterwards: the stress becomes weaker, the unstressed vowels more
indistinct, and this or that consonant may be dropped. The same
principle is shown in all the abbreviations of proper names and of long
words in general which have been treated above (Ch IX § 7): here the
speaker has felt assured that his hearer has understood what or who he
is talking about, as soon as he has pronounced the initial syllable or
syllables, and therefore does not take the trouble to pronounce the
rest of the word. It has often been pointed out (see, e.g., Curtius K
72) that stem or root syllables are generally better preserved than
the rest of the word: the reason can only be that they have greater
importance for the understanding of the idea as a whole than other
syllables.[63] But it is especially when we come to examine stress
phenomena that we discover the full extent of this principle of value.
XIV.--§ 11. Stress Phenomena.
Stress is generally believed to be dependent exclusively on the force
with which the air-current is expelled from the lungs, hence the name
of ‘expiratory accent’; but various observations and considerations
have led me to give another definition (LPh 7. 32, 1913): stress is
energy, intensive muscular activity not of one organ, but of _all
the speech organs at once_. To pronounce a ‘stressed’ syllable all
organs are exerted to the utmost. The muscles of the lungs are strongly
innervated; the movements of the vocal chords are stronger, leading on
the one hand in voiced sounds to a greater approximation of the vocal
chords, with less air escaping, but greater amplitude of vibrations and
also greater risings or fallings of the tone. In voiceless sounds, on
the other hand, the vocal chords are kept at greater distance (than in
unstressed syllables) and accordingly allow more air to escape. In the
upper organs stress is characterized by marked articulations of the
velum palati, of the tongue and of the lips. As a result of all this,
stressed syllables are loud, i.e. can be heard at great distance, and
distinct, i.e. easy to perceive in all their components. Unstressed
syllables, on the contrary, are produced with less exertion in every
way: in voiced sounds the distance between the vocal chords is greater,
which leads to the peculiar ‘voice of murmur’; but in voiceless
sounds the glottis is not opened very wide. In the upper organs we
see corresponding slack movements; thus the velum does not shut off
the nasal cavity very closely, and the tongue tends towards a neutral
position, in which it moves very little either up and down or backwards
and forwards. The lips also are moved with less energy, and the final
result is dull and indistinct sounds. Now, all this is of the greatest
importance in the history of languages.
The psychological importance of various elements is the chief, though
not the only, factor that determines sentence stress (see, for
instance, the chapters on stress in my LPh xiv. and MEG v.). Now, it
is well known that sentence stress plays a most important rôle in the
historical development of any language; it has determined not only the
difference in vowel between [wɔz] and [wəz], both written _was_, or
between the demonstrative [ðæt] and the relative [ðət], both written
_that_, but also that between _one_ and _an_ or _a_, originally the
same word, and between Fr. _moi_ and _me_, _toi_ and _te_--one might
give innumerable other instances. Value also plays a not unimportant
rôle in determining which syllable among several in long words is
stressed most, and in some languages it has revolutionized the whole
stress system. This happened with old Gothonic, whence in modern
German, Scandinavian, and in the native elements of English we have the
prevalent stressing of the root syllable, i.e. of that syllable which
has the greatest psychological value, as in _'wishes_, _be'speak_, etc.
Now, it is generally said that if double forms arise like _one_ and
_an_, _moi_ and _me_, the reason is that the sounds were found under
‘different phonetic conditions’ and therefore developed differently,
exactly as the difference between _an_ and _a_ or between Fr. _fol_
and _fou_ is due to the same word being placed in one instance before
a word beginning with a vowel and in the other before a consonant,
that is to say, in different external conditions. But it won’t do to
identify the two things: in the latter case we really have something
external or mechanical, and here we may rightly use the expression
‘phonetic condition,’ but the difference between a strongly and a
weakly stressed form of the same word depends on something internal, on
the very soul of the word. Stress is not what the usual way of marking
it in writing and printing might lead us to think--something that hangs
outside or above the word--but is at least as important an element
of the word as the ‘speech sounds’ which go to make it up. Stress
alternation in a sentence cannot consequently be reckoned a ‘phonetic
condition’ of the same order as the initial sound of the next word.
If we say that the different treatment of the vowel seen in _one_ and
_an_ or _moi_ and _me_ is occasioned by varying degrees of stress, we
have ‘explained’ the secondary sound change only, but not the primary
change, which is that of stress itself, and that change is due to the
different significance of the word under varying circumstances, i.e. to
its varying value for the purposes of the exchange of ideas. Over and
above mechanical principles we have here and elsewhere psychological
principles, which no one can disregard with impunity.
XIV.--§ 12. Non-phonetic Changes.
Considerations of ease play an important part in all departments
of language development. It is impossible to draw a sharp line
between phonetic and syntactic phenomena. We have what might be
termed prosiopesis when the speaker begins, or thinks he begins, to
articulate, but produces no audible sound till one or two syllables
after the beginning of what he intended to say. This phonetically is
‘aphesis,’ but in many cases leads to the omission of whole words;
this may become a regular speech habit, more particularly in the
case of certain set phrases, e.g. (Good) _morning_ / (Do you) _see_?
/ (Will) _that do?_ / (I shall) _see you again this afternoon_; Fr.
(na)_turellement_ / (Je ne me) _rappelle plus_, etc.
On the other hand, we have aposiopesis if the speaker does not finish
his sentence, either because he hesitates which word to employ or
because he notices that the hearer has already caught his meaning.
Hence such syntactic shortenings as _at Brown’s_ (house, or shop, or
whatever it may be), which may then be extended to other places in
the sentence; the _grocer’s_ was closed / _St. Paul’s_ is very grand,
etc. Similar abbreviations due to the natural disinclination to use
more circumstantial expressions than are necessary to convey one’s
meaning are seen when, instead of _my straw hat_, one says simply _my
straw_, if it is clear to one’s hearers that one is talking of a hat;
thus _clay_ comes to be used for _clay pipe_, _return_ for _return
ticket_ (‘We’d better take returns’) _the Haymarket_ for _the Haymarket
Theatre_, etc. Sometimes these shortenings become so common as to be
scarcely any longer felt as such, e.g. _rifle_, _landau_, _bugle_, for
_rifle gun_, _landau carriage_, _bugle horn_ (further examples MEG
ii. 8. 9). In Maupassant (_Bel Ami_ 81) I find the following scrap of
conversation which illustrates the same principle in another domain:
“Voilà six mois que je suis _employé aux bureaux du chemin de fer du
Nord_.” “Mais comment diable n’as-tu pas trouvé mieux qu’une place
_d’employé au Nord_?”[64]
The tendency to economize effort also manifests itself when the
general ending _-er_ is used instead of a more specific expression:
_sleeper_ for _sleeping-car_; _bedder_ at college for _bedmaker_;
_speecher_, _footer_, _brekker_ (Harrow) for _speech-day_, _football_,
_breakfast_, etc. Thus also when some noun or verb of a vague or
general meaning is used because one will not take the trouble to
think of the exact expression required, very often _thing_ (sometimes
extended _thingumbob_, cf. Dan. _tingest_, G. _dingsda_), Fr. _chose_,
_machin_ (even in place of a personal name); further, the verb _do_ or
_fix_ (this especially in America). In some cases this tendency may
permanently affect the meaning of a common noun which has to serve so
often instead of a specific name that at last it acquires a special
signification; thus, _corn_ in England = ‘wheat,’ in Ireland = ‘oats,’
in America = ‘maize,’ _deer_, orig. ‘animal,’ Fr. _herbe_, now ‘grass,’
etc. As many people, either from ignorance or from carelessness, are
far from being precise in thought and expression--they “Mean not, but
blunder round about a meaning”--words come to be applied in senses
unknown to former generations, and some of these senses may gradually
become fixed and established. In some cases the final result of such
want of precision may even be beneficial; thus English at first had no
means of expressing futurity in verbs. Then it became more and more
customary to say ‘he will come,’ which at first meant ‘he has the will
to come,’ to express his future coming apart from his volition--thus,
also, ‘it will rain,’ etc. Similarly ‘I shall go,’ which originally
meant ‘I am obliged to go,’ was used in a less accurate way, where no
obligation was thought of, and thus the language acquired something
which is at any rate a makeshift for a future tense of the verb.
