LANGUAGE
ITS NATURE
DEVELOPMENT
AND ORIGIN
OTTO JESPERSEN
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1922
jT" V
I
TO
VILHELM THOMSEN
A^Sl^f^
Olaede, nSr av andres mund
jeg hjjTrte de tanker store,
Glaede over hvert et fund
jeg selv ved min forsken gjorde.
PREFACE
The distinctive feature of the science of language as conceived
nowadays is its historical character : a language or a word is no
longer taken as something given once for all, but as a result of
previous development and at the same time as the starting-point
for subsequent development. This manner of viewing languages
constitutes a decisive improvement on the way in which languages
were dealt with in previous centuries, and it suffices to mention
such words as ' evolution ' and ' Darwinism ' to show that linguistic
research has in this respect been in full accordance with tendencies
observed in many other branches of scientific work during the last
hundred years. Still, it cannot be said that students of language
have always and to the fullest extent made it clear to themselves
what is the real essence of a language. Too often expressions are
used which are nothing but metaphors — in many cases perfectly
harmless metaphors, but in other cases metaphors that obscure
the real facts of the matter. Language is frequently spoken of
as a ' living organism ' ; we hear of the ' life ' of languages, of
the ' birth ' of new languages and of the ' death ' of old languages,
and the implication, though not always realized, is that a language
is a living thing, something analogous to an animal or a plant.
Yet a language evidently has no separate existence in the same
way as a dog or a beech has, but is nothing but a function of
certain living human beings. Language is activity, purposeful
activity, and we should never lose sight of the speaking individuals
and of their purpose in acting in this particular way. When
people speak of the life of words — as in celebrated books \%dth such
titles as La vie des mots, or Biographies of Words — they do
not always keep in view that a word has no ' life ' of its own :
it exists only in so far as it is pronounced or heard or remembered
by somsbody, and this kind of existence cannot properly be com-
pared with ' life ' in the original and proper sense of that word.
The only unimpeachable definition of a word is that it is a human
habit, an habitual act on the part of one human individual which
has, or may have, the effect of evoking some idea in the mind
7
8 LANGUAGE
of another individual. A word thus may be rightly compared
with such an habitual act as taking off one's hat or raising one's
fingers to one's cap : in both cases we have a certain set of mus-
cular activities which, when seen or heard by somebody else,
shows him what is passing in the mind of the original agent or
what he desires to bring to the consciousness of the other man
(or men). The act is individual, but the interpretation presupposes
that the individual forms part of a community with analogous
habits, and a language thus is seen to be one particular set of
human customs of a well-defined social character.
It is indeed possible to speak of ' life ' in connexion with
language even from this point of view, but it will be in a different
sense from that in which the word was taken b}' the older school
of linguistic science. I shall try to give a biological or biographical
science of language, but it will be through sketching the linguistic
biology or biography of the speaking individual. I shall give,
therefore, a large part to the way in which a child learns his mother
tongue (Book II) : my conclusions there are chiefly based on the
rich material I have collected during manj' j-ears from direct
observation of many Danish children, and particularly^ of my
own boy, Frans (see my book Nutid sprog hos born og voxne, Copen-
hagen, 1916). Unfortunately, I have not been able to make first-
hand observations with regard to the speech of English children ;
the English examples I quote are taken second-hand either from
notes, for which I am obliged to English and American friends,
or from books, chiefly by psychologists. I should be particiilarly
happy if my remarks could induce some English or American
linguist to take up a systematic study of the speech of children,
or of one child. This study seems to me very fascinating indeed,
and a linguist is sure to notice many things that would be passed
by as uninteresting even by the closest observer among psycholo-
gists, but which may have some bearing on the life and development
of language.
Another part of linguistic biology deals \nth the influence
of the foreigner, and still another with the changes which the
individual is apt independently to introduce into his speech even
after he has fully acquired his mother-tongue. Tliis naturallj'
leads up to the question whether all these changes introduced by
various individuals do, or do not, follow the same line of direction,
and whether mankind has on the whole moved forward or not in
linguistic matters. The con\action reached through a study cf
historically accessible periods of well-knoAMi languages is finally
shown to throw some light on the disputed problem of the ultimate
origin of human language.
Parts of my theory of sound-change, and especially mj'^ objections
PREFACE 9
to the dogma of blind sound-laws, date back to my very first
linguistic paper (1886) ; most of the chapters on Decay or Progress
and parts of some of the following chapters, as well as the theory
of the origin of speech, may be considered a new and revised
edition of the general chapters of my Progress in Language (1894).
Many of the ideas contained in this book thus are not new with
me ; but even if a reader of my previous works may recognize
things which he has seen before, I hope he will admit that they
have been here worked up with much new material into something
like a sj'stem, which forms a fairly comprehensive theory of
linguistic development.
Still, I have not been able to compress into this volume the
whole of my pliilosophy of speech. Considerations of space have
obliged me to exclude the chapters I had first intended to write
on the practical consequences of the ' energetic ' view of language
wliich I have throughout maintained ; the estimation of linguistic
phenomena implied in that view has bearings on such questions
as these : What is to be considered ' correct ' or ' standard ' in
matters of pronunciation, spelling, grammar and idiom ? Can (or
should) indi%'iduals exert themselves to improve their mother-tongue
by enriching it with new terms and by making it purer, more i^recise,
more fit to express subtle shades of thought, more easy to handle
in speech or in writing, etc. ? (A few hints on such questions may
be found in my paper " Energetik der Sprache " in Scientia, 1914.)
Is it possible to construct an artificial language on scientific prin-
ciples for international use ? (On this question I may here briefly
state my conviction that it is extremely important for the whole
of mankind to have such a language, and that I(iais scientificallj'
and practically very much superior to all previous attempts,
Volapiik, Esperanto, Idiom Neutral, Latin sine flexione, etc. But
I have written more at length on that question elsewhere.) With
regard to the sj^stem of grammar, the relation of grammar to
logic, and grammatical categories and their definition, I must refer
the reader to Sprojefs Logik (Copenhagen, 1913), and to the first
chapter of the second volume of my Modern English Grammar
(Heidelberg, 1914), but I shall hope to deal with these questions
more in detail in a future work, to be called, probably. The Logic
of Grammar, of which some chapters have been ready in my
drawers for some years and others are in active preparation.
I have prefixed to the theoretical chapters of this work a short
survey of the history of the science of language in order to show
how my problems have been previously treated. In this part
(Book I) I have, as a matter of course, used the excellent works
on the subject by Benfey, Raumer, Delbruck [Einleihing in das
Sprachstudium, 1st ed., 1880 ; I did not see the 6th ed., 1908, till
r
10 LANGUAGE
my own chapters on the history of linguistics were finished;,
Thorasen, Oertel and Pedersen. But I have in nearly every case
gone to the sources themselves, and have, I think, found interesting
things in some of the early books on linguistics that have been
generally overlooked ; I have even pointed out some writers who
had passed into undeserved oblivion. My intention has been on
the whole to throw into relief the great lines of development
rather than to give many details ; in judging the first part of my
book it should also be borne in mind that its object primarily is
to serve as an introduction to the problems dealt with in tlic rest
of the book. Throughout I have tried to look at things with my
own eyes, and accordingly my views on a great many points are
different from those generally accepted ; it is my hope that an
impartial observer will find that I have here and there succeeded
in distributing light and shade more justly than my predecessors.
Wherever it has been necessary I have transcribed words
phonetically according to the system of the Association Phonetique
Internationale, though without going into too minute distinction
of sounds, the object being, not to teach the exact pronunciation
of various languages, but rather to bring out clearly the insuffi-
ciency of the ordinary spelling. The latter is given throughout in
italics, while phonetic symbols have been inserted in brackets [.].
I must ask the reader to forgive inconsistency in such matters
as Greek accents. Old English marks of vowel-length, etc., which
I have often omitted as of no importance for the purpose of this
volume.
I must express here my gratitude to the directors of the
Carlsbergfond for kind support of my work. I want to thank
also Professor G. C. ^loore Smith, of the University of Sheffield :
not only has he sent me the manuscript of a translation nf
most of my Nutidssprog, which he had undertaken of his own
accord and which served as the basis of Book II, but he has
kindly gone through the whole of this volume, improving and
correcting my English style in many passages. His friendship and
the untiring interest he has always taken in my work have been
extremely valuable to me for a great many years.
OTTO JESPERSEN.
University of Copenhagen,
June 1921.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface ........ 7
Abbreviations of Book Titles, Etc. . . . .13
Phonetic Symbols . . . . . .16
BOOK I
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
CHAPTER
I. Before 1800 ...... 19
II. Beginxixg of Nineteenth Century . . 32
III. Middle of Nineteenth Century . . .63
IV. End of Nineteenth Century . . .89
BOOK II
THE CHILD
V. Sounds . . . . . . .103
VI. Words ....... 113
VII. Grammar . . . . . .128
VIII, Some Fundamental Problems . . . 140
IX. The Influence of the Child on Linguistic
Development ...... 161
X. The Influence of the Child {continued) . . 172
u
12
LANGUAGE
BOOK in
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE WORLD
OBAPTEB FAOE
XI. The Foreigner . . . . . .191
XII. Pidgin and Congeners .... 216
XIII. The Woman . . . . . .237
XIV. Causes of Change . . . . . 255
XV. Causes of Change (continued) . . . 276
BOOK IV
DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE
XVI. Etymology ...... 305
XVII. Progress or Decay ? . . . . . 319
XVIII. Progress ....... 337
XIX. Origin of Grammatical Elements . . . 367
XX. Sound Symbolism ..... 396
XXI. The Origin of Speech . . . . .412
Index . . . . . . . 4:,3
ABBREVIATIONS OF BOOK TITLES, ETC.
Bally LV == Ch. Ballj-, Le Langage et la Vie, Gent;ve 1913.
Benfey Gesch = Th. Benfey, Oeschichte der Sprachwisaenschaft, Miinchen
1869.
Bleek CG = W. H. I. Bleek, Comparative Grammar of South African Languages'
London 1862-69.
Bloonxfield SL = L. Bloomfield, An Introduction to the Study of Language,
New York 1914.
Bopp C = F. Bopp, Conjugationasystem der Sanskritsprache, Frankfurt 1816.
AC = Analytical Comparison (see ch. ii, § 6).
VG = Vergleichende Orammatik, 2te Ausg., Berlin 1857.
Breal M = M. Breal, Melanges de Mythologie et de Linguistique, Paris 1882.
Brugmann VG = K. Brugmann, Qrundriss der Vergleichenden Grammatih,
Strassburg 1886 fi., 2te Ausg., 1897 £f.
KG = Kurze Vergleichende Grammatik, Strassburg 1904.
ChE = O. Jespersen, Chapters on English, London 1918.
Churchill B = W. Churchill, Beach-la-Mar, Washington 1911.
Curtius C = G. Cixrtius, Zur Chronologie der indogerm. Sprachforschung,
Leipzig 1873.
K = Zur Kritik der neuesten Sprachforschung, Leipzig 1885.
Dauzat V = A. Dauzat, La Vie du Langage, Paris 1910.
Ph = La Philosophic du Langage, Paris 1912.
Delbrvick E = B. Delbruck, Einleitung in das Sprachstudium, Leipzig 1880 ;
5te Aufl. 1908.
Grfr = Grundfragen der Sprachforschung, Strassburg 1901.
E. = English.
EDD = J. Wright, The English Dialect Dictionary, Oxford 1898 £E.
ESt = Englische Sludien.
Feist KI = S. Feist, Kultur, Ausbreitung und Herkunft der Jndogermanen,
Berlin 1913.
Fonetik = O. Jespersen, Fonetik, Copenhagen 1897.
Fr. == French.
Gabelentz Spr = G. v. d. Gabelentz, Die Sprachwissenschaft, Leipzig 1891.
Gr = Chinesische Grammatik, Leipzig 1881.
Ginneken LP = J. v. Ginneken, Principes de Linguistique Paychologique
Amsterdam, Paris 1907.
Glencormer = P. Glenconner, The Sayings of the Children, Oxford 1918.
Gr. = Greek.
Greenough and Kittredge W = J. B. Greenough and G. L. Kittredge, Words
and their Ways in English Speech, London 1902.
Grimm Gr. = J. Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik, 2te Ausg., Gottingen 1822.
GDS = Geschichte der dexitschen Sprache, 4te Aufl., Leipzig 1880.
13
14 LANGUAGE \
GRM = Oermaniach-Romanische Monataschrift.
GS = O. Jespersen, Orowth and Structure of the English Language, 3rd ed.,
Leipzig 1919.
Hilmer Sch = H. Hilmer, Schallnachahmung, Wortschopfung u. Bedeutungs-
wandel, Halle 1914.
Hirt GDS = H. Hirt, Oeschichte der deutachen Sprache, Miinchen 1919.
Idg = Die Indogermanen, Strnssburg 1905-7.
Humboldt Versch = W. v. Humboldt, Verachiedenheit dea menachlichen
Sprachbauea (number of pages as in the original edition).
IF = Indogermanische Forschungen.
KZ = Kuhn's Zeitachrift fiir vcrgleichende Sprachforachung.
Lasch S = R. Laaoh, Bonder a prachen u. ihre Entstehung, Wien 1907.
LPh = O. Jesporsen, Lehrbuch der Phonetik, 3te Aufl., Leipzig 1920.
Madvig 1857 = J. N. Madvig, De grammalische Betegnelaer, Copenhagen 1857.
Kl = Kleine philologiache Schriften, Leipzig 1875.
ME. = Middle English.
MEG = O. Jespersen, Modern English Grammar, Heidelberg 1909, 1914.
Meillet DI = A. Meillet, Lea Dialectea Indo-Europeena, Paris 1908.
Germ. = Caracterea gdm'raux dea Languea Germaniques, Paris 1917.
Gr = Aper<^u d'une Histoire de la Langue Grecque, Paris 1913.
LI = Introduction d V4tude camp, dea Languea Indo-Europeennea,
2e dd., Paris 1908.
Meinhof Ham = C. Meinhof, Die hamitischen Sprachen, Haml)urg 1912.
MSA = Die moderne Sprachforachung in Afrika, Berlin 1910.
Meringer L = R. Meringer, Aua dem Leben der Sprache, Berlin 1908.
Misteli = F. Misteli, Charakteriatik der haupta, Typen dea Sprachbauea,
Berlin 1893.
MSL = M^moires de la Socidtd de Linguiatique de Paria.
Ft. Miiller Gr = Friedrich Miiller, Grundrisa der Spiachwiaaenachaft, '\\'ien
1876 ff.
Max Miiller Ch = F. Max Miiller, Chipa from a German Workahop, vol. iv,
London 1875.
NED = A New Engliah Dictionary, by Murray, etc., Oxford 1884 f5.
Noreen UL = A. Noreen, Abriaa der urgermaniachen Lautlehre, Strassburg
1894.
VS = Vart Spr8k, Lund 1903 ff.
Nyrop Gr = Kr. Nyrop, Grammaire Hisiorique de la Langue Fran^aiae,
Copenhagen 1914 ff.
OE. = Old English (Anglo-Saxon).
Oertel = H. Oertel, Lecturea on the Study of Language, New York 190L
OFr. = Old French.
ON. = Old Norse.
Passy Ch = P. Passy, Lea Changementa Phondtiquea, Paris 1890.
Paul P = H. Paul, Prinzipien der Sprachgeachichte, 4te Aufl., Halle 1909.
Gr = Grundriaa der germanischen Philologie.
PBB = Beitrage zur Geachichte der deutachen Sprache (Paul u. Braune).
Pedersen GKS = H. Pedersen, Vergl. Grammatik der keltischen Sprachen,
GSttingen 1909.
PhG = O. Jespersen, Phonetische Grundfragen, Leipzig 1904.
Porzezinski Spr = V. Porzezinski, Einleitung in die Sprachwiaaenachaft,
Leipzig 1910.
Progr. = O. Jespersen, Progreaa in Language, London 1894.
ABBREVIATIONS OF BOOK TITLES 15
Rask P = R. Rask [Prisskrift] Undersogelse om det gamie Nordiske Sprogs
Oprindehe, Copenhagen 181S.
SA = Samlede AJhandlinger, Copenhagen 1834.
Raumer Gesch = R. v. Raumer, Genchichte der germanischen Philologte,
Miinchen 1870.
Ronjat = J. Ronjat, Le Developpement du Langage chez un Enjant Bilingue,
Paris 1913.
Sandfeld Jensen S = Kr. Sandfeld Jensen, Sprogvidenskaben, Copenhagen
1913.
Sprw = Die Sprachwiasenschaft, Leipzig 1915.
Saussure LG = F. de Saussure, Cours de Linguistique G6n6rale, Lausanne
191G.
Sayce P = A. H. Sayce, Principles oj Comparative Philology, 2nd ed., London
1875.
S = Introduction to the Science of Language, London 1880.
Scherer GDS = W. Scherer, Zur Oeschichte der deutachen Sprache, Berlin
1878.
Schleicher I, II = A. Schleicher, Sprachvergleichende Vntersuchungen, I-II,
Bonn 1848, 1850.
Bed. = Die Bedeutung der Sprache, Weimar 1865.
C = Compendium der vergl. Grammatik, 4te Aufl., Weimar 1876.
D = Die deutsche Sprache, Stuttgart 1S60.
Darw. = Die Darwinische Theorie und die Sprachunasenachaft,
Weimar 1873.
NV = Nomen und Verbum, Leipzig 1865.
Schuchardt SID = H. Schuchardt, Slawo-DeiUschea u. Slawo-Italienischea,
Graz 1885.
KS = Kreolische Studien (Wien, Akademie).
Simonyi US = S. Simonyi, Die Ungarische Sprache, Strassburg 1907.
Skt. = Sanskrit.
Sommer Lat. = F. Sommer, Handbuch der latein- Laul- wid Formenlehre,
Heidelberg 1902.
Stern = Clara and William Stern, Die Kinder sprache, Leipzig 1907.
StoSel Int. = C. StoSel, Intensives and Down-toners, Heidelberg 1901.
Streitberg Gesch = W. Streitberg, Geschichte der indogerm. Sprachwiasen-
schaft, Strassburg 1917.
Urg = Urgermanische Grammatik, Heidelberg 1896.
Sturtevant LCh = E. H. Sturtevant, Linguistic Change, Chicago 1917.
Siitterlin WSG = L. Siitterlin, Das Wesen der sprachlichen Gebilde, Heidel-
berg 1902.
WW = Werden und Wesen der Sprache, Leipzig 1913.
Sweet CP = H. Sweet, Collected Papers, Oxford 1913.
H = The History of Language, London 1900.
PS = The Practical Study of Languages, London 1899.
Tegn^r SM = E. Tegner, Spraketa makt ofver tanken, Stockholm 1880.
Vemer = K. Verner, Afhandlinger og Breve, Copenhagen 1903.
Wechssler L = E. Wechssler, Giebt es Lautgesetze ? Halle 1900.
Whitney G = W. D. Whitney, Life and Growth of Language, London 1875.
L = Language and the Study of Language, London 1868.
M = Max Mailer and the Science of Language, New York 1892.
OLS = Oriental and Linguistic Studies, New York 1873-4.
Wundt S = W. Wundt, Die Sprache, Leipzig 1900.
PHONETIC SYMBOLS
[a'] as in olms.
[ai] as in tee.
[au] as in howse.
[se] as in hat.
[ei] as in hate.
[e] as in care ; Fr. tel.
[a] indistinct vowels.
[i] as in fill ; Fr. qui.
fi-] as in feel ; Fr. fille.
[o] as in Fr. aeau.
[ou] as in so,
[d] open o-sounds.
fu] as in iuU ; Fr. iou.
[u'j as in fool ; Fr. 6poMsew
standij before the stressed syllable,
indicates length of the preceding sound.
[y] as in Fr. vu.
[a] as in cut.
[«] as in Fr. fe«.
[ce] as in Fr. sceur.
["] French nasalization.
[c] as in G. ich.
[x] as in G., Sc. loch.
[6] as in this.
[j] as in 2/ou.
[]?] as in thick.
[/] as in she.
[5] as in measure.
['] in Russian palatalization, in
Danish glottal stop.
16
BOOK I
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
17
CHAPTER I
BEFORE 1800
§ 1. Antiquity. § 2. Middle Ages and Renaissance. § 3. Eighteenth-
century Speculation. Herder. § 4. Jenisch.
I. — §1. Antiquity.
The science of language began, tentatively and approximately,
when the minds of men first turned to problems like these : How
is it that people do not speak every^vhere the same language ?
How were words first created ? What is the relation between a
name and the thing it stands for ? Why is such and such a person,
or such and such a thing, called tJiis and not that ? The first
answers to these questions, like primitive answers to other riddles
of the universe, were largely theological : God, or one particular
god, had created language, or God led all animals to the first man
in order that he might give them names. Thus in the Old Testa-
ment the diversity of languages is explained as a punishment
from God for man's crimes and presumption. These were great
and general problems, but the minds of the early Jews were also
occupied with smaller and more particular problems of language,
as when etymological interpretations were given of such personal
names as were not immediately self-explanatory.
The same predilection for etymology, and a similar primitive
kind of etymology, based entirely on a more or less accidental
similarity of sound and easily satisfied with any fanciful connexion
in sense, is found abundantly in Greek writers and in their Latin
imitators. But to the speculative minds of Greek thinkers the
problem that proved most attractive was the general and abstract
one, Are words natinral and necessary expressions of the notions
underlying them, or are they merely arbitrary and conventional
signs for notions that might have been equally well expressed by
any other sounds ? Endless discussions were carried on about
this question, as we see particularly from Plato's Kratylos, and
no very definite result was arrived at, nor could any be expected
so long as one language only formed the basis of the discussion —
even in om* own days, after a centm-y of comparative philology,
the question still remains an open one. In Greece, the two catch-
words phusei (by nature) and thesei (by convention) for centuries
19
\E 1800 [cii. I
divided phuosopners aiiJ grammarians into two camps, while
some, like Sokrates in Plato's dialogue, though admitting that
in language as actually existing there was no natural connexion
between word and thing, still wished that an ideal language might
be created in which words and things would be tied together in
a perfectly rational wa}' — thus paving the way for Bishop Wilkins
and other modern constructors of philosophical languages.
Such abstract and a priori speculations, however stimulating
and clever, hardly deserve the name of science, as this term is
understood nowadays. Science presupposes careful observation
and systematic classification of facts, and of that in the old Greek
writers on language we find very little. The earliest masters in
linguistic observation and classification were the old Indian gram-
marians. The language of the old sacred hymns had become in
many points obsolete, but religion required that not one iota of
these revered texts should be altered, and a scrupulous oral tradition
kept them unchanged from generation to generation in every
minute particular. This led to a wonderfully exact analysis of
speech sounds, in wliich every detail of articulation was care-
fully described, and to a no less admirable analj'sis of grammatical
forms, which were arranged systematically and described in a
concise and highly ingenious, though artificial, terminology. The
whole manner of treatment was entirely different from the methods
of Western grammarians, and when the works of Panini and other
Sanskrit grammarians were first made kno'WTi to Europeans in
the nineteenth century, they profoundh^ influenced our own lin-
guistic science, as witnessed, among other things, by the fact that
some of the Indian technical terms are still extensively used, for
instance those describing various kinds of compound nouns.
In Europe grammatical science was slowly and laboriou?^Iy
developed in Greece and later in Rome. Aristotle laid the founda-
tion of the division of words into " parts of speech " and introduced
the notion of case (ptosis). His work in this connexion was
continued by the Stoics, many of whose grammatical distinctions
and terms are still in use, the latter in their Latin dress, which
embodies some curious mistakes, as when genike, " the case of kmd
or species," was rendered genitivus, as if it meant "the case of
origin," or, worse still, when aitiatike, " the case of object," was
rendered accusativus, as if from aitidoniai, ' I accuse.' In later
times the philological school of Alexandria was particularly
important, the object of research being the interpretation of tl'.e
old poets, whose language was no longer instantly intelligible.
Details of flexion and of the meaning of words were described
and referred to the two categories of analogy or regularity and
anomaly or irregularity, but real insight into the nature of language
§1] ANTIQUITY 21
made very little progress either with the Alexandrians or with
their Roman inheritors, and etymology still remained in the
childlike stage.
I. — § 3. Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Nor did linguistic science advance in the Sliddle Ages. The
chief thing then was learning Latin as the common language of
the Church and of what little there was of civilization generally ;
but Latin was not studied in a scientific spirit, and the various
vernacular languages, which one by one blossomed out into
languages of literatiure, even less so.
The Renaissance in so far brought about a change in this, as
it widened the horizon, especially by introducing the study of
Greek. It also favoured grammatical studies through the stress
it laid on correct Latin as represented in the best period of classical
literature : it now became the ambition of humanists in all
countries to Avrite Latin Uke Cicero. In the following centuries
we witness a constantly deepening interest in the various living
languages of Eiurope, owing to the growing importance of native
hteratures and to increasing facilities of international traffic and
communication in general. The most important factor here was,
of course, the invention of printing, which rendered it incom-
parably more easy than formerly to obtain the means of studjang
foreign languages. It should be noted also that in those times
the prevalent theological interest made it a much more common
thing than nowadays for ordinarj^ scholars to have some know-
ledge of Hebrew as the original language of the Old Testament.
The acquaintance with a language so different in type from those
spoken in Eiu-ope in many ways stimulated the interest in linguistic
studies, though on the other hand it proved a fruitful source of
error, because the position of the Semitic family of languages
was not yet understood, and because Hebrew was thought to be
the language spoken in Paradise, and therefore imagined to be
the language from which all other languages were descended.
All kinds of fanciful similarities between Hebrew and European
languages were taken as proofs of the origin of the latter ; every
imaginable permutation of sounds (or rather of letters) was looked
upon as possible so long as there was a slight connexion in the
sense of the two words compared, and however incredible it may
seem nowadays, the fact that Hebrew was written from right to
left, while we in our writing proceed from left to right, was
considered justification enough for the most violent transposition
of letters in etymological explanations. And yet all these flighty
and whimsical comparisons served perhaps in some measm'e to
22 BEFORE 1800 [cH. i
pave the way for a more systematic treatment of etymology through
collecting vast stores of words from which sober and critical minds
might select those instances of indubitable connexion on which a
sound science of etymology could eventually be constructed.
The discovery and publication of texts in the old Gothonic
(Germanic) languages, especially Wulfila's Gotliic translation of
the Bible, compared with which Old English (Anglo-Saxon), Old
German and Old Icelandic texts were of less, though by no means
of despicable, account, paved the way for historical treatment
of this important group of languages in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. But on the whole, the interest in the history
of languages in those days was small, and linguistic thinkers thought
it more urgent to establish vast treasuries of languages as actually
spoken than to follow the development of any one language from
century to century. Thus we see that the great philosopher
Leibniz, who took much interest in hnguistic pursuits and to whom
we owe many judicious utterances on the possibility of a universal
language, instigated Peter the Great to have vocabularies and
specimens collected of all the various languages of his vast empire.
To this initiative taken by Leibniz, and to the great personal
interest that the Empress Catherine II took in these studies, we
owe, directly or indirectly, the great repertories of all languages
then known, first Pallas's lAngiLarum totius orbis vocabtdaria
comparativa (1786-87), then Hervas's Catdlogo de las lengnaa
de las Tuiziones conocidas (1800-5), and finally Adelung's
Mithridates oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde (1806-17). In spite
of their inevitable shortcomings, their uncritical and unequal
treatment of many languages, the preponderance of lexical over
grammatical information, and the use of biblical texts as their
sole connected illustrations, these great works exercised a mighty
influence on the linguistic thought and research of the time, and
contributed very much to the birth of the hnguistic science of the
nineteenth century. It should not be forgotten, moreover, that
Hervas was one of the first to recognize the superior importance
of grammar to vocabulary for deciding questions of relationship
between languages.
It will be well here to consider the manner in which languages
and the teaching of languages were generally viewed during the
centuries preceding the rise of Comparative Linguistics. The chief
language taught was Latin ; the first and in many cases the only
grammar with which scholars came into contact was Latin grammar.
No wonder therefore that grammar and Latin grammar came
in the minds of most people to be sjmonyms. Latin grammar
played an enormous rfile in the schools, to the exclusion of maay
subjects (the pupil's own native language, science, history, etc.)
§2] MIDDLE AGES AND RENAISSANCE 28
which we are now beginning to think more essential for the educa-
tion of the young. The traditional term for ' secondary school '
was in England ' grammar school ' and in Denmark ' latinskole,'
and the reason for both expressions was obviously the same.
Here, however, we are concerned with this privileged position of
Latin grammar only in so far as it influenced the treatment of
languages in general. It did so in more ways than one.
Latin was a language with a wealth of flexional forms, and
in describing other languages the same categories as were found
in Latin were applied as a matter of course, even where there was
nothing in these other languages which really corresponded to what
was found in Latin. In English and Danish grammars paradigms
of noun declension were given with such cases as accusative, dative
and ablative, in spite of the fact that no separate forms for these
cases had existed for centuries. All languages were indiscriminately
saddled with the elaborate Latin system of tenses and moods in
the verbs, and by means of such Procrustean methods the actual
facts of many languages were distorted and misrepresented.
Discriminations which had no foundation in reality were never-
theless insisted on, while discriminations which happened to be
non-existent in Latin were apt to be overlooked. The mischief
consequent on this unfortunate method of measuring all grammar
after the pattern of Latin grammar has not even yet completely
disappeared, and it is even now difficult to find a single grammar
of any language that is not here and there influenced by the
Latin bias.
Latin was chiefly taught as a written language (witness the
totally different manner in which Latin was pronounced in
the different countries, the consequence being that as early as the
sixteenth century French and English scholars were imable to
understand each other's spoken Latin). This led to the almost
exclusive occupation with letters instead of sounds. The fact
that all language is primarily spoken and only secondarily veritten
do"«Ti, that the real life of language is in the mouth and ear and
not in the pen and eye, was overlooked, to the detriment of a real
understanding of the essence of language and linguistic develop-
ment ; and very often where the spoken form of a language was
accessible scholars contented themselves with a reading knowledge.
In spite of many efforts, some of which go back to the sixteenth
century, but which did not become really powerful till the rise
of modern phonetics in the nineteenth century, the fundamental
significance of spoken as opposed to \vritten language has not
yet been fully appreciated by all linguists. There are still too
many writers on philological questions who have evidently never
tried to think in sounds instead of thinking in letters and symbols,
24 BEFORE 1800 [cu. i
and who would probably be sorely puzzled if they were to pro-
nounce all the forms that come so glibly to their pens. What
Sweet -wTote in 1877 in the preface to his Handbook of Phonetics
is perhaps less true now than it was then, but it still contains some
elements of truth. " Manj' instances," he said, "might be quoted
of the way in which important philological facts and laws have
been passed over or misrepresented through the observer's want
of phonetic training. Schleicher's failing to observe the Lithua-
nian accents, or even to comprehend them when pointed out by
Kurschat, is a striking instance." But there can be no doubt
that the way in which Latin has been for centuries made the
basis of all linguistic instruction is largely responsible for the
preponderance of eye-philology to ear-philology in the history of
our science.
We next come to a point which to my mind is very important,
because it concerns something which has had, and has justly had,
enduring effects on the manner in which language, and especially
grammar, is viewed and taught to this day. What was the object
of teaching Latin in the Middle Ages and later ? Certainly not
the purely scientific one of imparting knowledge for knowledge's
own sake, apart from anj' practical use or advantage, simply in
order to widen the spiritual horizon and to obtain the joy of pure
intellectual understanding. For such a purpose some people "v^ith
scientific leanings may here and there take up the study of some
out-of-the-way African or American idiom. But the reasons for
teaching and learning Latin were not so idealistic. Latin w'as
not even taught and learnt solely with the purpose of opening the
doors to the old classical or to the more recent religious literature
in that language, but chiefly, and in the first instance, because
Latin was a practical and highly important means of communication
between educated people. One had to learn not only to road
Latin, but also to ^vl■ite Latin, if one wanted to maintain no matter
how humble a position in the republic of learning or in the hier-
archy of the Church. Consequently, grammar was not (even
primarily) the science of how words were inflected and how forms
were used bj'' the old Romans, but chiefly and essentially the
art of inflecting words and of using the forms yourself, if you
wanted to write correct Latin. This yoii must say, and these
faults you must avoid — such were the lessons imparted in the
schools. Grammar was not a set of facts observed but of rules to
be observed, and of paradigms, i.e. of patterns, to be follo-wcd.
Sometimes this character of grammaticaLrhistruction is expres-sly
indicated in the form of the precepts given, as in such memorial
verses as this : " Tolle -me, -mi, -mil, -mis. Si declinare domvs vis ! "
In other words, grammar was prescriptive rather than descriptive.
§2] MIDDLE AGES AND RENAISSANCE 25
The current definition of grammar, therefore, was " ars bene
dicendi et bene scribendi," " I'art de bicn dire et de bicn ecrire,"
the art of speaking and wi'iting correctly. J. C. ScaHger said,
" Grammatici unus finis est recte loqui." To attain to correct
diction (' good grammar ') and to avoid faulty diction (' bad
grammar '), such were the two objects of grammatical teaching.
Now, the same point of view, in which the two elements of ' art '
and of ' correctness ' entered so largely, was applied not only to
Latin, but to other languages as well, when the various vernaculars
came to be treated grammatically.
The vocabulary, too, was treated from the same point of view.
This is especially evident in the case of the dictionaries issued by
the French and Italian Academies. They differ from dictionaries
as now usually compiled in being not collections of all and any
words their authors could get hold of within the limits of the
language concerned, but in being selections of words deserving the
recommendations of the best arbiters of taste and therefore fit
to be used in the highest literature by even the most elegant or
fastidious -svriters. Dictionaries thus understood were less descrip-
tions of actual usage than prescriptions for the best usage of
words.
The normative way of viewing language is fraught with some
great dangers which can only be avoided through a comprehen-
sive knowledge of the historic development of languages and of
the general conditions of linguistic psychology. Otherwise, the
tendency everywhere is to draw too narrow limits for what is
allowable or correct. In many cases one form, or one construc-
tion, only is recognized, even where two or more are found in
actual speech ; the question which is to be selected as the only good
form comes to be decided too often by individual fancy or predilec-
tion, where no scientific tests can yet be applied, and thus a form
may often be proscribed which from a less narrow point of view
might have appeared just as good as, or even better than, the
one preferred in the official grammar or dictionary. In other
instances, where two forms were recognized, the grammarian
wanted to give rules for their discrimination, and sometimes on
the basis of a totally inadequate induction he would establish
nice distinctions not really warranted by actual usage — distinctions
which subsequent generations had to learn at school with the sweat
of their brows and which were often considered most important
in spite of their intrinsic insignificance. Such unreal or half-real
subtle distinctions are the besetting sin of French grammarians
from the ' grand siecle ' onwards, while they have played a much
less considerable part in England, where people have been on the
whole more inclined to let things slide as best they may on the
26 BEFORE 1800 [ch. i
' laissez faire ' principle, and where no Academy was ever estab-
lished to regulate language. But even in EngUsh rules are not
unfrequently given in schools and in newspaper offices which are
based on narrow views and hasty generalizations. Because a
preposition at the end of a sentence may in some instances be
clumsy or unwieldy, this is no reason why a final preposition should
always and under all circumstances be considered a grave error.
But it is of course easier for the schoolmaster to give an absolute,
and inviolable rule once and for all than to study carefulh' all
the various considerations that might render a qualification
desirable. If the ordinary books on Common Faults in Writing
and Speaking English and similar works in other languages have
not even now assimilated the teachings of Comparative and
Historic Linguistics, it is no wonder that the grammarians of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with whom we are here
concerned, should be in many ways guided by narrow and
insufficient views on what ought to determine correctness of spccclh
Here also the importance given to the study of Latin was
sometimes harmful ; too much was settled by a reference to Latin
rules, even where the modern languages really followed rules of
their own that were opposed to those of Latin. The learning qf
Latin grammar was supposed to be, and to some extent really
was, a schooling in logic, as the strict observance of the rules of
any foreign language is bound to be ; but the consequence of this
was that when questions of grammatical correctness were to be
settled, too much importance was often given to purely logical
considerations, and scholars were sometimes apt to determine
what was to be called ' logical '' in language according to whetlier
it was or was not in conformity with Latin usage. This disposition,
joined with the unavoidable conservatism of mankind, and more
particularly of teachers, would in many ways prove a hindrance
to natural developments in a living speech. But we must again
take up the thread of the history of linguistic theory.
I. — §3. Eighteenth-century Speculation. Herder.
The problem of a natural origin of language exercised sonu of
the best-known thinkers of the eighteenth century. Rousfeau
imagined the first men setting themselves more or less deliberately
to frame a language by an agreement similar to (or forming part
of) the corilrat social which according to him was the basis of all
social order. There is here the obvious difficulty of imagining
how primitive men who had been previously without any speech
came to feel the want of language, and how they could agree on
what sound was to represent what idea without having already
§8] EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SPECULATION 27
some means of communication. Rousseau's whole manner of
putting and of viewing the problem is evidently too crude to be
of any real importance in the history of linguistic science.
Condillac is much more sensible when he tries to imagine how
a speechless man and a speechless woman might be led quite
natiu-ally to acquire something like language, starting with instinc-
tive cries and violent gestures called forth by strong emotions.
Such cries would come to be associated with elementary feelings,
and new sounds might come to indicate various objects if produced
repeatedly in connexion with gestures showing what objects the
speaker wanted to call attention to. If these two first speaking
beings had as yet very little power to vary their sounds, their
child would have a more flexible tongue, and would therefore be
able to, and be impelled to, produce some new sounds, the meaning
of which his parents would guess at, and which they in their turn
would imitate ; thus gradually a greater and greater number of
words would come into existence, generation after generation
working painfully to enrich and develop what had been already
acquired, until it finally became a real language.
The profoundest thinker on these problems in the eighteenth
century was Johann Gottfried Herder, who, though he did little
or nothing in the way of scientific research, yet prepared the rise
of linguistic science. In his prize essay on the Origin of Language
(1772) Herder first vigorously and successfully attacks the orthodox
view of his age — a view which had been recently upheld very
emphatically by one Siissmilch — that language could not have
been invented by man, but was a direct gift from God. One of
Herder's strongest arguments is that if language had been framed
by God and by Him instilled into the mind of man, we should
expect it to be much more logical, much more imbued with pure
reason than it is as an actual matter of fact. Much in all existing
languages is so chaotic and ill-arranged that it could not be God's
work, but must come from the hand of man. On the other hand,
Herder does not think that language was really ' invented ' by
man — although this was the word used by the Berlin Academy
when opening the competition in which Herder's essay gained the
prize. Language was not deliberately framed by man, but sprang
of necessity from his innermost nature ; the genesis of language
according to him is due to an impulse similar to that oi tne mature
embryo pressing to be born. Man, in the same way as all animals,
gives vent to his feelings in tones, but this is not enough ; it is
impossible to trace the origin of human language to these emotional
cries alone. However much they may be refined and fixed, without
understanding they can never become human, conscious language.
Man differs from brute animals not in degree or in the addition of
28 BEFORE 1800 [ch. i
new powers, but in a totally different direction and development
of all powers. Man's inferiority to animals in strength and sureness
of instinct is compensated by his wider sphere of attention ; the
whole disposition of his mind as an unanalysable entity constitutes
the impassable barrier between him and the lower animals. Man,
then, shows conscious reflexion when among the ocean of sensa-
tions that rush into his soul through all the senses he singles out
one wave and arrests it, as when, seeing a lamb, he looks for a dis-
tinguishing mark and finds it in the bleating, so that next time
when he recognizes the same animal he imitates the sound of
bleating, and thereby creates a name for that animal. Thus the
lamb to him is ' the bleater,' and nouns are created from verbs,
whereas, according to Herder, if language had been the creation
of God it would inversely have begun with nouns, as that would
have been the logically ideal order of procediue. Another charac-
teristic trait of primitive languages is the crossing of various
shades of feeling and the necessity of expressing thoughts through
strong, bold metaphors, presenting the most motley picture.
" The genetic cause lies in the poverty of the human mind and
in the flowing together of the emotions of a primitive human
being." Another consequence is the wealth of synonyms in
primitive language ; " alongside of real poverty it has the most
unnecessary superfluity."
When Herder here speaks of primitive or ' original ' languages,
he is thinking of Oriental languages, and especially of Hebrew.
" We should never forget," says Edward Sapir,^ " that Herder's
time-perspective was necessarily very diflPerent from ours. Wliile
we unconcernedly take tens or even himdreds of thousands of
years in wliich to allow the products of human civilization to
develop. Herder was still compelled to operate with the less than
six thousand years that orthodoxy stingily doled out. To us the
two or three thousand years that separate our language from the
Old Testament Hebrew seems a negligible quantity, when specu-
lating on the origin of language in general ; to Herder, however,
the Hebrew and the Greek of Homer seemed to be appreciably
nearer the oldest conditions than our vernaculars — hence his
exaggeration of their ursprilnglichkeit."
Herder's chief influence on the science of speech, to mj' mind,
is not derived directly from the ideas contained in his essay on
the actual origin of speech, but rather indirectly tluough the
whole of his life's work. He had a very strong sense of the \alue
of everything that had grown naturally (das naturwiichsige) ; ho
prepared the minds of his comitrymen for the manysided reeep-
* See his essay on Herder's " Ursprung der spracho " in Modern Philology,
5. 117 (1907).
§3] EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SPECULATION 29
tiveness of the Romanticists, who translated and admired the
popular poetry of a great many countries, which had hitherto been
terrce incognitce ; and he was one of the first to draw attention to
the great national value of his own country's medieval literature
and its folklore, and thus was one of the spiritual ancestors of
Grimm. He sees the close connexion that exists between language
and primitive poetry, or that kind of spontaneous singing that
characterizes the childhood or youth of mankind, and which is
totallj^ distinct from the artificial poetry of later ages. But to"
him each language is not only the instrument of literature, but
itself literature and poetr3\ A nation speaks its soul in the words
it uses. Herder admires his own mother -tongue, which to him
is perhaps inferior to Greek, but superior to its neighbours. The
combinations of consonants give it a certain measured pace ; it
does not rush forward, but walks with the firm carriage of a
German. The nice gradation of vowels mitigates the force of
the consonants, and the numerous spirants make the German
speech pleasant and endearing. Its syllables are rich and firm,
its phrases are stately, and its idiomatic expressions are emphatic
and serious. Still in some ways the present German language is
degenerate if compared with that of Luther, and still more with
that of the Suabian Emperors, and much therefore remains to be
done in the way of disinterring and revivifying the powerful
expressions now lost. Through ideas like these Herder not only
exercised a strong influence on Goethe and the Romanticists,
but also gave impulses to the linguistic studies of the following
generation, and caused many younger men to turn from the
well-worn classics to fields of research previously neglected.
I. — §4. Jenisch.
Where questions of correct language or of the best usage are
dealt with, or where different languages are compared with regard
to their eJBficiency or beauty, as is done very often, though more
often in dilettante conversation or in casual remarks in literary
works than in scientific linguistic disquisitions, it is no far cry to
the question, What would an ideal language be like ? But such
is the matter-of-factness of modern scientific thought, that probably
no scientific Academy in our own days would think of doing what
the Berlin Academy did in 1794 when it offered a prize for the
best essay on the ideal of a perfect language and a comparison of
the best-known languages of Europe as tested by the standard
of such an ideal. A Berlin pastor, D. Jenisch, won the prize, and
in 1796 brought out his book under the title Philosophisch-kritische
vergleichung und niirdigicng von vierzehn dltern und neuern S'prachen
80 BEFORE 1800 [ch. i
Europens — a book which is even now well worth reading, the
more so because its subject has been all but completely neglected
in the hundred and twenty years that have since intervened. In
the Introduction the author has the following passage, which
might be taken as the motto of Wilhelm v. Humboldt, Steinthal,
Finck and Byrne, who do not, however, seem to have been
inspired by Jenisch : "In language the whole intellectual and
moral essence of a man is to some extent revealed. ' Speak, and
you are ' is rightly said by the Oriental. The language of the
natural man is savage and rude, that of the cultured man is elegant
and polished. As the Greek was subtle in thought and sensuously
refined in feeling — as the Roman was serious and practical rather
than speculative — as the Frenchman is popular and sociable —
as the Briton is profound and the German philosophic — so are
also the languages of each of these nations."
Jenisch then goes on to say that language as the organ for
communicating our ideas and feelings accomplishes its end if it
represents idea and feeling according to the actual want or need
of the mind at the given moment. We have to examine in each
case the following essential qualities of the languages compared,
(1) richness, (2) energy or emphasis, (3) clearness, and (4) euphony.
Under the head of richness we are concerned not only with the
number of words, first for material objects, then for spiritual and
abstract notions, but also with the ease with which new words
can be formed (lexikalische bildsamkeit). The energy of a language
is shown in its lexicon and in its grammar (simplicity of grammatical
structure, absence of articles, etc.), but also in " the characteristic
energy of the nation and its original writers." Clearness and
definiteness in the same way are shown in vocabulary and grammar,
especially in a regular and natural sjmtax. Euphony, finally,
depends not only on the selection of consonants and \'owels
utilized in the language, but on their harmonious combination, the
general impression of the language being more important than any
details capable of being analysed.
These, then, are the criteria by which Greek and Latin and a
number of living languages are compared and judged. The author
displays great learning and a sound practical knowledge of many
languages, and his remarks on the advantages and shortcomings
of these are on the whole judicious, though often perhaps too much
stress is laid on the literary merits of great WTiters, which have
really no intrinsic connexion with the value of a language as such.
It depends to a great extent on accidental circumstances whether
a language has been or has not been used in elevated literature,
and its merits should be estimated, so far as this is possible, inde-
pendently of the perfection of its literature. Jenisch's prejudice
§ 4] JENISCH 81
in that respect is shown, for instance, when he says (p. 36) that
the endeavours of Hickes are entirely futile, when he tries to make
out regular declensions and conjugations in the barbarous language
of Wdlfila's translation of the Bible. But otherwise Jenisch is
singularly free from prejudices, as shown by a great number of
passages in which other languages are praised at the expense of
his own. Thus, on p. 396, he declares German to be the most
repellent contrast to that most supple modern language, French,
on account of its unnatural word-order, its eternally trailing
article, its want of participial constructions, and its interminable
auxiliaries (as in ' ich werde geliebt werden, ich wurde geliebt
worden sein,' etc.), wdth the frequent separation of these auxiliaries
from the main verb through extraneous intermediate words, all
of wliich gives to German something incredibly awkward, which
to the reader appears as lengthy and diffuse and to the writer as
inconvenient and intractable. It is not often that we find an
author appraising his own language with such severe impartiality,
and I have given the passage also to show what kind of problems
confront the man who wishes to compare the relative value of
languages as wholes. Jenisch's view here forms a striking contrast
to Herder's appreciation of their common mother -tongue.
Jenisch's book does not seem to have been widely read by
nineteenth-century scholars, who took up totally different problems.
Those few who read it were perhaps inclined to say with S. Lefmann
(see his book on Franz Bopp, Nachtrag, 1897, p, xi) that it is diffi-
cult to decide which was the greater fool, the one who put this
problem or the one who tried to answer it. This attitude, however,
towards problems of valuation in the matter of languages is
neither just nor wise, though it is perhaps easy to see how students
of comparative grammar were by the very nature of their study
led to look down upon those who compared languages from the
point of view of aesthetic or literary merits. Anyhow, it seems to
me no small merit to have been the first to treat such problems
as these, which are generally answered in an off-hand way
according to a loose general judgement, so as to put them on a
scientific footing by examining in detail what it is that makes us
more or less instinctively prefer one language, or one turn or expres-
sion in a language, and thus lay the foundation of that inductive
sBsthetic theory of language which has still to be developed in a
truly scientific spirit.
CHAPTER II
BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY
§ 1. Introduction. Sanskrit. § 2. Friedricli von Schlegel. § 3. Rasmua
Rask. § 4. Jacob Grimm. § 5. The Sound Shift. § 6. Franz Bopp.
§ 7. Bopp continued. § 8. Wilhelm von Humboldt. § 9. Grimm
once more.
II.--§1. Introduction. Sanskrit.
The nineteenth century witnessed an enormous growth and
development of the science of language, which in some respects
came to present features totally unknown to previous centuries.
The horizon was widened ; more and more languages were described,
studied and examined, many of them for their own sake, as they
had no important literature. Everj^where a deeper insight was
gained into the structures even of such languages as had been
for centuries objects of study ; a more comprehensive and more
incisive classification of languages was obtained with a deeper
understanding of their mutual relationships, and at the same time
linguistic forms were not only described and analysed, but also
explained, their genesis being traced as far back as historical
evidence allowed, if not sometimes further. Instead of contenting
itself with stating when and where a form existed and how it looked
and was employed, linguistic science now also began to ask why
it had taken that definite shape, and thus passed from a purely
descriptive to an explanatory science.
The chief innovation of the begimiing of the nineteenth century
was the historical point of view. On the whole, it must be said
that it was reserved for that century to apply the notion of history
to other things than wars and the vicissitudes of dj'^nasties. and
thus to discover the idea of development or evolution as pervading
the whole universe. This brought about a vast change in the
science of language, as in other sciences. Instead of looking ai such
a language as Latin as one fixed point, atid instead of aiming at
fixing another language, such as French, in one classical form,
the new science viewed both as being in constant flux, as growing,
as moving, as continually changing. It cried aloud like Hernclitus
33
§1] INTRODUCTION. SANSKRIT 83
" Panta rei," and like Galileo " Eppur si muove." And lo ! the
better this historical point of view was applied, the more secrets
languages seemed to unveil, and the more light seemed also to be
thrown on objects outside the proper sphere of language, such as
ethnology and the early history of mankind at large and of
particular coimtries.
It is often said that it was the discovery of Sanskrit that was
the real tiu-ning-point in the history of linguistics, and there is
some truth in this assertion, though we shall see on the one hand
that Sanskrit was not in itself enough to give to those who studied
it the true insight into the essence of language and linguistic science,
and on the other hand that real genius enabled at least one man
to grasp essential truths about the relationships and development
of languages even without a knowledge of Sanskrit. Still, it must
be said that the first acq[uaintance with this language gave a mighty
impulse to linguistic studies and exerted a lasting influence on
the way in Avhich most European languages were viewed by scholars,
and it will therefore be necessary here briefly to sketch the history
of these studies. India was very little known in Europe till the
mighty struggle between the French and the English for the mastery
of its wealth excited a wide interest also in its ancient culture.
It was but natural that on this intellectual domain, too, the French
and the English should at first be rivals and that we should find
both nations represented in the pioneers of Sanskrit scholarship.
The French Jesuit missionary Coeurdoux as early as 1767 sent to
the French Institut a memoir in which he called attention to the
similarity of many Sanskrit words with Latin, and even compared
the flexion of the present indicative and subjunctive of Sanskrit
asmi, ' I am,' with the corresponding forms of Latin grammar.
Unfortunately, however, his work was not printed till forty years
later, when the same discovery had been announced independently
by others. The next scholar to be mentioned in this connexion
is Sir William Jones, who in 1796 uttered the following memorable
words, which have often been quoted in books on the history of
hnguistics : " The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity,
is of a wonderful structure ; more perfect than the Greek, more
copious than the Latin and more exquisitely refined than either ;
yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinitj^ both in the roots
of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have
been produced by accident ; so strong, indeed, that no philologer
could examine them all three without believing them to have
sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer
exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for
supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic . . . had the same
origin with the Sanscrit ; and the old Persian might be added to
3
34 BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. ii
the same family." Sir W. Jones, however, did nothing to carry
out in detail the compari«on thus inaugurated, and it was reserved
for younger men to follow up the clue he had given.
II. — § 2. Friedrich von Schlegel.
One of the books that exercised a great influence on the develop-
ment of linguistic science in the beginning of the nineteenth century
was Friedrich von Schlegel's Uebcr die sprache und u-fisheit
der Indier (1808). Schlegel had studied Sanskrit for some years
in Paris, and in his romantic enthusiasm he hoped that the study
of the old Indian books would bring about a revolution in European
thought similar to that produced in the Renaissance through the
revival of the study of Greek. We are here concerned exclusively
with his linguistic theories, but to his mind they were inseparable
from Indian religion and philosophy, or rather religious and philo-
sophic poetry. He is struck by the similarity between Sanskrit
and the best-known European languages, and gives quite a number
of words from Sanskrit found with iScarcely any change in German,
Greek and Latin. He repudiates the idea that these similarities
might be accidental or due to borrowings on the side of the Indians,
saying expressly that the proof of original relationship between
these languages, as well as of the greater age of Sanskrit, lies
in the far-reaching correspondences in the whole grammatical
structure of these as opposed to many other languages. In this
connexion it is noticeable that he is the first to speak of ' com-
parative grammar ' (p. 28), but, like Moses, he only looks into this
promised land without entering it. Indeed, his method of compari-
son precludes him from being the founder of the new science, for
he says himself (p. 6) that he will refrain from stating any rules
for change or substitution of letters (sounds), and require complete
identity of the words used as proofs of the descent of languages.
He adds that in other cases, " where intermediate stages are hisitori-
cally demonstrable, we may derive giorno from dies, and when
Spanish so often has h for Latin /, or Latin p very often becomes /
in the German form of the same word, and c not rarely becomes h
[by the way, an interesting foreshadowing of one part of the dis-
covery of the Germanic sound -shifting], then this may be the
foundation of analogical conclusions with regard to other les6
evident instances." If he had followed up this idea by establishing
similar ' sound-laws,' as we now say, between Sanskrit and other
languages, he would have been many years ahead of his time ;
as it is, his comparisons are those of a dilettante, and he sometimes
falls into the pitfalls of accidental similarities while overlooking
the real correspondences. He is also led astray by the idea of a
§2] FRIEDRICH VON SCHLEGEL 35
particularly close relationship betAveen Persian and German, an
idea which at that time was widely spread ^ — we find it in Jenisch
and even in Bopp's first book.
Schlegel is not afraid of surveying, the whole world of human
languages ; he divides them into two classes, one comprising
Sanskrit and its congeners, and the second all other languages.
In the former he finds organic growth of the roots as shown by
their capabilitj' of inner change or, as he terms it, ' flexion,' while
in the latter class everything is effected by the addition of affixes
(prefixes and suffixes). In Greek he admits that it would be
possible to believe in the possibility of the grammatical endings
(bildungssylben) having arisen from particles and auxiliary
words amalgamated into the word itself, but in Sanskrit even
the last semblance of this possibility disappears, and it becomes
necessary to confess that the structure of the language is formed
in a thoroughly organic way through flexion, i.e. inner changes
and modifications of the radical sound, and not composed merely
mechanically by the addition of words and particles. He admits,
however, that affixes in some other languages have brought about
something that resembles real flexion. On the whole he finds that
the movement of grammatical art and perfection (der gang der
bloss grammatischen kunst und ausbildung, p. 56) goes in opposite
directions in the two species of languages. In the organic lan-
guages, which represent the highest state, the beauty and art of their
structure is apt to be lost through indolence ; and German as well
as Romanic and modern Indian languages show this degeneracy
when compared with the earlier forms of the same languages.
In the affix languages, on the other hand, we see that the beginnings
are completely artless, but the ' art ' in them grows more and more
perfect the more the affixes are fused with the main word.
As to the question of the ultimate origin of language, Schlegel
thinks that the diversity of linguistic structure points to different
beginnings. While some languages, such as Manchu, are so inter-
woven with onomatopoeia that imitation of natural sounds must
have played the greatest role in their formation, this is by no
means the case in other languages, and the j)erfection of the oldest
organic or flexional languages, such as Sanskrit, shows that they
cannot be derived from merely animal sounds ; indeed, they form an
additional proof, if any such were needed, that men did not every-
where start from a brutish state, but that the clearest and intensest
reason existed from the very first beginning. On all these points
Schlegel 's ideas foreshadow views that are found in later works ;
and it is probable that his fame as a writer outside the philological
field gave to his linguistic speculations a notoriety which his often
» It dates back to Vulcaniiis, 1597 ; see Streitberg, IF 35. 182.
36 BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. ii
loose and superficial reasonings would not otherwise have acquired
for them.
Schlegel's bipartition of the languages of the world carries
in it the germ of a tripartition. On the .lowest stage of his second
class he places Chinese, in which, as he acknowledges, the particles
denoting secondary sense modifications consist in monosyllables
that are completely independent of the actual word. It is clear that
from Schlegel's own point of view we cannot here properly speak
of ' affixes,' and thus Chinese really, though Schlegel himself does
not say so, falls outside his affix languages and forms a class by
itself. On the other hand, his arguments for reckoning Semitic
languages among affix languages are very weak, and he seems
also somewhat inclined to say that much in their structure re-
sembles real flexion. If we introduce these two changes into his
system, we arrive at the threefold division found in slightly different
shapes in most subsequent works on general linguistics, the first
to give it being perhaj)s Schlegel's brother, A. W. Schlegel, who
speaks of (1) les langues sans aucune structure grammaticale —
under which misleading term he understands Chinese with its
unchangeable monosyllabic words ; (2) les langues qui emploient
des affixes ; (3) les langues a inflexions.
Like his brother, A. W. Schlegel places the flexional languages
highest and thinks them alone ' organic' On the other hand, he
subdivides flexional languages into two classes, synthetic and
analytic, the latter using personal pronouns and auxiliaries in
the conjugation of verbs, prepositions to supply the want of
cases, and adverbs to express the degrees of comparison. While
the origin of the synthetic languages loses itself in the darkness
of ages, the analytic languages have been created in modern times ;
all those that we know are due to the decomposition of sjoithetic
languages. These remarks on the division of languages are found
in the Introduction to the book Observations sur la langue et
la litterature provenQole (1818) and are thus primarily meant to
account for the contrast between synthetic Latin and analytic
Romanic.
II. — § 3. Rasmus Rask.
We now come to the three greatest names among the initiators
of linguistic science in the beginning of the nineteenth century.
If we give them in their alphabetical order, Bopp, Grimm and
Rask, we also give them in the order of merit in which most sub-
sequent historians have placed them. The works that constitute
their first claims to the title of founder of the new science came
in close succession, Bopp's Conjugationssystem in 1816, Rask's
Undersf^geUe in 1818, and the first volume of Grimm's Grammatik in
§3] RASMUS RASK 87
1819. While Bopp is entirely independent of the two others, we
shall sec that Grimm was deeply influenced by Rask, and as the
latter's contributions to our science began some years before his
chief work just mentioned (which had also been finished in manu-
script in 1814, thus two years before Bopp's Conjugationssystem),
the best order in which to deal with the three men will perhaps
be to take Rask first, then to mention Grimm, who in some ways
was his pupil, and finally to treat of Bopp : in this way we shall
also be enabled to see Bopp in close relation with the subsequent
development of Comparative Grammar, on which he, and not
Rask, exerted the strongest influence.
Born in a peasant's hut in the heart of Denmark in 1787, Rasmus
Rask was a grammarian from his boyhood. When a copy of the
Heimskringla was given him as a school prize, he at once, without
any grammar or dictionary, set about establishing paradigms, and
so, before he left school, acquired proficiency in Icelandic, as well
as in many other languages. At the University of Copenhagen
he continued in the same course, constantly widened his linguistic
horizon and penetrated into the grammatical structure of the
most diverse languages. Icelandic (Old Norse), however, remained
his favourite study, and it filled him with enthusiasm and national
pride that " our ancestors had such an excellent language," the
excellency being measured chiefly by the full flexional system which
Icelandic shared with the classical tongues, partly also by the
pure, unmixed state of the Icelandic vocabulary. His first book
(1811) was an Icelandic grammar, an admirable production when
we consider the meagre work done previously in this field. With
great lucidity he reduces the intricate forms of the language into
a consistent system, and his penetrating insight into the essence
of language is seen when he explains the vowel changes, which we
now comprise under the name of mutation or umlaut, as due to
the approximation of the vowel of the stem to that of the ending,
at that time a totally new point of view. This we gather from
Grimm's review, in which Rask's explanation is said to be " more
astute than true " (" mehr scharfsinnig als w&hr," Kleiner e schriften,
7. 515), Rask even sees the reason of the change in the plural
blo^ as against the singular bla^ in the former having once ended
in -u, which has since disappeared. This is, so far as I know, the
first inference ever drawn to a prehistoric state of language.
In 1814, during a prolonged stay in Iceland, Rask sent down
to Copenhagen his most important work, the prize essay on the
origin of the Old Norse language {Unders^gelse om det gamle
nordiske eller islandske sprogs oprindelse) which for various
reasons was not printed till 1818. If it had been published when
it was finished, and especially if it had been printed in a language
38 BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. ii
better known than Danish, Rask might well have been styled the
founder of the modern science of language, for his work contains
the best exposition of the true method of linguistic research
written in the first half of the nineteenth century and applies
this method to the solution of a long series of important questions.
Only one part of it was ever translated into another language,
and this was unfortunately buried in an appendix to Vater's
Vergleichnngstafeln, 1822. Yet Rask's work even now repays
careful perusal, and I shall therefore give a brief resume of it^
principal contents.
Language according to Rask is our principal means of finding
out anything about the history of nations before the existence of
written documents, for though everything may change in religion,
customs, laws and institutions, language generally remains, if not
unchanged, yet recognizable even after thousands of years. But
in order to find out anything about the relationship of a language
we must proceed methodically and examine its whole structure
instead of comparing mere details ; what is here of prime importance
is the grammatical system, because words are very often taken
over from one language to another, but very rarely grammatical
forms. The capital error in most of what has been written on
this subject is that this important point has been overlooked.
That language which has the most complicated grammar is nearest
to the source ; however mixed a language may be, it belongs to
the same family as another if it has the most essential, most
material and indispensable words in common with it ; pronouns
and numerals are in this respect most decisive. If in such words
there are so many points of agreement between two languages that
it is possible to frame rules for the transitions of letters (in other
passages Rask more correctly says sounds) from the one language
to the other, there is a fundamental kinship between the two
languages, more particularly if there are corresponding similarities
in their structure and constitution. This is a most important
thesis, and Rask supplements it by saying that transitions of
sounds are naturally dependent on their organ and manner of
production.
Next Rask proceeds to apply these principles to his task of
finding out the origin of the Old Icelandic language. He describee
its position in the ' Gothic ' (Gothonic, Germanic) group and
then looks round to find congeners elsewhere. He rapidly discards
Greenlandic and Basque as being too remote in grammar and
vocabulary ; with regard to Keltic languages he hesitates, but
finally decides in favour of denying relationship. (He was soon
to see his error in this ; see below.) Next he deals at some length
with Finnic and Lapp, and comes to the conclusion that the simi-
§3] RASMUS RASK 39
larities are due to loans rather than to original kinship. But when
he comes to the Slavonic languages his utterances have a different
ring, for he is here able to disclose so many similarities in funda-
mentals that he ranges these languages within the same great
family as Icelandic. The same is true with regard to Lithuanian
and Lettic, which are here for the first time correctly placed as
an independent sub-famih', though closely akin to Slavonic. The
comparisons with Latin, and especially with Greek, are even more
detailed ; and Rask in these chapters really presents us with a suc-
cinct, but on the whole marvellously correct, comparative grammar
of Gothonic, Slavonic, Lithuanian, Latin and Greek, besides examin-
ing numerous lexical correspondences. He does not yet know any
of the related Asiatic languages, but throws out the hint that
Persian and Indian may be the remote source of Icelandic through
Greek. Greek he considers to be the ' source ' or ' root ' of the
Gothonic languages, though he expresses himself -with a degree of
uncertainty which forestalls the correct notion that these languages
have all of them sprung from the same extinct and unknown
language. This view is very clearly expressed in a letter he wrote
from St. Petersburg in the same year in which his Unders'^gelse
was published ; he here says : " I divide our family of languages
in this way : the Indian (Dekanic, Hindostanic), Iranic (Persian,
Armenian, Ossetic), Thracian (Greek and Latin), Sarmatian
(Lettic and Slavonic), Gothic (Germanic and Skandinavian)
and Keltic (Britannic and Gaelic) tribes " (SA 2. 281, dated
June 11, 1818).
This is the fullest and clearest account of the relationships
of our family of languages found for many years, and Rask showed
true genius in the way in which he saw what languages belonged
together and how they were related. About the same time he gave
a classification of the Finno-Ugrian family of languages which is
pronounced by such living authorities on these languages as Vilhelm
Thomsen and Emil Setala to be superior to most later attempts.
"\Mien travelling in India he recognized the true position of Zend,
about which previous scholars had held the most erroneous views,
and his surve}- of the languages of India and Persia was thought
valuable enough in 1863 to be printed from his manuscript, forty
years after it was written. He was also the first to see that the
Dravidian (by him called Malabaric) languages were totally different
from Sanskrit. In his short essay on Zend (1826) he also inci-
dentally gave the correct value of two letters in the first cunei-
form writing, and thus made an important contribution towards
the final deciphering of these inscriptions.
His long tour (1816-23) through Sweden, Finland, Russia,
the Caucasus, Persia and India was spent in the most intense study
40 BEGINNING OF NINETEENT^H CENTURY [ch. ii
of a great variety of languages, but unfortunately brought on the
illness and disappointments which, together with economic anxieties,
marred the rest of his short life.
When Rask died in 1832 he had written a great number of
grammars of single languages, all of them remarkable for their
accuracy in details and clear systematic treatment, more parti-
cularly of morphology, and some of them breaking new ground ;
besides his Icelandic grammar already mentioned, his Anglo-Saxon,
Frisian and Lapp grammars should be specially named. Historical
grammar in the strict sense is perhaps not his forte, though in a
remarkable essay of the year 1815 he explains historically a great
many features of Danish grammar, and in his Spanish and Italian
grammars he in some respects forestalls Diez's historical explana-
tions. But in some points he stuck to erroneous views, a notable
instance being his system of old Gothonic ' long vowels,' which
was reared on the assumption that modern Icelandic pronunciation
reflects the pronunciation of primitive times, while it is really a
recent development, as Grimm saw from a comparison of all the
old languages. With regard to consonants, however, Rask was
the clearer-sighted of the two, and throughout he had this immense
advantage over most of the comparative linguists of his age, that
he had studied a great many languages at first hand with native
speakers, while the others knew languages chiefly or exclusively
through the medium of books and manuscripts. In no work of
that period, or even of a much later time, are found so many first-
hand observations of living speech as in Rask's Retskrivningslcsre.
Handicapped though he was in many ways, by poverty and illness
and by the fact that he wrote in a language so little known as
Danish, Rasmus Rask, through his wide outlook, his critical
sagacity and aversion to all fanciful theorizing, stands out as
one of the foremost leaders of linguistic science.^
II.— §4. Jacob Grimm.
Jacob Grimm's career was totally different from Rask's. Born
in 1785 as the son of a lawyer, he himself studied law and came
imder the influence of Savigny, whose view of legal institutions as
the outcome of gradual development in intimate connexion with
popular tradition and the whole intellectual and moral life of the
* I have given a life of Ra-sk and an appraisement of his work in the
small volume Rasmus Rask (Copenhagen, Gyldendal, 1918). See also Vilh.
Thomson, Samlede afhandlinger, 1. 47 ff. and 125 ff. A good and full
account of Rask's work is found in Raumer, Gesch. ; of. also Paul, Gr.
Recent short appreciations of his genius may be read in Trombetti,
Come si fa la critica, 1907, p. 41, Meillet, LI, p. 415, Hirt, Idg, pp. 74
and 578.
§4] JACOB GRBIM 41
people appealed strongly to the young man's imagination. But
he was d^a^vn even more to that study of old German popular
poetry which then began to bo the fashion, thanks to Tieck and
other Romanticists ; and when he was in Paris to assist Savigny
with his historico-legal research, the old German manuscripts in
the Biblioth^que nationale nourished his enthusiasm for the
poetical treasures of the Middle Ages. He became a librarian
and brought out his first book, Ueber den altdeutschen meistergesang
(1811). At the sr.me time, with his brother Wilhelm as constant
companion and fellow-worker, he began collecting popular tradi-
tions, of which he published a first instalment in his famous Kinder-
und hausmdrchen (1812 ff.), a work whose learned notes and com-
parisons may be said to have laid the foundation of the science of
folklore. Language at first had only a subordinate interest to
him, and when he tried his hand at etymology, he indulged in the
wildest guesses, according to the method (or want of method) of
previous centuries. A. W. Schlegel's criticism of his early attempts
in this field, and still more Rask's example, opened Grimm's eyes
to the necessity of a stricter method, and he soon threw himself
with great energy into a painstaking and exact study of the oldest
stages of the German language and its congeners. In his review
(1812) of Rask's Icelandic grammar he writes : " Each individuality,
even in the world of languages, should be respected as sacred ;
it is desirable that even the smallest and most despised dialect
should be left only to itself and to its own nature and in nowise
subjected to violence, because it is sure to have some secret advan-
tages over the greatest and most highly valued language." Here
we meet with that valuation of the hitherto overlooked popular
dialects which sprang from the Romanticists' interest in the
' people ' and everything it had produced. Much valuable
linguistic work was directly inspired by this feeling and by con-
scious opposition to the old philology, that occupied itself exclu-
sively with the two classical languages and the upper-class
literature embodied in them. As Scherer expresses it {Jacob
Grimm, 2te ausg., Berlin, 1885, p. 152) : " The brothers Grimm
applied to the old national literature and to popular traditions
the old philological virtue of exactitude, which had up to then
been bestowed solely on Greek and Roman classics and on the Bible.
They extended the field of strict philology, as they extended the
field of recognized poetry. They discarded the aristocratic narrow-
mindedness with which philologists looked down on unwritten
tradition, on popular ballads, legends, fairy tales, superstition,
nursery rimes. ... In the hands of the two Grimms philology
became national and popular ; and at the same time a pattern was
created for the scientific study of all the peoples of the earth and
42 BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. ii
for a comparative investigation of the entire mental life of
mankind, of which written literature is nothing but a small
epitome."
But though Grimm thus broke loose from the traditions of
classical philology, he still carried with him one relic of it, namely
the standard by which the merits of different languages were
measured. " In reading carefully the old Gothonic (altdeutschen)
sources, I was every day discovering forms and perfections which
we generally envy the Greeks and Romans when we consider the
present condition of our language.". . . " Six hundred years ago
every rustic knew, that is to say practised daily, perfections and
niceties in the German language of which the best grammarians
nowadays do not even dream ; in the poetry of Wolfram von
Eschenbach and of Hartmann von Aue, who had never heard of
declension and conjugation, nay who perhaps did not even know
how to read and write, many differences in the flexion and use of
nouns and verbs are still nicely and unerringly observed, which
we have gradually to rediscover in learned guise, but dare not
reintroduce, for language ever follows its inalterable course."
Grimm then sets about WTiting his great historical and com
parative Deutsche Grammatik, taking the term ' deutsch ' in
its widest and hardly justifiable sense of what is now ordinarily
called Germanic and which is in this work called Gothonic. The
first volume appeared in 1819, and in the preface we see that he
was quite clear that he was breaking new ground and introducing
a new method of looking at grammar. He speaks of previous
German grammars and says expressly that he does not want his
to be ranged with them. He charges them with unspeakable
pedantry ; they wanted to dogmatize magisterially, while to Grimm
language, like everything natural and moral, is an unconscious
and unnoticed secret which is implanted in us in youth. Every
German therefore who speaks his language naturally, i.e. untaught,
may call himself his own living grammar and leave all school-
masters' rules alone. Grimm accordingly has no wish to prescribe
anything, but to observe what has grown naturally, and very
appropriately he dedicates his work to Sa\'igny, who has taught
him how institutions grow in the life of a nation. In the new
preface to the second edition there are also some noteworthy
indications of the changed attitude. " I am hostile to general
logical notions in grammar ; they conduce apparently to strict-
ness and solidity of definition, but hamper observation, which I
take to be the soul of linguistic science. ... As my starting-point
was to trace the never-resting (unstillstchende) element of our
language which changes with time and place, it became necessary
for me to admit one dialect after the other, and I could not even
§4] JACOB GRIMM 48
forbear to glance at those foreign languages that are ultimately
related with ours."
Here we have the first clear programme of that historical
school which has since then been the dominating one in linguistics.
But as language according to this new point of view was constantlj'^
changing and developing, so also, during these years, were Grimm's
o^vn ideas. And the man who then exercised the greatest influence
on him was Rasmus Rask. When Grimm wrote the first edition
of his Grammatik (1819), he knew nothing of Rask but the Icelandic
grammar, but just before finishing his own volume Rask's prize
essay reached him, and in the preface he at once speaks of it in
the highest terms of praise, as he does also in several letters of
this period ; he is equally enthusiastic about Rask's Anglo-Saxon
gi-ammar and the Swedish edition of his Icelandic grammar, neither
of which reached him till after his own first volume had been printed
off. The consequence was that instead of going on to the second
volume, Grimm entirely recast the first volume and brought it
out in a new shape in 1822. The chief innovation was the phono-
logy or, as he calls it, " Erstes buch. Von den buchstaben," which
was entirely absent in 1819, but now ran to 595 pages.
U.— § 5. The Sound Shift.
This first book in the 1822 volume contains much, perhaps
most, of what constitutes Grimm's fame as a grammarian, notably
his exposition of the ' sound shift ' (lautverschiebung), which it
has been customary in England since Max Miiller to term ' Grimm's
Law.' If any one man is to give his name to this law, a better name
would be ' Rask's Lav/,' for all these transitions, Lat. Gr. p=f,
t = y> {th), k = h, etc., are enumerated in Rask's Unders^gelse,
p. 168, which Grimm knew before he wrote a single word about
the sound shift.
Now, it is interesting to compare the two scholars' treatment
of these transitions. The sober-minded, matter-of-fact Rask
contents himself with a bare statement of the facts, with just enough
well-chosen examples to establish the correspondence ; the way
in which he arranges the sounds shows that he saw their parallelism
clearly enough, though he did not attempt to bring everything
under one single formula, any more than he tried to explain why
these sounds had changed.^ Grimm multiplies the examples and
^ Only in one subordinate point did Rask make a mistake (b = 6), which
is all the more venial as there are extremely few examples of this sound.
Bredsdorf? (Aaraageme, 1821, p. 21) evidently had the law from Rask, and
gives it in the compreheiisive fonnula which Paul (Gr. 1. 86) misses in Rask
and gives as Griram's meritorious improvement on Rask. " The Germanic
44 BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. ii
then systematizes the whole process in one formula so as to comprise
also the ' second shift ' found in High German alone — a shift
well known to Rask, though treated by him in a different place
(p. 68 f.)- Grimm's formula looks thus :
Greek p b f
Gothic f p b
High G. b(v)f p
t d th I k g ch
th t d I h k g
d z t I g ch k,
which may be expressed generally thus, that tenuis (T) becomes
aspirate (A) and then media (M), etc., or, tabulated :
Greek T M A
Gothic A T M
High G. M A T.
For this Grimm would of course have deserved great credit,
because a comprehensive formula is more scientific than a rough
statement of facts — if the formula had been correct ; but unfortu-
nately it is not so. In the first place, it breaks down in the very
first instance, for there is no media in High German corresponding
to Gr. p and Gothic / (cf. poils, fotus,Juss, etc.) ; secondly, High
German has h just as Gothic has, corresponding to Greek k (cf.
kardia, hairto, herz, etc.), and where it has g, Gothic has also g in
accordance with rules unknown to Grimm and not explained till
long afterwards (by Verner). But the worst thing is that the
whole specious generalization produces the impression of regularity
and uniformity only through the highly unscientific use of the
word ' aspirate,' which is made to cover such phonetically disparate
things as (1) combination of stop with following h, (2) combination
of stop with following fricative, pf, ts written z, (3) voiceless fricative,
/, 5 in G. das, (4) voiced fricative, v, t5 written th, and (5) h. Grimm
rejoiced in his formula, giving as it does three chronological stages
in each of the three subdivisions (tenuis, media, aspirate) of each of
the three classes of consonants (labial, dental,' guttural '). This
evidently took hold of his fancy through the mystic power of the
number three, which he elsewhere (Gesch 1. 191, cf. 241) finds
pervading language generally : three original vowels, a, i, u, three
genders, three numbers (singular, dual, plural), three persons, three
' voices ' (genera : active, middle, passive), three tenses (present,
preterit, future), three declensions through a, i, u. As there is
here an element of mysticism, so is there also in Grimm's highfiown
family has most often aspirates where Greek has tenues, tenues where it
has media}, and again raediaa where it has aspirates, e.g. fod, Gr. pons ; horn,
Gr. keras ; ]>rir, Gr. treia ; padde, Gr. batrakhoa ; kone, Gr. gune ; ti, Gr. deka ;
bcerer, Gr. pherd ; galde, Gr. kholS ; dtfr, Gr. thura." To the word ' horn ' was
appended a foot-note to the effect that h without doubt here originally was
the German c/t-sound. This was one year before Grimm stated his law !