But considerations of space prevent me from diving too deeply into
questions of semantic change.
FOOTNOTES:
[56] The uniformity in the speech of the whole Roman Empire during the
first centuries of our Christian era was kept up, among other things,
through the habit of removing soldiers and officials from one country
to the other. This ceased later, each district being left to shift more
or less for itself.
[57] “Dass unsere ältesten vorfahren sich das sprechen erstaunlich
unbequem gemacht haben,” Delbrück, E 155.
[58] Sometimes appearances may be deceptive: when [nr, mr] become [ndr,
mbr], it looks on the paper as if something had been added and as if
the transition therefore militated against the principle of ease: in
reality, the old and the new combinations require exactly the same
amount of muscular activity, and the change simply consists in want of
precision in the movement of the velum palati, which comes a fraction
of a second too soon. If anything, the new group is a trifle easier
than the old. See LPh 5. 6 for explanation and examples (E. _thunder_
from _þunor_ sb., _þunrian_ vb.; _timber_, cf. Goth. _timrian_, G.
_zimmer_, etc.).
[59] This is rendered most clear by my ‘analphabetic’ notation (α means
lips, β tip of tongue, δ soft palate, velum palati, and ε glottis; 0
stands for closed position, 1 for approximation, 3 for open position);
the three sound combinations are thus analysed (cf. my _Lehrbuch der
Phonetik_):
p | n p | m m | n
α 0 | 3 0 | 0 0 | 3
β 3 | 0 3 | 3 3 | 0
δ 0 | 3 0 | 3 3 | 3
ε 3 | 1 3 | 1 1 | 1
[60] The only clear cases of saving of time are those in which long
sounds are shortened, and even they must be looked upon as a saving of
effort.
[61] In the reprint in _Samlede Afhandlinger_, ii. 417 (1920), a few
lines are added in which Thomsen fully accepts the explanation which I
gave as far back as 1886.
[62] The above remarks are condensed from the argument in ChE 38 ff.
Note also what is said below (Ch. XIX § 13) on the loss of Lat. final
_-s_ in the Romanic languages after it had ceased to be necessary for
the grammatical understanding of sentences.
[63] Against this it has been urged that Fr. _oncle_ has not preserved
the stem syllable of Lat. _avunculus_ particularly well. But this
objection is a little misleading. It is quite true that at the
time when the word was first framed the syllable _av-_ contained
the main idea and _-unculus_ was only added to impart an endearing
modification to that idea (‘dear little uncle’); but after some time
the semantic relation was altered; _avus_ itself passed out of use,
while _avunculus_ was handed down from generation to generation as a
ready-made whole, in which the ordinary speaker was totally unable to
suspect that _av-_ was the really significative stem. He consequently
treated it exactly as any other polysyllable of the same structure,
and _avun-_ (phonetically [awuŋ, auuŋ]) was naturally made into one
syllable. Nothing, of course, can be protected by a sense of its
significance unless it is still felt as significant. That hardly needs
saying.
[64] Compare also the results of the same principle seen in writing.
In a letter a proper name or technical term when first introduced
is probably written in full and very distinctly, while afterwards
it is either written carelessly or indicated by a mere initial. Any
shorthand-writer knows how to utilize this principle systematically.
CHAPTER XV
CAUSES OF CHANGE--_continued_
§ 1. Emotional Exaggerations. § 2. Euphony. § 3. Organic Influences.
§ 4. Lapses and Blendings. § 5. Latitude of Correctness. §
6. Equidistant and Convergent Changes. § 7. Homophones. § 8.
Significative Sounds preserved. § 9. Divergent Changes and Analogy. §
10. Extension of Sound Laws. § 11. Spreading of Sound Change. § 12.
Reaction. § 13. Sound Laws and Etymological Science. § 14. Conclusion.
XV.--§ 1. Emotional Exaggerations.
In the preceding chapter we have dwelt at great length on those
changes which tend to render articulations easier and more convenient.
But, important as they are, these are not the only changes that
speech sounds undergo: there are other moods than that of ordinary
listless everyday conversation, and they may lead to modifications
of pronunciation which are different from and may even be in direct
opposition to those mentioned or hinted at above. Thus, anger or other
violent emotions may cause emphatic utterance, in which, e.g., stops
may be much more strongly aspirated than they are in usual quiet
parlance; even French, which has normally unaspirated (‘sharp’) [t]
and [k], under such circumstances may aspirate them strongly--‘_Mais
taisez-vous donc!_’ Military commands are characterized by peculiar
emphasizings, even in some cases distortions of sounds and words.
Pomposity and consequential airs are manifested in the treatment of
speech sounds as well as in other gestures. Irony, scoffing, banter,
amiable chaffing--each different mood or temper leaves its traces on
enunciation. Actors and orators will often use stronger articulations
than are strictly necessary to avoid those misunderstandings or
that unintelligibility which may ensue from slipshod or indistinct
pronunciation.[65] In short, anyone who will take careful note of the
way in which people do really talk will find in the most everyday
conversation as well as on more solemn occasions the greatest
variety of such modifications and deviations from what might be
termed ‘normal’ pronunciation; these, however, pass unnoticed under
ordinary circumstances, when the attention is directed exclusively
to the contents and general purport of the spoken words. A vowel or
a consonant will be made a trifle shorter or longer than usual, the
lips will open a little too much, an [e] will approach [æ] or [i],
the off-glide after a final [t] will sound nearly as [s], the closure
of a [d] will be made so loosely that a little air will escape and
the sound therefore will be approximately a [ð] or a weak fricative
point [r], etc. Most of these modifications are so small that they
cannot be represented by letters, even by those of a very exact
phonetic alphabet, but they exist all the same, and are by no means
insignificant to those who want to understand the real essence of
speech and of linguistic change, for life is built up of such minutiæ.
The great majority of such alterations are of course made quite
unconsciously, but by the side of these we must recognize that there
are some individuals who more or less consciously affect a certain mode
of enunciation, either from artistic motives, because they think it
beautiful, or simply to ‘show off’--and sometimes such pronunciations
may set the fashion and be widely imitated (cf. below, p. 292).
Tender emotions may lead to certain lengthenings of sounds. The
intensifying effect of lengthening was noticed by A. Gill, Milton’s
teacher, in 1621, see Jiriczek’s reprint, p. 48: “Atque vt Hebræi,
ad ampliorem vocis alicuius significationem, syllabas adaugent [cf.
here below, Ch. XX § 9]; sic nos syllabarum tempora: vt, _grët_ [the
diæresis denotes vowel-length] magnus, _grëet_ ingens; _monstrus_
prodigiosum, _mönstrus_ valde prodigiosum, _möönstrus_ prodigiosum
adeo vt hominem stupidet.” Cf. also the lengthening in the exclamation
_God!_, by novelists sometimes written _Gawd_ or _Gord_. But it is
curious that the same emotional lengthening will sometimes affect
a consonant (or first part of a diphthong) in a position in which
otherwise we always have a short quantity; thus, Danish clergymen, when
speaking with unction, will lengthen the [l] of _glæde_ ‘joy,’ which is
ridiculed by comic writers through the unphonetic spelling _ge-læde_;
and in the same way I find in Kipling (_Stalky_ 119): “We’ll make
it a _be-autiful_ house,” and in O. Henry (_Roads of Destiny_ 133):
“A regular Paradise Lost for elegance of scenery and _be-yooty_ of
geography.” I suppose that the spellings _ber-luddy_ and _bee-luddy_,
which I find in recent novels, are meant to indicate the pronunciation
[bl·-ʌdi], thus the exact counterpart of the Danish example. An
unstressed vowel before the stressed syllable is similarly lengthened
in “Dee-lightful couple!” (Shaw, _Doctor’s Dilemma_ 41); American girl
students will often say ['di·liʃ] for _delicious_.