§5] THE SOUND SHIFT 45
explanation of the whole process from pretended popular psy-
chology, which is full of the cloudiest romanticism. " When
once the language had made the first step and had rid itself of
the organic basis of its sounds, it was hardly possible for it to
escape the second step and not to arrive at the third stage,^
through which this development was perfected. . . . It is impossible
not to admire the instinct by which the linguistic spirit (sprachgeist)
carried this out to the end. A great many sounds got out of joint,
but they always knew how to arrange themselves in a different
place and to find the new application of the old law. I am not
saying that the shift happened without any detriment, nay from
one point of view the sound shift appears to me as a barbarous
aberration, from which other more quiet nations abstained, but
which is connected with the violent progress and craving for freedom
which was found in Germany in the beginning of the Middle Ages
and which initiated the transformation of Europe. The Germans
pressed forward even in the matter of the innermost sounds
of their language," etc., with remarks on intellectual progress
and on victorious and ruling races. Grimm further says that
" die diitte stufe des verschobnen lauts den kreislauf abschliesse
und nach ihr ein neuer ansatz zur abweichimg wieder von vorn
anheben miisse. Doch eben weil der sprachgeist seinen lauf
vollbracht hat, scheint er nicht wieder neu beginnen zu wollen "
(GDS 1. 292 f., 299). It would be difficult to attach any clear ideas
to these words.
Grimm's idea of a * kreislauf ' is caused by the notion that the
two shifts, separated by several centuries, represent one continued
movement, while the High German shift of the eighth century has
really no more to do with the primitive Gothonic shift, which took
place probably some time before Christ, than has, for instance,
the Danish shift in words like gribe, bide, bage, from gripce, bitce,
bakce (about 1400), or the still more recent transition in Danish
through which stressed t in lid, tyve, etc., sounds nearly like [ts], as
in HG. zeit. There cannot possibly be any causal nexus between
such transitions, separated chronologically by long periods, with
just as little change in the pronunciation of these consonants as
there has been in English.^
* The muddling of the negatives is Grimm's, not the translator's.
■ I am therefore surprised to find that in a recent article {Am. Joum.
of Philol. 39. 415, 1918) Collitz praises Grimm's view in preference to Rask's
because he saw " an inherent connexion between the various processes of
the shifting," which were " subdivisions of one great law in which the formula
T : A : M may be used to illustrate the shifting (in a single language) of three
different groups of consonants and the result of a double or threefold shifting
(in three difierent languages) of a single group of consonants. This great
law was unknown to Rask." Collitz recognizes that " Grimm's law will
hold good only if we accept the term * aspirate ' in the broad sense in which
46 BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. ii
Grimm was anj'thing but a phonetician, and sometimes says
things which nowadays cannot but produce a smile, as when he
says (Gr 1.3) " in our word schrifl, for instance, we express eight
sounds through seven signs, for/ stands for ph " ; thus he earnestly
beUeves that sch contains three sounds, a and the ' aspirate *
ch=c-}-h 1 Yet through the irony of fate it was on the history of
sounds that Grimm exercised the strongest influence. As in other
parts of his grammar, so also in the " theory of letters " he gave
fuller word lists than people had been accustomed to, and this
opened the eyes of scholars to the great regularity reigning in this
department of linguistic development. Though in his own etj^mo-
logical practice he was far from the strict idea of ' phonetic law '
that played such a prominent role in later times, he thus paved the
way for it. He speaks of law at any rate in connexion with the
consonant shift, and there recognizes that it serves to curb wild
etymologies and becomes a test for them (Gesch 291). The con-
sonant shift thus became the law in linguistics, and because it
affected a great many words known to everybody, and in a new
and surprising way associated well-known Latin or Greek words
with words of one's owa mother-tongue, it became popularly the
keystone of a new wonderful science.
Grimm coined several of the terms now generally used in lin-
guistics ; thus umlaut and ablaut, ' strong ' and ' weak ' declensions
and conjugations. As to the first, we have seen that it was Rask
who first understood and who taught Grimm the cause of this
phenomenon, which in English has often been designated by
the German term, while Sweet calls it ' mutation ' and others better
' infection.' With regard to ' ablaut ' (Sweet : gradation, best
perhaps in English apophony), Rask termed it ' omlyd,' a word
which he never applied to Grimm's ' umlaut,' thus keeping the two
kinds of vowel change as strictly apart as Grimm does. Apophony
was first discovered in that class of verbs which Grimm called
' strong ' ; he was fascinated by the commutation of the vowels
in springe, sprang, gesprungen, and sees in it, as in birnbambum,
something mystic and admirable, characteristic of the old German
spirit. He was thus blind to the correspondences found in other
languages, and his theory led him astray in the second volume, in
which he constructed imaginary verbal roots to explain apophony
wherever it was found outside the verbs.
it is employed by J. Grimm " — but ' broad ' here means ' wrong ' or
' unscientific' There is no kreislauf in the case of initial k = h ; only in
a few of the nine series do we find three distinct stages (as in tres, three, drei) ;
here we have in Danish three stages, of which the third is a reversal to the
first (tre) ; in E. mother we have five stages : t, p, "5, d, (OE. modor) and again
5. Is there an "inherent connexion between the various processes of this
shifting " too ?
§5] THE SOUND SHIFT 47
Though Grimm, as we have seen, was by his principles and
whole tendency averse to prescribing laws for a language, he is
sometimes carried away by his love for mediaeval German, as
when he gives as the correct nominative form der boge, though
everybody for centuries had said der bogen. In the same way
many of his followers would apply the historical method to questions
of correctness of speech, and would discard the forms evolved in
later times in favour of previously existing forms which were looked
upon as more ' organic'
It will not be necessary here to speak of the imposing work
done by Grimm in the rest of his long life, chiefly spent as a professor
in Berlin. But in contrast to the ordinary view I must say that
what appears to me as most likely to endure is his work on syntax,
contained in the fourth volume of his grammar and in monographs.
Here his enormous learning, his close power of observation, and
his historical method stand him in good stead, and there is much
good sense and freedom from that kind of metaphysical systematism
which was triumphant in contemporaneous work on classical syntax.
His services in this field are the more interesting because he did
not himself seem to set much store by these studies and even
said that syntax was half outside the scope of grammar. This
utterance belongs to a later period than that of the birth of historical
and comparative linguistics, and we shall have to revert to it after
sketching the work of the third great founder of this science, to
whom we shall now turn.
n.— § 6. Franz Bopp.
The third, by some accounted the greatest, among the founders of
modern linguistic science was Franz Bopp. His life was unevent-
ful. At the age of twenty-one (he was born in 1791) he went to Paris
to study Oriental languages, and soon concentrated his attention
on Sanskrit. His first book, from which it is customary in Germany
to date the birth of Comparative Philology, appeared in 1816, while
he was still in Paris, under the title Ueber des conjugationssy stent der i.>^
sanskriisprache in vergleichung mit jenem dergriechischen, lateinischen, —
persischen mid germanischen sprache, but the latter part of the small
volume was taken up with translations from Sanskrit, and for a
long time he was just as much a Sanskrit scholar, editing and
translating Sanskiit texts, as a comparative grammarian. He
showed himself in the latter character in several papers read before
the Berlin Academy, after he had been made a professor there in
1822, and especially in his famous Vergleichende grammatik des
Sanskrit, liend, armenischen, griechischen, lateinischen, litauischen,
altslawischeii, gotischen und deutschen, the first edition of which was
48 BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. ii
published between 1833 and 1849, the second in 1857, and the
third in 1868. Bopp died in 18G7.
Of Bopp's Conjugationssystem a revised, rearranged and greatly
improved English translation came out in 1820 under the title
Analytical Comparison of the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Teutonic
Languages. This was reprinted with a good introduction by
F. Techraer in his Internationale zeitschrift fiir allgem. sprachwissen-
schaft IV (1888), and in the following remarks I shall quote this
(abbreviated AC) instead of, or alongside of, the German original
(abbreviated C).
Bopp's chief aim (and in this he was characteristically different
from Rask) was to find out the ultimate origin of grammatical
forms. He follows his quest by the aid of Sanslo-it forms, though
he does not consider these as the ultimate forms themselves : "I
do not believe that the Greek, Latin, and other European languages
are to be considered as derived from the Sanskrit in the state in
which we find it in Indian books ; I feel rather inclined to consider
them altogether as subsequent variations of one original tongue,
which, however, the Sanskrit has preserved more perfect than its
kindred dialects. But whilst therefore the language of the Brah-
mans more frequently enables us to conjecture the primitive form
of the Greek and Latin languages than what we discover in the
oldest authors and monuments, the latter on their side also may
not unfrequently elucidate the Sanskrit grammar " (AC 3). Herein
subsequent research has certainly borne out Bopp's view.
After finding out by a comparison of the grammatical forms
of Sanskrit, Greek, etc., which of these forms were identical and
what were their oldest shapes, he tries to investigate the ultimate
origin of these forms. This he takes to be a comparatively easy
consequence of the first task, but he was here too much under the
influence of the philosophical grammar then in vogue. Gottfried
Hermann {De emendanda ratione Grcecce grmnmaticcB, 1801),
on purely logical grounds, distinguishes three things as necessary
elements of each sentence, the subject, the predicate, and the copula
joining the first two elements together ; as the power of the verb
is to attribute the predicate to the subject, there is really only one
verb, namely the verb to be. Bopp's teacher in Paris, Silvestre
de Sacy, says the same thing, and Bopp repeats : " A verb, in the
most restricted meaning of the term, is that part of speech by
which a subject is connected with its attribute. According to
this definition it would appear that there can exist only one verb,
namely, the substantive verb, in Latin esse ; in English, to be. . . .
Languages of a structure similar to that of the Greek, Latin, etc.,
can express by one verb of this kind a whole logical proposition, in
which, however, that part of speech which expresses the connexion
§6] FRANZ BOPP 49
of the subject with its attribute, which is the characteristic function
of the verb, is generally entirely omitted or understood. The Latin
verb dat expresses the proposition ' he gives,' or ' he is giving ' :
the letter t, indicating the third person, is the subject, da expresses
the attribute of giving, and the grammatical copula is understood.
In the verb potest, the latter is expressed, and potest unites in itself
the three essential parts of speech, t being the subject, es the copula,
and pot the attribute."
Starting from this logical conception of grammar, Bopp is
inclined to find everywhere the ' substantive verb ' to be in its
two Sanski'it forms as and bhu as an integral part of verbal forms.
He is not the fii-st to think that terminations, which are now in-
separable parts of a verb, were originally independent words ; thus
Home Tooke (in Epea pteroenta, 1786, ii. 429) expressly says that
" All those common terminations in any language . . . are them-
selves separate words with distinct meanings," and explains, for
instance, Latin ibo from i, ' go' -\- b, ' will,' from Greek boul-
(oTnai) + ' /,' from ego. Bopp's explanations are similar to this,
though they do not imply such violent shortenings as that of botil-
{omai) to 6. He finds the root Sanski'it as, ' to be,' in Latin perfects
like scrip-s-i, in Greek aorists like e-tup-s-a and in futures like tup-s-o.
That the same addition thus indicates different tenses does not
trouble Bopp greatly ; he explains hsLt.fueram iromfu -\- es -\- am,
etc., and says that the root fii " contains, properly, nothing to indi-
cate past time, but the usage of language having supplied the want
of an adequate inflexion, fui received the sense of a perfect, and
fu-eram, which would be nothing more than an imperfect, that
of a pluperfect, and after the same manner fu-ero signifies * I shall
have been,' instead of ' I shall be ' " (AC 57). All Latin verbal
endings containing r are thus explained as being ultimately formed
■with the substantive verb {ama-rem, etc.) ; thus among others the
infinitives fac-ere, ed-ere, as well as esse, posse : " £" is properly, in
Latin, the termination of a simple infinitive active ; and the root
Es produced anciently ese, by adding e ; the s having afterwards
been doubled, we have esse. This termination e answers to the
Greek infinitive in ai, etnai ..." (AC 58).
If Bopp found a master-key to many of the verbal endings
in the Sanskrit root es, he found a key to many others in the other
root of the verb ' to be,' Sanskrit bhu. He finds it in the Latin
imperfect da-bam, as well as in the future da-bo, the relation between
which is the same as that between er-a7n and er-o. " Bo, bis, bit
has a striking similarity with the Anglo-Saxon beo, bys, byth, the
future tense of the verb substantive, a similarity which cannot be
considered as merely accidental." [Here neither the form nor the
function of the Anglo-Saxon la stated quite co^rectl3^] But
4
50 BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. n
the ending in Latin ama-vi is also referred to the same root ; for
the change of the b into v we arc referred to Italian amava, from
Lat. amabam ; thus also fui is for fuvi and potui is for pot-vi :
" languages manifest a constant effort to combine heterogeneous
materials in such a manner as to offer to the ear or eye one
perfect whole, like a statue executed by a skilful artist, that
wears the appearance of a figure hewn out of one piece of
marble " (AC 60).
The following may be taken as a fair specimen of the method
followed in these first attempts to account for the origin of flexional
forms : " The Latin passive forms amat-ur, amant-ury would, in
some measure, conform to this mode of joining the verb substantive,
if the r was also the result of a permutation of an original 8 ; and
this appears not quite incredible, if we compare the second person
ama-ris with the third amat-ur. Either in one or the other there
must be a transposition of letters, to which the Latin language
is particularly addicted. If ama-ris, which might have been
produced from atna-sis, has preserved the original order of letters,
then ama-tur must be the transposition of ama-rui or ama-sut,
and ama-ntur that of ama-runt or ama-sunt. If this be the case,
the origin of the Latin passive can be accounted for, and although
differing from that of the Sanskrit, Greek, and Gothic languages, it
is not produced by the invention of a new grammatical form.
It becomes clear, also, why many verbs, with a passive form, have
an active signification ; because there is no reason why the addi-
tion of the verb substantive should necessarily produce a passive
sense. There is another way of explaining ama-ris, if it really
stands for ama-sis ; the s may be the radical consonant of the
reflex pronoun se. The introduction of this pronoun would be
particularly adapted to form the middle voice, which expresses
the reflexion of the action upon the actor ; but the Greek language
exemplifies the facility with which the peculiar signification of
the middle voice passes into that of the passive." The reasoning
in the beginning of this passage (the only one contained in C)
carries us back to a pre-scientific atmosphere, of which there are
few or no traces in Rask's writings ; the latter explanation (added
in AC) was preferred by Bopp himself in later works, and v/as for
many years accepted as the correct one, until scholars found a
passive in r in Keltic, where the transition from s to r is not found
as it is in Latin ; and as the closely corresponding forms in Keltic
and Italic must obviously be explained in the same way, the hypo-
thesis of a composition with se was generally abandoned. Bopp's
partiality for the abstract verb is seen clearly when he explains
the Icelandic passive in -st from s — es (C 132) ; here llask and
Gx'imm saw the correct and obvious explanation.
§6] FRANZ BOPP 51
Among the other explanations given first by Bopp must be
mentioned the Latin second person of the passive voice -mini, as
in ama-mini, which he takes to be the nominative mascuhne plural
of a participle corresponding to Greek -me7ios and found in a different
form in Lat. alumnus (AC 51). This explanation is still widely
accepted, though not by everybody.
With regard to the preterit of what Grimm was later to term
the ' weak ' verbs, Bopp vacillates between different explanations.
In C 118 he thinks the t ov d is identical with the ending of the
participle, in which the case endings were omitted and supplanted
by personal endings ; the syllable cd after d [in Gothic sok-id-edum ;
' Greek,' p. 119, must be a misprint for Gothic] is nothing but an
accidental addition. But on p. 151 he sees in sokidedun, sokidedi,
a connexion of sok with the preterit of the verb Tun, as if the Ger-
mans were to say sucheiaten, suchetdte ; he compares the English use
of did {did seek), and thinks the verb used is G. tun, Goth, tanjan.
The theory of composition is here restricted to those forms that
contain two d's, i.e. the plural indicative and the subjunctive. In
the English edition this twofold explanation is repeated with
some additions : d or t as in Gothic sok-i-da and oh-ta originates
from a participle found in Sanskr. tyak-ta, likh-i-ta, Lat. -tus, Gr.
-tds ; this suffix generally has a passive sense, but in neuter verbs
an active sense, and therefore would naturally serve to form a
preterit tense with an active signification. He finds a proof of
the connexion between this preterit and the participle in the fact
that onlj' such verbs as have this ending in the participle form
their preterit by means of a dental, while the others (the ' strong '
verbs, as Grimm afterwards termed them) have a participle in an
and reduplication or a change of vowel in the preterit ; and Bopp
compares the Greek aorist passive etuphth-en, eddth-en, which he
conceives may proceed from the participle tuphth-els, doth-eis
(AC 37 ff.). This suggestion seems to have been commonly over-
looked or abandoned, while the other explanation, from dedi as
in English did seek, which Bopp gives p. 49 for the subjunctive and
the indicative plural, was accepted by Grimm as the explanation of all
the forms, even of those containing only one dental ; in later works
Bopp agreed with^ Grimm and thus gave up the first part of his
original explanation. The did explanation had been given already
by D. von Stade (d. 1718, see Collitz, Das schicache prdtcritum,
p. 1) ; Rask (P 270, not mentioned by Collitz) says : " Whence
this d or t has come is not easy to tell, as it is not found in Latin and
Greek, but as it is evident from the Icelandic grammar that it is
closely connected with the past participle and is also found in
the preterit subjunctive, it seems clear that it must have been an
old characteristic of the past tense in every mood, but was lost
52 BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. ii
in Greek when the above-mentioned participles in tos disappeared
from the verbs " (cf. Ch. XIX § 12).
With regard to the vowels, Bopp in AC has the interesting
theory that it is only through a defect in the alphabet that Sanskrit
appears to have a in so many places ; he believes that the spoken
language had often " the short Italian e and o," where a was
written. "If this was the case, we can give a reason why, in words
common to the Sanskrit and Greek, the Indian akdra [that is,
short a] so often corresponds to e and o, as, for instance, asti, he
is, ecTTL ; patis, husband, Troat? ; amharas, sky, ofi^po^, rain,
etc." Later, unfortunately, Bopp came under the influence of
Grimm, who, as we saw, on speculative grounds admitted in the
primitive language only the three vowels a, i, u, and Bopp and
his followers went on believing that the Sanskrit a represented the
original state of language, until the discovery of the ' palatal law '
(about 1880) showed (what Bopp's occasional remark might other-
wise easily have led up to, if he had not himself discarded it) that
the Greek tripartition into a, e, o represented really % more original
state of things.
II.— §7. Bopp continued.
In a chapter on the rootS in AC (not found in C), Bopp contrasts
the structure of Semitic roots and of our own ; in Semitic languages
roots must consist of three letters, neither more nor less, and thus
generally contain two syllables, while in Sanskrit, Greek, etc.,
the character of the root " is not to be determined by the number
of letters, but by that of the syllables, of which they contain only
one " ; thus a root like i, ' to go,' would be unthinkable in Arabic.
The consequence of this structure of the roots is that the inner
changes which play such a large part in expressing grammatical
modifications in Semitic languages must be much more restricted
in our family of languages. These changes were what F. Schlegel
termed flexions and what Bopp himself, two years before (C 7),
had named " the truly organic way " of expressing relation and
mentioned as a wonderful flexibility foimd in an extraordinary
degree in Sanskrit, by the side of which composition with the
verb ' to be ' is found only occasionally. Now, however, in 1820,
Bopp repudiates Schlegel's and his own previous assumption that
' flexion ' was characteristic of Sanslcrit in contradistinction to
other languages in which grammatical modifications were expressed
by the addition of suffixes. On the contrary, while holding that
both methods are emploj'ed in all languages, Chinese perhaps alone
excepted, he now thinks that it is the suffix method which is preva-
lent in Sanskrit, and that " the only real inflexions . . . possible
§7] FRANZ BOPP 58
in a language, whose elements are monosj-llables, are the change
of their vowels and the repetition of their radical consonants,
otherwise called reduplication." It will be seen that Bopp here
avoids both the onesidedness found in Schlegel's division of
languages and the other onesidedness which we shall encounter
in later theories, according to which all grammatical elements are
originally independent subordinate roots added to the main root.
In his Vocalismus (1827, reprinted 1836) Bopp opposes Grimm's
theory that the changes for which Grimm had introduced the term
ablaut were due to psychological causes ; in other words, possessed
an inner meaning from the very outset. Bopp inclined to a
mechanical explanation ^ and thought them dependent on the
weight of the endings, as shown by the contrast between Sanskr.
veda, Goth, vait, Gr. otda and the plural, respectively vidima, vitum,
idmen. In this instance Bopp is in closer agreement than Grimm
with the majority of younger scholars, who see in apophony
(ablaut) an originally non-significant change brought about
mechanically by phonetic conditions, though they do not find
these in the ' weight ' of the ending, but in the primeval accent ;
the accentuation of Sanskrit was not known to Bopp when he
wrote his essay.
The personal endings of the verbs had already been identified
with the corresponding pronouns by Scheidius (1790) and Rask
(P 258) ; Bopp adopts the same view, only reproaching Scheidius
for thinking exclusively of the nominative forms of the pronouns.
It thus. appears that in his early work Bopp deals with a great
many general problems, but his treatment is suggestive rather than
exhaustive or decisive, for there are too many errors in details
and his whole method is open to serious criticism. A modern
reader is astonished to see the facility with which violent changes
of sounds, omissions and transpositions of consonants, etc., are
gratuitously accepted. Bopp never reflected as deeply as Rask
did on what constitutes linguistic kinship, hence in C he accepts
the common belief that Persian was related more closely to German
than to Sanskrit, and in later life he tried to establish a relationship
between the Malayo-Polynesian and the Indo-European languages.
But in spite of all this it must be recognized that in his long laborious
life he accomplished an enormous amount of highly meritorious
work, not only in Sanskrit philology, but also in comparative
grammar, in which he graduall}'^ freed himself of his worst methodi-
cal errors. He was constantly widening his range of vision, taking
into consideration more and more cognate languages. The ingenious
way in which he explained the curious Keltic shiftings in initial
^ Probably vuider the influence of Humboldt, who wrote to him (Sep-
*»mber 1826) : " Absichtlicb grammatisch ist gewiss kein vokalwechael."
54 BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. ii
consonants (which had so puzzled Rask as to make him doubt of
a connexion of these languages with our family, but which Bopp
showed to be dependent on a lost final sound of the preceding word)
definitely and irrefutably established the position of those languages.
Among other things that might be credited to his genius, I shall
select his explanation of the various declensional classes as deter-
mined by the final sound of the stem. But it is not part of my
plan to go into many details ; suffice it to say that Bopp's great
Vergleichemle grammatik served for long years as the best, or really
the only, exposition of the new science, and vastly contributed not
only to elucidate obscure points, but also to make comparative
grammar as popular as it is possible for such a necessarily
abstruse science to be.
In Bopp's Vergleichende grammatik (1. § 108) he gives his classifi-
cation of languages in general. He rejects Fr. Schlegel's bipartition.
but his growing tendency to explain everything in Aryan grammar,
even the inner changes of Sanskrit roots, by mechanical causes
makes him modify A. W. Schlegel's tripartition and place our
family of languages with the second instead of the third class.
His three classes are therefore as follows : I. Languages without
roots proper and without the power of composition, and thus with-
out organism or grammar ; to this class belongs Chinese, in which
most grammatical relations are only to be recognized by the posi-
tion of the words. II. Languages with monosyllabic roots, capable
of composition and acquiring their organism, their grammar,
nearly exclusively in this way ; the main principle of word forma-
tion is the connexion of verbal and pronominal roots. To this
class belong the Indo-European languages, but also all languages
not comprised under the first or the third class. III. Languages
with disyllabic roots and three necessary consonants as sole bearers
of thB signification of the word. This class includes only the
Semitic languages. Grammatical forms are here created not only
by means of composition, as in the second class, but also by inner
modification of the roots.
It will be seen that Bopp here expressly avoids both expressions
'agglutination' and ' flexion,' the former because it had been used
of languages contrasted with Aryan, while Bopp wanted to show
the essential identity of the two classes ; the latter because it had
been invested with much obscurity on account of Fr. Schlegel's
use of it to signify inner modification only. According to Schlegel,
only such instances as English drink / drank / drunk are pure
flexion, while German trink-c / trank / ge-trunk-en, and still more
Greek leip-o I e-lip-on / le-loip-a, besides an element of ' flexion '
contain also affixed elements. It is clear that no language can use
' flexion ' (in Schlegel's sense) exclusively, and consequently this
§7] FRANZ BOPP 55
cannot be made a principle on which to erect a classification of
languages generally. Schlegcl's use of the term ' flexion ' seems
to have been dropped by all subsequent writers, who use it so as
to include what is actually found in the grammar of such languages
as Sanskrit and Greek, comprising under it inner and outer modi-
fications, but of course not requiring both in the same form.
In view of the later development of our science, it is worthy
of notice that neither in the brothers Schlegel nor in Bopp do we
yet meet with the idea that the classes set up are not onlj' a dis-
tribution of the languages found side by side in the world at this
time, but also represent so -many stages in historical development ;
indeed, Bopp's definitions are framed so as positively to exclude
any development from his Class II to Class III, as the character
of the underlying roots is quite heterogeneous. On the other hand,
Bopp's tendency to explain Aryan endings from originally inde-
pendent roots paved the way for the theorj^ of isolation, agglutina-
tion and flexion as three successive stages of the same language.
In his first work (C 56) Bopp had already hinted that in the
earliest period known to us languages had already outlived their
most perfect state and were in a process of decaj^ ; and in his
review of Grimm (1827) he repeats this : " We perceive them in
a condition in which they may indeed be progressive syntactically,
but have, as far as grammar is concerned, lost more or less of
what belonged to the perfect structure, in which the separate
members stand in exact relation to each other and in which every-
thing derived has still a visible and unimpaired connexion with
its source " (Voc. 2), We shall see kindred ideas in Humboldt
and Schleicher.
To sum up : Bopp set about discovering the ultimate origin
of flexional elements, but instead of that he discovered Compara-
tive Grammai' — " a pen pres comme Christophe Colomb a decouvert
TAmerique en cherchant la route des Indes," as A. Meillet puts
it (LI 413). A countryman of Rask may be forgiven for pushing
the French scholar's brilliant comparison still further : in the
same way as Norsemen from Iceland had discovered America
before Columbus, without imagining that they w^ere finding the
way to India, just so Rasmus Rask through his Icelandic studies
had discovered Comparative Grammar before Bopp, ^^■ithout
needing to take the circuitous route through Sanskrit.
n.— § 8. Wilhelm von Humboldt.
This will be the proper place to mention one of the profoundest
thinkers in the domain of linguistics, Wilhelm von Humboldt
(1767-1835), who, while playing an important part in the political
5Q BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. ii
world, found time to study a great many languages and to
think deeply on many problems connected with philology and
ethnography.^
In numerous works, the most important of which, Ueber die
Kawisprache auf der Insel Jaiua, with the famous introduction
'■ Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und
ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschen-
geschlechts," was published posthumously in 1836-40, Hum-
boldt developed his linguistic philosoph}', of which it is not
easy to give a succinct idea, as it is largely couched in a
most abstruse style ; it is not surprising that his admirer and
follower, Heymarm Steinthal, in a series of books, gave as many
different interpretations of Humboldt's thoughts, each purporting
to be more correct than its predecessors. Still, I believe the
following may be found to be a tolerably fair rendering of some
of Humboldt's ideas.
He rightly insists on the importance of seeing in language
a continued activity. Language is not a substance or a finished
work, but action (Sie selbst ist kein werk, ergon, sondern eine
tatigkeit, energeia). Language therefore cannot be defined except
genetically. It is the ever-repeated labour of the mind to utilize
articulated sounds to express thoughts. Strictly speaking, this
is a definition of each separate act of speech ; but truly and essen-
tially a language must be looked upon as the totality of such acts.
* Humboldt'a relation to Bopp'e general ideas is worth studying; see
his letters to Bopp, printed as Nachtrag to S. Lefman's Franz Bopp, sein
leben und seine wissenschaft (Berlin, 1897), He is (p. 5) on the whole of
Bopp's opinion that flexions have arisen through agglutination of syllables,
the independent meaning of which was lost ; still, he is not certain that all
flexion can be explained in that way, and especially doubts it in the case
of ' umlaut,' under which term he here certainly includes ' ablaut,' as
seen by his reference (p. 12) to Greek future staid from stello ; he adds that
" some flexions are at the same time so insignificant and so widely spread
in languages that I should be inclined to call them original ; for example,
our i of the dative and m of the same case, both of which by their sharper
soimd seem intended to call attention to the peculiar nature of this case,
which does not, like the other cases, denote a simple, but a double relation"
(repeated p. 10). Humboldt doubts Bopp's identification of the temporal
augment with the a privativum. He says (p. 14) that cases often originate
from prepositions, as in American languages and in Basque, and that he has
always explained our genitive, as in G. 7nanne-s, as a remnant of aua. This
is evidently wrong, as the a of aus is a special High German development
from t, while the s of the genitive is also found in languages which do not
share in this development of t. But the remark is interesting because, apart
from the historical proof to the contrary which we happen to possess in this
case, the derivation is no whit worse than many of the explanations resorted
to by adherents of the agglutinative theory. But Humboldt goes on to say
that in Greek and Latin he is not prepared to maintain that one single
case is to be explained in this way. Humboldt probably had some influence
on Bopp's view of the weak pretei-it, for he is skeptical with regard to the did
explanation and inclines to connect the ending with the participle in t.
§8] WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT 57
For the words and rules, which according to our ordinary notions
make up a language, exist really only in the act of connected speech.
The breaking up of language into words and rules is nothing but
a dead product of our bungling scientific analysis (Versch 41).
Nothing in language is static, everything is djTiamic. Language
has nowhere any abiding place, not even in writing ; its dead part
must continually be re-created in the mind ; in order to exist
it must be spoken or understood, and so pass in its entirety into
the subject (ib. 63).
Humboldt speaks continually of languages as more perfect or
less perfect. Yet " no language should be condemned or depre-
ciated, not even that of the most savage tribe, for each language
is a picture of the original aptitude for language " (Versch 304).
In another place he speaks about special excellencies even of lan-
guages that cannot in themselves be recognized as superlatively
good instruments of thought. Undoubtedly Chinese of the old
style carries with it an impressive dignity through the immediate
succession of nothing but momentous notions ; it acquires a simple
greatness because it throws away all unnecessary accessory elements
and thus, as it were, takes flight to pure thinking. Malay is rightly
praised for its ease and the great simplicity of its constructions.
The Semitic languages retain an admirable art in the nice discrimina-
tion of sense assigned to many shades of vowels. Basque possesses
a particular vigour, dependent on the briefness and boldness of
expression imparted by the structure of its words and by their
combination. Delaware and other American languages express
in one word a number of ideas for which we should require many
words. The human mind is always capable of producing something
admirable, however one-sided it may be ; such special points decide
nothing with regard to the rank of languages (Versch 189 f.). We
have here, as indeed continually in Humboldt, a valuation of lan-
guages with many brilliant remarks, but on the whole we miss the
concrete details abounding in Jenisch's work. Humboldt, as it
were, lifts us to a higher plane, where the air may be purer, but
where it is also thinner and not seldom cloudier as well.
According to Humboldt, each separate language, even the most
despised dialect, should be looked upon as an organic whole, different
from all the rest and expressing the individuality of the people
speaking it ; it is characteristic of one nation's psyche, and indi-
cates the peculiar way in which that nation attempts to realize
the ideal of speech. As a language is thus symbolic of the national
character of those who speak it, very much in each language had
its origin in a symbolic representation of the notion it stands for ;
there is a natural nexus between certain sounds and certain general
ideas, and consequently we often find similar sounds used for the
58 BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [cii. ii
same, or nearly the same, idea in languages not otherwise related
to one another.
Humboldt is opposed to the idea of ' general ' or ' universal '
grammar as understood in his time ; instead of this purely deduc-
tive grammar he would found an inductive general grammar,
based upon the comparison of the different ways in which the same
grammatical notion was actually expressed in a variety of lan-
guages. He set the example in his paper on the Dual. His own
studies covered a variety of languages ; but his works do not give
us many actual concrete facts from the languages he had studied ;
he was more interested in abstract reasonings on language in general
than in details.
In an important paper, Ueber das Enlstelien der grammatischen
Formen uml ihren Einfluss auf die, Ideenentwickelung (1822), he says
that language at first denotes only objects, leaving it to the hearer
to understand or guess at (hinzudenken) their connexion. By
and by the word-order becomes fixed, and some words lose their
independent use and sound, so that in the second stage we see
grammatical relations denoted through word-order and through
words vacillating between material and formal significations.
Gradually these become affixes, but the connexion is not yet firm,
the joints are still visible, the result being an aggregate, not yet a
unit. Thus in the third stage we have something analogous to
form, but not real form. This is achieved in the fourth stage,
where the word is one, only modified in its grammatical relations
through the flexional sound ; each word belongs to one definite
part of speech, and form-words have no longer any disturbing
material signification, but are pure expressions of relation. Such
words as Lat. amavit and Greek epoiesas are truly grammatical
forms in contradistinction to such combinations of words and sylla-
bles as are found in cruder languages, because we have here a fusion
into one whole, which causes the signification of the parts to be
forgotten and joins them firmly under one accent. Though Hum-
boldt thus thinks flexion developed out of agglutination, he dis-
tinctly repudiates the idea of a gradual development and rather
inclines to something like a sudden crystallization (see especially
Steinthal's ed., p. 585).
Humboldt's position with regard to the classification of lan-
guages is interesting. In his works we continually meet with the
terms agglutination ^ and flexion by the side of a new term, ' in-
corporation.' This he finds in full bloom in man}' American lan-
guages, such as Mexican, where the object ma}' be inserted into
the verbal form between the element indicating person and the
» Humboldt seems to be the inventor of this term (1821; see Streitberg,
IF 35. 191).
§8] WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT 59
root. Now, Humboldt says that besides Chinese, which has no
grammatical form, there are three possible forms of languages,
the flexional, the agglutinative and the incorporating, but he adds
that all languages contain one or more of these forms (Versch 301).
He tends to deny the existence of any exclusively agglutinative
or exclusively flexional language, as the two principles are gener-
ally commingled (132). Flexion is the only method that gives
to the word the true inner firmness and at the same time distributes
the parts of the sentence according to the necessary interlacing
of thoughts, and thus undoubtedly represents the pure principle
of linguistic structure. Now, the question is, what language carries
out this method in the most consistent way ? True perfection
may not be found in any one language : in the Semitic languages
we find flexion in its most genuine shape, united with the most
refined symbolism, only it is not pursued consistently in all parts
of the language, but restricted by more or less accidental laws.
On the other hand, in the Sanskritic languages the compact unity
of every word saves flexion from any suspicion of agglutination ;
it pervades all parts of the language and rules it in the highest
freedom (Versch 188). Compared with incorporation and with
the method of loose juxtaposition without any real word-unity,
flexion appears as an intuitive principle born of true linguistic
genius (ib.). Between Sanskrit and Chinese, as the two opposed
jDoles of linguistic structure, each of them perfect in the consistent
following one principle, we may place all the remaining languages
(ib. 326). But the languages called agglutinative have nothing
in common except just the negative trait that they are neither
isolating nor flexional. The structural diversities of human lan-
guages are so great that they make one despair of a fully com-
prehensive classification (ib. 330).
According to Humboldt, language is in continued development
under the influence of the changing mental power of its speakers.
In this development there are naturally two definite periods, one
in which the creative instinct of speech is still growing and active,
and another in which a seeming stagnation begins and then an
appreciable decline of that creative instinct. Still, the period of
decline may initiate new principles of life and new successful
changes in a language (Versch 184). In the form-creating period
nations are occupied more with the language than with its purpose,
i.e. with what it is meant to signify. They struggle to express
thought, and this craving in connexion with the inspiring feeling
of success produces and sustains the creative power of language
(ib. 191). In the second period we witness a wearing-off of the
flexional forms. This is found less in languages reputed crude or
rough than in refined ones. Language is exposed to the most
60 BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. ii
violent changes when the human mind is most active, for then
it considers too careful an observation of the modifications of
sound as superfluous. To this may be added a want of perception
of the poetic charm inherent in the sound. Thus it is the transi-
tion from a more sensuous to a more intellectual mood that works
changes in a language. In other cases less noble causes are at
work. Rougher organs and less sensitive ears are productive
of indifference to the principle of harmony, and finally a prevalent
practical trend may bring about abbreviations and omissions of
all kinds in its contempt for everything that is not strictly neces-
sary for the purpose of being understood. While in the first period
the elements still recall their origin to man's consciousness, there
is an aesthetic pleasure in developing the instrument of mental
activity ; but in the second period language serves only the prac-
tical needs of life. In this way such a language as English may
reduce its forms so as to resemble the structure of Chinese ; but
there will always remain traces of the old flexions ; and English
is no more incapable of high excellences than German (Versch
282-6). What these are Humboldt, however, does not tell us.
n. — §9. Grimm Once More.
Humboldt here foreshadowed and probably influenced ideas
to which Jacob Grimm gave expression in two essays written in
his old age and which it will be necessary here to touch upon.
In the essay on the pedantry of the German language {Ueber das
pedantische in der deutschen sprache, 1847), Grimm says that he
has so often praised his mother-tongue that he has acquired the
right once in a while to blame it. If pedantry had not existed
already, Germans would have invented it ; it is the shadowy side
of one of their virtues, painstaking accuracy and loyalty. Grimm's
essay is an attempt at estimating a language, but on the whole it
is less comprehensive and less deep than that of Jenisch. Grimm
finds fault with such things as the ceremoniousness with which
princes are spoken to and spoken of {Durchlauchtigster, allerhochst-
derselbe), and the use of the pronoun Sie in the third person plural
in addi-essing a single person ; he speaks of the clumsiness of the
auxiliaries for the passive, the past and the future, and of the
word-order which makes the Frenchman cry impatiently " J 'attends
le verbe." He blames the use of capitals for substantives and other
peculiarities of German spelling, but gives no general statement
of the principles on which the comparative valuation of different
languages should be based, though in many passages we see that
he places the old stages of the language very much higher than
the language of his own day.