XV.--§ 2. Euphony.
It was not uncommon in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to
ascribe phonetic changes to a desire for euphony, a view which is
represented in Bopp’s earliest works. But as early as 1821 Bredsdorff
says that “people will always find that euphonious which they are
accustomed to hear: considerations of euphony consequently will not
cause changes in a language, but rather make for keeping it unchanged.
Those changes which are generally supposed to be based on euphony are
due chiefly to convenience, in some instances to care of distinctness.”
This is quite true, but scarcely the whole truth. Euphony depends
not only on custom, but even more on ease of articulation and on
ease of perception: what requires intricate or difficult movements
of the organs of speech will always be felt as cacophonous, and so
will anything that is indistinct or blurred. But nations, as well as
individuals, have an artistic feeling for these things in different
degrees, and that may influence the phonetic character of a language,
though perhaps chiefly in its broad features, while it may be difficult
to point out any particular details in phonological history which have
been thus worked upon. There can be no doubt that the artistic feeling
is much more developed in the French than in the English nation, and
we find in French fewer obscure vowels and more clearly articulated
consonants than in English (cf. also my remarks on French accent, GS §
28).
XV.--§ 3. Organic Influences.
Some modifications of speech sounds are due to the fact that the
organs of speech are used for other purposes than that of speaking.
We all know the effect of someone trying to speak with his mouth full
of food, or with a cigar or a pipe hanging between his lips and to
some extent impeding their action. Various emotions are expressed by
facial movements which may interfere with the production of ordinary
speech sounds. A child that is crying speaks differently from one that
is smiling or laughing. A smile requires a retraction of the corners
of the mouth and a partial opening of the lips, and thus impedes
the formation of that lip-closure which is an essential part of the
ordinary [m]; hence most people when smiling will substitute the
labiodental _m_, which to the ear greatly resembles the bilabial [m].
A smile will also often modify the front-round vowel [y] so as to make
it approach [i]. Sweet may be right in supposing that “the habit of
speaking with a constant smile or grin” is the reason for the Cockney
unrounding of the vowel in [nau] for _no_. Schuchardt (_Zs. f. rom.
Phil._ 5. 314) says that in Andalusian _quia!_ instead of _ca!_ the
lips, under the influence of a certain emotion, are drawn scoffingly
aside. Inversely, the rounding in _Josu!_ instead of _Jesu!_ is due
to wonder (ib.); and exactly in the same way we have the surprised or
pitying exclamation _jøses!_ from _Jesus_ in Danish. Compare also the
rounding in Dan. and G. [nø·] for [ne·, nɛ·] (_nej_, _nein_). Lundell
mentions that in Swedish a caressing _lilla vän_ often becomes _lylla
vön_, and I have often observed the same rounding in Dan. _min lille
ven_. Schuchardt also mentions an Italian [ʃ] instead of [s] under the
influence of pain or anger (_mi duole la teʃta_; _ti do uno ʃchiaffo_);
a Danish parallel is the frequent [ʃluð’ər] for _sludder_ ‘nonsense.’
We are here verging on the subject of the symbolic value of speech
sounds, which will occupy us in a later chapter (XX).
Observe, too, how people will pronounce under the influence of alcohol:
the tongue is not under control and is incapable of accurately forming
the closure necessary for [t], which therefore becomes [r], and
the thin rill necessary for [s], which therefore comes to resemble
[ʃ]; there is also a general tendency to run sounds and syllables
together.[66]
XV.--§ 4. Lapses and Blendings.
All these deviations are due to influences from what is outside the
sphere of language as such. But we now come to something of the
greatest importance in the life of language, the fact, namely, that
deviations from the usual or normal pronunciation are very often due to
causes inside the language itself, either by lingering reminiscences
of what has just been spoken or by anticipation of something that the
speaker is just on the point of pronouncing. The process of speech is
a very complicated one, and while one thing is being said, the mind is
continually active in preparing what has to be said next, arranging the
ideas and fashioning the linguistic expression in all its details. Each
word is a succession of sounds, and for each of these a complicated
set of orders has to be issued from the brain to the various speech
organs. Sometimes these get mixed up, and a command is sent down to
one organ a moment too early or too late. The inclination to make
mistakes naturally increases with the number of identical or similar
sounds in close proximity. This is well known from those ‘jaw-breaking’
tongue-tests with which people amuse themselves in all countries and of
which I need give only one typical specimen:
She sells seashells on the seashore,
The shells she sells are seashells, I’m sure,
For if she sells seashells on the seashore,
Then I’m sure she sells seashore shells.
If the mind is occupied with one sound while another is being
pronounced, and thus either runs in advance of or lags behind what
should be its immediate business, the linguistic result may be of
various kinds. The simplest case of influencing is assimilation of two
contiguous sounds, which we have already considered from a different
point of view. Next we have assimilative influence on a sound at a
distance, as when we lapse into _she shells_ instead of _sea shells_
or _she sells_; such is Fr. _chercher_ for older _sercher_ (whence
E. _search_) from Lat. _circare_, Dan. and G. vulgar _ʃerʃant_ for
_sergeant_; a curious mixed case is the pronunciation of _transition_
as [træn'siʒən]: the normal development is [træn'ziʃən], but the
voice-articulation of the two hissing sounds is reversed (possibly
under accessory influence from the numerous words in which we have
[træns] with [s], and from words ending in [iʒən], such as _vision_,
_division_). Further examples of such assimilation at a distance or
consonant-harmonization (_malmsey_ from _malvesie_, etc.) may be found
in my LPh 11. 7, where there are also examples of the corresponding
harmonizings of vowels: Fr. _camarade_, It. _uguale_, _Braganza_, from
_camerade_, _eguale_, _Brigantia_, etc. In Ugro-Finnic and Turkish this
harmony of vowels has been raised to a principle pervading the whole
structure of the language, as seen, e.g., most clearly in the varying
plural endings in Yakut _agalar_, _äsälär_, _ogolor_, _dörölör_,
‘fathers, bears, children, muzzles.’
What escapes at the wrong place and causes confusion may be a part of
the same word or of a following word; as examples of the latter case
may be given a few of the lapses recorded in Meringer and Mayer’s
_Versprechen und Verlesen_ (Stuttgart, 1895): instead of saying
_Lateinisches lehnwort_ Meringer said _Latenisches ..._ and then
corrected himself; _paster noster_ instead of _pater noster_; _wenn
das wesser ... wetter wieder besser ist_. This phenomenon is termed
in Danish _at bakke snagvendt_ (for _snakke bagvendt_) and in English
_Spoonerism_, from an Oxford don, W. A. Spooner, about whom many comic
lapses are related (“Don’t you ever feel a half-warmed fish” instead of
“half-formed wish”).
The simplest and most frequently occurring cases in which the order
for a sound is issued too early or too late are those transpositions
of two sounds which the linguists term ‘metatheses.’ They occur most
frequently with _s_ in connexion with a stop (_wasp_, _waps_; _ask_,
_ax_) and with _r_ (chiefly, perhaps exclusively, the trilled form of
the sound) and a vowel (_third_, OE. _þridda_). A more complicated
instance is seen in Fr. _trésor_ for _tésor_, _thesaurum_. If the
mind does not realize how far the vocal organs have got, the result
may be the skipping of some sound or sounds; this is particularly
likely to happen when the same sound has to be repeated at some little
distance, and we then have the phenomenon termed ‘haplology,’ as
in _eighteen_, OE. _eahtatiene_, and in the frequent pronunciation
_probly_ for _probably_, Fr. _contrôle_, _idolatrie_ for _contrerôle_,
_idololatrie_, Lat. _stipendium_ for _stipipendium_, and numerous
similar instances in every language (LPh 11. 9). Sometimes a sound may
be skipped because the mind is confused through the fact that the same
sound has to be pronounced a little later; thus the old Gothonic word
for ‘bird’ (G. _vogel_, OE. _fugol_; E. _fowl_ with a modified meaning)
is derived from the verb _fly_, OE. _fleogan_, and originally had
some form like *_fluglo_ (OE. had an adj. _flugol_); in recent times
_flugelman_ (G. flügelmann) has become _fugleman_. It. has _Federigo_
for _Frederigo_--thus the exactly opposite result of what has been
brought about in _trésor_ from the same kind of mental confusion.
When words are often repeated in succession, sounds from one of them
will often creep into another, as is seen very often in numerals: the
nasal which was found in the old forms for 7, 9 and 10 and is still
seen in E. _seven_, _nine_, _ten_, has no place in the word for 8, and
accordingly we have in the ordinal ON. _sjaundi_, _átti_, _níundi_,
_tíundi_, but already in ON. we find _áttandi_ by the side of _átti_,
and in Dan. the present-day forms are _syvende_, _ottende_, _niende_,
_tiende_; in the same way OFr. had _sedme_, _uidme_, _noefme_, _disme_
(which have all now disappeared with the exception of _dîme_ as a
substantive). In the names of the months we had the same formation of
a series in OFr.: _septembre_, _octembre_, _novembre_, _decembre_,
but learned influence has reinstated _octobre_. G. _elf_ for older
_eilf_ owes its vowel to the following _zwelf_; and as now the latter
has given way to _zwölf_ (the vowel being rounded in consequence of
the _w_) many dialects count _zehn_, _ölf_, _zwölf_. Similarly, it
seems to be due to their frequent occurrence in close contact with the
verbal forms in _-no_ that the Italian plural pronouns _egli_, _elle_
are extended with that ending: _eglino amano_, _elleno dicono_. Diez
compares the curious Bavarian _wo-st bist_, _dem-st gehörst_, etc.,
in which the personal ending of the verb is transferred to some other
word with which it has nothing to do (on this phenomenon see Herzog,
_Streitfragen d. roman. phil._ 48, Buergel Goodwin, _Umgangsspr. in
Südbayern_ 99).
In speaking, the mind is occupied not only with the words one is
already pronouncing or knows that one is going to pronounce, but also
with the ideas which one has to express but for which one has not yet
chosen the linguistic form. In many cases two synonyms will rise to
the consciousness at the same time, and the hesitation between them
will often result in a compromise which contains the head of one and
the tail of another word. It is evident that this process of blending
is intimately related to those we have just been considering; see the
detailed treatment in Ch. XVI § 6.
Syntactical blends are very frequent. Hesitation between _different
from_ and _other than_ will result in _different than_ or _another
from_, and similarly we occasionally find _another to_, _different
to_, _contrary than_, _contrary from_, _opposite from_, _anywhere
than_. After a clause introduced by _hardly_ or _scarcely_ the normal
conjunction is _when_, but sometimes we find _than_, because that is
regular after the synonymous _no sooner_.
XV.--§ 5. Latitude of Correctness.
It is a natural consequence of the essence of human speech and the
way in which it is transmitted from generation to generation that we
have everywhere to recognize a certain latitude of correctness, alike
in the significations in which the words may be used, in syntax and
in pronunciation. The nearer a speaker keeps to the centre of what is
established or usual, the easier will it be to understand him. If he
is ‘eccentric’ on one point or another, the result may not always be
that he conveys no idea at all, or that he is misunderstood, but often
merely that he is understood with some little difficulty, or that his
hearers have a momentary feeling of something odd in his choice of
words, or expressions or pronunciation. In many cases, when someone has
overstepped the boundaries of what is established, his hearers do not
at once catch his meaning and have to gather it from the whole context
of what follows: not unfrequently the meaning of something you have
heard as an incomprehensible string of syllables will suddenly flash
upon you without your knowing how it has happened. Misunderstandings
are, of course, most liable to occur if words of different meaning,
which in themselves would give sense in the same collocation, are
similar in sound: in that case a trifling alteration of one sound,
which in other words would create no difficulty at all, may prove
pernicious. Now, what is the bearing of these considerations on the
question of sound changes?
The latitude of correctness is very far from being the same in
different languages. Some sounds in each language move within narrow
boundaries, while others have a much larger field assigned to them;
each language is punctilious in some, but not in all points. Deviations
which in one language would be considered trifling, in another would
be intolerable perversions. In German, for instance, a wide margin is
allowed for the (local and individual) pronunciation of the diphthong
written _eu_ or _äu_ (in _eule_, _träume_): it may begin with [ɔ] or
[œ] or even [æ, a], and it may end in [i], or the corresponding rounded
vowel [y], or one of the mid front vowels, rounded or not, it does
not matter much; the diphthong is recognized or acknowledged in many
shapes, while the similar diphthong in English, as in _toy_, _voice_,
allows a far less range of variation (for other examples see LPh 16.
22).
Now, it is very important to keep in mind that there is an intimate
connexion between phonetic latitude and the significations of words. If
there are in a language a great many pairs of words which are identical
in sound except for, say, the difference between [e·] and [i·] (or
between long and short [i], or between voiced [b] and voiceless [p],
or between a high and a low tone, etc.), then the speakers of that
language necessarily will make that distinction with great precision,
as otherwise too many misunderstandings would result. If, on the other
hand, no mistakes worth speaking of would ensue, there is not the
same inducement to be careful. In English, and to a somewhat lesser
degree in French, it is easy to make up long lists of pairs of words
where the sole difference is between voice and voicelessness in the
final consonant (_cab_ _cap_, _bad_ _bat_, _frog_ _frock_, etc.);
hence final [b] and [p], [d] and [t], [g] and [k] are kept apart
conscientiously, while German possesses very few such pairs of words;
in German, consequently, the natural tendency to make final consonants
voiceless has not been checked, and all final stopped consonants have
now become voiceless. In initial and medial position, too, there are
very few examples in German of the same distinction (see the lists,
LPh 6. 78), and this circumstance makes us understand why Germans are
so apt to efface the difference between [b, d, g] and [p, t, k]. On
the other hand, the distinction between a long and a short vowel is
kept much more effectively in German than in French, because in German
ten or twenty times as many words would be liable to confusion through
pronouncing a long instead of a short vowel or vice versa. In French no
two words are kept apart by means of stress, as in English or German;
so the rule laid down in grammars that the stress falls on the final
syllable of the word is very frequently broken through for rhythmic and
other reasons. Other similar instances might easily be advanced.
XV.--§ 6. Equidistant and Convergent Changes.
Phonetic shifts are of two kinds: the shifted sound may be identical
with one already found in the language, or it may be a new sound.
In the former, but not in the latter kind, fresh possibilities of
confusions and misunderstandings may arise. Now, in some cases one
sound (or series of sounds) marches into a position which has just
been abandoned by another sound (or series of sounds), which has
in its turn shifted into some other place. A notable instance is
the old Gothonic consonant shift: Aryan _b_, _d_, _g_ cannot have
become Gothonic _p_, _t_, _k_ till after primitive _p_, _t_, _k_ had
already become fricatives [f, þ, x (h)], for had the shift taken
place before, intolerable confusion would have reigned in all parts
of the vocabulary. Another instructive example is seen in the history
of English long vowels. Not till OE. long _a_ had been rounded into
something like [ɔ·] (OE. _stan_, ME. _stoon_, _stone_) could a new
long _a_ develop, chiefly through lengthening of an old short _a_ in
certain positions. Somewhat later we witness the great vowel-raising
through which the phonetic value of the long vowels (written all the
time in essentially the same way) has been constantly on the move and
yet the distance between them has been kept, so that no confusions
worth speaking of have ever occurred. If we here leave out of account
the rounded back vowels and speak only of front vowels, the shift may
be thus represented through typical examples (the first and the last
columns show the spelling, the others the sounds):
Middle English. Elizabethan. Present English.