§9] GRIMM ONCE MORE 61
The essay on the origin of language (1851) is much more
important, and may be said to contain the mature expression of
all Grimm's thoughts on the philosophy of language. Unfor-
tunately, much of it is couched in that high-flown poetical style
which may be partly a consequence of Grimm's having approached
the exact study of language through the less exact studies of popular
poetry and folklore ; this style is not conducive to clear ideas, and
therefore renders the task of the reporter very difficult indeed.
Grimm at some length argues against the possibility of language
having been either created by God when he created man or having
been revealed by God to man after his creation. The very imper- \^
fections and changeability of language speak against its divine wc- "
origin. Language as gradually developed must be the work ol{\iJ\^
man himself, and therein is different from the immutable cries
and songs of the lower creation. Nature and natural instinct
have no history, but mankind has. Man and woman were created
as grown-up and marriageable beings, and there must have been
created at once more than one couple, for if there had been only
one couple, there would have been the possibility that the one
mother had borne only sons or only daughters, further procreation
being thus rendered impossible (!), not to mention the moral objec-
tions to marriages between brother and sister. How these once
created beings, human in every respect except in language, were
able to begin talking and to find themselves understood, Grimm
does not really tell us ; he uses such expressions as ' inventors '
of words, but apart from the symbolical value of some sounds,
such as I and r, he thinks that the connexion of word and sense
was quite arbitrary. On the other hand, he can tell us a great
deal about the first stage of human speech : it contained only the
three vowels a, i, u, and only few consonant groups ; every word
was a monosjdlable, and abstract notions were at first absent.
The existence in all (?) old languages of masculine and feminine
flexions must be due to the influence of women on the formation
of language. Through the distinction of genders Grimm says that
regularity and clearness were suddenly brought about in every-
thing concerning the noun as by a most happy stroke of fortune.
Endings to indicate person, number, tense and mood originated
in added pronouns and auxiliary words, which at first were loosely
joined to the root, but later coalesced with it. Besides, redupli-
cation was used to indicate the past ; and after the absorption of
the reduplicational syllable the same effect was obtained in German
through apophony. All nouns presuppose verbs, whose material
sense was applied to the designation of things, as when G. hahn
(' cock ') was thus called from an extinct verb hanan, corresponding
to Lat. canere, ' to sing.'
62 BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. n
In what Grimm says about the development of language it is
easy to trace the influence of Humboldt's ideas, though they are
worked out with great originality. He discerns three stages,
the last two alone being accessible to us through historical docu-
ments. In the first period we have the creation and growing of
roots and words, in the second the flourishing of a perfect flexion,
and in the third a tendency to thoughts, which leads to the giving
up of flexion as not yet (?) satisfactory. The}' may be compared
to leaf, blossom and fruit, " the beauty of human speech did not
bloom in its beginning, but in its middle period ; its ripest fruits
will not be gathered till some time in the future." He thus sums
up his theory of the three stages ; " Language in its earliest form
was melodious, but diffuse and straggling ; in its middle form it
was full of intense poetical vigour ; in our own days it seeks to
remedy the diminution of beauty by the harmony of the whole, and
is more effective though it has inferior means." In most places
Grimm still speaks of the downward course of linguistic develop-
ment ; all the oldest languages of our family " show a rich, pleasant
and admirable perfection of form, in which all material and spiritual
elements have vividly interpenetrated each other," Mhile in the
later developments of the same languages the inner jiower and
subtlety of flexion has generally been given up and destroj'ed,
though partly replaced by external means and auxiliary words.
On the whole, then, the history of language discloses a descent
from a period of perfection to a less perfect condition. This is
the point of view that we meet with in nearly all linguists ; but
there is a new note when Grimm begins vaguely and dimly to see
that the loss of flexional forms is sometimes compensated by other
things that may be equally valuable or even more valuable ; and
he even, without elaborate arguments, contradicts his own main
contention when he says that " human language is retrogressive
only apparently and in particular points, but looked upon as a
whole it is progressive, and its intrinsic force is contmually in-
creasing." He instances the English language, which by sheer
making havoc of all' old phonetic laws and by the loss of all flexions
has acquired a great force and power, such as is found perhaps
in no other human language. Its wonderfully happy structure
resulted from the marriage of the two noblest languages of Europe ;
therefore it was a fit vehicle for the greatest poet of modern times,
and may justly claim the right to be called a world's language ;
like the English people, it seems destined to reign in future even
more than now in all parts of the earth. This enthusiastic panegyric
forms a striking contrast to what the next great German scholar with
whom we have to deal, Schleicher, says about the same language,
which to him shows only " how rapidl}'^ the language of a nation
important both in history and literature can decline" (II. 231).
CHAPTER III
MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY
S 1. After Bopp and Grimm. § 2. K, M. Rapp. § 3. J. H. Bredsdorff.
§ 4. August Schleicher. § 5. Classification of Languages. § 6. Recon-
struction. § 7. Curtius, Madvig and Specialists. § 8. Max Miiller and
Whitney.
III. — § 1. After Bopp and Grimm.
Bopp and Grimm exercised an enormous influence on linguistic
thought and linguistic research in Germany and other countries.
Long even before their death we see a host of successors following
in the main the lines laid down in their work, and thus directly
and indirectly they determined the development of this science
for a long time. Through their efforts so much new light had
been shed on a number of linguistic phenomena that these took
a quite different aspect from that which they had presented to the
previous generation ; most of what had been written about etymo-
logy and kindred subjects in the eighteenth century seemed to the
new school utterly antiquated, mere fanciful vagaries of incom-
petent blunderers, whereas now scholars had found firm ground
on which to raise a magnificent structure of solid science. This
feeling was especially due to the undoubted recognition of one
great famiiy of languages to which the vast majority of European
languages, as well as some of the most important Asiatic languages,
belonged : here we had one firmly established fact of the greatest
magnitude, which at once put an end to all the earlier whimsical
attempts to connect Latin and Greek words with Hebrew roots.
As for the name of that family of languages, Rask hesitated between
different names, ' European,' ' Sarmatic ' and finally ' Japhetic '
(as a counterpart of the Semitic and the Hamitic languages) ;
Bopp at first had no comprehensive name, and on the title-page
of his Vergl. grammatik contents himself with enumerating the
chief languages described, but in the work itself he says that he
prefers the name ' Indo-European,' which has also found wide
acceptance, though more in France, England and Skandinavia
than in Germany. Humboldt for a long while said ' Sanskritic,
but later he adopted ' Indo-Germanic,' and this has been the gener
ally recognized name used in Germany, in spite of Bopp's protest
who said that ' Indo-klassisch ' would be more to the point ; ' Indo-
63
64 MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. iii
Keltic ' has also been proposed as designating the family through
its two extreme members to the East and West. But all these
compound names are clumsy without being completely pertinent,
and it seems therefore much better to use the short and con-
venient term ' the Aryan languages ' : Aryan being the oldest
name bj' which any members of the family designated themselves
(in India and Persia).^
Thanks to the labours of Bopp and Grimm and their co-workers
and followers, we see also a change in the status of the study of
languages. Formerly this was chiefly a handmaiden to philology
— but as this word is often in English used in a sense unknown
to other languages and really objectionable, namely as a synonym
of (comparative) study of languages, it will be necessary first to
say a few words about the terminology of our science. In this
book I shall use the word ' philology ' in its continental sense, which
is often rendered in English by the vague word ' scholarship,'
meaning thereby the study of the specific culture of one nation ;
thus we speak of Latin philology, Greek philolog}', Icelandic
philology, etc. The word 'linguist,' on the other hand, is not infre-
quently used in the sense of one who has merely a practical know-
ledge of some foreign language ; but I think I am in accordance
with a growing number of scholars in England and America if I
call such a man a ' practical Imguist ' and apply the word ' linguist *
by itself to the scientific student of language (or of languages) ;
' linguistics ' then becomes a shorter and more convenient name
for what is also called the science of language (or of languages).
Now that the reader understands the sense in which I take
these two terms, I may go on to say that the beginning of the nine-
teenth century witnessed a growing differentiation between philo-
logy and linguistics in consequence of the new method introduced
by comj)arative and by historical grammar ; it was nothing less
than a completely new way of looking at the facts of language
and trying to trace their origin. While to the philologist the
Greek or Latin language, etc., was only a means to an end, to the
linguist it was an end in itself. The former saw in it a valuable,
and in fact an indispensable, means of gaining a first-hand know-
ledge of the literature which was his chief concern, but the linguist
cared not for the literature as such, but studied languages for their
own sake, and might even turn to languages destitute of literature
because they were able to throw some light on the life of language
in general or on forms in related languages. The philologist as
such would not think of studying the Gothic of Wulfila, as a know-
^ It has been objected to the use of Arj'^an in this wide sense that the
name is also vised in the restricted sense of Indian + Iranic ; but no separate
name is needed for that small group other than Indo-Iranio.
§1] AFTER BOPP AND GRIMM 65
ledge of that language gives access only to a translation of parts
of the Bible, the ideas of which can be studied much better else-
where ; but to the linguist Gothic was extremely valuable. The
differentiation, of course, is not an absolute one ; besides being
linguists in the new sense, Rask was an Icelandic philologist,
Bopp a Sanskrit philologist, and Grimm a German philologist ;
but the tendency towards the emancipation of linguistics was very
strong in them, and some of their pupils were pure linguists and
did no work in philology.
In breaking away from philology and claiming for linguistics
the rank of a new and independent science, the partisans of the
new doctrine were apt to think that not only had they discovered
a new method, but that the object of their study was different
from that of the philologists, even when they were both concerned
with language. While the philologist looked upon language as
part of the culture of some nation, the linguist looked upon it as
a natural object ; and when in the beginning of the nineteenth cen-
tury philosophers began to divide all sciences into the two sharply
separated classes of mental and natural sciences (geistes- und
naturwissenschaften), linguists would often reckon their science
among the latter.. There was in this a certain amount of pride
or boastfulness, for on account of the rapid rise and splendid
achievements of the natm-al sciences at that time, it began to be a
matter of common belief that they were superior to, and were pos-
sessed of a more scientific method than, the other class — the same
view that fhids an expression in the ordinary English usage,
according to which ' science ' means natural science and the
other domains of human knowledge are termed the ' arts ' or the
' humanities.'
We see the new point of view in occasional utterances of the
pioneers of linguistic science. Rask expressly says that " Language
is a natural object and its study resembles natural history "
(SA 2. 502) ; but when he repeats the same sentence (in Retskrivn-
ingslcere, 8) it appears that he is thinking of language as opposed
to the more artificial writing, and the contrast is not between
mental and natural science, but between art and nature, between
what can and what cannot be consciously modified by man — ^it is
really a different question.
Bopp, in his review of Grimm (1827, reprinted Vocalismus,
1836, p. 1), says : " Languages are to be considered organic natural
bodies, which are formed according to fixed laws, develop as pos-
sessing an inner principle of life, and gradually die out because
they do not understand themselves any longer [!], and therefore
cast off or mutilate their members or forms, which were at first
significant, but gradually have become more of an extrinsip mass.
5
66 MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. in
... It is not possible to determine how long languages may pre-
serve their full vigour of life and of procreation," etc. This is
highly figurative language which should not be taken at its face
value ; but expressions like these, and the constant use of such
words as ' organic ' and ' inorganic ' in speaking of formations in
languages, and ' organism ' of the whole language, would tend to
widen the gulf between the philological and the linguistic point of
view. BojDp himself never consistently followed the naturalistic
w'ay of looking at language, but in § 4 of this chapter we shall see
that Schleicher was not afraid of going to extremes and building
up a consistent natural science of language.
The cleavage between philology and linguistics did not take
^lace without arousing warm feeling. Classical scholars disliked
the intrusion of Sanskrit everywhere ; they did not know that
language and did not see the use of it. They resented the way
in which the new science wanted to reconstruct Latin and Greek
grammar and to substitute new explanations for those which
had always been accepted. Those Sanskritists chatted of guna
and vrddhi and other barbaric terms, and even ventured to talk
of a locative case in Latin, as if the number of cases had not been
settled once for all long ago ! ^
Classicists were no doubt perfectly right when they reproached
comparativists for their neglect of s^mtax, which to them was the
most important part of grammar ; they were also in some measure
right when they maintained that linguists to a great extent con-
tented themselves with a superficial knowledge of the languages
compared, which they studied more in grammars and glossaries
than in living texts, and sometimes they would even exult when
they found proof of this in solecisms in Bopp's Latin translations
from Sanskrit, and even on the title-page of Glossarium Sanscritum
a Franzisco Bopj^. Classical scholars also looked askance at the
growing interest in the changes of sounds, or, as it was then usual
to say, of letters. But when they were ajDt here to quote the scrip-
tural phrase about the letter that killeth, while the spirit giveth
life, they overlooked the fact that Nature has rendered it impos-
sible for anyone to penetrate to the mind of am^one else except
through its outer manifestations, and that it is consequently
impossible to get at the spirit of a language excej^t through its
sounds : phonology must therefore form the necessary basis and
prerequisite of the scientific study of any group of languages.
Still, it cannot be denied that sometimes comparative phonology
was treated in such a mechanical way as partly to dehumanize the
study of language.
1 In Lefmann's book ou Bopp.pp. 292 and 299,there are some interesting
quotations on this point.
§1] AFTER BOPP AND GRIMM 67
When we look back at this period in the history of linguistics,
there are certain tendencies and characteristics that cannot fail
to catch our attention. First we must mention the prominence
given to Sanskrit, which was thought to be the unavoidable re-
quirement of every comparative linguist. In explaining anything
in anj' of the cognate languages the etymologist always turned
first to Sanskrit words and Sanskrit forms. This standpoint is
found even much later, for instance in Max Miiller's Inaugural
Address (1868, Ch. 19) : " Sanskrit certainly forms the only sound
foundation of Comparative Philology, and it will always remain
the only safe guide through all its intricacies. A comparative
philologist without a knowledge of Sanskrit is like an astronomer
without a knoAvledge of mathematics." A linguist of a later
generation may be excused for agreeing rather with Ellis, who says
[Transact. Philol. Soc, 1873-4, 21) : " Almost in our own days
came the discovery of Sanskrit, and philology proper began — but,
alas ! at the wTong end. Now, here I run great danger of being
misunderstood. Although for a scientific sifting of the nature
of language I presume to think that beginning at Sanskrit was
unfortunate, yet I freely admit that, had that language not been
brought into Europe . . . our knowledge of language would have
been in a poor condition indeed. . . . We are under the greatest
obligations to those distinguished men who have undertaken to
unravel its secrets and to show its connexion with the languages
of Europe. Yet I must repeat that for the pure science of
language, to begin with Sanskrit was as much beginning at the
wrong end as it would have been to commence zoology with
palseontology — the relations of life with the bones of the dead."
Next, Bopp and his nearest successors were chiefly occupied
with finding likenesses between the languages treated and dis-
covering things that united them. This was quite natural in the
first stage of the new science, but sometimes led to one-sidedness,
the characteristic individuality of each language being lost sight
of, while forms from many countries and many times were mixed
up in a hotch-potch. Rask, on account of his whole mental equip-
ment, was less liable to this danger than most of his contemporaries ;
but Pott was evidently right when he warned his fellow-students
that their comparative linguistics should be supplemented by
separative luiguistics {ZdhlmetJiode, 229), as it has been to a great
extent in recent years.
Still another feature of the linguistic science of those days
is the almost exclusive occupation of the student with dead
languages. It was quite natural that the earliest comparativists
should first give their attention to the oldest stages of the languages
compared, since these alone enabled them to prove the essential
68 MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. iii
kinship between the different members of the great Aryan family.
In Grimm's grammar nearlj' all the space is taken up with Gothic,
Old High German, Old Norse, etc., and comparatively little is said
about recent developments of the same languages. In Bopp's
comparative grammar classical Greek and Latin are, of course,
treated carefully, but Modern Greek and the Romanic languages
are not mentioned (thus also in Schleicher's Compendhim and in
Brugmann's Grammar), such later developments being left to
specialists who were more or less considered to be outside the sphere
of Comparative Linguistics and even of the science of language
in general, though it would have been a much more correct view
to include them in both, and though much more could really be
learnt of the life of language from these studies than from com-
parisons made in the spirit of Bopp.
The earlier stages of different languages, which were compared
by linguists, Avere, of course, accessible only through the medium
of writing ; we have seen that the early linguists spoke constantly
of letters and not of sounds. But this vitiated their whole outlook
on languages. These were scarcely ever studied at first-hand,
and neither in Bopp nor in Grimm nor in Pott or Benfey do we find
such first-hand observations of living spoken languages as play a
great role in the writings of Rask and impart an atmosphere of
soundness to his whole manner of looking at languages. If
languages were called natural objects, they were not yet studied
as such or by truly naturalistic methods.
When living dialects were studied, the interest constantly
centred round the archaic traits in them ; every survival of an old
form, every trace of old sounds that had been dropped in the
standard speech, was greeted with enthusiasm, and the significance
of these old characteristics greatly exaggerated, the general im-
pression being that popular dialects were always much more con-
servative than the speech of educated people. It was reserved
for a much later time to prove that this view is completely
erroneous, and that popular dialects, in spite of many archaic
details, are on the whole further developed than the various
standard languages with their stronger tradition and literary
reminiscences.
m.— §2. K. M. Rapp.
It was from this archasological point of view only that Grimm
encouraged the study of dialects, but he expressly advised students
not to carry the research too far in the direction of discriminating
minutiae of sounds, because these had little bearing on the history
of language as he understood it. In this connexion we may
§2] K. M. RAPP 69
mention an episode in the history of early linguistics that is sympto-
matic. K. M. Rapp brought out his Versuch einer Physiologic
der Sprache nebst historischer Entwickelung der ahendldndischen
Idiome nach physiologischen Grundsdtzen in four volumes (1836,
1839, 1840, 1841). A physiological examination into the nature
and classification of speech sounds was to serve only as the basis
of the historical part, the grandiose plan of which was to find out
how Greek, Latin and Gothic sounded, and then to pursue the
destinies of these sound systems through the Middle Ages (Byzan-
tine Greek, Old Provencal, Old French, Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Old
High German) to the present time (Modern Greek, Italian, Spanish,
etc., down to Low and High German, with different dialects).
To carry out this plan Rapp was equipped with no small knowledge
of the earlier stages of these languages and a not contemptible
first-hand observation of living languages. He relates how from
his childhood he had a " morbidly sharpened ear for all acoustic
impressions " ; he had early observed the difference between
dialectal and educated speech and taken an interest in foreign
languages, such as French, Italian and English. He visited Den-
mark, and there made the acquaintance of and became the pupil
of Rask ; he often speaks of him and his works in terms of the
greatest admiration. After his return he took up the study of
Jacob Grimm ; but though he speaks always very warmly about
the other parts of Grimm's work, Grimm's phonology disappointed
him. " Grimm's theory of letters I devoured with a ravenous
appetite for all the new things I had to learn from it, but also with
heartburning on account of the equally numerous things that
warred against the whole of my previous research with regard to
the nature of speech sounds ; fascinated though I was by what
I read, it thus made me incredibly miserable." He set to his
great task with enthusiasm, led by the conviction that " the his-
torical material gives here only one side of the truth, and that the
living language in all its branches that have never been committed
to writing forms the other and equally important side which is
still far from being satisfactorily investigated." It is easy to
understand that Rapp came into conflict with Grimm's Buch-
stabenlehre, that had been based exclusively on -svritten forms,
and Rapp was not afraid of expressing his unorthodox views in
what he himself terms " a violent and arrogating tone." No
wonder, therefore, that his book fell into disgrace with the leaders
of linguistics in Germany, who noticed its errors and mistakes,
which were indeed numerous and conspicuous, rather than the new
and sane ideas it contained. Rapp's work is extraordinarily little
known ; in Raumer's Gesckichte der germanischen Philologie and
similar works it is not even mentioned, and when I disinterred it
70 INIIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. hi
from undeserved oblivion in my Fonetik (1897, p. 35 ; cf. Die
neueren Sprachen, vol. xiii, 1904) it was utterly imknown to the
German phoneticians of my acquaintance. Yet not only are its
phonetic observations ^ deserving of praise, but still more its whole
plan, based as it is on a thorough comprehension of the mutual
relations of sounds and writing, which led Rapp to use phonetic
transcription throughout, even in connected specimens both of
living and dead languages ; that this is really the only way in which
it is possible to obtain a comprehensive and living understanding
of the sound-system of any language (as well as to get a clear
perception of the extent of one's own ignorance of it!) has not
yet been generally recognized. The science of language would
have made swifter and steadier progress if Grimm and his suc-
cessors had been able to assimilate the main thoughts of Rapp.
in.— §3. J. H. Bredsdorff.
Another (and still earlier) work that was overlooked at the time
was the little pamphlet Om Aarsagerne til Sprogenes Forandringer
(1821) by the Dane J. H. Bredsdorlf. Bopp and Grimm never
really asked themselves the fundamental question. How is it that
language changes : what are the driving forces that lead in course
of time to such far-reaching differences as those we find between
Sanskrit and Latin, or between Latin and French ? Now, this is
exactly the question that Bredsdorff treats in his masterly pamphlet.
Like Rapp, he was a very good phonetician ; but in the pamphlet
that concerns us here he speaks not onl}' of phonetic but of other
linguistic changes as well. These he refers to the following causes,
which he illustrates with well-chosen examples : (1) IMishearing
and misunderstanding ; (2) misrecollection ; (3) imperfection of
organs ; (4) indolence : to this he inclines to refer nine-tenths
of all those changes in the pronunciation of a language that are
not due to foreign influences ; (5) tendency towards analogy : here
he gives instances from the speech of children and explains by
analogy such phenomena as the extension of s to all genitives,
etc. ; (6) the desire to be distinct ; (7) the need of expressing
new ideas. He recognizes that there are changes that cannot be
brought under any of these explanations, e.g. the Gothonic sound
shift (cf. above, p. 43 note), and he emphasizes the many ways in
which foreign nations or foreign languages may influence a
language. Bredsdorff's explanations may not always be correct ;
^ For example, the correct appreciation of Scandinavian o sounds and
especially the recognition of syllables without any vowel, for instance, in
G. mittel, achmeicheln, E. heaven, little ; this important truth was unnoticed
by linguists till Sievers in 1876 called attention to it and Brugmann in 1877
used it in a famous article.
§3] J. H. BREDSDORFF 71
but what constitutes the deep originality of his httle book is the
way in which linguistic changes are always regarded in terms of
human activity, chiefly of a psychological character. Here he was
head and shoulders above his contemporaries ; in fact, most of
Bredsdorff's ideas, such as the power of analogy, were the same
that sixty years later had to fight so hard to be recognized by
the leading linguists of that time.^
III. — §4. August Schleicher.
In Kapp, and even more in Bredsdorff, Ave get a whiff of the
scientific atmosphere of a much later time ; but most of the linguists
of the twenties and folloAving decades (among whom A. F. Pott
deserves to be speciall}^ named) moved in essentially the same
grooves as Bopp and Grimm, and it Avill not be necessary here to
deal in detail with their work.
August Schleicher (1821-68) in many ways marks the cul-
mination of the first period of Comparative Linguistics, as well
as the transition to a new period wdth different aims and, partially
at any rate, a new method. His intimate knowledge of many
languages, his great power of combination, his clear-cut and alwaj^s
lucid exposition — all this made him a natural leader, and made
his books for many years the standard handbooks of linguistic
science. Unlike Bopp and Grimm, he was exclusively a linguist,
or, as he called it himself, ' glottiker,' and never tired of claiming
for the science of linguistics (' glottik '), as opposed to philology,
the rank of a separate natural science. Schleicher specialized in
Slavonic and Lithuanian ; he studied the latter language in its
own home and took down a great many songs and tales from the
mouths of the peasants ; he was for some years a professor in the
University of Prague, and there acquired a conversational know-
ledge of Czech ; he spoke Russian, too, and thus in contradis-
tinction to Bopp and Grimm had a first-hand knowledge of more
than one foreign language ; his interest in living speech is also
manifested in his specimens of the dialect of his native town,
Volkstiimliches aus Sonneberg. When he was a child his father
very severely insisted on the constant and correct use of the edu-
cated language at home ; but the boy, perhaps all the more on
account of the paternal prohibition, was deeply attracted to the
^ A young German linguist, to whom I sent the pamphlet early in 1886,
wrote to me : " Wenn man sich den spass machte imd das ding iibersetzte
mit der bemerkung, es sei vor vier jahren erschienen, wer wiirde einem
nicht trauen ? Merkwiirdig, dass solche sachen so unbemerkt, ' dem kleinen
veilchen gleich,' dahinschwinden konncn." A short time afterwards the
pamphlet was reprinted with a short preface by Vilh. Thomsen (Copenhagen,
1886).
72 MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. iii
popular dialect he heard from his playfellows and to the fas-
cinating folklore of the old townspeople, which he was later to
take down and put into print. In the preface he says that the
acquisition of foreign tongues is rendered considerably easier
through the habit of speaking two dialects from childhood.
What makes Schleicher particularly important for the purposes
of this volume is the fact that in a long series of publications he
put forth not only details of his science, but original and compre-
hensive views on the fundamental questions of linguistic theorj',
and that these had great influence on the linguistic philosophy of
the following decades. He was, perhaps, the most consistent as well
as one of the clearest of linguistic thinkers, and his views therefore
deserve to be examined in detail and with the greatest care.
Apart from languages, Schleicher was deeply interested both
in philosophy and in natural science, especially botany. From
these he fetched many of the weapons of his armoury, and they
coloured the whole of his theory of language. In his student days
at Tubingen he became an enthusiastic adherent of the philosophy
of Hegel, and not even the Darwinian sympathies and views of
which he became a champion towards the end of his career made
him abandon the doctrines of his youth. As for science, he saj's
that naturalists make us understand that in science nothing is
of value except facts established tlu"ough strictly objective observa-
tion and the conclusions based on such facts — tliis is a lesson that
he thinks many of his colleagues would do well to take to heart.
There can be no doubt that Schleicher in his practice followed a
much more rigorous and sober method than his predecessors,
and that his Compendium in that respect stands far above Bopp's
Orammar. In his general reasonings on the nature of language,
on the other hand, Schleicher did not always follow the strict
principles of sober criticism, being, as we shall now see, too
dependent on Hegelian philosophy, and also on certain dogmatic
views that he had inherited from previous German linguists,
from Schlegel downwards.
The Introductions to Schleicher's two first volumes are entirely
Hegelian, though wdth a characteristic difference, for in the first
he says that the changes to be seen in the realm of languages are
decidedly historical and in no way resemble the changes that we
may observe in nature, for " however manifold these may be, they
never show anything but a circular course that repeats itself con-
tinually " (Hegel), while in language, as in everything mental, we
may see new things that have never existed before. One generation
of animals or plants is like another ; the skill of animals has no
histor}^ as human art has ; language is specifically human and
mental : its development is therefore analogous to histor/ for in
§4] AUGUST SCHLEICHER 78
both we see a continual progress to new phases. In Schleicher's
second volume, however, this view is expressly rejected in its
main part, because Schleicher now wants to emphasize the natural
character of language : it is true, he now says, that language
shows a ' werden ' which may be termed history in the wider
sense of this word, but which is found in its purest form in
nature ; for instance, in the growing of a plant. Language
belongs to the natural sphere, not to the sphere of free mental
activity, and this must be our starting-point if we would discover
the method of linguistic science (ii. 21).
It would, of course, be possible to say that the method of lin-
guistic science is that of natural science, and yet to maintain that
the object of linguistics is different from that of natural science,
but Schleicher more and more tends to identify the two, and when
he was attacked for saying, in his pamphlet on the Darwinian theory,
that languages were material things, real natural objects, he wrote
in defence Ueher die bedeutung der sprache fiir die naturgeschichte
des menschen, which is highly characteristic as the culminating point
of the materialistic way of looking at languages. The activity,
he says, of any organ, e.g. one of the organs of digestion, or the brain
or muscles, is dependent on the constitution of that organ. The
different ways in which different species, nay even different indi-
viduals, walk are evidently conditioned by the structure of the
limbs ; the activity or function of the organ is, as it were, nothing
but an aspect of the organ itself, even if it is not always possible
by means of the knife or microscope of the scientist to demonstrate
the material cause of the phenomenon. What is true of the manner
of walking is true of language as well ; for language is nothing
but the result, perceptible through the ear, of the action of a com-
plex of material substances in the structure of the brain and of
the organs of speech, with their nerves, bones, muscles, etc. Anato-
mists, however, have not yet been able to demonstrate differences
in the structures of these organs corresponding to differences of
nationality — to discriminate, that is, the organs of a Frenchman
{qud Frenchman) from those of a German {qiid German). Accord-
ingly, as the chemist can only arrive at the elements which com-
pose the sun by examining the light which it emits, while the
source of that light remains inaccessible to him, so must we be
content to study the nature of languages, not in their material
antecedents but in their audible manifestations. It makes no
great difference, however, for " the two things stand to each other
as cause and effect, as substance and phenomenon : a philosopher
[i.e. a Hegehan] would say that they are identical."
Now I, for one, fail to understand how this can be what Schleicher
believes it to be, "a refutation of the objection that language is
T4 MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [cii. iii
nothing but a consequence of the activity of these organs." The
sun exists independently of the human observer ; but there could
be no such thing as language if there was not besides the speaker
a listener who might become a speaker in his turn. Schleicher
speaks continually in his pamphlet as if structural differences in
the brain and organs of speech were the real language, and as if
it were only for want of an adequate method of examining this
hidden structure that we had to content ourselves with stud3dng
language in its outward manifestation as audible speech. But
this is certainly on the face of it preposterous, and scarcely needs
any serious refutation. If the proof of the pudding is in the
eating, the proof of a language must be in the hearing and under-
standing ; but in order to be heard Avords must first be spoken,
and in these two activities (that of producing and that of per-
ceiving sounds) the real essence of language must consist, and
these two activities are the primarj' (or why not the exclusive ?)
object of the science of language.
Schleicher goes on to meet another objection that may be made
to his view of the ' substantiality of language,' namely, that drawn
from the power of learning other languages. Schleicher doubts
the possibility of learning another language to perfection ; he
would admit this only in the case of a man who exchanged his
mother-tongue for another in his earliest youth ; '' but then he
becomes by that very fact a different being from what he was :
brain and organs of speech develop in -another direction." If
]\Ir. So-and-So is said to speak and write German, English and
French equally well, Schleicher first inclines to doubt the fact ;
and then, granting that the same individual may "be at the same
time a German, a Frenchman and an Englishman," he asks us to
remember that all these three languages belong to the same family
and may, from a broader point of view, be termed species of the same
language ; but he denies the possibility of anyone's being equally
at home in Chinese and German, or in Arabic and Hottentot, etc.,
becau.se these languages are totally different in their innermost
essence. (But what of bilingual children in Finland, speaking
Swedish and Finnish, or in Greenland, speaking Danish and Eskimo,
or in Java, speaking Dutch and Malaj^ ?) Schleicher has to admit
that our organs are to some extent flexible and capable of acquiring
activities that they had not at first ; but one definite function
is and remains nevertheless the only natural one, and thus " the
possibility of a man's acquiring foreign languages more or less
perfectly is no objection to our seeing the material basis of lan-
guage in the structure of the brain and organs of si^eech."
Even if we admit that Schleicher is so far right that in nearly
all (or all ?) cases of bilingualism one language comes more naturally
§4] AUGUST SCHLEICHER 75
than the other, he certainly exaggerates the difference, which is
always one of degree ; and at any rate his final conclusion is wrong,
for we might with the same amount of justice say that a man who
has first learned to plaj' the piano has acquired the structure of
brain and fingers peculiar to a pianist, and that it is then unnatural
for him also to learn to play the violin, because that would imply
a different structure of these organs. In all these cases we have to
do with a definite proficiency or skill, which can onlj^ be obtained
by constant practice, though of course one man may be better
predisposed by nature for it than another ; but then it is also the
fact that people who speak no foreign language attain to very
different degrees of proficiencj^ in the use of their mother-tongue.
It cannot be said too emphaticallj^ that we have here a fundamental
question, and that Schleicher's view can never lead to a true con-
ception of what language is, or to a real insight into its changes
and historical development.
Schleicher goes on to say that the classification of mankind into
races should not be based on the formation of the skull or on the
character of the hair, or any such external criteria, as they are by
no means constant, but rather on language, because this is a
thoroughly constant criterion. This alone would give a perfectly
natural system, one, for instance, in which all Turks would be
classed together, while otherwise the Osmanli Turk belongs to the
' Caucasian ' race and the so-called Tataric Turks to the ' Mon-
golian ' race ; on the other hand, the Magyar and the Basque
are not physically to be distinguished from the Indo-European,
though their languages are widely dissimilar. According to
Schleicher, therefore, the natural system of languages is also the
natural system of mankind, for language is closely connected with
the whole higher life of men, which is therefore taken into con-
sideration in and with their language. In this book I am not con-
cerned with the ethnographical division of mankind into races,
and I therefore must content myself with saying that the very
examples adduced by Schleicher seem to me to militate against
his theory that a division of mankind based on language is the
natural one : are we to reckon the Basque's son, who speaks nothing
but French (or Spanish) as belonging to a different race from his
father ? And does not Schleicher contradict himself when on
p. 16 he writes that language is " ein vollig constantes merkmal,"
and p. 20 that it is " in fortwahrender veranderung begriffen " ?
So far as I see, Schleicher never expressly says that he thinks that
the physical structure conditioning the structure of a man's lan-
guage is hereditar5^ though some of his expressions point that way,
and that may be what he means by the expression ' constant.'
In other places (Darw. 25, Bed. 24) he allows external conditions
76 MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. iii
of life to exercise some influence on the character of a language,
as when languages of neighbouring peoples are similar (Aryans
and Semites, for example, are the only nations possessing flexional
languages). On such points, however, he gives only a few hints
and suggestions.
ni.— § 5. Classification of Languages.
In the question of the classification of languages Schleicher
introduces a deductive element from his strong preoccupation with
Hegehan ideas, Hegel everywhere moves in trilogies ; Schleicher
therefore must have three classes, and consequently has to tack
together two of Pott"s four classes (agglutinating and incorporating) ;
then he is able philosophically to deduce the tripartition. For
language consists in meaning (bedeutung ; matter, contents, root)
and relation (beziehung ; form), tertium non datur. As it would
be a sheer impossibility for a language to express form only, we
obtain three classes :
I. Here meaning is the only thing indicated by sound ; relation
is merely suggested by word-position : isolating languages.
II. Both meaning and relation are expressed by sound, but
the formal elements are visibly tacked on to the root, which is
itself invariable : agglutinating languages.
III. The elements of meaning and of relation are fused together
or absorbed into a higher unity, the root being susceptible of
inward modification as well as of afl&xes to denote form : flexional
languages.
Schleicher employs quasi-mathematical formulas to illustrate
these thi'ee classes : if we denote a root by R, a prefix by p and
a suffix by s, and finally use a raised x to denote an inner modifica-
tion, we see that in the isolated languages we have nothing but
R (a sentence may be represented by R R R R . . .), a word in the
second class has the formula R s or p R or p R s, but in the third
class we may have p R^ s (or R^ s).
Now, according to Schleicher the three classes of languages
are not only found simultaneously in the tongues of our own
day, but they represent three stages of linguistic development ;
" to the nebeneinander of the system corresponds the nacheinander
of history," Beyond the flexional stage no language can attain ;
the symbolic denotation of relation by flexion is the highest
accomplishment of language ; speech has here effectually real-
ized its object, which is to give a faithful phonetic image of
thought. But before a language can become flexional it must
have passed through an isolating and an agglutinating period.
Is this theory borne out by historical facts ? Can we trace back
§5] CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES 77
any of the existing flexional languages to agglutination and
isolation ? Schleicher himself answers this question in the
negative : the earliest Latin was of as good a flexional type as
are the modern Romanic languages. This would seem a sort
of contradiction in terms ; but the orthodox Hegelian is ready
with an answer to any objection ; he has the word of his master
that History cannot begin till the human spirit becomes " con-
scious of its own freedom," and this consciousness is only possible
after the complete development of language. The formation of
Language and History are accordingly successive stages of human
activity. Moreover, as history and historiography, i.e. literature,
come into existence simultaneously, Schleicher is enabled to ex-
press the same idea in a way that " is only seemingly paradoxical,"
namely, that the development of language is brought to a conclusion
as soon as literature makes its appearance ; this is a crisis after
which language remains fixed ; language has now become a means,
instead of being the aim, of intellectual activity. We never meet
with any language that is developing or that has become more
perfect ; in historical times all languages move only downhill ;
linguistic history means decay of languages as such, subjugated
as they are through the gradual evolution of the mind to greater
freedom.
The reader of the above survey of previous classifications
will easily see that in the matter itself Schleicher adds very little
of his own. Even the expressions, which are here given through-
out in Schleicher's own words, are in some cases recognizable
as identical with, or closely similar to, those of earlier scholars.
He made one coherent system out of ideas of classification
and development already found in others. What is new is the
philosophical substructure of Hegelian origin, and there can be
no doubt that Schleicher imagined that by this addition he con-
tributed very much towards giving stability and durability to
the whole system. And yet this proved to be the least stable
and durable part of the structure, and as a matter of fact the
Hegelian reasoning is not repeated by a single one of those who
give their adherence to the classification. Nor can it be said
to carry conviction, and undoubtedly it has seemed to most
linguists at the same time too rigid and too unreal to have any
importance.
But apart from the philosophical argument the classification
proved very successful in the particular shape it had found in
Schleicher. Its adoption into two such widely read works as
Max Miiller's and Whitney's Lectures on the Science of Language
contributed very much to the popularity of the system, though
the former's attempt at ascribing to the tripartition a sociological
78 MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [cii. iii
importance by saying that juxtaposition (isolation) is characteristic
of the ' family stage,' agglutination of ' the nomadic stage ' and
amalgamation (flexion) of the ' political stage ' of human society
was hardly taken seriously by anybody.
The chief reasons for the popularity of this classification are
not far to seek. It is easy of handling and appeals to the
natural fondness for clear-cut formulas through its specious
appearance of regularity and rationality. Besides, it flatters
widespread prejudices in so far as it places the two groups
of languages highest that are spoken bj^ those nations which
have culturally and religiously exercised the deepest influence
on the civilization of the world, Aryans and Semites. Therefore
also Pott's view, according to which the incorporating or
' polysynthetic ' American languages possess the same char-
acteristics that distinguish flexion as against agglutination, only
in a still higher degree, is generally tacitly discarded, for obviously
it would not do to place some languages of American Indians
higher than Sanskrit or Greek. But when these are looked upon
as the very flower of linguistic development it is quite natural
to regard the modern languages of Western Europe as degenerate
corruptions of the ancient more highly flexional languages ; this
is in perfect keeping with the prevalent admiration for classical
antiquity and with the belief in a far past golden age. Argu-
ments such as these may not have been consciously in the minds
of the framers of the ordinary classification, but there can be
no doubt that they have been unconsciously working in favour
of the system, though very little thought seems to be required
to show the fallacy of the assumption that high civilization
has any intrinsic and necessary connexion with the grammatical
construction of the language spoken by the race or nation con-
cerned. No language of modern Europe presents the flexional
type in a purer shape than Lithuanian, where we find preserved
nearly the same grammatical system as in old Sanskrit, yet no
one would assert that the culture of Lithuanian peasants is higher
than that of Shakespeare, whose language has lost an enormous
amount of the old flexions. Culture and language must be appraised
separately, each on its own merits and independently of the
other.
From a purely linguistic point of view there are many objections
to the usual classification, and it will be well here to bring them
together, though this will mean an interruption of the historical
survey which is the main object of these chapters.
First let us look upon the tripartition as purporting a com-
prehensive classification of languages as existing side by side
without any regard to historic development (the nebeneinander
§5] CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES 79
of Schleicher). Here it does not seem to be an ideal manner of
classifying a great many objects to establish three classes of such
different dimensions that the first comprises only Chinese and
some other related languages of the Far East, and the third only
two families of languages, while the second includes hundreds
of unrelated languages of the most heterogeneous character.
It seems certain that the languages of Class I represent one definite
tj'pe of linguistic structure, and it may be that Arj'an and Semitic
should be classed together on account of the similarity of their
structure, though this is by no means quite certain and has been
denied (by Bopp, and in recent times b}^ Porzezinski) ; but what
is indubitable is that the ' agglutinating ' class is made to com-
prehend languages of the most diverse tyj)e, even if we follow Pott
and exclude from this class all incorporating languages. Finnish
is always mentioned as a typically agglutinative language, yet
there we meet with such declensional forms as nominative vesi
' water,' toinen ' second,' partitive veitd, toista, genitive veclen,
toisen, and such verbal forms as sido-n ' I bind,' sido-t ' thou
bindest,' sito-o ' he binds,' and the three corresponding persons
in the plural, sido-mme, sido-tte, sito-vat. Here we are far from
having one unchangeable root to which endings have been glued,
for the root itself undergoes changes before the endings. In
Kiyombe (Congo) the perfect of verbs is in many cases formed
by means of a vowel change that is a complete parallel to the
apophonj' in English drink, drank, thus vanga ' do," perfect vemje,
twala ' bring,' perfect twele or twede, etc. {Anthro'pos, ii. p. 761).
Examples like these show that flexion, in whatever way we may
define this term, is not the prerogative of the Aryans and Semites,
but may be found in other nations as well. ' Agglutination ' is
either too vague a term to be used in classification, or else, if it
is taken strictly according to the usual definition, it is too definite
to comprise many of the languages which are ordinarily reckoned
to belong to the second class.
It will be seen, also, that those writers who aim at giving descrip-
tions of a variety of human tongues, or of them all, do not content
themselves with the usual three classes, but have a greater number.
This began with Steinthal, who in various works tried to classify
languages partly from geographical, partly from structural points
of view, without, however, arriving at any definite or consistent
system. Friedi'ich Miiller, in his great Grundriss der Sprachwis-
senschaft, really gives up the psychological or structural division of
languages, distributing the more than hundied different languages
that he describes among twelve races of mankind, characterized
chiefly by external criteria that have nothing to do with language.
Misteli establishes six main types : I. Incorporating. II. Root-
80 MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. iii
isolating. III. Stem-isolating. IV. Affixing (Anreihende). V. Ag-
glutinating. VI. Flexional. These he also distributes so as
to form four classes : (1) languages with sentence-words : I ;
(2) languages with no words : II, III and IV ; (3) languages with
apparent words : V ; and (4) languages with real words : VI.
But the latter division had better be left alone ; it turns on
the intricate question " What constitutes a word ? " and ulti-
mately depends on the usual depreciation of ' inferior races '
and corresponding exaltation of our own race, which is alone
reputed capable of possessing ' real words.' I do not see why
we should not recognize that the vocables of Greenlandic,
Malay, Kafir or Finnish are just as ' real ' words as any in
Hebrew or Latin.
Our final result, then, is that the tripartition is insufficient and
inadequate to serve as a comprehensive classification of languages
actually existing. Nor shall we wonder at this if we see the way
in which the theory began historically in an obiter dictum of Fr. v.
Schlegel at a time when the inner structure of only a few languages
had been properly studied, and if we consider the lack of clearness
and definiteness inherent in such notions as agglutination and
flexion, which are nevertheless made the corner-stones of the
whole system. We therefore must go back to the wise saying
of Humboldt quoted on p. 59, that the structural diversities of
languages are too great for us to classify them comprehensively.
In a subsequent part of this work I shall deal -with the
tripartition as representing three successive stages in the
development of such languages as our own (the nacheinander
of Schleicher), and try to show that Schleicher's view is not
borne out by the facts of linguistic history, which give us a
totally different pictm-e of development.
From both points of view, then, I think that the classifica-
tion here considered deserves to be shelved among the hasty
generalizations in which the history of every branch of science
is unfortunately so rich.
in. — §6. Reconstruction.
Probably Schleicher's most original and important contribution
to linguistics was his reconstruction of the Proto-Aryan language,
die indogermanische ursprache. The possibility of inferentially
constructing this parent language, which to Sanskrit, Greek, Latin,
Gothic, etc., was what Latin was to ItaUan, Spanish, Fi-ench,
etc., was early in his thoughts (see quotations illustrating the
gradual growth of the idea in Oertel, p. 39 f.), but it was not
till the first edition of his Compendium that he carried it out in
§ 6] RECONSTRUCTION 81
detail, giving there for each separate chapter (vowels, consonantK,
roots, stem-formation, declension, conjugation) first the Proto-
Aryan forms and then those actually found in the different languages,
from which the former were inferred. This arrangement has the
advantage that the reader everywhere sees the historical evolution
in the natural order, beginning with the oldest and then proceeding
to the later stages, just as the Romanic scholar begins with Latin
and then takes in successive stages Old French, Modern French,
etc. But in the case of Proto-Aryan this procedure is apt to
deceive the student and make him take these primitive forms
as something certain, whose existence reposes on just as good
evidence as the forms found in Sanskrit literature or in German
or English as spoken in our own days. When he finds some forms
given first and used to explain some others, there is some danger
of his forgetting that the forms given first have a quite different
status to the others, and that their only raison d'etre is the desire
of a modern linguist to explain existing forms in related languages
which present certain similarities as originating from a common
original form, which he does not find in his texts and has, there-
fore, to reconstruct. But apart from this there can be no doubt
that the reconstruction of older forms (and the ingenious device,
due to Schleicher, of denoting such forms by means of a preposed
asterisk to distinguish them from forms actually found) has been
in many waj^s beneficial to historical grammar. Only it may
be questioned whether Schleicher did not go too far when he wished
to base the whole grammar of all the Arj'an languages on such
reconstructions, instead of using them now and then to explain
single facts.
Schleicher even ventured (and in this he seems to have had no
follower) to construct an entire little fable in primitive Aryan:
see " Eine fabel in indogermanischer ursprache," Beitrdge zur vergl.
sprachfoTSchung , 5. 206 (1868). In the introductory remarks he
complains of the difficulty of such attempts, chiefi}^ because of
the almost complete lack of particles capable of being inferred
from the existing languages, but he seems to have entertained
no doubt about the phonetic and grammatical forms of the words
he employed. As the fable is not now commonly known, I give
it here, with Schleicher's translation, as a document of this period
of comparative linguistics.
AVIS AKVASAS KA
Avis, jasmin varna na a ast, dadarka akvams, tam, vagham
garum vaghantam, tam, bharam magham, tam, manum aku
bharantam. Avis akvabhjams a vavakat : kard aghnutai mai
vidanti manum akvams agantam.
6
82 MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. iii
Akvasas a vavakant : krudhi avai, kard aghnutai vividvant-
sva.s : inanus patis varnam avisams karnanti svabhjam gharmam
vastram avibhjams ka varna na asti.
Tat kukruvants avis agrara a bhugat.
[DAS] SCHAF UND [DIE] ROSSE
[Ein] schaf, [auf] welchem woUe nicht war (ein gcschorencs
schaf) sah rosse, das [einen] schweren wagen fahrend, das [eine]
grosse last, das [einen] menschen schnell tragend. [Das] schaf
sprach [zu den] rosscn : [Das] herz wird beengt [in] mir (es thut
mir herzlich leid), sehend [den] menschen [die] rosse treibend.
[Die] rosse sprachen : Hore schaf, [das] herz wird beengt [in
den] gesehend-habenden (cs thut uns herzlich leid, da wir wissen) :
[der] mensch, [der] herr macht [die] wolle [der] schafe [zu einem]
warraen kleide [fur] sich und [den] schafen ist nicht wolle (die
schafe aber haben keine wolle mehr, sie werden geschorcn ; es
geht ihnen noch schlechter als den rossen).
Dies gehort habend bog (entwich) [das] schaf [auf das] feld
(es machte sich aus dem staube).
The question here naturally arises : Is it possible in the way
initiated by Schleicher to reconstruct extinct linguistic stages,
and what degree of probability can be attached to the forms thus
created by linguists ? The answer certainly must be that in some
instances the reconstruction may have a very strong degree of
probability, namely, if the data on which it is based are unam-
biguous and the form to be reconstructed is not far removed
from that or those actually found ; but that otherwise any re-
construction becomes doubtful, and naturally the more so according
to the extent of the reconstruction (as when a whole text is con-
structed) and to the distance in time that intervenes between the
known and the unknown stage. If we look at the genitives of
Lat. genus and Gr. genos, which are found as generis and genous,
it is easy to see that both presuppose a form with <s between two
vowels, as we see a great many intervocalic s's becoming r in Latin
and disappearing in Greek ; but when Schleicher gives as the
prototype of both (and of corresponding forms in the other lan-
guages) Ai-yan ganasas, he oversteps the limits of the permissible
in so far as lie ascribes to the vowels definite sounds not reallj''
warranted by the known forms. If we knew the modern Scan-
dinavian languages and English only, we should not hesitate to
give to the Proto-Gothonic genitive of the word for ' mother '
the ending -s, cf. Dan. moders, E. mother'' s ; but G. der mutter
suffices to show that the conclusion is not safe, and as a matter
of fact, both in Old Norse and in Old English the genitive of this
§ 6] RECONSTRUCTION 88
word is without an s. An analogous case is presented when
Schleicher reconstructs the nom. of the word for ' father ' as
patars, because he presupposes -s as the invariable sign of every
nom. 8g. masc, although in this particular word not a single one
of the old languages has -s in the nominative. All Schleicher's
reconstructions are based on the assumption that Primitive Aryan
had a very simple structure, only few consonant and fewer vowel
sounds, and great regularity in morphology ; but, as we shall see,
this assumption is completely gratuitous and was exploded only
a few years after his death. Gabelentz (Spr 182), therefore, was
right when he said, with a certain irony, that the Aryan ursprache
had changed beyond recognition in the short time between
Schleicher and Brugmann. The moral to be drawn from all
this seems to be that hypothetical and starred forms should be
used sparingly and with the extremest caution.
With regard to inferential forms denoted by a star, the follow-
ing note may not be out of place here. Their purely theoretical
character is not always realized. An example will illustrate what
I mean. If etymological dictionaries give as the origin of F.
menage (OF. maisnage) a Latin form ^mattsionaticum, the etymology
may be correct although such a Latin word may never at any
time have been uttered. The word was framed at some date,
no one knows exactly when, from the word which at various
times had the forms (ace.) mansionem, *masione, maison, by
means of the ending which at first had the form -aticurn (as
in viaticum), and finally (through several intermediate stages)
became -age ; but at what stage of each the two elements met to
make the word which eventually became menage, no one can tell,
so that the only thing really asserted is that if the word had been
formed at a very early date (which is far from probable) it would
have been mnnsionaticum. It would, therefore, perhaps be more
correct to say that the word is from mansione -f- -aticurn.
m.— § 7. Curtius, Madvig, and Specialists.
Second only to Schleicher among the linguists of those days
was Georg Curtius (1820-85), at one time his colleague in the
University of Prague. Curtius's special study was Greek, and his
books on the Greek verb and on Greek etymology cleared up a
great many doubtful points ; he also contributed very much to
bridge the gulf between classical philology and Aryan linguistics.
His views on general questions were embodied in the book Zur
Chronologie der indogermanischen Sprachforschung (1873). While
Schleicher died when his fame was at its highest and his theories
were seemingly victorious in all the leading circles, Curtius had
8 1 MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [en. iii
the misfortune to see a generation of younger men, including some
of his own best disciples, such as Brugraann, advance theories that
seemed to him to be in conflict with the most essential principles
of his cherished science ; and though he himself, like Schleicher,
had always been in favour of a stricter observance of sound-
laws than his predecessors, his last book was a polemic against
those younger scholffrs who carried the same point to the excess
of admitting no exceptions at all, who believed in innumerable
analogical formations even in the old languages, and whose re-
constructions of primitive forms appeared to the old man as
deprived of that classical beauty of the ursprache which was
represented in his own and Schleicher's works {Zur Kritik der
neuesten Sprachjorschunq , 1885). But this is anticipating.
If Curtius was a comi^arativist with a sound knowledge of
classical philology, Johan Nikolai Madvig was pre-eminently a
classical philologist who took a great interest in general linguistics
and brought his critical acumen and sober common sense to bear
on many of the problems that exercised the minds of his contem-
poraries. He was opposed to everything of a vague and mystical
nature in the current theories of language and disliked the tendency
of some scholars to find dcep-lj'ing mysterious powers at the root
of linguistic phenomena. But he probably went too far in his
rationalism, for example, when he entirely denied the existence
of the sound-symbolism on which Humboldt had expatiated.
He laid much stress on the identity of the linguistic faculty in
all ages : the first speakers had no more intention than people
to-day of creating anything systematic or that would be good
for all times and all occasions — they could have no other object
in view than that of making themselves understood at the moment ;
hence the want of system which we find everywhere in languages :
a different number of cases in singular and plural, different endings,
etc. Madvig did not escape some inconsistencies, as when he
himself would explain the use of the soft vowel a to denote the
feminine gender by a kind of sound-symbolism, or when he thought
it possible to determine in what order the different grammatical
ideas presented themselves to primitive man (tense relation first
in the verb, number before case in the noun). He attached too
little value to phonological and etymological research, but on
the whole his views were sounder than many which were set forth
on the same subjects at the time ; his papers, however, were very
little known, partly because they were written in Danish, partly
because his style was extremely heavy and difficult, and when
he finally brought out his Kleine philologische schriften in German
(1875), he expressed his regret in the preface at finding that
many of the theories he had put forward j'ears before in Danish
§7] CURTIUS, MADVIG, AND SPECIALISTS 85
had in the meantime been independently arrived at by Whitney,
who had had the advantage of expressing them in a world-language.
One of the most important features of the period with which
we are here dealing is the development of a number of special
branches of historical linguistics on a comparative basis. Curtius's
work on Greek might be cited as one example ; in the same way
there were specialists in Sanskrit (Westergaard and Benfey among
others), in Slavonic (IMiklosich and Schleicher), in Keltic (Zeuss),
etc. Grimm had numerous followers in the Gothonic or Germanic
field, while in Romanic philology there Avas an active and flourishing
school, headed by Friedrich Diez, whose Grammatik der romanischen
Sprachen and Etymologisches Worterbuch der romanischen Sprachen
were perhaps the best introduction to the methodical study of
linguistics that anyone could desire ; the writer of these lines
looks back with the greatest gratitude to that period of his j'^outh
when he had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of these
truly classical works. Everything was so well arranged, so care-
fully thought out and so lucidly explained, that one had every-
where the pleasant feeling that one was treading on firm ground,
the more so as the basis of the whole was not an artificially con-
structed nebulous ursprache, but the familiar forms and words of
an historical language. Here one witnessed the gradual differ-
entiation of Latin into seven or eight distinct languages, whose
development it was possible to follow century by century in well-
authenticated texts. The picture thus displayed before one's
eyes of actual linguistic growth in all domains — sounds, forms,
word-formation, syntax — and (a very important corollary) of the
interdef)endence of these domains, could not but leave a very
strong impression — not merely enthusiasm for what had been
achieved here, but also a salutary skepticism of theories in other
fields which had not a similarly solid basis.
m.— § 8. Max MtiUer and Whitney.
Working, as we have seen, in many fields, linguists had now
brought to light a shoal of interesting facts affecting a great many
languages and had put forth valuable theories to explain these
facts ; but most of their work remained difficult of access except
to the specialist, and very little was done by the experts to impart
to educated people in general those results of the new science
which might be enjoyed without deeper study. But in 1861 Max
Miiller gave the first series of those Lectures on the Science of
Language which, in numerous editions, did more than anything
else to popularize linguistics and served to initiate a great many
students into our science. In many ways these lectures were
86 MroDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. hi
excellently adapted for this purpose, for the author had a certain
knack of selecting interesting illustrations and of presenting his
subject in a way that tended to create the same enthusiasm for
it that he felt himself. But his arguments do not bear a close
inspection. Too often, after stating a problem, he is found to fly
off at a tangent and to forget what he has set out to prove for the
sake of an interesting etymology or a clever paradox. He gives an
uncritical acceptance to many of Schleicher's leading ideas ; thus,
the science of linguistics is to him a physical science and has
nothing to do with philology, which is an historical science. If,
however, we look at the book itself, we shall find that everything
that he counts on to secure the interest of his reader, everything
that made his lectures so popular, is really non-naturalistic : all
those brilliant exposes of word-history are really like historical
anecdotes in a book on social evolution ; they may have some
bearing on the fundamental problems, but these are rarely or
never treated as real problems of natural science. Nor does he,
when taken to task, maintain his view very seriously, but partly
retracts it and half-heartedly ensconces himself behind the dictum
that everything depends on the definition you give of '' physical
science " (see especially Ch 234, 442, 497) — thus calling forth
Whitney's retort that " the implication here is that our author
has a right at his own good pleasure to lay down such a definition
of a physical science as should make the name properly applicable
to the study of this particular one among the products of human
capacities. ... So he may prove that a whale is a fish, if you only
allow him to define what a fish is " (M 23 f.).
Though Schleicher and Max Miiller in their own day had few
followers in defining linguistics as a natural or physical science —
the opposite view was taken, for instance, by Curtius (K 154),
Madvig and Whitney — there can be no doubt that the naturalistic
point of view practically, though perhaps chiefly unconsciously,
had wide-reaching effects on the history of linguistic science. It
was intimately connected with the problems chiefly investigated
and with the way in which they were treated. From Grimm
through Pott to Schleicher and his contemporaries we see a growing
interest in phonological comparisons ; more and more " sound-
laws " were discovered, and those found were more and more
rigorously applied, with the result that etymological investigation
was attended with a degree of exactness of which former genera-
tions had no idea. But as these phonological studies were not,
as a rule, based on a real, penetrating insight into the nature
of speech-sounds, the work of the etymologist tended more and
more to be purely mechanical, and the science of language was
to a great extent deprived of those elementa which are more
§8] MAX MULLER AND WHITNEY 87
intimately connected with the human ' soul.' Isolated vowels
and consonants were compared, isolated flexional forms and iso-
lated words were treated more and more in detail and explained
by other isolated forms and words in other languages, all of them
being like dead leaves shaken off a tree rather than parts of a
living and moving whole. The speaking individual and the speak-
ing community were too much lost sight of. Too often compara-
tivists gained a considerable acquaintance with the sound-laws
and the grammatical forms of various languages without knowing
much about those languages themselves, or at any rate without
possessing any degree of familiarity with them. Schleicher was
not blind to the danger of this. A short time before his death
he brought out an Indogermanische Chrestomathie (Weimar, 1869),
and in the preface he justifies his book by saying that " it is of
great value, besides learning the grammar, to be acquainted, how-
ever slightly, with the languages themselves. For a comparative
grammar of related languages lays stress on what is common to
a language and its sisters ; consequently, the languages may appear
more alike than they are in reality, and their idiosyncrasies may
be thrown into the shade. Linguistic specimens form, therefore,
an indispensable supplement to comparative grammar." Other
and even more weighty reasons might have been adduced, for
grammar is after all only one side of a language, and it is certainly
the best plan, if one wants to understand and appreciate the
position of any language, to start with some connected texts
of tolerable length, and only afterwards to see how its forms are
related to and may be explained by those of other languages.
Though the mechanical school of linguists, with whom historical
and comparative phonology was more and more an end in itself,
prevailed to a great extent, the trend of a few linguists was different.
Among these one must especially mention Heymann Steinthal,
who drew his inspiration from Humboldt and devoted numerous
works to the psychology of language. Unfortunately, Steinthal was
greatly inferior to Schleicher in clearness and consistency of
thought : " When I read a work of Steinthal's, and even many
parts of Humboldt, I feel as if walking through shifting clouds,"
Max Miiller remarks, with good reason, in a letter {Life, i. 256).
This obscurity, in connexion with the remoteness of Steinthal's
studies, which ranged from Chinese to the language of the Mande
negroes, but paid little regard to European languages, prevented
him from exerting any powerful influence on the linguistic thought
of his generation, except perhaps through his emphatic assertion
of the truth that language can only be understood and explained
by means of psychology : his explanation of syntactic attraction
paved the way for much in Paul's Prinzipien.
88 MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [en. iii
The leading exponent of general linguistics after the death of
Schleicher was the American William Dwight Whitney, whose
books, Language and the Study of Language (first ed. 1867) and
its replica, The Life and Growth of Language (1875), were translated
into several languages and were hardly less popular than those
of his antagonist, Max Miiller. Whitney's style is less brilliant
than Max Miiller's, and he scorns the cheap triumphs which the
latter gains by the multiplication of interesting illustrations ;
he never wearies of running down Miiller's paradoxes and incon-
sistencies,^ from which he himself was spared by his greater general
solidity and sobriety of thought. The chief point of divergence
between them was, as already indicated, that Whitney looked
upon language as a human institution that has grown slowly out
of the necessity for mutual understanding ; he was opposed to all
kinds of mysticism, and words to him were conventional signs —
not, of course, that he held that there ever was a gathering of
people that settled the meaning of each word, but in the sense
of "resting on a mutual understanding or a community of habit,"
no matter how brought about. But in spite of all differences
between the two they are in many respects alike, when viewed from
the coign of vantage of the twentieth century : both give expres-
sion to the best that had been attained by fifty or sixty years of
painstaking activity to elucidate the mysteries of speech, and
especially of Aryan words and forms, and neither of them was
deeply original enough to see through many of the fallacies of the
young science. Consequently, their views on the structure of
Proto-Aryan, on roots and their role, on the building-up and decay
of the form-system, are essentially the same as those of their con-
temporaries, and many of their theories have now crumbled away,
including much of what they probably thought firmly rooted for
all time.
1 In numerous papers in North Am. Review and elsewhere, and finally
in the pamphlet Max Miiller and the Science of Language, a Criticism (New
York, 1892). Miiller's reply to the earlier attacks is foimd in Chips from
a Oerman Workshop, vol. iv.
CHAPTER IV
END OF NINETEENTH CENTURY
§ 1. Achievements about 1870. § 2. New Discoverieg. § 3. Phonetic Law«
and Analogy. § 4. General Tendencies.
IV. — § 1. Achievements about 1870.
Ix works of this period one frequently meets with expressions
of pride and joy in the wonderful results that had been achieved
in comparative linguistics in the course of a few decades. Thus
Max Muller writes : " All this becomes clear and intelligible by
the light of Comparative Grammar ; anomalies vanish, excep-
tions prove the rule, and we perceive more plainly every day
how in language, as elsewhere, the conflict between the freedom
claimed by each individual and the resistance offered by the
community at large establishes in the end a reign of law most
wonderful, yet perfectly rational and intelligible " ; and again :
" There is nothing accidental, nothing irregular, nothing without
a purpose and meaning in any part of Greek or Latin grammar.
No one who has once discovered this hidden life of language,
no one who has once found out that what seemed to be merely
anomalous and whimsical in language is but, as it were, a
petrification of thought, of deep, curious, poetical, philosophical
thought, will ever rest again till he has descended as far as he
can descend into the ancient shafts of human speech," etc.
(Ch 41 f.), Whitney says ; " The difference between the old
haphazard style of etymologizing and the modern scientific
method lies in this : that the latter, while allowing everything
to be theoretically possible, accepts nothing as actual which
is not proved by sufficient evidence ; it brings to bear upon
each individual case a wide circle of related facts ; it im-
poses upon the student the necessity of extended comparison
and cautious deduction ; it makes him careful to inform himself
as thoroughly as circumstances allow respecting the history of
every word he deals with " (L 386). And Benfey, in his
Geschichte der Sprachwissetischaft (1869, see pp. 562 f. and 596),
arrives at the conclusion that the investigation of Aryan languages
has already attained a very great degree of certainty, and that
the reconstruction of Primitive Aryan, both in grammar and
90 END OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [cii. iv
vocabulary, must be considered as in the main settled in such
a way that only some details are still doubtful ; thus, it is certain
that the first person singular ended in -mi, and that this is a
phonetic reduction of the pronoun ma, and that the word for
' horse ' was akva. This feeling of pride is certainly in a great
measure justified if we compare the achievements of linguistic
science at that date with the etymologies of the eighteenth
century ; it must also be acknowledged that 90 per cent,
of the etjanologies in the best-known Aryan languages which
must be recognized as established beyond any reasonable doubt
had already been discovered before 1870, while later investi-
gations have only added a small number that may be considered
firmly established, together with a great many more or less
doubtful collocations. But, on the other hand, in the light of
later research, we can now see that much of what was then con-
sidered firm as a rock did not deserve the implicit trust then
placed in it.
IV. — §2. New Discoveries.
This is ti'ue in the first place with regard to the phonetic
structure ascribed to Proto-Aryan. A series of brilliant dis-
coveries made about the year 1880 profoundly modified the
views of scholars about the consonantal and still more about
the vocalic system of our family of languages. This is parti-
cularly true of the so-called palatal law.^ So long as it was
taken for granted that Sanskrit had in all essential points pre-
served the ancient sound system, while Greek and the other
languages represented younger stages, no one could explain why
Sanskrit in some cases had the palatals c and j (sounds approxi-
mately like the initial sounds of E. chicken and joy) where
the other languages have the velar sounds k and g. It M-as now
recognized that so far from the distribution of the two classes
of sounds in Sanskrit being arbitrary, it followed strict rules,
1 Who was the discoverer of the palatal law ? This has been hotly
discussed, and as the law was in so far anticipated bj' other discoveries of
the 'seventies as to be " in the air," it is perhaps futile to try to fix the
paternity on any single man. However, it seems now perfectly clear that
Vilhelm Thomsen was the first to mention it in his lectures (1875), but
unfortunately the full and able paper in which he intended to lay it before
the world was delayed for a couple of years and then kept in liis drawers
when he heard that Johannes Schmidt was preparing a paper on the same
subject : it was printed in 1920 in the second volume of his iSamlede AJhmid-
linger (from the original manuscript). Esaias Tegner had found the law
independently and had printed five sheets of a book De ariska sprdkens
palataler, which he withdrew when he found that Collitz and de Saussure
had expressed similar views. Karl Verner, too, had independently arrived
at the same results ; see his AJhandlinger og Breve, 109 fi., 305.
§2] NEW DISCOVERIES 91
though these were not to be seen from Sanskrit itself. Where
Sanskrit a following the consonant corresponded to Greek or
Latin o, Sanskrit had velar k ov g \ where, on the other hand,
it corresponded to Greek or Latin e, Sanskrit had palatal c or j.
Thus we have, for instance, c in Sansk. ca, ' and ' = Greek te,
Lat. que, but k in kaHa = Lat. coxa ; the difference between
the two consonants in a perfect like cakara, ' have done,' is
dependent on the same vowel alternation as that of Greek
Uloipa; c in the verb pacati, 'cooks,' as against k in the sub-
stantive pakas, ' cooking,' corresponds to the vowels in Greek
Ugei as against logos, etc. All this shows that Sanskrit itself
must once have had the vowels e and o instead of a ; before the
front vowel e the consonant has then been fronted or palatalized,
as ch in E. chicken is due to the following front vowel, while
k has been preserved before o in cock. Sanskrit is thus shown
to be in some important respects less conservative than Greek,
a truth which was destined profoundly to modify many theories
concerning the whole family of languages. As Curtius said,
with some resentment of the change in view then taking place,
" Sanskrit, once the oracle of the rising science and trusted
blindly, is now put on one side ; instead of the traditional ex
oriente lux the saying is now in oriente tenebrce " (K 97).
The new views held in regard to Aryan vowels also resulted
in a thorough revision of the theory of apophony (ablaut). The
great mass of Aryan vowel alternations were shown to form a
vast and singularly consistent system, the main features of which
may be gathered from the following tabulation of a few select
Greek examples, arranged into three columns, each representing
one ' grade ' :
I
II
III
(1) petomai
p6te
ept6mai
(s)ekh6
(s)6khos
fekhon
(2) lelp5
leloipa
elipon
(3) peiithomai
—
eputh6men
(4) derkomai
dedorka
edrakon
(5) teino (*tenjo) t6nos tatos
It is outside our scope to show how this scheme gives us a
natural clue to the vowels in such verbs as E. I ride, II rode, III
ridden (2), G. I werde, II imrd, III geworden (4), or I binde, II band,
III gebunden (5). It will be seen from the Greek examples that
grade I is throughout characterized by the vowel e and grade
II by the vowel o ; as for grade III, the vowel of I and II has
entirely disappeared in (1), where there is no vowel between the
92 END OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. iv
two consonants, and in (2) and (3), where the element found
after e and o and forming a diphthong with these has now
become a full (syllabic) vowel » and u by itself. In (4) Sanskrit
has in grade III a syllabic r {adrQam = Gr. edrakon), while
Greek has ra, or in some instances ar, and Gothonic has ur or or
according to the vowel of the following syllable. It was this
fact that suggested to Brugmann his theory that in (5) Greek a,
Lat. in, Goth, nn in the third grade originated in syllabic n, and
that tatos thus stood for *tnt6s ; he similarly explained Gr. deka,
Lat. decern, Gothic iailiun, E. ten from *deL-m with syllabic m.
I do not believe that his theory is entirely correct ; but so
much is certain, that in all instances grade III is characterized
by a reduction of the vowel that appears in the two other
grades as e and o, and there can be no doubt that this reduction
is due to want of stress. This being so, it becomes impossible
to consider lip the original root-form, which in leip and loip has
been extended, and the new theory of apophony thus disposes
of the old theory, based on the Indian grammarians' view that
the shortest form was the root-form, which was then raised
through ' guna ' and ' vrddhi.' This now is reversed, and the
fuller form is shown to be the oldest, which in some cases was
shortened according to a process paralleled in many living
languages. Bopp was right in his rejection of Grimm's theory
of an inner, significatory reason for apophony, as apophony is
now shown to have been due to a mechanical cause, though a
different one from that suggested by Bopp (see above, p. 53) ;
and Grimm was also wrong in another respect, because apophony
is found from the first in noun-formations as well as in verbs,
where Grimm believed it to have been instituted to indicate
tense differences, with which it had originally nothing to do.
Apophony even appears in other syllables than the root syllable ;
the new view thus quite naturally paved the way for skepticism
with regard to the old doctrine that Aryan roots were neces-
sarily monosyllabic ; and scholars soon began to admit dissyllabic
' bases ' in place of the old roots ; instead of lip, the earliest
accessible form thus came to be something like leipo or hipe.
In this way the new vowel system had far-reaching consequences
and made linguists look upon many problems in a new light. It
should be noted, however, that the mechanical explanation of
apophony from difference in accent applies only to grade III, in
contradistinction to grades I and II ; the reason of the alter-
nation between the e of I and the o of II is by no means clear.
The investigations leading to the discovery of the palatal
law and the new theory of apophony were only a part of the
immense labour of a number of able linguists in the 'seventies
§2] NEW DISCOVERIES 98
and 'eighties, which cleared up many obscure points in Aryan
phonology and morphology. One of the most famous dis-
coveries was that of the Dane Karl Verner, that a whole series
of consonant alternations in the old Gothonic languages was
dependent on accent, and (more remarkable still) on the pri-
meval accent, preserved in its oldest form in Sanskrit only, and
differing from that of modern Gothonic languages in resting in
some instances on the ending and in others on the root. When
it was realized that the fact that German has t in vater, but d
in bruder, was due to a different accentuation of the two words
three or four thousand years ago, or that the difference between
s and r in E. was and were was connected with the fact that per-
fect singulars in Sanskrit are stressed on the root, but plurals on
the ending, this served not only to heighten respect for the
linguistic science that was able to demonstrate such truths, but
also to increase the feeling that the world of sounds was subject
to strict laws comparable to those of natural science.
IV.— § 3. Phonetic Laws and Analogy.
The ' blind ' operation of phonetic laws became the chief
tenet of a new school of ' young-grammarians ' or ' junggram-
matiker ' (Brugraann, Delbriick, Osthoff, Paul and others), who
somewhat noisily flourished their advance upon earlier linguists
and justly roused the anger not only of their own teachers,
including Curtius, but also of fellow-students like Johannes
Schmidt and Collitz. For some years a fierce discussion took
place on the principles of linguistic science, in which young-
grammarians tried to prove deductively the truth of their
favourite thesis that " Sound-laws admit of no exceptions "
(first, it seems, enounced by Leskien), Osthoff wrongly main-
tained that sound changes belonged to physiology and analogical
change to psychology ; but though that distribution of the two
kinds of change to two different domains was untenable, the
distinction in itself was important and proved a valuable,
though perhaps sometimes too easy instrument in the hands
of the historical grammarian. It was quite natural that those
who insisted on undeviating phonetic laws should turn their
attention to those cases in which forms appeared that did not
conform to these laws, and try to explain them ; and thus they
inevitably were led to recognize the immense importance of ana-
logical formations in the economy of all languages. Such forma-
tions had long been known, but little attention had been paid
to them, and they were generally termed ' false analogies ' and
looked upon as corruptions or inorganic formations found only
94 END OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [cii. iv
or chiefly in a degenerate age, in which the true meaning and
composition of the old forms was no longer understood. Men
like Curtius were scandalized at the younger school explaining
so many even of the noble forms of ancient Greek as due to this
upstart force of analogy. His opponents contended that the
name of ' false analogy ' was wrong and misleading : the analogy
in itself was perfect an^i was handled with unerring instinct in
each case. They likewise pointed out that analogical formations,
so far Irom being perversions of a late age, really represented one
of the vital principles of language, without which it could never
have come into existence.
One of the first to take the new point of view and to explain
it clearly was Hermann Paul. I quote from an early article
(as translated by Sweet, CP 112) the following passages, which
really struck a new note in linguistic theory :
" There is one simple fact which should never be left out of
sight, namely, that even in the parent Indogermanic language,
long before its split-up, there were no longer any roots, stems,
and suffixes, but only ready-inade words, which were employed
without the slightest thought of their composite nature. And
it is only of such ready-made words that the store is composed
from which everyone draws when he speaks. He has no stock
of stems and terminations at his disposal from which he could
construct the form required for each separate occasion. Not
that he must necessarily have heard and learnt by heart every
form he uses. This would, in fact, be impossible. He is, on the
contrary, able of himself to form cases of nouns, tenses of verbs, etc.,
which he has either never heard or else not noticed specially ;
but, as there is no combining of stem and suffix, this can only
be done on the pattern of the other ready-made combinations
which he has learnt from his fellows. These latter are first
learnt one by one, and then gradually associated into groups
which correspond to the grammatical categories, but are never
clearly conceived as such without special training. This grouping
not only greatly aids the memory, but also makes it possible to
produce other combinations. And this is what we call analogy."
" It is, therefore, clear that, while speaking, everj^one is
incessantly producing analogical forms. Reproduction by memory
and new -formation by means of association are its two indis-
pensable factors. It is a mistake to assume a language as given
in grammar and dictionary, that is, the whole body of possible
words and forms, as something concrete, and to forget that it
is nothing but an abstraction devoid of reality, and that the
actual language exists only in the individual, from whom it cannot
be separated even in scientific investigation, if we will understand
§3] PHONETIC LAWS AND ANALOGY 95
its nature and development. To comprehend the existence of
each separate spoken form, we must not ask ' Is it current in the
language '^ * or ' Is it conformable to the laws of the language
as deduced by the grammarians ? ' but ' Has he who has just
employed it previously had it in his memory, or has he formed
it himself for the first time, and, if so, according to what ana-
logy ? ' When, for instance, anyone employs the plural milben
in Grerman, it may be that he has learnt it from others, or else
that he has only heard the singular milbe, but knows that such
words as lerche, schwalbe, etc., form their plural lerchen, etc., so
that the association milbe-milben is unconsciously suggested to
him. He may also have heard the plural milben, but remembers
it so imperfectly that he would forget it entirely were it not
associated in his mind with a series of similar forms which help
him to recall it. It is, therefore, often difficult to determine the
share memory and creative fancy have had in each separate
case."
Linguists thus set about it seriously to think of language in
terms of speaking individuals, who have learnt their mother-
tongue in the ordinary way, and who now employ it in their
daily intercourse with other men and women, without in each
separate case knowing what they owe to others and what they
have to create on the spur of the moment. Just as Sokrates
fetched philosophy down from the skies, so also now linguists
fetched words and forms down from vocabularies and grammars
and placed them where their natural home is, in the minds and
on the lips of ordinary men who are neither lexicographers nor
grammarians, but who nevertheless master their language with
sufficient ease and correctness for all ordinary purposes. Linguists
now were confronted with some general problems which had not
greatly troubled their predecessors (with the solitary exception
of Bredsdorff, whose work was entirely overlooked), namely,
What are the causes of changes in language ? How are they
brought about, and how should they be classified ? Many
articles on these questions appeared in linguistic periodicals about
the year 1880, but the profoundest and fullest treatment was
found in a masterly book by H. Paul, Prinzipien der Sprack-
geschichte, the first edition of which (1880) exercised a very con-
siderable influence on linguistic thought, while the subsequent
editions were constantly enlarged and improved so as to contain
a wealth of carefully sifted material to illustrate the various pro-
cesses of linguistic change. It should also be noted that Paul
paid more and more attention to syntax, and that this part of
grammar, which had been neglected by Bopp and Schleicher
and their contemporaries, was about this time taken up by some
96 END OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. iv
of the leading linguists, who showed that the comparative and
historical method was capable of throwing a flood of light on
syntax no less than on morphology (Delbriick, Ziemer).