(1) _bite_ bi·tə beit bait _bite_
(2) _bete_ be·tə bi·t bi·t _beet_
(3) _bete_ bɛ·tə be·t bi·t _beat_
(4) _abate_ a'ba·tə ə'bæ·t ə'beit _abate_
When the sound of (2) was raised into [i·], the sound of (1) had
already left that position and had been diphthongized, and when the
sound of (3) was raised from an open into a close _e_, (2) had already
become [i·]; (4) could not become [æ·] or [ɛ·] till (3) had become a
comparatively close _e_ sound. The four vowels, as it were, climbed
the ladder without ever reaching each other--a climbing which took
centuries and in each case implied intermediate steps not indicated in
our survey. No clashings could occur so long as each category kept its
distance from the sounds above and below, and thus we find that the
Elizabethans as scrupulously as Chaucer kept the four classes of words
apart in their rimes. But in the seventeenth century class (3) was
raised, and as no corresponding change had taken place with (2), the
two classes have now fallen together with the single sound [i·]. This
entails a certain number of homophones such as had not been created
through the preceding equidistant changes.
XV.--§ 7. Homophones.
The reader here will naturally object that the fact of new homophones
arising through this vowel change goes against the theory that the
necessity of certain distinctions can keep in check the tendency
to phonetic changes. But homophones do not always imply frequent
misunderstandings: some homophones are more harmless than others. Now,
if we look at the list of the homophones created by this raising of
the close _e_ (MEG i. 11. 74), we shall soon discover that very few
mistakes of any consequence could arise through the obliteration of the
distinction between this vowel and the previously existing [i·]. For
substantives and verbal forms (like _bean_ and _been_, _beet_ _beat_,
_flea_ _flee_, _heel_ _heal_, _leek_ _leak_, _meat_ _meet_, _reed_
_read_, _sea_ _see_, _seam_ _seem_, _steel_ _steal_), or substantives
and adjectives (like _deer_ _dear_, _leaf_ _lief_, _shear_ _sheer_,
_week_ _weak_) will generally be easily distinguished by their position
in the sentence; nor will a plural such as _feet_ be often mistaken for
the singular _feat_. Actual misunderstandings of any importance are
only imaginable when the two words belong to the same ‘part of speech,’
but of such pairs we meet only few: _beach_ _beech_, _breach_ _breech_,
_mead_ _meed_, _peace_ _piece_, _peal_ _peel_, _quean_ _queen_, _seal_
_ceil_, _wean_ _ween_, _wheal_ _wheel_. I think the judicious reader
will agree with me that confusions due to these words being pronounced
in the same way will be few and far between, and one understands that
they cannot have been powerful enough to prevent hundreds of other
words from having their sound changed. An effective prevention can only
be expected when the falling together in sound would seriously impair
the understanding of many sentences.
It is, moreover, interesting to note how many of the words which were
made identical with others through this change were already rare at
the time or have at any rate become obsolete since: this is true of
_breech_, _lief_, _meed_, _mete_ (adj.), _quean_, _weal_, _wheal_,
_ween_ and perhaps a few others. Now, obsolescence of some words is
always found in connexion with such convergent sound changes. In some
cases the word had already become rare before the change in sound took
place, and then it is obvious that it cannot have offered serious
resistance to the change that was setting in. In other cases the dying
out of a word must be looked upon as a consequence of the sound change
which had actually taken place. Many scholars are now inclined to see
in phonetic coalescence one of the chief reasons why words fall into
disuse, see, e.g., Liebisch (PBB XXIII, 228, many German examples in O.
Weise, _Unsere Mutterspr._, 3d ed., 206) and Gilliéron, _La faillite de
l’étymologie phonétique_ (Neuveville, 1919--a book whose sensational
title is hardly justified by its contents).
The drawbacks of homophones[67] are counteracted in various ways. Very
often a synonym steps forward, as when _lad_ or _boy_ is used in nearly
all English dialects to supplant _son_, which has become identical in
sound with _sun_ (cf. above p. 120, a childish instance). Very often
it becomes usual to avoid misunderstandings through some addition, as
when we say _the sole of her foot_, because _her sole_ might be taken
to mean _her soul_, or when the French say _un dé à coudre_ or _un dé
à jouer_ (cf. E. _minister of religion_ and _cabinet minister_, the
_right-hand_ corner, the _subject-matter_, where the same expedient
is used to obviate ambiguities arisen from other causes). Chinese, of
course, is the classical example of a language abounding in homophones
caused by convergent sound changes, and it is highly interesting
to study the various ways in which that language has remedied the
resulting drawbacks, see, e.g., B. Karlgren, _Ordet och pennan i
Mittens rike_ (Stockholm, 1918), p. 49 ff. But on the whole we must say
that the ways in which these phonetic inconveniences are counteracted
are the same as those in which speakers react against misunderstandings
arising from semantic or syntactic causes: as soon as they perceive
that their meaning is not apprehended they turn their phrases in a
different way, choosing some other expression for their thought, and by
this means language is gradually freed from ambiguity.
XV.--§ 8. Significative Sounds preserved.
My contention that the significative side of language has in so far
exercised an influence on phonetic development that the possibility
of many misunderstandings may effectually check the coalescence of
two hitherto distinct sounds should not be identified with one of the
tenets of the older school (Curtius included) against which the ‘young
grammarians’ raised an emphatic protest, namely, that a tendency to
preserve significative sounds and syllables might produce exceptions
to the normal course of phonetic change. Delbrück and his friends may
be right in much of what they said against Curtius--for instance,
when he explained the retention of _i_ in some Greek optative forms
through a consciousness of the _original_ meaning of this suffix; but
their denial was in its way just as exaggerated as his affirmation. It
cannot justly be urged against the influence of signification that a
preservation of a sound on that account would only be imaginable on the
supposition that the speaker was conscious of a threatened sound change
and wanted to avoid it. One need not suppose a speaker to be on his
guard against a ‘sound law’: the only thing required is that he should
feel, or be made to feel, that he is not understood when he speaks
indistinctly; if on that account he has to repeat his words he will
naturally be careful to pronounce the sound he has skipped or slurred,
and may even be tempted to exaggerate it a little.
There do not seem to be many quite unimpeachable examples of words
which have received exceptional phonetic treatment to obviate
misunderstandings arising from homophony; other explanations (analogy
from other forms of the same word, etc.) can generally be alleged more
or less plausibly. But this does seem to be the easiest explanation
of the fact that the E. preposition _on_ has always the full vowel
[ɔ], though in nine cases out of ten it is weakly stressed and though
all the other analogous prepositions (_to_, _for_, _of_, _at_) in the
corresponding weak positions in sentences are generally pronounced
with the ‘neutral’ vowel [ə]. But if _on_ were similarly pronounced,
ambiguity would very often result from its phonetic identity with the
weak forms of the extremely frequent little words _an_ (the indefinite
article) and _and_ (possibly also _in_), not to mention the great
number of [ən]s in words like _drunken_, _shaken_, _deepen_, etc.,
where the forms without _-en_ also exist. With the preposition _upon_
the same considerations do not hold good, hence the frequency of the
pronunciation [əpən] in weak position. Considerations of clearness
have also led to the disuse of the formerly frequent form _o_ (_o’_)
which was the ‘natural’ development of each of the two prepositions
_on_ and _of_. The form written _a_ survives only in some fossilized
combinations like _ashore_; in several others it has now disappeared
(_set the clock going_, formerly _a-going_, etc.).