IV.— §4. General Tendencies.
While linguists in the 'eighties were taking up, as we have
scon, a great many questions of vast general importance that had
not been treated by the older generation, on the other hand they
were losing interest in some of the problems that had occupied
their predecessors. This was the case with the question of the
ultimate origin of grammatical endings. So late as 1869 Benfey
included among Bopp's ' brilliant discoveries ' his theory that
the s of the aorist and of the future was derived from the verb
as, ' to be,' and that the endings of the Latin imperfect -bam
and future -bo were from the synonymous verb fa = Sanskrit
bhu (Gesch 377), and the next year Raumer reckons the same
theories among Bopp's ' most important discoveries.' But soon
after this we see that speculations of this kind somehow go out
of fashion. One of the last books to indulge in them to any
extent is Scherer's once famous Zur Oeschichte der deutschen
Sprache (2nd ed., 1878), in the eighth chapter of which the writer
disports himself among primitive roots, endings, prepositions
and pronouns, which he identifies and differentiates with such
extreme boldness and confidence in his own wild fancies that
a sober-minded man of the twentieth century cannot but feel
dazed and giddy. The ablest linguists of the new school simply
left these theories aside: no new explanations of the same
description were advanced, and the old ones were not sub-
stantiated by the ascertained phenomena of living languages.
So much was found in these of the most absorbing interest that
scholars ceased to care for what might lie behind Proto-Aryan ;
some even went so far as to deprecate in strong expressions any
attempts at what they termed ' glottogonic ' theories. To these
matter-of-fact linguists all speculations as to the ultimate origin
of language were futile and nebulous, a verdict which might be
in no small degree justified by much of what had been written
on the subject by quasi-philosophers and quasi-linguists. The
aversion to these questions was shown as early as 1866, when
La Society de Linguistique was founded in Paris. Section 2 of
the statutes of the Society expressly states that " La Societe
n'admet aucune communication concernant, soit I'origine du
langage, soit la creation d'une langue universelle " — both of them
questions Avhich, as they can be treated in a scientific spirit,
should not bo left exclusively to dilettanti.
§4] GENERAL TENDENCIES 97
The last forty j^ears have Avitnessed an extraordinary activity
on the part of scholars in investigating all domains of the Aryan
languages in the light of the new general views and by the aid
of the methods that have now become common property.
Phonological investigations have no doubt had the lion's share
and have to a great extent been signalized by that real insight
into physiological phonetics which had been wanting in earlier
linguists ; but very much excellent work has also been done in
morphology, syntax and semantics ; and in all these domains
much has been gained by considering words not as mere isolated
imits, but as parts of sentences, or, better, of connected speech.
In phonetics more and more attention has been paid to sentence
phonetics and ' sandhi phenomena ' ; the heightened interest in
everytliing concerning ' accent ' (stress and pitch) has also led
to investigations of sentence-stress and sentence-melody ; the
intimate connexion between forms and their use or function in
the sentence, in other words their syntax, has been more and
more recognized ; and finally, if semantics (the study of the signi-
fications of words) has become a real science instead of being a
curiosity shop of isolated specimens, this has only been rendered
possible through seeing words as connected with other words to
form complete utterances. But this change of attitude could
not have been brought about unless linguists had studied texts
in the different languages to a far greater extent than had been
done in previous periods ; thus, naturally, the antagonism formerly
often felt between the linguistic and the purely philological study
of the same language has tended to disappear, and many scholars
have produced work both in their particular branch of linguistics
and in the corresponding philology. There can be no doubt that
this development has been profitable to both domains of scientific
activity.
Another beneficial change is the new attitude taken with
regard to the study of living speech. The science of linguistics
had long stood in the sign of Cancer and had been constantly
looking backwards — to its own great loss. Now, with the greater
stress laid on i)honetics and on the psychology of language, the
necessity of observing the phenomena of actual everyday speech
was more clearly perceived. Among pioneers in this respect I
must specially mention Henry Sweet ; now there is a steadily
growing interest in living speech as the necessary foundation of
all general theorizing. And with interest comes knowledge.
It is outside the purpose of this volume to give the history
of linguistic study during the last forty years in the same way
as I have attempted to give it for the period before 1880, and I
must therefore content myself with a few brief rcmajks on
7
98 END OF NINETEENTH CENTURY [ch. iv
general tendencies. I even withstand the temptation to try and
characterize the two greatest works on general linguistics that
have appeared during this period, those by Georg v. d. Gabelentz
and Wilhelm Wundt ; important and in many ways excellent
as they are, they have not exercised the same influence on con-
temporary linguistic research as some of their predecessors.
Personally I owe incomparably much more to the former than
to the latter, who is much less of a linguist than of a psychologist
and whose pages seem to me often richer in words than in fertil-
izing ideas. As for the rest, I can give only a bare alphabetical
list of some of the writers who during this period have dealt with
the more general problems of linguistic change or linguistic
theory, and must not attempt any appreciation of their works :
Bally, Baudouin de Courtenay, Bloomfield, Breal Delbriick, van
Ginneken, Hale, Henrj'-, Hirt, Axel Kock, Meillet Meringer, Noreen,
Oertel, Pedersen, Sandfeld (Jensen), de Saussure, Schuchardt,
Sechehaye, Streitberg, Sturtevant, Siitterlin, Sweet, Uhlenbeck,
Vossler, Wechssler. In the following parts of my work there
will be many opportunities of mentioning their views, especially
when I disagree with them, for I am afraid it will be impossible
always to indicate what I owe to their suggestions.
In the history of linguistic science we have seen in one period
a tendency to certain large sjmtheses (the classification of
languages into isolating, agglutinative and flexional, and the
corresponding theory of three periods with its corollary touching
the origin of flexional endings), and we have seen how these
syntheses were later discredited, though never actually disproved,
linguists contenting themselves with detailed comparisons and
explanations of single words, forms or sounds without troubling
about their ultimate origin or about the evolutionary tendencies
of the whole system or structure of language. The question may
therefore be raised, were Bopp and Schleicher wrong in attempt-
ing these large syntheses ? It would appear from the expressions
of some modern linguists that they thought that any such com-
prehensive generalization or any glottogonic theory were in itself
of evil. But this can never be admitted. Science, of its very
nature, aims at larger and larger generalizations, more and more
comprehensive formulas, so as finally to bring about that " uni-
fication of knowledge " of which Herbert Spencer speaks. It was
therefore quite right of the early linguists to propound those
great questions ; and their failure to solve them in a way that
could satisfj' the stricter demands of a later generation should
not be charged too heavily against them. It was also quite
right of thf^ moderns to reject their premature solutions (though
this Avas often done Avithout any adequate examination), but
§4] GENERAL TENDENCIES 99
it was decidedly wrong to put the questions out of court alto-
gether.^ These great questions have to be put over and over
again, till a complete solution is found ; and the refusal to face
these difficulties has produced a certain barrenness in modern
linguistics, which must strike any impartial observer, however
much he admits the fertility of the science in detailed investi-
gations. Breadth of vision is not conspicuous in modern
linguistics, and to my mind this lack is chiefly due to the fact
that linguists have neglected all problems connected with a
valuation of language. What is the criterion by which one word
or one form should be preferred to another ? (most linguists
refuse to deal with such questions of preference or of correctness
of speech). Are the changes that we see gradually taking place
in languages to be considered as on the whole beneficial or the
opposite ? (most linguists pooh-pooh such questions). Would it
be possible to construct an international language by which
persons in different countries could easily communicate with
one another ? (most linguists down to the present day have
looked upon all who favour such ideas as visionaries and Uto-
pians). It is my firm conviction that such questions as these
admit of really scientific treatment and should be submitted to
serious discussion. But before tackling those of them which
fall within the plan of this work, it will be well to deal with some
fundamental facts of what is popularly called the ' life ' of language,
and first of all with the manner in which a child acquires its
mother-tongue. For as language exists only in individuals and
means some specific activities of human beings which are not
inborn, but have to be learnt by each of them separately from
his fellow-beings, it is important to examine somewhat in detail
how this interaction of the individual and of the surrounding
society is brought about. This, then, will occupy us in Book II,
^ " Ea ist besger, bei solchen versuchen zu irren als gar nicht darQber
nachzudenken," Curtius, K 145.
BOOK II
THE CHILD
CHAPTER V
SOUNDS
§ 1. From Screaming to Talking. § 2. First Soimda. § 3. Sound-laws of
the Next Stage. § 4. Groups of Sounds. § 5. Mutilations and
Reduplications. § 6. CoiTection. § 7. Tone.
V. — §1. From Screaming to Talking.
A Danish philosopher has said : " In his whole life man achieves
nothing so great and so wonderful as what he achieved when he
learnt to talk." When Darwin was asked in which three years
of his life a man learnt most, he said : " The first three."
A child's linguistic development covers three periods — the
screaming time, the crowing or babbling time, and the talking
time. But the last is a long one, and must again be divided into
two periods — that of the " little language," the child's own
language, and that of the common language or language of the
community. In the former the child is linguistically an indi-
vidualist, in the latter he is more and more socialized.
Of the screaming time little need be said. A child's scream
is not uttered primarily as a means of conveying anything to
others, and so far is not properly to be called speech. But if
from the child's side a scream is not a wajj" of telling anything,
its elders may still read something in it and hurry to relieve the
trouble. And if the child comes to remark — as it soon will —
that whenever it cries someone comes and brings it something
pleasant, if only company, it will not be long till it makes use of
this instrument whenever it is uneasy or wants something. The
scream, which was at first a reflex action, is now a voluntary action.
And many parents have discovered that the child has learnt to
use its power of screaming to exercise a t^Tannical power over
them — so that they have had to walk up and down all night with
a screaming child that prefers this way of spending the night to
lying quietly in its cradle. The onlj' course is brutally to let the
baby scream till it is tired, and persist in never letting it get its
desire because it screams for it, but only because what it desires
is good for it. The child learns its lesson, and a scream is once
more what it was at first, an involuntary, irresistible result of the
fact that something is wrong.
103
104. SOUNDS [CH. V
Screaming has, however, another side. It is of plij'siological
vahie as an exercise of all the muscles and ajipliances whicli are
afterwards to be called into play for speech and song. Nurses
say — and there may be something in it — that the child who screams
loudest as a baby becomes the best singer later.
Babbling time produces pleasanter sounds which are more
adapted for the purposes of speech. Cooing, crowing, babbling —
i.e. uttering meaningless sounds and series of sounds — is a delightful
exercise like sprawling with outstretched arms and legs or trying
to move the tiny fingers. It has been well said that for a long
time a child's dearest toy is its tongue — that is, of course, not the
tongue only, but the other organs of speech as well, especially
the lips and vocal chords. At first the movements of these organs
are as uncontrolled as those of the arms, but gradually they become
more systematic, and the boy knows what sound he wishes to
utter and is in a position to produce it exactly.
First, then, come single vowels or vowels with a single consonant
preceding them, as la, ra, Id, etc., though a baby's sounds cannot
be identified with any of om's or written down with our letters.
For, though the head and consequently the mouth capacit}' is
disprojiortionally great in an infant and grows more rapidly than
its limbs, there is still a great difiference between its mouth capacity
and that required to utter normal speech-sounds. I have else-
where (PhG, p. 81 ff.) given the results of a series of measurings
of the jaw in children and adults and discussed the importance
of these figures for phonetic theory : while there is no growth of
any importance during the talking period (for a child of five may
have the same jaw-length as a man of thirty-seven), the growth
is enormous during the first months of a child's life : in the case
of my own child, from 45 mm. a few daj^s after birth to 60 mm.
at three months old and 75 mm. at eleven months, while the
average of grown-up men is 99 mm. and of women 93 mm. The
consequence is that the sounds of the baby are different from
ours, and that even when they resemble ours the mechanism of
production may be different from the normal one ; when my son
during the first weeks said something like la, I was able to see
distinctly that the tip of the tongue was not at all in the position
required for our /. This want of congruence between the acoustic
manners of operation in the infant and the adult no doubt gives
us the key to many of the difficulties that have puzzled previous
observers of small children.
Babbling or crowing begins not earlier than the third week ;
it may be, not till the seventh or eighth week. The first sound
exercises are to be regarded as muscular exercises pure and simple,
as is clear from the fact that deaf-mutes amuse themselves with
§1] FROM SCREAMING TO TALKING 105
them, although they cannot themselves hear them. But the
moment comes when tlie hearing child finds a pleasure in hearing
its own sounds, and a most important step is taken when the little
one begins to hear a resemblance between the sounds uttered
by its mother or nurse and its own. The mother will naturally
answer the baby's syllables by repeating the same, and when the
baby recognizes the likeness, it secures an inexhaustible source
of pleasure, and after some time reaches the next stage, when it
tries itself to imitate what is said to it (generally towards the
close of the first year). The value of this exercise cannot be
over-estimated : the more that parents understand how to play
this game with the baby — of saying something and letting the
baby say it after, however meaningless the syllable-sequences that
they make — the better will be the foundation for the child's later
acquisition and command of language.
v.— § 2. First Sounds,
It is generally said that the order in which the child learns
to utter the different sounds depends on their difficulty : the easiest
sounds are produced first. That is no doubt true in the main ;
but when we go into details we find that different writers bring
forward lists of sounds in different order. All are agreed, however,
that among the consonants the labials, j), b and 7/i,*are early sounds,
if not the earliest. The explanation has been given that the child
can see the working of his mother's lips in these sounds and there-
fore imitates her movements. This implies far too much conscious
thought on the part of the baby, who utters his ' ma ' or ' mo '
before he begins to imitate anything said to him by his surroundings.
Moreover, it has been pointed out that the child's attention is
hardly ever given to its mother's mouth, but is steadily fixed
on her eyes. The real reason is probably that the labial muscles
nsed to produce b or tn are the same that the baby has exercised
in sucking the breast or the bottle. It would be interesting to
learn if blind children also produce the labial sounds first.
Along with the labial sounds the baby produces many other
sounds — vowel and consonant — and in these cases one is certain
that it has not been able to see how these sounds are produced
by its mother. Even in the case of the labials we know that
what distinguishes m from 6, the lowering of the soft palate, and
b from p, the vibrations of the vocal chords, is invisible. Some
of the sounds produced by means of the tongue may be too hard
to pronounce till the muscles of the tongue have been exercised
in consequence of the child having begun to eat more solid things
than milk.
106 SOUNDS [CH. V
By the end of the first year the number of sounds which the
little babbler has mastered is already considerable, and he loves
to combine long scries of the same syllables, dadadada . . .,
nenenene . . . , bygnbygnbygn . . . , etc. That is a game which
need not even cease when the child is able to talk actual language.
It is strange that among an infant's sounds one can often detect
sounds — for instance k, g, h, and uvular r — which the child will find
difficulty in producing afterwards when they occur in real words,
or which may be unknown to the language which it will some day
speak. The explanation lies probably in the difference between
doing a thing in play or without a plan — when it is immaterial
which movement (sound) is made — and doing the same thing of
fixed intention when this sound, and this sound only, is required,
at a definite point in the syllable, and with this or that particular
sound before and after. Accordingly, great difficulties come to
be encountered when the child begins more consciously^ and syste-
maticall}' to imitate his elders. Some sounds come without effort
and may be used incessantly, to the detriment of others which
the child may have been able previously to produce in play ; and
a time even comes when the stock of sounds actually diminishes,
while particular sounds acquire greater precision. Dancing masters,
singing masters and gymnastic teachers have similar experiences.
After some lessons the child may seem more awkward than it was
before the lessons began.
The ' little language ' which the child makes for itself by
imperfect imitation of the sounds of its elders seems so arbitrary
that it may well be compared to the child's first rude drawings
of men and animals. A Danish boy named Gustav (1.6)^ called
himself [dodado] and turned the name Karoline into [nnn]. Other
Danish children made skammel into [gramn] or [gap], elefant into
fvat], Karen into [gaja], etc. A few examples from English
children: Hilary M. (1.6) called Ireland (her sister) [a'ni],
Gordon M. (1.10) called Millicent (his sister) [dadu]. Tony E.
(1.11) called his playmate Sheila [dubabud].
v.— § 3. Sound-laws of the Next Stage.
As the child gets away from the peculiarities of his individual
' little language,' his speech becomes more regular, and a linguist
can in many cases see reasons for his distortions of normal w^ords.
When he replaces one sound by another there is always some
common element in the formation of the two sounds, Avhich causes
^ In this book the age of a child is indicated by stating the number of
years and months completed: 1.6 thus means "in the seventh month of
the second year," etc.
§3] SOUND-LAWS OF THE NEXT STAGE 107
a kindred impression on the ear, though tve may have difficulty
in detecting it because we are so accustomed to noticing the
difference. There is generally a certain system in the sound
substitutions of children, and in many instances we are justified
in speaking of ' strictly observed sound-laws.' Let us now look
at some of these.
Children in all countries tend to substitute [t] for [k] : both
sounds are produced by a complete stoppage of the breath for the
moment by the tongue, the only difference being that it is the
back of the tongue which acts in one case, and the tip of
the tongue in the other. A child who substitutes t for k will
also substitute d for g ; if he says ' tat ' for ' cat ' he will say
' do ' for ' go.'
i? is a difficult sound. Hilary M. (2.0) has no r's in her speech.
Initially they become w, as in [wau] for 'run,' medially between
vowels they become I, as in [veli, beli] for ' very, berry,' in conso-
nantal combinations they are lost, as in [kai, bA/"] for ' cry,
brush.' Tony E. (1.10 to 3.0) for medial r between vowels first
substituted d, as in [vedi] for ' very,' and later g [vegi] ; similarly
in [mu-gi] for ' Muriel,' [tsegi] for ' carry ' ; he often dropped
initial r, e.g. oom for 'room.' It is not unusual for children who
use w for r in most combinations to say [t/] for tr and [d5] for dr,
as in ' chee,' ' jawer ' for 'tree,' 'drawer.' This illustrates the
fact that what to us is one sound, and therefore represented in
writing by one letter, appears to the child's ear as different sounds
— and generally the phonetician will agree with the child that
there are really differences in the articulation of the sound according
to position in the syllable and to surroundings, only the child
exaggerates the dissimilarities, just as we in writing one and the
same letter exaggerate the similarity.
The two th sounds offer some difficulties and are often imitated
as / and v respectively, as in ' frow ' and ' muvver ' for ' throw '
and 'mother'; others say ' ze ' or ' de ' for 'the.' Hilary M.
(2.0) has great difficulty with th and s ; th usually becomes [/],
[be/, ti/, /ri] for 'Beth,' 'teeth,' 'three'; s becomes [/],
e.g. [fran/i/, firm.] for ' Francis,' ' steam ' ; in the same way
z becomes [5] as in [Ubs, bou5] for ' loves,' ' Bowes ' ; sw becomes
[fw] as in [Ivfirj, fwit] for ' swing,' ' sweet.' She drops I in conso-
nantal combinations, e.g. [ki'n, kaim, kok, /ip] for ' clean,'
'climb,' 'clock,' 'sleep.'
Sometimes it requires a phonetician's knowledge to understand
the individual sound-laws of a child. Thus I pick out from some
specimens given by O'Shea, p. 135 f. (girl, 2.9), the following
words : pell (smell), teeze (sneeze), poke (smoke), tow (snow), and
formulate the rule : « -f- a nasal became the voiceless stop corre-
108 SOUNDS [cii. V
spending to the nasal, a kind of assimilation, in vhich the place
of articulation and the mouth-closure of the nasals were preserved,
and the sound was made unvoiced and non-nasal as the s. In
other combinations m and 7i were intact.
Some further faults are illustrated in Tony E.'s [t/ouz, pAg,
pus, taem, pAm, bask, pi'z, nous, ok, es, u'] for clothes, plug, imsh,
tram, plum, black, please, nose, clock, yes, you.
V. — §4. Groups of Sounds.
Even when a sound by itself can be pronounced, the child
often finds it hard to pronounce it when it forms part of a group
of sounds. 8 is often drojDped before another consonant, as in
' tummy ' for ' stomach.' Other examples have already been
given above, Hilary M. (2.0) had difficulty with Ip and said
[haepl] for ' help.' She also said [ointon] for ' ointment ' ;
C. M. L. (2.3) said ' sikkums ' for 'sixpence.' Tony E. (2.0)
turns grannie into [nsegi]. When initial consonant groups are
simplified, it is generally, though not always, the stop that remains :
b instead of bl-, br-, k instead of kr-, sk-, skr-, p instead of pi-, pr-,
sjir-, etc. For the groups occurring medially and finally no general
rule seems possible.
V. — § 5. Mutilations and Reduplications.
To begin Avith, the child is unable to master long sequences
of syllables ; he prefers monosyllables and often emits them singly
and separated by pauses. Even in words that to us are inseparable
wholes some children will make breaks between syllables, e.g.
Shef-field, Ing-land. But more often they will give only part
of the word, generally the last syllable or syllables ; hence we get
pet-names like Bet or Beth for Elizabeth and forms like ' tatoes '
for potatoes, ' chine ' for machine, ' tina ' for concertina, ' tash '
for moustache, etc. Hilary M. (1.10) called an express-cart a
press-cart, bananas and pyjamas nanas and jamas.
It is not, however, the production of long sequences of syllables
in itself that is difficult to the child, for in its meaningless babbling
it may begin very early to pronounce long strings of sounds without
any break ; but the difficulty is to remember what sounds have
to be put together to bring about exactly this or that word. We
grown-up people may experience just the same sort of difficulty
if after hearing once the long name of a Bulgarian minister or a
Sanskrit book we are required to repeat it at once. Hence we should
not wonder at such pronunciations as [pekalout] for petticoat or
[efebnt] for elephant (Beth M., 2.C) ; Hilary M. called a caterpillar
§5] MUTILATIONS AND REDUPLICATIONS 109
a pillarcat. Other transpositions are serreval for several and ocken
for uncle ; cf. also ivops for wasp.
To explain the frequent reduplications found in children's
language it is not necessary, as some learned authors have done,
to refer to the great number of reduplicated words in the languages
of primitive tribes and to see in the same phenomenon in our own
children an atavistic return to primitive conditions, on the Hiickelian
assumption that the development of each individual has to pass
rapidly through the same (' phylogenetic ') stages as the whole
lineage of his ancestors. It is simpler and more natural to refer
these reduplications to the pleasure always felt in repeating the
same muscular action until one is tired. The child will repeat
over and over again the same movements of legs and arms, and
we do the same when we wave our hand or a handkerchief or when
we nod our head several times to signify assent, etc. When we
laugh we repeat the same syllable consisting of h and a more or
less indistinct vowel, and when we sing a melody without words
we are apt to ' reduplicate ' indefiniteh'. Thus also with the
little ones. Apart from such words as papa and mamma, to which
we shall have to revert in another chapter (VIII, § 9), children
will often form words from those of their elders by repeating one
syllable ; cf. pt'ff-puff, gee-gee. Tracy (p. 132) records pepe for
'pencil,' kaka for 'Carrie,' For a few weeks (1.11) Hilary M.
reduplicated whole words, e.g. king-king, ring-ring (i.e. bell),
water-water. Tony F. (1.10) uses [touto] for his own name.
Hence pet-names like Dodo ; they are extremely frequent in French
— for instance, Fifine, Lolotie, Lolo, Mimi ; the name Daudet has
arisen in a similar waj^ from Clatidet, a diminutive of Claude.
It is a similar phenomenon (a kind of partial reduplication)
when sounds at a distance affect one another, as when Hilarj' M.
(2.0) said [gogi] for doggie, [bobin] for Dobbin, [dezman din] for
Jesmond Dene, [baikikl] for bicycle, [kekl] for kettle. Tracy (p. 133)
mentions 60^00 for ' bottle,' in which 00 stands for the hollow
sound of syllabic I. One correspondent mentions ivhoofing-covgh
for ' whooping-cough ' (where the final sound has crept into the
first word) and chicken-pops for ' chicken-pox.' Some children
say ' aneneme ' for anemone; and in S. L. (4.9) this caused a
curious confusion during the recent war: "Mother, there must
be two sorts of anenemies, flowers and Germans."
Dr. Henry Bradley once told me that his youngest child had
a difficulty with the name Connie, which was made alternatingly
[toni] and [ko^i], in both cases with two consonants articulated
at the same point. Similar instances are mentioned in German
books on children's language, thus gigarr for ' zigarre,' baibift
110 SOUNDS [en. v
for ' bleistift,' autobobil (Meringer),^ fotofafieren (Stern), ambam
for ' armband,' dan for ' dame,' jpajp for ' patte ' (Ronjat). I
have given many Danish examples in my Danish book. Gram-
mont's child (see Milangca linguistiques offerts d A. MeiUet, 1902)
carried through these changes in a most systematic way.
V. — §6. Correction.
The time comes when the child corrects his mistakes — where
it said 'tat' it now says 'cat.' Here there are two possibilities
which both seem to occur in actual life. One is that the cliild
hears the correct sound some time before he is able to imitate it
correctly ; he will thus still say t for k, though he may in some
way object to other people saying ' turn ' for ' come.' Passy
relates how a little French girl would say tosson both for gar^on
and cochon; but she protested when anybody else said " C'est
un petit cochon " in speaking about a boy, or vice versa. Such
a child, as soon as it can produce the new sound, puts it correctly
into all the places where it is required. This, I take it, is the
ordinary procedure. Frans (my own boy) could not pronounce
h and said an, on for the Danish pronouns han, hun ; but when
he began to pronounce this sound, he never misplaced it (2.4).
The other possibility is that the child learns how to pronounce
the new sound at a time when its o^^ti acoustic impression is not
yet quite settled ; in that case there will be a period during which
his use of the new sound is uncertain and fluctuating. When
parents are in too great a hurry to get a child out of some false
pronunciation, they may succeed in giving it a new sound, but
the child will tend to introduce it in places where it does not belong.
On the whole, it seems therefore the safest plan to leave it to the
child itself to discover that its sound is not the correct one.
Sometimes a child will acquire a sound or a sound combination
correctly and then lose it till it reappears a few months later.
In an English family where there was no question of the influence
of A-less servants, each child in succession passed through an 7i-Iess
period, and one of the children, after pronouncing h correctly,
lost the use of it altogether for two or three months. I have
had similar experiences viith Danish children. S. L. (ab. 2) said
' bontin ' for bonnet ; but five months earlier she had said bonnet
correctly.
The path to perfection is not alwa3^s a straight one. Tonj- E.
in order to arrive at the correct pronunciation of 'please passed
through the following stages : (1) [bi-], (2) [bli-j, (3) [pi'z],
* An American child said atUonohile [otonobi'l] with partial assimilation
of m to the point-stop t.
§ 6] CORRECTION 111
(4) [p\vi-5], (5) [beisk, meis, mais] and several other impossible
forms. Tracy (p. 139) gives the following forms through which
the boy A. (1.5) had to pass before being able to say pussy : poohch,
j)Oofie, poopoohie, poofee. A French child had four forms [nieni,
peti, meti, mesi] before being able to say merci correctly (Gram-
mont). A Danish child passed through bejab and vamb before
pronouncing svamp (' sponge '), etc.
It is certain that all this while the little brain is working, and
even consciously working, though at first it has not sufficient
command of speech to say anything about it. Meringer sa^'s that
children do not practise, but that their new acquisitions of sounds
happen at once without any visible preparation. He may be right
in the main with regard to the learning of single sounds, though
even there I incline to doubt the possibility of a universal rule ;
but Ronjat (p. 55) is certainly right as against Meringer with
regard to the way in which children learn new and difficult com-
binations. Here they certainly do practise, and are proudly
conscious of the happy results of their efforts. When Frans (2.11)
mastered the combination fl, he was very proud, and asked his
mother : " Mother, can you B&,y fiyve ? " ; then he came to me and
told me that he could say bluse and fine, and when asked whether
he could saj' blad, he answered : " No, not j'et ; Frans cannot
say b-Jad " (with a little interval between the b and the I). Five
weeks later he said : " Mother, won't j'ou play upon the klaver
(piano) ? " and after a little while, " Frans can say kla so well."
About the same time he first misj)ronounced the word manchetter,
and then (when I asked what he was sa5ing, without telling him
that anything w^as WTong) he gave it the correct sound, and I
heard him afterwards in the adjoining room repeat the word to
himself in a whisper.
How well children observe sounds is again seen by the way
in which they 'oill correct their elders if they give a pronunciation
to Avhich they are not accustomed — for instance, in a verse the3*
have learnt by heart. Beth M (2.6) was never satisfied with her
parents' pronunciation of " What will you buy me when you get
there ? " She always insisted on their gabbling the first M'ords
as quickly as they could and then coming out with an emphatic
there.
v.— § 7. Tone.
As to the differences in the tone of a voice, even a baby shows
by his expression that he can distinguish clearly between what
is said to him lovingly and what sharply, a long time before he
understands a single word of what is said. Many children are
112 SOUNDS [CH. V
able at a very early age to hit off the exact note in which some-
thing is said or sung. Here is a story of a boy of more advanced
age. In Copenhagen he had had his hair cut by a Swedish lady
and did not like it. When he travelled with his mother to Norway,
as soon as he entered tlie house, he broke out with a scream :
" Mother, I hope I'm not going to have my hair cut ? " He had
noticed the Norwegian intonation, which is very like the Swedish,
and it brought an unpleasant association of ideas.
CHAPTER VI
WORDS
§ 1. Introductory, § 2. First Period. § 3. Father and Mother. § 4. The
DeUmitation of Meaning. § 5. Numerals. Time. § 6. Various Diffi-
culties. § 7. Shifters. § 8. Extent of Vocabulary. § 9. Siunmary.
VI. — §1. Introductory.
In the preceding chapter, in order to simphfy matters, we have
dealt with sounds only, as if they were learnt by themselves and
independently of the meanings attached to them. But that, of
course, is only an abstraction : to the child, as well as to the
grown-up, the two elements, the outer, phonetic element, and the
inner element, the meaning, of a w^ord are indissolubly connected,
and the child has no interest, or very little interest^ in trying to
imitate the sounds of its parents except just in so far as these
mean something, ffhat words have a meaning, the child will
begin to perceive at a very early age. Parents may of course
deceive themselves and attribute to the child a more complete
and exact understanding of speech than the child is capable of.
That the child looks at its father when it hears the word ' father,'
may mean at first nothing more than that it follows its mother's
glance ; but naturally in this way it is prepared for actually asso-
ciating the idea of ' father ' with the sound. If the child learns
the feat of lifting its arms when it is asked " How big is the boy ? "
it is not to be supposed that the single words of the sentence are
understood, or that the child has any conception of size ; he only
knows that when this series of sounds is said he is admired if he
lifts his arms up : and so the sentence as a whole has the effect
of a word of command. A dog has the same degree of under-
standing. Hilary M. (1.0), when you said to her at any time the
refrain " He greeted me so," from " Here come three knights from
Spain," would bow and salute with her hand, as she had seen some
children doing it when practising the song.
The. understanding of what is said always precedes the power
of saj'ing the same thing oneself — often precedes it for an extra-
ordinarily long time. One father notes that his little daughter
of a year and seven months brings what is wanted and understands
questions while she cannot say a word. It often happens that
8 113
114 WORDS [CH. VI
parents some tine claj' come to regret what they have said in the
presence of a child without suspecting how much it understands.
" Little pitchers have long ears."
One can, however, easily err in regard to the range and cer-
tainty of a child's understanding. The Swiss philologist Tappolet
noticed that his child of six months, when he said '" Where is the
window ? " made vague movements towards the window. He
made the expeiiment of repeating his question in French — with
the same intonation as in German, and the child acted just as it
had done before. It is, projjerly si:)eaking, only when the child
begins to talk that we can be at all sure what it has really under-
stood, and even then it may at times be difficult to sound the
depths of the child's conception.
The child's acquisition of the meaning of words is truly a highly
complicated affair. How many things arc comprehended under
one word ? The answer is not easy in all cases. The single Danish
word keppe covers all that is expressed in English by carpet, rug,
blanket, counterpane, curtain (theatrical). And there is still
more complication when Ave come to abstract ideas. The child
has somehow to find out for himself with regard to his own lan-
guage what ideas are considered to hang together and so come
under the same word. He hears the word ' chair ' applied to
a particular chaii", then to another chair that perhaps looks to
him totally different, and again to a third : and it becomes his
business to group these together.
What Stern tells about his own boy is certainly exceptional,
perhaps unique. The boy ran to a door and said das ^ (' That ? '
— his way of asking the name of a thing). They told him ' tiir.'
He then Avent to two other doors in the room, and each time the
performance was repeated. He then did the same with the seven
chairs in the room. Stern saj^s, ''As he thus makes sure that
the objects that are alike to his eye and to his sense of touch have
also the same name, he is on his way to general conceptions."
We should, hoAvever, be Avary of attributing general ideas to little
children.
VI.— § 2. First Period.
In the first jieriod Ave meet the same phenomena in the child's
acquisition of Avord-meanings that Ave found in his acquisition of
sounds. A child develops conceptions of his OAvn Avhich are as
unintelligible and strange to the uninitiated as his sounds.
Among the child's first passions are animals and pictures of
animals, but for a certain time it is quite arbitrary what animals
are classed together under a particular name. A child of nine
§2] FIRST PERIOD 115
months noticed that his grandfather's dog said ' bow-wow ' and
fancied that anything not human could say (and therefore should
be called) bow-wow — pigs and horses included. A little girl of
two called a horse he (Danish hest) and divided the animal kingdom
into two groups, (1) horses, including all four-footed things, even
a tortoise, and (2) fishes (pronounced iz), including r\ll that moved
without use of feet, for example, birds and flies. A boy of 1.8
saw a picture of a Danish priest in a ruflf and was told that it was
a prcest, which he rendered as beep. Afterwards seeing a jiicture
of an aunt with a white collar which recalled the priest's ruff, he
said again beep, and this remained the name of the aunt, and even
of another aunt, who was called ' other bsej).' These transfer-
ences are sometimes extraordinary. A boy who had had a pig
drawn for him, the pig being called of, at the age of 1.6 used of
(1) for a pig, (2) for drawing a pig, (3) for writing in general.
Such transferences may seem very absurd, but are not more
so than some transferences occurring in the language of grown-up
persons. The word Tripos passed from the sense of a three-legged
stool to the man who sat on a three-legged stool to dispute with
candidates for degrees at Cambridge. Then, as it was the duty
of ]Mr. Tripos also to provide comic verses, these were called tripos
verses, such verses being printed under that name till very near
the end of the nineteenth century, though IVIi-. Tripos himself had
disappeared long ago. And as the examination list was printed
on the back of these verses, it was called the Tripos list, and it
was no far cry to saying of a successful candidate, " he stands
high on the Tripos," which now came to mean the examination
itself.
But to return to the classifications in the minds of the children.
Hilary M. (1.6 to 2.0) used the word daisy (1) of the flower itself,
(2) of any flower, (3) of an}'- conventional flower in a pattern,
(4) of any pattern. One of the first words she said was colour
(1.4), and she got into a way of saying it when anything striking
attracted her attention. Originally she heard the word of a
bright patch of colour in a picture. The word was still in use
at the age of two. For some months anything that moved was
a fly, every man was a soldier, everybody that was not a man
was a baby. S. L. (1.8) used ting (1) for a door, (2) for bricks
or building with bricks. The connexion is through the bang
of a door or a tumbling castle of bricks, but the name was trans-
ferred to the objects. It is curious that at 1.3 she had the word
bang for anji:hing dropped, but not bing ; at 1.8 she had both,
bing being specialized as above. From books about children's
language I quote two illustrations. Ronjat's son used the word
papement, which stands for ' kaffemensch,' in speaking about the
IIG WORDS [CH. VI
grocer's boy who brought coffee ; but as he had a kind of uniform
with a flat cap, papement was also used of German and Russian
officers in the illustrated papers. Hilde Stern (1.9) used bichu
for drawer or chest of drawers ; it originated in the word biicher
(books), which was said when her picture-books were taken out
of the drawer.
A warning is, however, necessary. When a grown-up person
says that a child uses the same word to denote various things,
he is apt to assume that the child gives a word two or three definite
meanings, as he does. The process is rather in this way. A child
has got a new toy, a horse, and at the same time has heard its
elders use the word ' horse,' which it has imitated as well as it
can. It now associates the word with the delight of playing with
its toy. If the next day it says the same sound, and its friends
give it the horse, the child gains the experience that the sound
brings the fulfilment of its wish : but if it sets its eye on a china
cow and utters the same sound, the father takes note that tlie
sound also denotes a cow, while for the child it is perhaps a mere
experiment — '" Could not I get my wish for that nice thing fulfilled
in the same way ? " If it succeeds, the experiment may very well
be repeated, and the more or less faulty imitation of the word
' horse ' thus bj^ the co-operation of those around it may become
also firmly attached to ' cow.'
When Elsa B. (1.10), on seeing the stopper of a bottle in the
garden, came out with the word ' beer,' it would be rash to conclude
(as her father did) that the word ' beer ' to her meant a ' stopper ' :
all we know is that her thoughts had taken that direction, and
that some time before, on seeing a stopper, she had heard the
word ' beer.'
Parents sometimes unconsciously lead a child into error about
the use of words. A little nephew of mine asked to taste his
father's beer, and when refused made so much to-do that the
father said, " Come, let us have peace in the house." Next day,
under the same circumstances, the boy asked for ' peace in the
house,' and this became the family name for beer. Not infre-
quently what is said on certain occasions is taken by the child to
be the name of some object concerned ; thus a sniff or some sound
imitating it may come to mean a flower, and ' hurrah ' a flag.
S. L. from an early age was fond of flowers, and at 1.8 used
' pretty ' or ' pretty-pretty ' as a substantive instead of the word
' flower,' which she learnt at 1.10.
I may mention here that analogous mistakes may occur Avhen
missionaries or others write down words from foreign languages
with which they are not familiar. In the oldest list of Green-
landic words (of 1587) there is thus a word ixmygmah given with
§2] FIRST PERIOD 117
the signification ' needle ' ; as a matter of fact it means ' my
daughter's ' : the Englishman pointed at the needle, but the
Eskimo thought he wanted to know whom it belonged to. In an
old list of words in the now extinct Polabian language we find
^' scumbe, yesterday, subuda, to-day, jamdigh'a, to-morrow": the
questions were put on a Satiirday, and the Slav answered accord-
ingly, for subuta (the same word as Sabbath) means Saturday,
skumpe 'fasting-day,' and ja nediJa 'it is Sunday.'
According to Shea (p. 131) "a child Avas greatly impressed
with the horns of a buck the first time he saw him. The father
used the term ' sheep ' several times while the creature was being
inspected, and it was discovered afterwards that the child had
made the association between the word and the animal's horns,
so now sheep signifies primarily horns, whether seen in pictures
or in real life." It is clear that mistakes of that kind will happen
more readily if the Avord is said singly than Avhen it is embodied
in whole connected sentences : the latter method is on the whole
preferable for many reasons.
VI.— § 3. Father and Mother.
A child is often faced by some linguistic usage which obliges
him again and again to change his notions, widen them, narrow
them, till he succeeds in giving words the same range of meaning
that his elders give them.
Frequently, perhaps most frequently, a word is at first for
the child a proper name. ' Wood ' means not a wood in general,
but the particular picture which has been pointed out to the child
in the dining-room. The little girl who calls her mother's black
muff ' muff,' but refuses to transfer the word to her own white
one, is at the same stage. Naturally, then, the word father when
first heard is a proper name, the name of the child's own father.
But soon it must be extended to other individuals who have some-
thing or other in common with the child's father. One child will
use it of all tnen, another perhaps of all men with beards, while
' lady ' is applied to all pictures of faces AAdthout beards ; a third
will apply the word to father, mother and grandfather. When
the child itself applies the word to another man it is soon corrected,
but at the same time it cannot avoid hearing another child call
a strange man ' father ' or getting to know that the gardener is
Jack's ' father,' etc. The word then comes to mean to the child
' a groA\Ti-up person who goes with or belongs to a little one,'
and he will say, " See, there goes a dog with his father." Or, he
comes to know that the cat is the kittens' father, and the dog the
puppies' father, and next day asks, " Wasps, are they the flies'
118 WORDS [cH. VI
father, or are they perhaps their mother ? " (as Frans did, 4.10).
Finally, by such guessing and drawing conclusions he gains full
understanding of the word, and is ready to make acquaintance
later with its more remote applications, as ' The King is the
father of his people ; Father O'Flynn ; Boyle was the father of
chemistry,' etc.
Difficulties are caused to the child when its father puts him-
self on the child's plane and calls his wife ' mother ' just as he
calls his own mother ' mother,' though at other moments the
child hears him call her 'grandmother' or 'grannie.' Professor
Sturtevant writes to me that a neighbour child, a girl of about
five years, called out to him, " I saw your girl and your mother,"
meaning ' your daughter and your wife.' In many families the
words ' sister ' (' Sissie ') or ' brother ' are used constantly instead
of his or her real name. Here we see the reason why so often such
names of relations change their meaning in the history of lan-
guages ; G. vetter probably at first meant ' father's brother,' as
it corresponds to Latin patruus ; G. base, from ' father's sister,'
came to mean also ' mother's sister,' ' niece ' and ' cousin.' The
word that corresponds etymologically to our mother has come
to mean ' wife ' or ' woman ' in Lithuanian and ' sister ' in
Albanian.
The same extension that we saw in the case of ' father ' now
may take place with real proper names. Tony E. (3.5), when a
fresh charwoman came, told his mother not to have this Mary :
the last charwoman's name was Mary.^ In exactlj' the same way
a Danish child applied the name of their servant, Ingeborg, as
a general word for servant : " Auntie's Ingeborg is called Ann,"
etc., and a German girl said viele Aiigiisten for ' manj' girls.' This,
of course, is the way in which doll has come to mean a ' toy baby,'
and we use the same extension when we say of a statesman that
he is no Bismarck, etc.
VI. — §4. The Delimitation of Meaning.
The association of a word with its meaning is accomplished
for the child by a series of single incidents, and as many words
are understood only by the help of the situation, it is natui'al that
the exact force of many of them is not seized at once. A boy of
4.10, hearing that his father had seen the lung, inquii-ed, " Has
he a head at both ends ? " — his conception of a king being derived
from playing-cards. Another child was born on what the Danes
call Constitution Day, the consequence being that he confused
birthday and Constitution Day, and would speak of " my Consti-
> Cf. Beach-la-Mar, below, Ch. XII § 1.
§4] THE DELIMITATION OF MEANING 119
tution Day," and tlien his brother and sister also began to talk of
their Constitution DaJ^
Hilary M. (2.0) and Murdoch D. (2.6) used dinner, breakfast
and tea interchangeabl}^ — the words might be translated ' meal.'
Other more or less similar confusions may be mentioned here.
Tony F. (2.8) used the term sing for (1) reading, (2) singing, (3)
any game in which his elders amused him. Hilary said indifferenth',
' Daddy, sing a story three bears,' and ' Daddy, tell a storj^ three
bears.' She cannot remember which is knife and which is fork.
Beth M. (2.6) always used can't when she meant won't. It meant
simply refusal to do what she did not want to.
VI. — § 5. Numerals. Time.
It is interesting to watch the way in which arithmetical notions
grow in extent and clearness. Many children learn very early
to say one, two, which is often said to them when they learn how
to walk ; but no ideas are associated with these syllables. In the
same wa3' manj'- children are di'illed to say three when the parents
begin with 07ie, two, etc. The idea of plurality is gradually deve-
loped, but a child may very well answer two when asked how many
fingers papa has ; Frans used the combinations some-two and
some-three to express 'more than one ' (2.4). At the age of 2.11
he was very fond of counting, but while he always got the first
four numbers right, he would skip over 5 and 7 ; and when asked
to count the apples in a bowl, he would say rapidly 1-2-3-4, even
if there were only three, or stop at 3, even if there were five or
more. At 3.4 he counted objects as far as 10 correctly, but might
easily pass from 11 to 13, and if the things to be counted were not
placed in a row he was apt to bungle by moving his fingers irregu-
larly from one to another. When he was 3.8 he answered the
question " What do 2 and 2 make ? " quite correctly, but next day
to the same question he answered " Three," though in a doubtful
tone of voice. This was in the spring, and next month I noted :
*' His sense of number is evidently weaker than it was : the open-
air life makes him forget this as well as all the verses he knew by
heart in the winter." When the next winter came his counting
exercises again amused him, but at first he was in a fix as before
about any numbers after 6, although he could repeat the numbers
till 10 without a mistake. He was fond of doing sums, and had
initiated this game himself by asking : " Mother, if I have two
apples and get one more, haven't I then three ?" His sense of
numbers was so abstract that he was caught by a tricky question :
" If you have two eyes and one nose, how man}^ ears have you ? "
He answered at once, " Three ! " A child thus seems to think in
120 WORDS [CH. VI
abstract numbers, and as he learns his numbers as 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.,
not as one pear, two pears, three pears, one may well be skeptical
about the justification for the recommendation made by many
pedagogues that at an early stage of the school-life a child should
learn to reckon with concrete things rather than with abstract
numbers,
A child will usually be familiar with the sound of higher
numerals long before it has any clear notion of Avhat the)'' mean.
Frans (3.6) said, " They are coming by a train that is called four
thirty-four," and (4.4) he asked, '" How much is tAvice hundred ?
Is that a thousand ? "
A child's ideas of time are necessarily extremely vague to
begin with ; it cannot connect verj^ clear or very definite notions
with the expressions it constantly hears others emplo}', such as
'last Sunday,' 'a week ago,' or 'next year.' The other day I
heard a little girl say : " This is where we sat nert time," evidently
meaning ' last time.' All observers of children mention the
frequent confusion of words like to -morrouy und yesterday, and the
linguist remembers that Gothic (jistradagis means ' to-morrow%'
though it corresponds formally with E. yesterday and G. gestern.
VI.— § 6. Various Difficulties.
Ver}?^ small children will often say up both when they want
to be taken up and when they want to be put down on the floor.
This generality means nothing else than that they have not yet
learnt the word down, and up to them simply is a means to obtain
a change of position. In the same way a German child used hut
auf for having the hat taken off as well as put on, but Meumann
rightly interprets this as an undifferentiated desire to have some-
thing happen with the hat. But even with somewhat more
advanced children there are curious confusions.
Hilary M. (2.0) is completely baffled by words of opposite mean-
ing. She will say, " Daddy, my pinny is too hot; I must Avarm it
at the fire." She goes to the fire and comes back, saying, " That's
better ; it's quite cool now." (The same confusion of hot and cold
was also reported in the case of one Danish and one German child ;
cf. also TracA', p. 134.) One morning while dressing she said,
" What a nice windy day," and an hour or two later, before
she had been out, " What a nasty windy day." She confuses
good and naughty completely. Tony F. (2.5) saA^s, " Turn the
dark out."
Sometimes a mere accidental likeness may prove too nnich
tor the child. When Hilary M. had a new doll (2.0) her mother
said to her: '' And is that your son ?" Hilary was puzzled, and
§6] VARIOUS DIFFICULTIES 121
looking out of the window at the sun, said : " No, that's ray sun."
It was very difficult to set her out of this confusion.^ Her sister
Beth (3.8), looking at a sunset, said : " That's what you call a smi-
set ; where Ireland (her sister) is (at school) it's a summerset."
About the same time, when staying at Longwoocl Farm, she said :
" I suppose if the trees were cut down it would be Shortwood
Farm ? "
An English friend \mtes to me : '' I misunderstood the text,
' And there fell from his eyes as it were scales,' as I knew the word
scales only in the sense ' balances.' The phenomenon seemed to
me a strange one, but I did not question that it occurred, any
more than I questioned other strange phenomena recounted in
the Bible. In the lines of the hymn —
Teach me to live that I may dread
The grave as httle as my bed —
I supposed that the words ' as little as my bed ' were descriptive
of my future grave, and that it was my duty according to the
hymn to fear the grave."
Words with several meanings may cause children much diffi-
culty. A Somerset child said, " Moses was not a good boy, and
his mother smacked 'un and smacked 'un and smacked 'un till
she couldn't do it no more, and then she put 'un in the ark of
bulrushes."' This puzzled the teacher till he looked at the passage
in Exodus : " And when she could hide him no longer, she laid
him in an ark of bulrushes." Here, of course, we have technically
two different words hide ; but to the child the difficulty is
practically as great where we have what is called one and the
same word with two distinct meanings, or when a word is used
figuratively.
The word ' cliild ' means two different things, which in some
languages are expressed by two distinct words. I remember my
own astonishment at the age of nine when I heard my godmother
talk of her children. " But you have no children." " Yes, Clara
and Eliza." I knew them, of course, but they were grown up.
Take again the word old. A boy loiew that he was three years,
but could not be induced to say ' three years old ' ; no, he is three
years new, and his father too is new, as distinct from his grand-
mother, who he Icnows is old. A child asked, " Why have
grand dukes and grand pianos got the same name ? " (Glen-
conner, p. 21).
When Frans was told (4.4) " Your eyes are running," he was
much astonished, and asked, " Are they running away ? "
1 Cf. below on the disappearance of the word 807i because it sounds like
3un (Ch. XV. § 7).
122 WORDS [CH. VI
Sometimes a child knows a word first in some secondary sense.
When a country child first came to Copenhagen and saw a soldier,
he said, " There is a tin-soldier " (2.0). Stern has a story about
his daughter who was taken to the country and wished to pat
the backs of the pigs, but was checked with the words, " Pigs
alwaj's lie in dirt," when she was suddenly struck with a new idea ;
"Ah, that is why they are called pigs, because they are so dirty :
but what would people call them if thej' didn't lie in the dirt ? "
History repeats itself : only the other day a teacher wrote to me
that one of his pupils had begun his essay with the words : '" Pigs
are rightly called thus, for they are such swine."
Words of similar sound are apt to be confused. Some children
have had trouble till mature years with soldier and shoulder,
hassock and cassock, diary and dairy. Lady Glenconner WTites :
"They almost invariably say 'lemon' [for melon], and if they
make an effort to be more correct they still mispronounce it,
• Don't say melling.' ' Very well, then, mellum.' " Among other
confusions mentioned in her book I may quote Portugal for ' pur-
gatory,' I^ng Solomon's three hundred Columbines, David and
his great friend Johnson, Cain and Mabel — all of them shoeing
how words from spheres beyond the ordinary ken of children are
assimilated to more familiar ones.
Schuchardt has a story of a little coloured bo}^ in the West
Indies who said, " It's three hot in this room " : he had heard too=
two and literally wanted to 'go one better.' According to Mr.
James Payne, a boy for years substituted for the words ' Hallowed
be Thy name ' ' Harold be Th}- name.' Many children imagine
that there is a i^ole to mark where the North Pole is, and even
(like Helen Keller) that polar bears climb the Pole.
Tliis leads us naturally to what linguists call ' popular ety-
mology " — wliich is very frequent with childi'en in all countries.
I give a few examples from books. A four-year-old boy had heard
several times about his nurse's neuralgia, and finally said : "I
don't think it's new ralgia, I call it old ralgia." In this way
anchovies are made into hamchotnes, whirlwind into tvorldwind, and
holiday into hollorday, a day to holloa. Professor Sturtevant
writes : A boy of six or seven had frequently had his ear in-igated ;
when similar treatment was applied to his noee, be said that he
had been ' nosigated '— he had evidently given his own inter-
pretation to the first syllable of irrigate.
There is an element of ' popular etymology ' in the following
joke which was made by one of the Glenconner children when
four years old : "I suppose you wag along in the wagonette, the
landau lands you at the door, and you sweep off in the brougham "
(pronounced broom).
§ 7] SHIFTERS 128
VI.— § 7. Shifters.
A class of words which presents grave difficulty to children
are those whose meaning differs according to the situation, so
that the child hears them now applied to one thing and now to
another. That was the case with words like ' father,' and
'mother.' Another such word is 'enemy.' When Frans (4.5)
played a war-game with Eggert, he could not get it into his head
that he was Eggert's enemy : no, it was only Eggert who was the
enemy. A stronger case still is ' home.' When a child was asked
if his grandmother had been at home, and answered : " No, grand-
mother was at grandfather's," it is clear that for him ' at home '
meant merely ' at my home.' Such words may be called shifters.
When Frans (3.6) heard it said that ' the one ' (glove) was as
good as ' the other,' he asked, "Which is the one, and which is the
other ? " — a question not easy to answer.
The most important class of shifters are the personal pro-
nouns. The child hears the word ' I ' meaning ' Father,' then
again meaning ' Mother,' then again ' Uncle Peter,' and so on
unendingly in the most confusing manner. Many people realize
the difficulty thus presented to the child, and to obviate it will
speak of themselves in the third person as ' Father ' or ' Grannie '
or ' Mary,' and instead gf saying ' you ' to the child, speak of it
by its name. The child's understanding of what is said is thus
facilitated for the moment : but on the other hand the child in
this way hears these little words less frequently and is slower in
mastering them.
If some children soon learn to say ' I ' while others speak
of themselves by their name, the difference is not entirely due
to the different mental powers of the children, but must be
largely attributed to their elders' habit of addressing them by
their name or by the pronouns. But Germans w^ould not be
Germans, and philosophers would not be philosophers, if they did
not make the most of the child's use of 'I,' in which they see
the first sign of self -consciousness. The elder Fichte, we are told,
used to celebrate not his son's birthday, but the day on which he
first spoke of himself as 'I.' The sober truth is, I take it, that
a boy who speaks of himself as ' Jack ' can have just as full and
strong a perception of himself as opposed to the rest of the world
as one who has learnt the little linguistic trick of saying 'I.'
But this does not suit some of the great psychologists, as seen
from the following quotation : " The child uses no pronouns ; it
speaks of itself in the third person, because it has no idea of its
' I ' (Ego) nor of its ' Not-I,' because it knows nothing of itself
nor of others."
124 WORDS [CH. VI
It is not an uncommon case of confusion for a child to use
' you ' and ' your ' instead of ' I,' ' me,' and ' mine.' The child
has noticed that ' will you have ? ' means ' will Jack have ? ' so
that he looks on ' you ' as synonymous with his o^^^l name. In
some children this confusion may last for some months. It is
in some cases connected with an inverted word-order, ' do you '
meaning 'I do' — an instance of ' echoism ' (see below). Some-
times he will introduce a further complication by using the per-
sonal pronoun of the third person, as though he had started the
sentence with ' Jack ' — then ' you have his coat ' means ' I have
my coat.' He may even speak of the person addressed as 'I.'
' Will I tell a story ? ' = ' Will you tell a story ? ' Frans was
liable to use these confused forms between the ages of two and
two and a-half, and I had to quicken his acquaintance with
the right usage by refusing to understand him when he used
the wrong. Beth M. (2.6) was very jealous about her elder
sister touching any of her property, and if the latter sat on
her chair, she would shriek out : " That's your chair ; that's
your chair."
The forms / and me are a common source of difficulty to
English children. Both Tony E. (2.7 to 3.0) and Hilary M. (2.0)
use my for me ; it is apparently a kind of blending of me and / ;
e.g. " Give Hilary medicine, make my better," " Maggy is looking
at my," " Give it my." See also O'Shea, p. 81 : ' my want to do
this or that ; my feel bad ; that is my pencil ; take my to bed.'
His and her are difficult to distinguish : " An ill ladj', his legs
were bad" (Tony E., 3.3).
C. M. L. (about the end of her second year) constantly' used
ivour and ivours for our and ours, the connexion being with ive, as
' your ' with you. In exactly the same way many Danish children
say vos for os on account of vi. But all this really falls imdcr our .
next chapter.
VI.— § 8. Extent of Vocabulary.
The number of words which the child has at command is con-
stantly increasing, but not uniformly, as the increase is affected
by the child's health and the new experiences which life presents
to him. In the beginning it is tolerably easy to count the words
the child uses ; later it becomes more difficult, as there are times
when his command of speech grows with astonishing rapidity.
There is great difference between individual children. Statistics
have often been given of the extent of a child's vocabulary at
different ages, or of the results of comparing the vocabularies of
a number of children.
§8] EXTENT OF VOCABULARY 125
All American child who was closely observed by his mother,
Mrs. Winfield S. Hall, had in the tenth month 3 words, in the
eleventh 12, in the twelfth 24, in the thirteenth 38, in the fourteenth
48, in the fifteenth 106, in the sixteenth 199, and in the seventeenth
232 words {Child Study Monthly, March 1897). During the first
month after the same boy was six years old, slips of paper and
pencils were distributed over the house and practically every-
thing which the child said was written down. After two or three
days these were collected and the words were put under their
respective letters in a book kept for that purpose. New sets of
papers were put in their places and other lists made. In addition
to this, the record of his life during the past year was examined
and all of his words not already listed were added. In this way
his summer vocabulaiy was obtained ; conversations on certain
topics were also introduced to give him an opportunity to use
words relating to such topics. The list is printed in the Journal
of Childhood and Adolescence, January 1902, and is well worth
looking through. It contains 2,688 words, apart from proper
names and numerals. No doubt the child was really in command
of words beyond that total.
This list perhaps is exceptional on account of the care with
which it was compiled, but as a rule I am afraid that it is not wise
to attach much importance to these tables of statistics. One is
generally left in the dark whether the words counted are those
that the child has understood, or those that it has actually used
— two entirely different things. The passive or receptive know-
ledge of a language always goes far beyond the active or
productive.
One also gets the impression that the observers have often
counted up words without realizing the difficulties involved. What
is to be counted as a word ? Are /, me, we, us one word or four ?
Is teacup a new word for a child who already knows tea and cwp ?
And so for all compounds. Is box (= a place at a theatre) the same
word as box (= workbox) ? Ai'e the two thats in ' that man that you
see ' two words or one ? It is clear that the process of counting
involves so much that is arbitrary and uncertain that very little
can be built on the statistics arrived at.
It is more interesting perhaps to determine what words at
a given age a child does not know, or rather does not understand
when he hears them or when they occur in his reading. I have
myself collected such lists, and others have been given me by
teachers, who have been astonished at words which their classes
did not understand. A teacher can never be too cautious about
assuming linguistic knowledge in his pupils — and this applies not
only to foreign words, about wliich all teachers are on the alert,
12G WORDS [oil. VI
but also to what seem to be quite everyday words of the language
of the country.
In connexion with the growth of vocabulary one may ask
how many words are possessed by the average grown-up man ?
Max Miiller in his Lectures stated on the authority of an English
clergyman that an English farm labourer has only about three
hundred words at command. This is the most utter balderdash,
but nevertheless it has often been repeated, even by such an
authority on psychology as Wundt. A Danish boy can easily
learn seven hundred English words in the first year of his study
of the language — and are we to believe that a grown Englishman,
even of the lowest class, has no greater stock than such a beginner ?
If you go through the list of 2,000 to 3,000 words used by the Ameri-
can boy of six referred to above, you will easily convince yourself
that they would far from suffice for the rudest labourer. A Swedish
dialectologist, after a minute investigation, found that the vocabu-
lary of Swedish peasants amounted to at least 26,000 words,
and his view has been confirmed by other investigators. This
conclusion is not invalidated by the fact that Shakespeare in his
works uses only about 20,000 words and IMilton in his poems
only about 8,000. It is easy to see what a vast number of words
of daily life are seldom or never required by a poet, especially
a poet like Milton, whose works are on elevated subjects. The
words used by Zola or Kipling or Jack London would no doubt
far exceed those used by Shakespeare and Milton. ^
VI. — §9. Summary.
To sum up, then. There are only very few words that are
explained to the child, and so long as it is quite small it will not
even understand the explanations that might be given. Some it
learns because, when the word is used, the object is at the same
time pointed at, but most words it can only learn by drawing
conclusions about their meaning from the situation in which they
arise or from the context in which they are used. These con-
clusions, however, are very uncertain, or they may be correct for
the particular occasion and not hold good on some other, to the
child's mind quite similar, occasion. Grown-up people are in the
same position with regard to words they do not know, but which
they come across in a book or newspaper, e.g. demise. The mean-
ings of many words are at the same time extraordinarily vague
and yet so strictly limited (at least in some respects) that the least
deviation is felt as a mistake. Moreover, the child often learns
a secondary or figurative meaning of a word before its simple
* Cf. the fuller treatment of this question in GS ch. ix.
§ 9] SUMMARY 127
meaning. But gradually a high degree of accuracy is obtained,
the fittest meanings surviving— that is (in this connexion) those
that agree best with those of the surrounding society. And thus
the individual is merged in society, and the social character of
language asserts itself through the elimination of everything that
is the exclusive property of one person only.
CHAPTER VII
GRAMMAR
§ 1. Introductory. § 2. Substantives and Adjectives. § 3. Verbs. § 4. De-
grees of Consciousness. § 5. Word-formation. § 6. Word-division.
§ 7. Sentences. § 8. Negation and Question. § 9. Prepositions and
Idioms.
Vn. — § 1. Introductory.
To learn a language it is not enough to know so many words.
They must be connected according to the particular laws of the
particular language. No one tells the child that the plural of
' hand ' is hands, of ' foot ' feet, of ' man ' men, or that the past
of ' am ' is ivas, of ' love ' loved ; it is not informed when to say
he and when him, or in what order words must stand. How can
the little fellow learn all this, Avhich when set forth in a grammar
fills many pages and can only be explained by help of many
learned words ?
Many people will say it comes by ' instinct,' as if ' instinct '
were not one of those fine words which are chiefly used to cover
over what is not understood, because it says so precious little and
seems to say so precious much. But when other people, using a
more everyday expression, say that it all ' comes quite of itself,'
I must strongly demur : so far is it from ' coming of itself ' that
it demands extraordinary labour on the child's part. The count-
less grammatical mistakes made by a child in its early j^ears are*
a tell-tale proof of the difficulty which this side of language presents
to him — especially, of course, on account of the imsystematic
character of our flexions and the irregularity of its so-called
' rules ' of syntax.
( At first each word has only one form for the cliild, but he
poon discovers that growTi-up people use many forms which
Resemble one another in different connexions, and he gets a sense
of the purport of these forms, so as to be able to imitate them
himself or even develop similar forms of his own. These latter
fprms are what linguists call analogy-formations : by analogy
with ' Jack's hat ' and ' father's hat ' the child invents such as
• uncle's hat ' and ' Charlie's hat ' — and inasmuch as these forms
arc ' correct,* no one can say on hearing them whether the child
198
§ 1] INTRODUCTORY 129
has really invented them or has first heard them used by others.
It is just on account of the fact that the forms developed on the
spur of the moment by each individual are in the vast majority
of instances perfectly identical with those used already by other
people, that the principle of analogy comes to have such paramount
importance in the life of language, for we are all thereby driven
to apply it unhesitatingly to all those instances in which we have
no ready-made form handy : without being conscious of it, each
of us thus now and then really creates something never heard
before by us or anybody else.
VII. — § 2. Substantives and Adjectives.
The -s of the possessive is so regular in English that it is not
difficult for the child to attach it to all words as soon as the
character of the termination has dawned upon him. But at first
there is a time with many children in which words are put together
without change, so that ' Mother hat ' stands for ' Mother's hat ' ;
cf. also sentences like " Baby want baby milk."
After the 5-form has been learnt, it is occasionally attached to
pronouns, as ■i/ou's for ' your,' or more rarely 7'<s or me's for ' my.*
The -5 is now in English added freely to whole groups of words,
as in the King of England's power, where the old construction was
the King's jjoioer of England, and in Beaumont and Fletcher's plays
(see on the historical development of this group genitive my
ChE iii.). In Danish we have exactly the same construction,
and Danish children will very frequently extend it, placing the
-s at the end of a whole interrogative sentence, e.g., ' Hvem er
det da's ? ' (as if in English, ' Who is it then's,' instead of ' Whose
is it then ? '). Dr. H. Bradley once wrote to me : " One of your
samples of children's Danish is an exact parallel to a bit of child's
English that I noted long ago. My son, when a little boy, used
to say ' Who is that-'s ' (with a pause before the s) for ' Whom
does that belong to ? ' "
Irregular plurals are often regularized, gooses for ' geese,'
tooths, knifes, etc O'Shea mentions one child who inversely
formed the plural chieves for chiefs on the analogy of thieves.
Sometimes the child becomes acquainted with the plural form
first, and from it forms a singular. I have noticed this several
times with Danish children, who had heard the irregular plural
k;(er, ' cows,' and then would say en kef instead of en ko (while
others from the singular ko form a regular plural koer). French
children will say un chevau instead of un cheval.
In the comparison of adjectives analogy-formations are
frequent vnth. all children, e.g. the littlest, littler, goodest, baddest,
9
180 GRAMMAR [ch. vii
splendider, etc. One child is reported as saying quicklier, another
as saying qiiickerly, instead of the received more qtiickly. A curious
fonaation is " P'raps it was John, but p'rapser it was Marj'."
O'Shea (p. 108) notices a period of transition when the child
may use the analogical form at one moment and the traditional
one the next. Thus 8. (4.0) will say better perhaps five times
where he says gooder once, but in times of excitement he will
revert to the latter form.
Vn.— § 3. Verbs.
The child at first tends to treat all verbs on the analogy of
love, loved, loved, or kiss, kissed, kissed, thus catched, buyed, frowed
for ' caught, bought, threw or thrown,' etc., but gradually it learns
the irregular forms, though in the beginning ^^ith a good deal of
hesitation and confusion, as done for ' did,' Imnged for ' hung,'
etc. O'Shea gives among other sentences (p. 94) : "I drunked
my milk." " Budd sivunged on the rings." " Grandpa boughted
me a ring." " I caughted- him." " Aunt Ket earned to-day."
" He gaved it to me " — in all of which the irregular form has been
supplemented \vith the regular ending.
A little Danish incident may be thus rendered in English.
The child (4.G): "I have seed a chestnut." ''Where have you
seen it ? " He : "I seen it in the garden." This shows the
influence of the form last heard.
I once heard a French child say "Ha pleuvy " for ' plu ' from
' pleuvoir.' Other analogical forms are prendu for ' pris ' ; a^sire
for ' asseoir ' (from the participle assis), se taiser for ' se taire '
(from the frequent injmiction taisez-vous). Similar formations are
frequent in all countries.
vn. — §4. Degrees of Consciousness.
Do the little brains think about these different forms and their
uses ? Or is the learning of language performed as unconsciously
as the circulation of the blood or the process of digestion ? Clearly
they do not think about grammatical forms in the way piu'sued
in grammar-lessons, with all the forms of the same word arranged
side by side of one another, Mith rules and exceptions. Still there
is much to lead us to believe that the thing does not go of itself
without some thinking over. The fact that in lat^r years we
speak our language without knowing how we do it, the right words
and phrases coming to us no one knows how or whence, is no
proof that it was always so. We ride a bicycle without giving
a thought to the machine, look around us, talk with a friend,
§4] DEGREES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 181
etc., and yet there was a time when every movement had to be
mastered by slow and painful efforts. There would be nothing
strange in supposing that it is the same with the acquisition of
language.
Of course, it would be idle to ask children straight out if they
think about these things, and what they think. But now and
then one notices something which shows that at an early age
they think about points of grammar a good deal. When Frans
was 2.9, he lay in bed not kno^nng that anyone was in the next
room, and he was heard to say quite plainlj-^ : " Sma haender
hedder det — lille hand — sma haender — lille haender, nse sma
haender." {" They are called small hands — little hand — small
hands — little hands, no, small hands " : in Danish lille is not used
with a plural noim.) Similar things have been related to me by
other parents, one child, for instance, practising plural forms
while turning over the leaves of a picture-book, and another one,
who was corrected for saving yiak instead of nikkede (' nodded '),
immediately retorted " Stikker stak, nikker nak," thus showing
on what analogy he had formed the new preterit. Frequently
childi-en, after giving a form which their own ears tell them is
wrong, at once correct it : 'I sticked it in — I stuck it in.'
A German child, not yet two, said : '" Papa, hast du mir
was mitgebrino:t — s;ebrungen — gebracht ? " almost at a breath
(Gabelentz), and another (2.5) said hausin, but then hesitated
and added : " Man kann auch hauser sagen " (Meringer),
Vn.— §5. Word-formation.
In the forming of words the child's brain is just as active.
In many cases, again, it will be impossible to distinguish between
what the child has heard and merely copied and what it has itself
fashioned to a given pattern. If a child, for example, uses the
word ' kindness,' it is probable that he has heard it before, but
it is not certain, because he might equally' well have formed the
word himself. If, however, we hear him say ' kindhood,' or
' kindship,' or ' «adeness,' " broadness,' ' stupidness,' wc know
for certain that he has made the word up himself, because the
resultant differs from the form used in the language he hears
aroimd him. A child who does not know the word ' spade ' may
call the tool a digger ; he may speak of a lamp as a shine. He
may say it sans when the sun is shining (cf . it rains), or ask his
mother to sauce his pudding. It is quite natiu-al that the enormous
number of nouns and verbs of exactly the same form in English
{blossom, care, drink, end, fight, fish, ape, hand, dress, etc.) should
induce children to make new verbs according to the same pattern ;
132 GRAMMAR [cii. ^^I
I quote a few of the examples given by O'Shea : " I am going to
basket these apples." " I pailed him out " (took a turtle out of
a washtub with a pail). " I needled him " (put a needle through
a fly).
Other words are formed b}'' means of derivative endings, as
sorrified, lessoner (O'Shea 32), flyahle (able to fly, Glenconner 3) ;
" This tooth ought to come out, because it is crookening the others "
(a ten -year-old, told me by Professor Ayres). Compound nouns,
too, may be freely formed, such as wind-ship, eye-curtain (O'Shea),
a fun-copy of Romeo and Juliet (travesty, Glenconner 19).
Bryan L. (ab. 5) said springklers for chrysalises (' because they
wake up in the spring ').
Sometimes a child will make up a new word through ' blend-
ing ' two, as when Hilary M. (1.8 to 2) spoke of rubbish = th^
rubhQV to -polish the boots, or of the backet, from bat and racquet.
Beth M. (2.0) used breakolate, from fereaHast and chocolate, and
Chally as a child's name, a compound of two sisters, Chanty and
Sally.
VII.— §6. Word-division.
We are so accustomed to see sentences in waiting or print
with a little space left after each word, that we have got alto-
gether WTong conceptions of language as it is spoken. Here words
follow one another without the least pause till the speaker
hesitates for a word or has come to the end of what he has to
saJ^ ' Not at all ' sounds like ' not a tall.' It therefore requires
in many cases a great deal of comparison and analysis on the
part of the child to find out Avhat is one and what two or three
words. We have seen before that the question ' How big is the
boy ? ' is to the child a single expression, beyond his powers of
analysis, and to a much later age it is the same \vith other phrases.
The child, then, may make false divisions, and either treat a group
of words as one word or one word as a group of words. A girl
(2 . 6) used the term ' Tanobijeu ' whenever she wished her
younger brother to get out of her way. Her parents finall}'^ dis-
covered that she had caught up and shortened a phrase that
some older children had used — ' 'Tend to j^our own business '
(O'Shea).
A child, addressing her cousin as ' Aunt Katie,' was told " I
am not Aunt Katie, I am merely Katie." Next day she said :
" Good-morning, Aunt merelj^-Katie " (translated). A child who
had been praised with the words, ' You are a good boy,' said to
his mother, "You're a good boy, mother" (2.8).
Cecil H. (4.0) came back from a party and said that she had
been given something very nice to eat. " What was it ? "
§ 6] WORD-DIVISION 133
" Rats." " No, no." " Well, it was mice then." She had been
asked if she would have ' some-ice,' and had taken it to be ' some
mice.' S. L. (2.6) constantly used ^ ababana' for 'banana';
the form seems to have come from the question " Will you
have a banana ? " but was used in such a sentence as " May I
have an ababana ? " Children will often say napple for apple
through a misdivision of an-apple, and normous for enormotts ;
cf. Ch. X § 2.
A few examples may be added from children's speech in other
countries. Ronjat's child said nesey for ' echelle,' starting
from u'ne echelle ; Grammont's child said U7i tarbre, starting
from cet arbre, and ce nos for ' cet os,' from vn os ; a German child
said motel for ' hotel,' starting from the combination ' im (h) otel '
(Stern). Many German children say arrhoe, because they take
the first syllable of ' diarrhoe ' as the feminine article. A Dutch
child heard the phrase ' 'k weet 't niet ' (' I don't know ') , and said
" Papa, hij kweet 't niet " (Van Ginneken). A Danish child heard
liis father say, '" Jeg skal op i ministeriet " ('' I'm going to the Govern-
ment office "), and took the fii'st syllable as min (my) ; consequently
he asked, " Skal du i dinisteriet ? " A French child was told that
they expected Munkacsy (the celebrated painter, in French pro-
nounced as Mon-), and asked his aunt : " Est-ce que ton Kdcsy
ne viendra pas ? " Antoinette K. (7.), in reply to " C'est bien, je
te felicite," said, " Eh bien, moi je ne te fais pas licite."
The German ' Ich habe antgewortet ' is obviously on the analogy
of angenommen, etc. (Meringer). Danish children not unfrequently
take the verb telefonere as two words, and in the interrogative
form will place the personal pronoun in the middle of it, ' Tele
hun fonerer ? ' (' Does she telephone V) A girl asked to see ele
mer fant (as if in English she had said ' ele more phant '). Cf.
' Give me more Jiundier-cap ' for ' Give me a greater handicap '
— in a foot-race (O'Shea 108).
Vn.— §7. Sentences.
In the first period the child knows nothing of grammar : it
does not connect words together, far less form sentences, but each
word stands by itself. ' Up ' means what we should express by
a whole sentence, ' I want to get up,' or ' Lift me up ' ; ' Hat '
means ' Put on my hat,' or ' I want to put my hat on,' or ' I have
my hat on,' or ' Mamma has a new hat on ' ; ' Father ' can be
either ' Here comes Father,' or ' This is Father,' or ' He is called
Father,' or ' I want Father to come to me,' or ' I want this or
that from Father.' This particular group of sounds is vaguely
associated with the mental pictm-e of the person in question,
184 GRAMMAR [ch. vii
and is uttered at the sight of him or at the mere wish to see him
or something else in connexion with him.
When we say that such a word means what we should express
by a whole sentence, this does not amount to saying that the
child's ' Up ' is a sentence, or a sentence-word, as many of those
who have wiitten about these questions have said. We might
just as well assert that clapping our hands is a sentence, because
it expresses the same idea (or the same frame of mind) that is
otherwise expressed by the whole sentence ' This is splendid.'
The word ' sentence ' presupposes a certain grammatical structure,
which is wanting in the child's utterance.
Many investigators have asserted that the child's first utter-
ances are not means of imparting information, but always an
expression of the child's wishes and requirements. This is cer-
tainly somewhat of an exaggeration, since the child quite clearly
can make known its joy at seeing a hat or a plaything, or at
merely being able to recognize it and remember the word for it ;
but the statement still contains a great deal of truth, for without
strong feelings a child would not say much, and it is a great
stimulus to talk that he very soon discovers that he gets his wishes
fulfilled more easily when he makes them known by means of
certain sounds.
Frans (1.7) was accustomed to express his longings in general
by help of a long m with rising tone, while at the same time
stretching out his hand towards the particular thing that he
longed for. This he did, for example, at dinner, when he wanted
water. One day his mother said, " Now see if you can say vand
(water)," and at once he said what was an approach to the word,
and was delighted at getting something to di-ink by that means.
A moment later he repeated what he had said, and was inexpressibly
delighted to have found the password which at once brought him
something to drink. This was repeated several times. Next day,
when his father was pouring out water for himself, the boy again
said ' van,' ' van,' and was duly rewarded. He had not heard
the word during the intervening twenty-four hours, and nothing
had been done to remind him of it. After some repetitions (for
he only got a few di-ops at a time) he pronounced the word for
the first time quite correctly. The daj' after, the same thing
occurred ; the word was never heard but at dinner. When he
became rather a nuisance with his constant cries for water, his
mother said : " Say please " — and immediately came his " Bebe
vand " (" Water, please ") — his first attempt to put two words
together.
Later — in this formless period — the child puts more and more
words together, often in quite haphazard order : ' My go snow '
§ 7] SENTENCES 185
(I want to go out into the snow'), etc. A Danish child of 2.1
said the Danish words (imperfectly pronounced, of course) corre-
sponding to '"Oh papa lamp mother boom," when his mother had
struck his father's lamp with a bang. Another child said " Papa
hen corn cap " when he saw his father give corn to the hens out
of his cap.