Sometimes, when all ordinary words are affected by a certain sound
change, some words prove refractory because in their case the old sound
is found to be more expressive than the new one. When the long E. [i·]
was diphthongized into [ai], the words _pipe_ and _whine_ ceased to be
good echoisms, but some dialects have _peep_ ‘complain,’ which keeps
the old sound of the former, and the Irish say _wheen_ (Joyce, _English
as we speak it in Ireland_, 103). In _squeeze_ the [i·] sound has been
retained as more expressive--the earlier form was _squize_; and the
same is the case with some words meaning ‘to look narrowly’: _peer_,
_peek_, _keek_, earlier _pire_, _pike_, _kike_ (cf. Dan. _pippe_,
_kikke_, _kige_, G. _kieken_).[68] In the same way, when the old [a·]
was changed into [ɛ·, ei], the word _gape_ ceased to be expressive (as
it is still in Dan. _gabe_), but in popular speech the tendency to
raise the vowel was resisted, and the old sound [ga·p] persisted, spelt
_garp_ as a London form in 1817 (Ellis, EEP v. 228) and still common in
many dialects (see _gaup_, _garp_ in EDD); Professor Hempl told me that
[ga·p] was also a common pronunciation in America. In the chapter on
Sound Symbolism (XX) we shall see some other instances of exceptional
phonetic treatment of symbolic words (especially _tiny_, _teeny_,
_little_, _cuckoo_).
XV.--§ 9. Divergent Changes and Analogy.
Besides equidistant and convergent sound changes we have divergent
changes, through which sounds at one time identical have separated
themselves later. This is a mere consequence of the fact that it is
rare for a sound to be changed equally in all positions in which it
occurs. On the contrary, one must admit that the vast majority of
sound changes are conditioned by some such circumstance as influence
of neighbouring sounds, position as initial, medial or final (often
with subdivisions, as position between vowels, etc.), place in a
strongly or weakly stressed syllable, and so forth. One may take as
examples some familiar instances from French: Latin _c_ (pronounced
[k]), is variously treated before _o_ (_corpus_ > _corps_), _a_
(_canem_ > _chien_), and _e_ (_centum_ > _cent_); in _amicum_ > _ami_
it has totally disappeared. Lat. _a_ becomes _e_ in a stressed open
syllable (_natum_ > _né_), except before a nasal (_amat_ > _aime_); but
after _c_ we have a different treatment (_canem_ > _chien_), and in
a close syllable it is kept (_arborem_ > _arbre_); in weak syllables
it is kept initially (_amorem_ > _amour_), but becomes [ə] (spelt
_e_) finally (_bona_ > _bonne_). This enumeration of the chief rules
will serve to show the far-reaching differentiation which in this
way may take place among words closely related as parts of the same
paradigm or family of words; thus, for Lat. _amo_, _amas_, _amat_,
_amamus_, _amatis_, _amant_ we get OFr. _aim_, _aimes_, _aime_,
_amons_, _amez_, _aiment_, until the discrepancy is removed through
analogy, and we get the regular modern forms _aime_, _aimes_, _aime_,
_aimons_, _aimez_, _aiment_. The levelling tendency, however, is not
strong enough to affect the initial _a_ in _amour_ and _amant_, which
are felt as less closely connected with the verbal forms. What were
at first only small differences may in course of time become greater
through subsequent changes, as when the difference between _feel_ and
_felt_, _keep_ and _kept_, etc., which was originally one of length
only, became one of vowel quality as well, through the raising of
long [e·] to [i·], while short [e] was not raised. And thus in many
other cases. Different nations differ greatly in the degree in which
they permit differentiation of cognate words; most nations resent any
differentiation in initial sounds, while the Kelts have no objection
to ‘the same word’ having as many as four different beginnings (for
instance _t-_, _d-_, _n-_, _nh-_) according to circumstances. In
Icelandic the word for ‘other, second’ has for centuries in different
cases assumed such different forms as _annarr_, _önnur_, _öðrum_,
_aðrir_, forms which in the other Scandinavian languages have been
levelled down.
It is a natural consequence of the manner in which phonology is usually
investigated and represented in manuals of historical grammar--which
start with some old stage and follow the various changes of each sound
in later stages--that these divergent changes have attracted nearly
the sole attention of scholars; this has led to the prevalent idea
that sound laws and analogy are the two opposed principles in the life
of languages, the former tending always to destroy regularity and
harmony, and the latter reconstructing what would without it be chaos
and confusion.[69]
This view, however, is too rigorous and does not take into account
the manysidedness of linguistic life. It is not every irregularity
that is due to the operation of phonetic laws, as we have in all
languages many survivals of the confused manner in which ideas were
arranged and expressed in the mind of primitive man. On the other hand,
there are many phonetic changes which do not increase the number of
existing irregularities, but make for regularity and a simpler system
through abolishing phonetic distinctions which had no semantic or
functional value; such are, for instance, those convergent changes
of unstressed vowels which have simplified the English flexional
system (Ch. XIV § 10 above). And if we were in the habit of looking at
linguistic change from the other end, tracing present sounds back to
former sounds instead of beginning with antiquity, we should see that
convergent changes are just as frequent as divergent ones. Indeed, many
changes may be counted under both heads; an _a_, which is dissociated
from other _a_’s through becoming _e_, is identified with and from
henceforth shares the destiny of other _e_’s, etc.
XV.--§ 10. Extension of Sound Laws.
If a phonetic change has given to some words two forms without any
difference in signification, the same alternation may be extended to
other cases in which the sound in question has a different origin
(‘phonetic analogy’). An undoubted instance is the unhistoric _r_
in recent English. When the consonantal [r] was dropped finally and
before a consonant while it was retained before a vowel, and words
like _better_, _here_ thus came to have two forms [betə, hiə] and
[betər (ɔf), hiər (ən ðɛ·ə)] _better off_, _here and there_, the same
alternation was transferred to words like _idea_, _drama_ [ai'diə,
dra·mə], so that the sound [r] is now very frequently inserted before a
word beginning with a vowel: _I’d no idea_-r-_of this_, _a drama_-r-_of
Ibsen_ (many references MEG i. 13. 42). In French final _t_ and _s_
have become mute, but are retained before a vowel: _il est_ [ɛ] _venu_,
_il est_ [ɛt] _arrivé_; _les_ [le] _femmes_, _les_ [lez] _hommes_;
and now vulgar speakers will insert [t] or [z] in the wrong place
between vowels: _pa-t assez_, _j’allai-t écrire_, _avant-z-hier_,
_moi-z-aussi_; this is called ‘cuir’ or ‘velours.’
In course of time a ‘phonetic law’ may undergo a kind of metamorphosis,
being extended to a greater and greater number of combinations. As
regards recent times we are sometimes able to trace such a gradual
development. A case in point is the dropping of [j] in [ju·] after
certain consonants in English (see MEG i. 13, 7). It began with _r_
as in _true_, _rude_; next came _l_ when preceded by a consonant, as
in _blue_, _clue_; in these cases [j] is never heard. But after _l_
not preceded by another consonant there is a good deal of vacillation,
thus in _Lucy_, _absolute_; after [s, z] as in _Susan_, _resume_
there is a strong tendency to suppress [j], though this pronunciation
has not yet prevailed,[70] and after [t, d, n], as in _tune_, _due_,
_new_, the suppression is in Britain only found in vulgar speakers,
while in some parts of the United States it is heard from educated
speakers as well. In the speech of these the sound law may be said
to attack any [ju·] after any point consonant, while it will have
to be formulated in various less comprehensive terms for British
speakers belonging to older or younger generations. It is extremely
difficult, not to say impossible, to reconcile such occurrences with
the orthodox ‘young grammarian’ theory of sound changes being due to a
shifting of the organic feeling or motor sensation (verschiebung des
bewegungsgefühls) which is supposed to have necessarily taken place
wherever the same sound was under the same phonetic conditions. For
what are here the same phonetic conditions? The position after _r_,
after _l_ combinations, after _l_ even when standing alone, after all
point consonants? Each generation of English speakers will give a
different answer to this question. Now, it is highly probable that many
of the comprehensive prehistoric sound changes, of which we see only
the final result, while possible intermediate stages evade our inquiry,
have begun in the same modest way as the transition from [ju·] to [u·]
in English: with regard to them we are in exactly the same position
as a man who had heard only such speakers as say consistently [tru·,
ru·d, blu·, lu·si, su·zn, ri'zu·m, tu·n, du·, nu·] and who would then
naturally suppose that [j] in the combination [ju·] had been dropped
all at once after any point consonant.
XV.--§ 11. Spreading of Sound Change.
Sound laws (to retain provisionally that firmly established term)
have by some linguists, who rightly reject the comparison with
natural laws (e.g. Meringer), been compared rather with the ‘laws’ of
fashion in dress. But I think it is important to make a distinction
here: the comparison with fashions throws no light whatever on the
question how sound changes _originate_--it can tell us nothing about
the first impulse to drop [j] in certain positions before [u·]; but
the comparison is valid when we come to consider the question how
such a change when first begun in one individual _spreads to other
individuals_. While the former question has been dealt with at some
length in the preceding investigation, it now remains for us to say
something about the latter. The spreading of phonetic change, as
of any other linguistic change, is due to imitation, conscious and
unconscious, of the speech habits of other people. We have already
met with imitation in the chapters dealing with the child and with
the influence exerted by foreign languages. But man is apt to imitate
throughout the whole of his life, and this statement applies to his
language as much as to his other habits. What he imitates, in this as
in other fields, is not always the best; a real valuation of what would
be linguistically good or preferable does not of course enter the head
of the ‘man in the street.’ But he may imitate what he thinks pretty,
or funny, and especially what he thinks characteristic of those people
whom for some reason or other he looks up to. Imitation is essentially
a social phenomenon, and if people do not always imitate the best (the
best thing, the best pronunciation), they will generally imitate ‘their
betters,’ i.e. those that are superior to them--in rank, in social
position, in wealth, in everything that is thought enviable. What
constitutes this superiority cannot be stated once for all; it varies
according to surroundings, age, etc. A schoolboy may feel tempted to
imitate a rough, swaggering boy a year or two older than himself rather
than his teachers or parents, and in later life he may find other
people worthy of imitation, according to his occupation or profession
or individual taste. But when he does imitate he is apt to imitate
everything, even sometimes things that are not worth imitating. In this
way Percy, in _Henry IV, Second Part_, II. 3. 24--
was indeed the glasse
Wherein the noble youth did dresse themselues.
He had no legges, that practic’d not his gate,
And _speaking thicke[71] (which Nature made his blemish)
Became the accents of the valiant.
For those that could speake low and tardily,
Would turne their owne perfection to abusee,
To seeme like him. So that in speech_, in gate ...
He was the marke, and glasse, coppy, and booke,
That fashion’d others.
The spreading of a new pronunciation through imitation must necessarily
take some time, though the process may in some instances be fairly
rapid. In some historical instances we are able to see how a new
sound, taking its rise in some particular part of a country, spreads
gradually like a wave, until finally it has pervaded the whole of a
linguistic area. It cannot become universal all at once; but it is
evident that the more natural a new mode of pronunciation seems to
members of a particular speech community, the more readily will it
be accepted and the more rapid will be its diffusion. Very often,
both when the new pronunciation is easier and when there are special
psychological inducements operating in one definite direction, the new
form may originate independently in different individuals, and that
of course will facilitate its acceptation by others. But as a rule a
new pronunciation does not become general except after many attempts:
it may have arisen many times and have died out again, until finally
it finds a fertile soil in which to take firm root. It may not be
superfluous to utter a warning against a fallacy which is found now and
then in linguistic works: when some Danish or English document, say, of
the fifteenth century contains a spelling indicative of a pronunciation
which we should call ‘modern,’ it is hastily concluded that people in
those days spoke in that respect exactly as they do now, whatever the
usual spelling and the testimony of much later grammarians may indicate
to the contrary. But this is far from certain. The more isolated such a
spelling is, the greater is the probability that it shows nothing but
an individual or even momentary deviation from what was then the common
pronunciation--the first swallow ‘who found with horror that he’d not
brought spring.’
XV.--§ 12. Reaction.
Even those who have no linguistic training will have some apperception
of sounds as such, and will notice regular correspondences, and even
occasionally exaggerate them, thereby producing those ‘hypercorrect’
forms which are of specially frequent occurrence when dialect speakers
try to use the ‘received standard’ of their country. The psychology
of this process is well brought out by B. I. Wheeler, who relates
(_Transact. Am. Philol. Ass._ 32. 14, 1901; I change his symbols into
my own phonetic notation): “In my own native dialect I pronounced _new_
as [nu·]. I have found myself in later years inclined to say [nju·],
especially when speaking carefully and particularly in public; so also
[tju·zdi] _Tuesday_. There has developed itself in connexion with these
and other words a dual sound-image [u·:ju·] of such validity that
whenever [u·] is to be formed after a dental [alveolar] explosive or
nasal, the alternative [ju·] is likely to present itself and create
the effect of momentary uncertainty. Less frequently than in _new_,
_Tuesday_, the [j] intrudes itself in _tune_, _duty_, _due_, _dew_,
_tumour_, _tube_, _tutor_, etc.; but under special provocation I am
liable to use it in any of these, and have even caught myself, when
in a mood of uttermost precision, passing beyond the bounds of the
imitative adoption of the new sound into self-annexed territory, and
creating [dju·] _do_ and [tju·] _two_.” One more instance from America
may be given: “In the dialect of Missouri and the neighbouring States,
final _a_ in such words as _America_, _Arizona_, _Nevada_ becomes
_y_--_Americy_, _Arizony_, _Nevady_. All educated people in that region
carefully correct this vulgarism out of their speech; and many of
them carry the correction too far and say _Missoura_, _praira_, etc.”
(Sturtevant, LCH 79). Similarly, many Irish people, noticing that
refined English has [i·] in many cases where they have [e·] (_tea_,
_sea_, _please_, etc.) adopt [i·] in these words, and transfer it
erroneously to words like _great_, _pear_, _bear_, etc. (MEG i. 11.
73); they may also, when correcting their own _ar_ into _er_, in such
words as _learn_, go too far and speak of _derning_ a stocking (Joyce,
_English as we speak it in Ireland_, 93). Cf. from England such forms
as _ruing_, _certing_, for _ruin_, _certain_.
From Germany I may mention that Low German speakers desiring to talk
High German are apt to say _zeller_ instead of _teller_, because High
German in many words has _z_ for their _t_ (_zahl_, _zahm_, etc.), and
that those who in their native speech have _j_ for _g_ (Berlin, etc.,
_eine jute jebratene jans ist eine jute jabe jottes_) will sometimes,
when trying to talk correctly, say _getzt_, _gahr_ for _jetzt_,
_jahr_.[72]
It will be easily seen that such hypercorrect forms are closely related
to those ‘spelling pronunciations’ which become frequent when there is
much reading of a language whose spelling is not accurately phonetic;
the nineteenth century saw a great number of them, and their number is
likely to increase in this century--especially among social upstarts,
who are always fond of showing off their new-gained superiority in this
and similar ways. But they need not detain us here, as being really
foreign to our subject, the natural development of speech sounds. I
only wish to point out that many forms which are apparently due to
influence from spelling may not have their origin _exclusively_ from
that source, but may be genuine archaic forms that have been preserved
through purely oral tradition by the side of more worn-down forms of
the same word. For it must be admitted that two or three forms of the
same word may coexist and be used according to the more or less solemn
style of utterance employed. Even among savages, who are unacquainted
with the art of writing, we are told that archaic forms of speech
are often kept up and remembered as parts of old songs only, or as
belonging to solemn rites, cults, etc.
XV.--§ 13. Sound Laws and Etymological Science.
In this and the preceding chapter I have tried to pass in review the
various circumstances which make for changes in the phonetic structure
of languages. My treatment is far from exhaustive and may have other
defects; but I want to point out the fact that nowhere have I found
any reason to accept the theory that sound changes always take place
according to rigorous or ‘blind’ laws admitting no exceptions. On the
contrary, I have found many indications that complete consistency is
no more to be expected from human beings in pronunciation than in any
other sphere.
It is very often said that if sound laws admitted of exceptions there
would be no possibility of a science of etymology. Thus Curtius wrote
as early as 1858 (as quoted by Oertel 259): “If the history of language
really showed such sporadic aberrations, such pathological, wholly
irrational phonetic malformations, we should have to give up all
etymologizing. For only that which is governed by law and reducible
to a coherent system can form the object of scientific investigation;
whatever is due to chance may at best be guessed at, but will never
yield to scientific inference.” In his practice, however, Curtius
was not so strict as his followers. Leskien, one of the recognized
leaders of the ‘young grammarians,’ says (_Deklination_, xxvii):
“If exceptions are admitted at will (abweichungen), it amounts to
declaring that the object of examination, language, is inaccessible to
scientific comprehension.” Since then, it has been repeated over and
over again that without strict adherence to phonetic laws etymological
science is a sheer impossibility, and sometimes those who have doubted
the existence of strict laws in phonology have been looked upon
as obscurantists adverse to a scientific treatment of language in
general, although, of course, they did not believe that everything is
left to chance or that they were free to put forward purely arbitrary
exceptions.
There are, however, many instances in which it is hardly possible
to deny etymological connexion, though ‘the phonetic laws are not
observed.’ Is not Gothic _azgo_ with its voiced consonants evidently
‘the same word’ as E. _ash_, G. _asche_, Dan. _aske_, with their
voiceless consonants? G. _neffe_ with short vowel must nevertheless be
identical with MHG. _neve_, OHG. _nevo_; E. _pebble_ with OE. _papol_;
_rescue_ with ME. _rescowe_; _flagon_ with Fr. _flacon_, though each
of these words contains deviations from what we find in other cases.
It is hard to keep apart two similar forms for ‘heart,’ one with
initial _gh_ in Skt. _hrd_ and Av. _zered-_, and another with initial
_k_ in Gr. _kardía_, _kēr_, Lat. _cor_, Goth. _haírto_, etc. The Greek
ordinals _hébdomos_, _ógdoos_ have voiced consonants over against the
voiceless combinations in _heptá_, _oktṓ_, and yet cannot be separated
from them. All this goes to show (and many more cases might be
instanced) that there are in every language words so similar in sound
and signification that they cannot be separated, though they break the
‘sound laws’: in such cases, where etymologies are too palpable, even
the strictest scholars momentarily forget their strictness, maybe with
great reluctance and in the secret hope that some day the reason for
the deviation may be discovered and the principle thus be maintained.
Instead of exacting strict adherence to sound laws everywhere as
the basis of any etymologizing, it seems therefore to be in better
agreement with common sense to say: whenever an etymology is not
palpably evident, whenever there is some difficulty because the
compared words are either too remote in sound or in sense or belong to
distant periods of the same language or to remotely related languages,
your etymology cannot be reckoned as _proved_ unless you have shown
by other strictly parallel cases that the sound in question has been
treated in exactly the same way in the same language. This, of course,
applies more to old than to modern periods, and we thus see that while
in living languages accessible to direct observation we do not find
sound laws observed without exceptions, and though we must suppose
that, on account of the essential similarity of human psychology,
conditions have been the same at all periods, it is not unreasonable,
in giving etymologies for words from old periods, to act as if sound
changes followed strict laws admitting no exceptions; this is simply
a matter of proof, and really amounts to this: where the matter is
doubtful, we must require a great degree of probability in that field
which allows of the simplest and most easily controllable formulas,
namely the phonetic field. For here we have comparatively definite
phenomena and are consequently able with relative ease to compute the
possibilities of change, while this is infinitely more difficult in the
field of significations. The possibilities of semantic change are so
manifold that the only thing generally required when the change is not
obvious is to show some kind of parallel change, which need not even
have taken place in the same language or group of languages, while with
regard to sounds the corresponding changes must have occurred in the
same language and at the same period in order for the evidence to be
sufficient to establish the etymology in question.
It would perhaps be best if linguists entirely gave up the habit of
speaking about phonetic ‘laws,’ and instead used some such expression
as phonetic formulas or rules. But if we are to keep the word ‘law,’
we may with some justice think of the use of that word in juridical
parlance. When we read such phrases as: this assumption is against
phonetic laws, or, phonetic laws do not allow us this or that
etymology, or, the writer of some book under review is guilty of many
transgressions of established phonetic laws, etc., such expressions
cannot help suggesting the idea that phonetic laws resemble paragraphs
of some criminal law. We may formulate the principle in something like
the following way: If in the etymologies you propose you do not observe
these rules, if, for instance, you venture to make Gr. _kaléo_ = E.
_call_ in spite of the fact that Gr. _k_ in other words corresponds
to E. _h_, then you incur the severest punishment of science, your
etymology is rejected, and you yourself are put outside the pale of
serious students.
In another respect phonetic laws may be compared with what we might
call a Darwinian law in zoology, such as this: the fore-limbs of the
common ancestor of mammals have developed into flippers in whales and
into hands in apes and men. The similarity between both kinds of laws
is not inconsiderable. A microscopic examination of whales, even an
exact investigation by means of the eye alone, will reveal innumerable
little deviations: no two flippers are exactly alike. And in the same
way no two persons speak in exactly the same way. But the fact that
we cannot in detail account for each of these _nuances_ should not
make us doubt that they are developed in a perfectly natural way, in
accordance with the great law of causality, nor should we despair of
the possibility of scientific treatment, even if some of the flippers
and some of the sounds are not exactly what we should expect. A law of
fore-limb development can only be deduced through such observation of
many flippers as will single out what is typical of whales’ flippers,
and then a comparison with the typical fore-limbs of their ancestors or
of their congeners among existing mammals. And in the same way we do
not find laws of phonetic development until, after leaving what can be
examined as it were microscopically, we go on telescopically to examine
languages which are far removed from each other in space or time: then
small differences disappear, and we discover nothing but the great
lines of a regular evolution which is the outcome of an infinite number
of small movements in many different directions.
XV.--§ 14. Conclusion.
It has been one of the leading thoughts in the two chapters devoted
to the causes of linguistic change that phonetic changes, to be fully
understood, should not be isolated from other changes, for in actual
linguistic life we witness a constant interplay of sound and sense.
Not only should each sound change be always as far as possible seen
in connexion with other sound changes going on in the same period in
the same language (as in the great vowel-raising in English), but
the effects on the speech material as a whole should in each case be
investigated, so as to show what homophones (if any) were produced, and
what danger they entailed to the understanding of natural sentences.
Sounds should never be isolated from the words in which they occur, nor
words from sentences. No hard-and-fast boundary can be drawn between
phonetic and non-phonetic changes. The psychological motives for both
kinds of changes are the same in many cases, and the way in which both
kinds spread through imitation is absolutely identical: what was said
on this subject above (§ 11) applies without the least qualification
to any linguistic change, whether in sounds, in grammatical forms, in
syntax, in the signification of words, or in the adoption of new words
and dropping of old ones.
We shall here finally very briefly consider something which plays a
certain part in the development of language, but which has not been
adequately dealt with in what precedes, namely, the desire to play
with language. We have already met with the effects of playfulness in
one of the chapters devoted to children (p. 148): here we shall see
that the same tendency is also powerful in the language of grown-up
people, though most among young people. There is a certain exuberance
which will not rest contented with traditional expressions, but
finds amusement in the creation and propagation of new words and in
attaching new meanings to old words: this is the exact opposite of that
linguistic poverty which we found was at the bottom of such minimum
languages as Pidgin-English. We find it in the wealth of pet-names
which lovers have for each other and mothers for their children, in the
nicknames of schoolboys and of ‘pals’ of later life, as well as in the
perversions of ordinary words which at times become the fashion among
small sets of people who are constantly thrown together and have plenty
of spare time; cf. also the ‘little language’ of Swift and Stella.
Most of these forms of speech have a narrow range and have only an
ephemeral existence, but in the world of _slang_ the same tendencies
are constantly at work.