When Frans was 1 . 10, passing a post-office (which Danes call
' posthouse '), he said of his own accord the Danish words for
' post, house, bring, letter ' (a pause between the successive words)
— I suppose that the day before he had heard a sentence in which
these words occurred. In the same month, when he had thrown
a ball a long way, he said what would be in English ' dat was
good.' This was not a sentence which he had put together for
himself, but a mere repetition of what had been said to him, clearly
conceived as a whole, and equivalent to ' bravo.' Sentences of
this kind, however, though taken as units, prepare the way for
the understanding of the words ' that ' and ' was ' when they turn
up in other connexions.
One thing which plays a great role in children's acquisition
of language, and especially in their early attempts to form sen-
tences, is Echoism : the fact that children echo what is said to
them. When one is learning a foreign language, it is an excellent
method to try to imitate to oneself in silence every sentence which
one hears spoken by a native. By that means the turns of phrases,
the order of words, the intonation of the sentence are firmly fixed
in the memory — so that they can be recalled when required, or
rather recur to one quite spontaneously without an effort. What
the grown man does of conscious purpose our childi'en to a large
extent do without a thought — that is, they repeat aloud what
they have just heard, either the whole, if it is a very short sentence,
or more commonly the conclusion, as much of it as they can retain
in their short memories. The result is a matter of chance — it
need not always have a meaning or consist of entu'e words. Much,
clearly, is repeated without being understood, much, again, without
being more than half understood. Take, for example (translated) :
Shall I carry you ? — Frans (1.9) : Carry you.
Shall Mother carry Frans ? — Carry Frans.
The sky is so blue. — So boo.
I shall take an umbrella. — Take rella.
Though this feature in a child's mental history has been often
noticed, no one seems to have seen its full significance. One of
the acutest observers (Meixmann, p. 28) even says that it has no
importance in the development of the child's speech. On the
contrary, I think that Echoism exj)lains very much indeed. First
let us bear in mmd the mutilated forms of words which a child
13G GRAMMAR [ch. vii
uses : ^chiiie for machine, 'gar for cigar, Trix for Beatrix, etc.
Then a child's frequent use of an indirect form of question rather
than direct, ' Why you smoke, Father ? ' which can hardly be
explained except as an echo of sentences like ' Tell me why you
smoke.' This plays a greater role in Danish than in English,
and the corresponding form of the sentence has been frequently
remarked by Danish parents. Another feature which is nearlj'
constant with Danish children at the age when echoing is habitual
is the inverted word order : this is used after an initial adverb
{nu kommer hun, etc.), but the child will use it in all cases {kommer
hun, etc.). Further, the extremely frequent use of the infinitive,
because the child hears it towards the end of a sentence, where
it is dependent on a preceding can, or may, or must. ' Not eat
that ' is a child's echo of ' You mustn't eat that.' In German
this has become the ordinary form of official order : " Nicht
hinauslehnen " ("Do not lean out of the window").
VII. — §8. Negation and Question.
Most children learn to say ' no ' before they can say ' j^es '
— simply because negation is a stronger expression of feeling than
affirmation. Many little children use nenenene (short i) as a
natural expression of fretfulness and discomfort. It is perhaps
so natural that it need not be learnt : there is good reason for
the fact that in so many languages words of negation begin with
n (or m). Sometimes the n is heard without a vowel : it is only
the gesture of ' turning up one's nose ' made audible.
At first the child does not express what it is that it does
not want — it merely puts it away with its hand, pushes away,
for example, what is too hot for it. But when it begins to express
in words what it is that it will not have, it does so often in the
form ' Bread no,' often with a pause between the words, as two
separate utterances, as when we might say, in our fuller forms of
expression : ' Do you offer me bread ? I won't hear of it.' So
with verbs : ' I sleep no.' Thus with many Danish children,
and I find the same phenomenon mentioned Avith regard to children
of different nations. Tracy saj's (p. 136) : " Negation was expressed
by an affirmative sentence, with an emphatic no tacked on at
the end, exactly as the deaf-mutes do." The blind-deaf Helen
Keller, when she felt her little sister's mouth and her mother
spelt ' teeth ' to her, answered : " Baby teeth — no, baby eat —
no," i.e., bab}^ cannot eat because she has no teeth. In the same
way, in German, ' Stul nei nei — schossel,' i.e., I won't sit on the
chair, but in your lap, and in French, ' Papa abeie ato non, iaian
abeie non,' i.e., Papa n'est pas encore habille, Suzanne n'est pas
§8] NEGATION AND QUESTION 137
habillee (Stern, 189, 203). It seems thus that this mode of expres-
sion will crop up everywhere as an emphatic negation.
Interrogative sentences come generally rather early — it would
be better to say questions, because at ftrst they do not take the
form of interrogative sentences, the interrogation being expressed
by bearing, look or gesture : when it begins to be expressed by
intonation we are on the way to question expressed in speech.
Some of the earliest questions have to do with place : ' Where
is . . . ? ' The child very often hears such sentences as ' Where
is its little nose ? ' which ai-e not really meant as questions ; we
may also remark that questions of this type are of great practical
importance for the little thing, who soon uses them to beg for
something which has been taken away from him or is out of his
reach. Other early questions are ' What's that ? ' and ' Who ? '
Later — generally, it would seem, at the close of the third year
— questions with ' why ' crop up : these are of the utmost impor-
tance for the child's understanding of the whole world and its
manifold occurrences, and, however tiresome they may be when
they come in long strings, no one who wishes well to his child
will venture to discourage them. Questions about time, such as
' When ? How long ? ' appear much later, owing to the child's
difficulty in acqumng exact ideas about time.
Children often find a difficulty in double questions, and when
asked ' Will you have bro-wTi bread or white ? ' merely answer
the last word with ' Yes.' So in reply to ' Is that red or yellow ? '
'Yes' means 'yellow' (taken from a child of 4.11). I think
this is an instance of the short memories of children, who have
already at the end of the question forgotten the beginning, but
Professor Mawer thinks that the real difficulty here is in making
a choice : they cannot decide between alternatives : usually they
are silent, and if they say ' Yes ' it only means that they do not
want to go without both or feel that they must say something.
Vn.— § 9. Prepositions and Idioms.
Prepositions are of very late growth in a child's language.
Much attention has been given to the point, and Stern has collected
statistics of the ages at which various children have first used
prepositions: the earliest age is 1.10, the average age is 2.3.
It does not, however, seem to me to be a matter of much interest
how early an individual word of some particular grammatical
class is first used ; it is much more interesting to follow up the
gradual growth of the child's command of this class and to see
how the first inevitable mistakes and confusions arise in the
little brain. Stern makes the interesting remark that when the
138 GRAMMAR [cii. vii
tendency to use preiDositions first appears, it grows far more
rapidly than the power to discriminate one preposition from
another ; with his own children there came a time when thej'^
employed the same word as a sort of universal preposition in all
relations. Hilda used vo7i, Eva ai(f. I have never observed
anything corresponding to this among Danish childi-en.
All children start by putting the words for the most important
concepts together without connective words, so ' Leave go bed-
room ' (' Ma}^ I have leave to go into the bedroom ? '), ' Out road '
(' I am going out on the road '). The first use of prepositions is
always in set phrases learnt as wholes, like ' go to school,' ' go to
pieces,' ' lie in bed,' ' at dinner.' Not till later comes the power
of using prepositions in free combinations, and it is then that
mistakes appear. Nor is this surprising, since in all languages
prepositional usage contains much that is peculiar and arbitrary,
chiefly because when we once pass beyond a few quite clear applica-
tions of time and place, the relations to be expressed become so
vague and indefinite, that logicall}' one preposition might often
seem just as right as another, although usage has laid down a
fast law that this preposition must be used in this case and that
in another. I noted down a great number of mistakes my own
boy made in these words, but in all cases I was able to find some
synonymous or antonymous expression in which the preposition
used would have been the correct one, and which may have been
vaguely before his mind.
The multiple meanings of prepositions sometimes have strange
results. A little girl w^as in her bath, and hearing her mother
say : " I will wash you in a moment," answered : "No, you must
wash me in the bath '" ! She was led astray by the two uses of
in. We know of the child at school who was asked " What is an
average ? " and said : " What the hen lays eggs on."' Even men
of science are similarly led astray by prepositions. It is perfectly
natural to say that something has passed over the threshold of
consciousness : the metaphor is from the waj^ in which you enter
a house by stepping over the threshold. If the metaphor were
kept, the opposite situation would be expressed by the statement
that such and such a thing is outside the threshold of conscious-
ness. But psj'chologists, in the thoughtless way of little children,
take under to be always the opposite of over, and so speak of things
' lying under (or below) the threshold of our consciousness,' and have
even invented a Latin word for the unconscious, viz. subliminal.^
^ H. Q. Wells writes (Soul of a Bishop, 94) : " He was lugging things
now into speech that so far had been scarcely above the threshold of his conscious
thought." Here we see the wrong interpretation of the preposition over
dragging with it the synonym above.
§9] PREPOSITIONS AND IDIOMS 139
Children may use verbs with an object which require a pieposi-
tion (■ Will you wait me ? '), or which are only used intransitively
(' Will you jamj) me ? '), or they may mix up an infinitival with a
direct construction (' Could you hear me sneezed ? '). But it is
surely needless to multiply' examples.
When many years ago, in my Progress in Language, I spoke
of the advantages, even to natives, of simplicity in linguistic
structure, Professor Herman Moller, in a learned review, objected
to me that to the adult learning a foreign tongue the chief difficulty
consists in " the countless chicaneries due to the tyrannical and
capricious usage, whose tricks there is no calculating ; but these
offer to the native child no such difficulty as morphology may,"
and again, in speaking of the choice of various prepositions, which
is far from easy to the foreigner, he says : " But any considerable
mental exertion on the part of the native child learning its
mother-tongue is here, of course, out of the question." Such
assertions as these cannot be founded on actual observation ; at
anj- rate, it is my experience in listening to children's talk that
long after they have reached the point where they make hardly
any mistake in pronunciation and verbal forms, etc., they are
still capable of using many turns of speech which are utterly
opposed to the spirit of the language, and which are in the main
of the same kind as those Avhich foreigners are apt to fall into.
Many of the child's mistakes are due to mixtures or blendings of
two turns of expression, and not a few of them may be logically
justified. But learning a language implies among other things
learning what you may not say in the language, even though
no reasonable ground can be given for the prohibition.
CHAPTER VTII
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
§ 1. Why is the Native Language learnt so well ? § 2. Natural Ability
and Sex. § 3. Mother-tongue and Other Tongue. § 4. Plajing at
Language. § 5. Secret Languages. § 6. Onomatopoeia. § 7. Word-
inventions. §8. 'Mamma' and 'Papa.'
Vm.— § 1. Why is the Native Language learnt so well ?
How does it happen that children in general learn their mother-
tongue so well ? That this is a problem becomes clear when we
contrast a child's fu-st acquisition of its mother-tongue with the
later acquisition of any foreign tongue. The contra^^t is indeed
striking and manifold : here we have a quite little child, without
experience or prepossessions ; there a bigger child, or it may be
a grown-up person with all sorts of knowledge and powers : here a
haphazard method of procedure ; there the whole task laid out in
a system (for even in the schoolbooks that do not follow the old
grammatical system there is a certain definite order of progress
from more elementary to more difficult matters) : here no pro-
fessional teachers, but chance parents, brothers and sisters, nursery-
maids and playmates ; there teachers trained for many years
specially to teach languages : here only oral instruction ; there not
only that, but reading-books, dictionaries and other assistance.
And yet this is the result : here complete and exact command
of the language as a native speaks it, however stupid the children ;
there, in most cases, even with people otherA^ise highly gifted, a
defective and inexact command of the language. On what does
this difference depend ?
The problem has never been elucidated or canvassed from all
sides, but here and there one finds a jDartial answer, often given
out to be a complete answer. Often one side of the question only
is considered, that which relates to sounds, as if the whole problem
had been solved when one had fomid a reason for children acquiring
a better pronunciation of their mother-tongue than one generally
gets in later life of a foreign speech.
Manj'' people accordingly tell us that chilcb-en's organs of speech
are especially flexible, but that this suppleness of the tongue and
lips is lost in later life. This explanation, however, does not hold
no
§1] THE NATIVE LANGUAGE 141
water, as is shown sufficiently by the countless mistakes in sound
made by children. If their organs were as flexible as is pretended,
they could learn sounds correctly at once, while as a matter of
fact it takes a long time before all the sounds and groups of sounds
are imitated with tolerable accm-acy. Suppleness is not some-
thing which is original, but something acquired later, and acquired
with no small difficulty, and then only with regard to the sounds
of one's own language, and not universall3^
The same applies to the second answer (given by Bremer,
Deutsche Phonetik, 2), namely, that the child's ear is especially
sensitive to impressions. The ear also requires development,
since at first it can scarcely detect a number of nuances which we
gro'UTi-up people hear most distinctly.
Some people say that the reason why a child learns its native
language so well is that it has no established habits to contend
against. But that is not right either : as any good observer can
see, the process by which the child acquires sounds is pm'sued
through a continuous struggle against bad habits which it has
acquired at an earlier stage and wliich may often have rooted
themselves remarkably fii-mly.
Sweet (H 19) says among other things that the conditions of
learning vernacular sounds are so favourable because the child
has nothing else to do at the time. On the contrary, one may say
that the child has an enormous deal to do while it is learning the
language ; it is at that time active beyond all belief : in a short
time it subdues Mdder tracts than it ever does later in a much
longer time. The more wonderful is it that along with those
tasks it finds strength to learn its mother-tongue and its many
refinements and crooked turns.
Some point to heredity and say that a child learns that language
most easily which it is disposed beforehand to learn by its ancestry,
or in other words that there are inherited convolutions of the
brain which take in this language better than any other. Perhaps
there is sometliing in this, but we have no definite, carefully ascer-
tained facts. Against the theory stands the fact that the children
of immigrants acquire the language of their foster-country to
all appearance just as surely and quickly as children of the same
age whose forefathers have been in the country for ages. This
may be observed in England, in Denmark, and still more in North
America. Environment clearly has greater influence than descent.
The real answer in my opinion (which is not claimed to be
absolutely new in every respect) lies partly in the child itself,
partly in the behaviour towards it of the people around it. In
the fu-st place, the time of learning the mother-tongue is the most
favourable of all, namely, the first years of life. If one assumes
142 SOME FUNDA^IENTAL PROBLEMS [ch. viii
that mental endowment means the capacity for development,
without doubt all children are best endowed in their first years :
from biith onwards there is a steady decline in the power of grasping
what is new and of accommodating oneself to it. With some
this decline is a very rapid one — they quickly become fossilized
and unable to make a change in their habits ; with others one
can notice a happy power of development even in old age ; but
no one keeps very long in its full range the adaptability of his
first years.
Further, we must remember that the child has far more
abundant opportunities of hearing his mother-tongue than one
gets, as a rule, with any language one learns later. He hears it
from morning to night, and, be it noted, in its genuine shape,
with the right pronunciation, right intonation, right use of words
and right syntax : the language comes to him as a fresh, ever-
bubbling spring. Even before he begins to say an3'-thing himself,
his first understanding of the language is made easier by the habit
that mothers and nurses have of repeating the same phrases with
slight alterations, and at the same time doing the thing which
they are talking about. '" Now we must wash the little face, now
we must wash the little forehead, now we must wash the little
nose, now we must wash the little chin, now we must wash the
little ear," etc. If men had to attend to their children, they would
never use so many words — but in that case the child would scarcelj'
learn to understand and talk as soon as it does when it is cared
for by women. ^
Then the child has, as it were, private lessons in its mother-
tongue all the year round. There is nothing of the kind in the
learning of a language later, when at most one has six hours a
week and generally shares them \^^th others. The child has another
priceless advantage ; he hears the language in all possible situations
and under such conditions that language and situation ever
correspond exactly to one another and mutually illustrate one
another. Gesture and facial expression harmonize with the words
* Women know
The way to rear up children, (to be just)
They know a simple, merry, tender knack
Of stringing pretty words that make no sense,
And kissing full sense into empty words,
Which things are corals to cut life upon,
Although such trifles : children learn by such
Love's holy earnest in a pretty play
And get not over-early solemnized . . .
Such good do mothers. Fathers love as well
— Mine did, I know — but still with heavier brains,
And wills more consciouslj^ responsible,
And not as wisely, since less foolishly.
Elizabeth Browning : Aurora Leigh, 10.
§1] THE NATIVE LANGUAGE 148
uttered and keep the child to a right understanding. Here there
is nothing unnatural, such as is often the case in a language-lesson
in later years, when one talks about ice and snow in June or
excessive heat in January, And what the child hears is just what
immediately concerns him and interests him, and again and again
his own attempts at speech lead to the fulfilment of his dearest
wishes, so that his command of language has great practical
advantages for him.
Along with what he himself sees the use of, he hears a great
deal which does not directly concern him. but goes into the little
brain and is stored up there to turn up again later. Nothing is
heard but leaves its traces, and at times one is astonished to
discover what has been preserved, and with what qKactness. One
day, when Frans was 4.11 old, he suddenly said: "Yesterday —
isn't there some who say yesterday 1 " (giving yesterday with the
correct English pronunciation), and when I said that it was an
English word, he went on : " Yes, it is Mrs. B. : she often says
like that, yesterday." Now, it was three weeks since that lady
had called at the house and talked English. It is a well-known
fact that hypnotized persons can sometimes say whole sentences
in a language which they do not loiow, but have merely heard in
childhood. In books about children's language there are many
remarkable accounts of such linguistic memories which had lain
buried for long stretches of time. A child who had spent the
first eighteen months of its life in Silesia and then came to Berlin,
where it had no opportunity of hearing the Silesian pronunciation,
at the age of five suddenly came out with a number of Silesian
expressions, which could not after the most careful investigation
be traced to any other source than to the time before it could talk
(Stern, 257 fif.). Grammont has a story of a little French girl,
whose nurse had talked French with a strong Italian accent ; the
child did not begin to si)eak till a month after this nurse had left,
but pronounced many words Avith Italian sounds, and some of
these peculiarities stuck to the child till the age of three.
We may also remark that the baby's teachers, though, regarded
as teachers of language, they may not be absolutely ideal, still
have some advantages over those one encounters as a rule later in
life. The relation between them and the child is far more cordial
and personal, just because they are not teachers first and foremost.
They are immensely interested in every little advance the child
makes. The most awkward attempt meets with sjnnpathy, often
vnih. admiration, while its defects and imperfections never expose
it to a breath of unkind criticism. There is a Slavonic proverb,
" If you wish to talk well, you must murder the language first."
But this is very often overlooked by teachers of language, who
144 SOME FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS [cii. viii
demand faultless accuracy from the beginning, and often keep
their pupils grinding so long at some little part of the subject that
their desire to learn the language is weakened or gone for good.
There is nothing of this sort in the child's first learning of his
language.
It is here that our distinction between tlie two periods comes
in, that of the child's own separate ' little language ' and that
of the common or social language. In the first period the little
one is the centre of a narrow circle of his own, which waits for
each little syllable that falls from his lips as though it were a
grain of gold. What teachers of languages in later years would
rejoice at hearing such forms as we saw before used in the time
of the child's ' little language,' fant or vat or ham for 'elephant ' ?
But the mother really does rejoice : she laughs and exults when
he can use these syllables about his toj'^-elephant, she throws the
cloak of her love over the defects and mistakes in the little one's
imitations of words, she remembers again and again what his
strange sounds stand for, and her eager sympathy transforms
the first and most difficult stej^s on the path of language to the
merriest game.
It Avould not do, however, for the child's ' little language ' and
its dreadful mistakes to become fixed. This might easily happen,
if the child were never out of the narrow circle of its own family,
which knows and recognizes its 'little language.' But this is
stopi^cd because it comes more and more into contact with others —
uncles and aunts, and especially little cousins and playmates :
more and more often it hap]3ens that the mutilated words are not
understood, and are corrected and made fun of, and the child
is incited in this way to steady improvement : the ' little language '
gradually gives place to the ' common language,' as the child
becomes a member of a social group larger than that of his own
little home.
We have now probably found the chief reasons why a child
learns his mother-tongue better than even a grown-up person
who has been for a long time in a foreign country learns the
language of his environment. But it is also a contributory reason
that the child's linguistic needs, to begin Avith, are far more limited
than those of the man who wishes to be able to talk about any-
thing, or at any rate about something. Much more is also lin-
guistically required of the latter, and he must have recourse to
language to get all his needs satisfied, while the baby is well looked
after even if it says nothing but waivaivqwa. So the baby has
longer time to store up his impressions and continue his experi-
ments, until by trying again and again he at length gets his lesson
learnt in all its tiny details, while the man in the foreign country,
§1] THE NATIVE LANGUAGE 145
who must make himself understood, as a rule goes on trying only
till he has acquired a form of speech which he finds natives under-
stand : at this point he will generally stop, at any rate as far as
pronunciation and the construction of sentences are concerned
(while his vocabulary may be largely increased). But this ' just
recognizable ' language is incorrect in thousands of small details,
and, inasmuch as bad little habits quickly become fixed, the
kind of language is produced which we know so well in the case
of resident foreigners — who need hardly open their lips before
everyone knows they are not natives, and before a practised ear
can detect the country they hail from.^
Vm.— § 2. Natural Ability and Sex.
An important factor in the acquisition of language which we
have not considered is naturally the individuality of the child.
Parents are apt to draw conclusions as to the abilities of their
young hopeful from the rapidity with wliich he learns to talk ;
but those who are in despair because their Tommy cannot say a
single ^v•ord when their neighbours' Harry can saj'^ a great deal
may take comfort. SlowTiess in talking may of course mean defi-
ciency of ability, or even idiocy, but not necessarily. A child
who chatters early may remain a chatterer all his life, and children
whose motto is ' Slow and sure ' may turn out the deepest, most
independent and most trustworthy characters in the end. There
are some children who cannot be made to say a single word for a
long time, and then suddenly come out with a whole sentence,
which shows how much has been quietly fructifying in their brain.
Carlyle was one of these : after eleven months of taciturnity he
heard a child cry, and astonished all by sajdng, " What ails wee
Jock ? " Edmund Gosse has a similar story of his own childhood,
and other examples have been recorded elsewhere (Meringer, 194 ;
Stern, 257).
^ This is not the place to speak of the way in which prevalent methods
of teaching foreign languages can be improved. A slavish copying of the
manner in which English children learn English is impracticable, and if
it were practicable it would demand more time than anyone can devote
to the purpose. One has to make the most of the advantages which the
pupils possess over babies, thus, their being able to read, their power of more
sustained attention, etc. Phonetic explanation of the new sounds and
phonetic transcription have done wonders to overcome difficulties of pro-
nunciation. But in other respects it is possible to some extent to assimilate
the teaching of a foreign language to the method piu-sued by the child in
its first years : one should not merely sprinkle the pupil, but plunge him
right down into the sea of language and enable him to swim by himself as
soon as possible, relying on the fact that a great deal will arrange itself in
the brain without the inculcation of too many special rules and explanations.
For details I may refer to my book, How to Teach a Foreign Language {honAon,
George Allen and Unwin).
10
146 SOME FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS [ch. viii
The linguistic development of an individual child is not always
in a steady rising line, but in a series of waves. A child who
seems to have a boundless power of acquiring language suddenly
stands still or even goes back for a short time. The cause may be
sickness, cutting teeth, learning to walk, or often a removal to
new surroundings or an open-air life in summer. Under such
circumstances even the word ' I ' may be lost for a time.
Some children develop very rapidly for some years until they
have reached a certain point, where they stop altogether, while
others retain the power to develop steadily to a much later age.
It is the same with some races : negro children in American schools
may, while they are little, be up to the standard of their white
schoolfellows, whom they cannot cojtc with in later life.
The two sexes diflFer very greatly in regard to speech — as in
regard to most other things. Little girls, on the average, learn
to talk earlier and more quickly than boys ; they outstrip them
in talking correctly ; their pronunciation is not spoilt by the many
bad habits and awkwardnesses so often found in boys. It has
been proved by statistics in many countries that there are far
more stammerers and bad speakers among boys and men than
among girls and women. The general receptivity of women, their
great power of, and pleasure in, imitation, their histrionic talent,
if one may so say — all this is a help to them at an early age, so that
they can get into other people's way of talking with greater agility
than boys of the same age.
Everytliing that is conventional in language, everything in
which the only thing of importance is to be in agreement with
those around you, is the girls' strong point. Boys may often
show a certain reluctance to do exactly as others do : the pecu-
liarities of their ' little language ' are retained by them longer
than by girls, and they will sometimes steadily refuse to correct
their own abnormalities, which is very seldom the case with girls.
Gaucherie and originality thus are two points between which the
speech of boys is constantly oscillating. Cf. below, Ch. XIII.
Vm.— §3. Mother-tongue and Other Tongue.
The expression " mother-tongue " should not be understood
too literally : the language which the child acquires naturally
is not, or not alwa}'-^, his mother's language. When a mother
speaks with a foreign accent or in a pronounced dialect, her children
as a rule speak their language as correctly as other children, or
keep only the slightest tinge of their mother's peculiarities. I
have seen this very distinctly in many Danish families, in wnich
the mother has kept up her Norwegian language all her life, and in
§ 3] MOTHER-TONGUE AND OTHER TONGUE 147
which the children have spoken pure Danish. Thus also in two
families I know, in which a strong Swedish accent in one mother,
and an unmistakable American pronunciation in the other, have
not prevented the children from speaking Danish exactly as if
their mothers had been born and bred in Denmark. I cannot,
therefore, agree with Passy, who says that the child learns his
mother's sound system (Ch § 32), or with Dauzat's dictum to the
same effect (V 20). The father, as a rule, has still less influence ;
but what is decisive is the speech of those with whom the child
comes in closest contact from the age of three or so, thus frequently
servants, but even more eflfoctually playfellows of his own age
or rather slightly older than himself, with whom he is constantly
thrown together for hours at a time and whose prattle is constantly
in his ears at the most impressionable age, while he may not see
and hear his father and mother except for a short time every day,
at meals and on such occasions. It is also a well-known fact
that the children of Danish parents in Greenland often learn the
Eskimo language before Danish ; and Meinhof says that German
cliildren in the African colonies will often learn the language of
the natives earlier than German (MSA 139).
This is by no means depreciating the mother's influence, which
is strong indeed, but chiefly in the first period, that of the child's
' little language.' But that is the time when the child's imitative
power is weakest. His exact attention to the minutiae of language
dates from the time when he is thrown into a wider circle and
has to make himself understood by many, so that his language
becomes really identical with that of the community, where
formerly he and his mother would rest contented with what they,
but hardly anyone else, could understand.
The influence of children on children cannot be overestimated.^
Boys at school make fun of any peculiarities of speech noticed in
schoolfellows who come from some other part of the country.
Kipling tells us in Stalky and Co. how Stalky and Beetle carefully
kicked McTurk out of his Irish dialect. When I read this, I was
vividly reminded of the identical method my new friends applied
to me when at the age of ten I was transplanted from Jutland
to a school in Seeland and excited their merriment through some
Jutlandish expressions and intonations. And so we may say that
the most important factor in spreading the common or standard
language is children themselves.
It often happens that children who are compelled at home to
talk without any admixture of dialect talk pure dialect when
playing with their schoolfellows out of doors. They can keep the
* Hence, also, the second or third child in a family will, as a rule, learn
to speak .more rapidly thtui the eldest.
148 SOME FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS [en. viii
two forms of speech distinct. In the same way they can learn
two languages less closely connected. At times this results in
very strange blcndings, at least for a time ; but many children
will easily pass from one language to the other without mixing
them up, especially if they come in contact with the two languages
in different surroundings or on the lips of different people.
It is, of course, an advantage for a child to be familiar with
two languages : but without doubt the advantage may be, and
generally is, purchased too dear. First of all the child in question
hardl}' learns either of the two languages as perfectly as he would
have done if he had limited himself to one. It may seem, on the
surface, as if he talked just like a native, but he does not really
command the fine points of the language. Has any bilingual child
ever developed into a great artist in speech, a poet or orator ?
Secondly, the brain effort required to master two languages
instead of one certainly diminishes the child's power of learning
other things which might and ought to be learnt. Schuchardt
rightly remarks that if a bilingual man has two strings to his bow,
both are rather slack, and that the three souls which the ancient
Roman said he possessed, owing to his being able to talk three
different languages, were probably very indifferent souls after all.
A native of Luxemburg, where it is usual for children to talk
both French and German, says that few Luxemburgers talk both
languages perfectly. " Germans often say to us : ' You speak
German remarkably well for a Frenchman,' and French people
will say, ' They are Germans who speak our language excellently.'
Nevertheless, we never speak either language as fluently as the
natives. The worst of the system is, that instead of learning
things necessary to us we must spend our time and energy in
learning to express the same thought in two or three languages
at the same time." ^
VIII.— §4. Playing at Language.
The child takes delight in making meaningless sounds long
after it has learnt to talk the language of its elders. At 2 . 2 Frans
amused himself with long series of such sounds, uttered with the
most confiding look and proper intonation, and it was a joy to
him when I replied with similar sounds. He kept up this game
for years. Once (4.11) after such a performance he asked me:
" Is that English ? "— " No."—" Why not ? "— " Because I under-
stand English, but I do not understand what you say." An
hour later he came back and asked : " Father, do you know all
languages ? " — " No, there are many I don't know." — " Do you
* I translate this from Ido, see The International Language, May 1912.
§4] PLAYING AT LANGUAGE 149
know German ? " — " Yes." (Frans looked rather crestfallen :
the servants had often said of his invented language that he
was talking German. So he went on) " Do you know
Japanese?" — "No." — (Delighted) "So remember when I say
something you don't understand, it's Japanese."
It is the same everywhere. Hawthorne writes : " Pearl mumbled
something into his ear, that sounded, indeed, like human language,
but was only such gibberish as children ni'^y be heard amusing
themselves with, by the hour together " {The Scarlet Letter, 173).
And R. L. Stevenson : " Children prefer the shadow to the substance.
When they might be speaking intelligibly together, they chatter
senseless gibberish by the hour, and are quite happy because they
are making believe to speak French" {Virginibus P., 236; cf.
Glenconner, p. 40; Stern, pp. 76, 91, 103). Meringer's boy (2.1)
took the music-book and sang a tune of his own making with
incomprehensible words.
Children also take delight in varying the sounds of real words,
introducing, for instance, alliterations, as " Sing a song of sixpence,
A socket full of sj^e," etc, Frans at 2 . 3 amused himself by rounding
all his vowels (o for a, y for i), and at 3.1 by making all words of
a verse line he had learnt begin with d, then the same words begin
with t. O'Shea (p. 32) says that " most children find pleasure
in the production of variations upon some of their familiar words.
Their purpose seems to be to test their ability to be original. The
performance of an unusual act affords pleasure in linguistics as in
other matters. H., learning the word dessert, to illustrate, plays
with it for a time and exhibits it in a dozen or more variations —
dissert, dishert, desot, des^sert, and so on."
Rhythm and rime appeal strongly to the children's minds.
One English observer says that " a child in its thii'd year will
copy the rhythm of songs and verses it has heard in nonsense
words." The same thing is noted by Meringer (p. 116) and
Stern (p. 103). Tony E. (2.10) suddenly made up the rime
" My mover, I lov-er," and Gordon M. (2 . 6) never tired of repeating
a phrase of his own composition, " Custard over mustard." A
Danish girl of 3.1 is reported as having a "curious knack of
twisting all words into rimes : bestemor hestemor prestemor,
Gudrun sludriin pludrun, etc."
Vin.— § 5. Secret Languages.
Children, as we have seen, at first employ play-language for
its own sake, with no arriere-pensee, but as they get older they
may see that such language has the advantage of not being under-
stood by their elders, and so they may develop a ' secret language '
150 SOME FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS [ch. viii
consciously. Some such languages are confined to one school,
others may be in common use among children of a certain age
all over a country. ' M-gibberish ' and ' S-gibberish ' consist
in inserting m and s, as in goming mout tomdaym or gosings outs
tosdays for ' going out to-day ' ; ' Marrowskying ' or ' Hospital
Greek ' transfers the initial letters of words, as renty oj plain for
' plenty of rain,' flutterby for ' butterfly ' ; ' Ziph ' or ' Hypernese '
(at Winchester) substitutes wa for the first of two initial consonants
and inserts p or g, making ' breeches ' into wareexhepes and ' penny '
into jjegennepy. From my own boyhood in Denmark I remember
two languages of this sort, in which a sentence like ' du er et lille
asen ' became dupii erper efpet lil2nllepe apasenpen and durbe erbe
erbe lirbelerbe arbeserbe respectively. Closely corresponding lan-
guages, with insertion of p and addition of -erbse, are found in
Germany ; in Holland we find ' de schoone Mei ' made into depe
schoopoonepe Meipei, besides an -erwi-iaal with a variation in
which the ending is -erf. In France such a language is called
javanais ; ' je vais bien ' is made into je-de-que vais-dai-qai bien-
den-qen. In Savoy the cowherds put deg after each syllable and
thus make ' a-te kogneu se va9hi ' (' as-tu connu ce vacher 1 ' in
the local dialect) into a-degd te-dege ko-dego gnu-deg^i se-dege va-dega
chi-degi ? Nay, even among the Maoris of New Zealand there
is a similar secret language, in which instead of ' kei te, haere au
ki reira ' is said te-kei te-i-te te-haere-te-re te-a te-u te-ki te-re-te-i-te-ra.
Human nature is pretty much the same everywhere.^
Vm. — § 6. Onomatopoeia.
Do children really create new words ? This question has been
much discussed, but even those who are most skeptical in that
respect incline to allow them this power in the case of words which
imitate sounds. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that the
majority of onomatopoeic words heard from children are not their
own invention, but are acquired by them in the same way as
other words. Hence it is that such words have different forms
in different languages. Thus to English cockadoodledoo corresponds
French coquerico, German kikeriki and Danish kykeliky, to E.
quack-quack, F. cancan, Dan. raprap, etc. These words are an
imperfect representation of the birds' natural cry, but from their
likeness to it they are easier for the child to seize than an entirely
arbitrary name such as duck.
But, side by side with these, children do invent forms of their
own, though the latter generally disappear quickly in favour of the
^ I have collected a bibliographical list of such ' secret languages ' in
Nord. Tidaskrijt J. Filologi, 4r. vol. 5.
§ 6] ONOMATOPCEIA 151
traditional forms. Thus Frans (2.3) had coined the word vakvak,
which his mother liad heard sometimes without understanding what
he meant, when one day he pointed at some crows while repeating
the same word ; but when his mother told him that these birds
were called krager, he took hold of this word with eagerness and
repeated it several times, evidently recognizing it as a better name
than his own. A little boy of 2 . 1 called soda-water ft, another boy
8aid ging or gingging for a clock, also for the railway train, while
his brother said dann for a bell or clock; a little girl (1.9) said
2)ooh (whispered) for ' match, cigar, pipe,' and gagag for ' hen,' etc.
When once formed, such words may be transferred to other
things, where the sound plays no longer any role. This may be
illustrated through two extensions of the same word buom or bom,
used by two children first to express the sound of something falling
on the floor ; then Ellen K. (1.9) used it for a ' blow,' and finally
for anything disagreeable, e.g. soap in the eyes, while Kaare G. (1 . 8),
after seeing a plate smashed, used the word for a broken plate and
afterwards for anything broken, a hole in a dress, etc., also when a
button had come off or when anything else was defective in any way.
Vin.— §7. Word-inventions.
Do children themselves create words — apart from onomatopoeic
words ? To me there is no doubt that they do. Frans invented
many words at his games that had no connexion, or very little
connexion, with existing words. He was playing with a little
twig when I suddenly heard him exclaim : " This is called lampe-
tine" but a little while afterwards he said lanketine, and then
again lampetine, and then he said, varying the play, " Now it is
kluatine and traniklualalilua " (3.6). A month later I write:
'■ He is never at a loss for a self-invented word ; for instance, when
he has made a figure with his bricks which resembles nothing
whatever, he will say, ' That shall be lindam.' " When he played
at trains in the garden, there were many stations with fanciful
names, and at one time he and two cousins had a word kukukounen
which they repeated constantly and thought great fun, but whose
inner meaning I never succeeded in discovering. An English
friend writes about his daughter : " When she was about two
and a quarter she would often use some nonsense word in the
middle of a perfectly intelligible sentence. When you asked her
its meaning she would explain it by another equally unintelli-
gible, and so on through a series as long as you cared to make
it." At 2.10 she pretended she had lost her bricks, and when
you showed her that they were just by her, she insisted that
th'ey were not ' bricks ' at all, but mtims.
152 SOME FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS [ch. viii
In all accounts of children's talk you find words which cannot
be referred back to the normal language, but which have cropped
up from some unsounded depth of the child's soul. I give a few
from notes sent to me by Danish friends : goi ' comb,' putput
' stocking, or any other piece of garment,' i-a-a ' chocolate,'
gon ' water to drink, milk ' (kept apart from the usual word vavd
for water, which she used only for water to wash in), hesh ' news-
paper, book.' Some such words have become famous in psycho-
logical literature because they were observed by Darwin and
Taine. Among less famous instances from other books I may
mention tibu ' bird ' (Striimpel), adi ' cake ' (Ament), be'lum-be'lum
' toy with two men turning about,' wakaJca ' soldier,' nda ' jar,'
pamma ' pencil,' bium ' stocking ' (Meringer).
An American correspondent writes that his boy was fond of
pushing a stick over the carpet after the manner of a carpet-
sweeper and called the operation jazing. He coined the word
borkens as a name for a particular sort of blocks with which he
was accustomed to play. He was a nervous child and his imagina-
tion created objects of terror that haunted him in the dark, and to
these he gave the name of Boons. This name may, however, be
derived from baboons. Mr. Harold Palmer tells me that his
daughter (whose native language was French) at an early age
used ['fu'we] for ' soap ' and [de'det/] for ' horse, wooden horse,
merry -go -round . '
Dr. F, Poulsen, in his book Bejser og rids (Copenhagen, 1920),
says about his two-year-old daughter that when she gets hold
of her mother's fur-collar she will pet it and lavish on it all kinds
of tender self -invented names, such as apu or a-fo-me-me. The latter
word, " which has all the melodious euphony and vague signification
of primitive language," is applied to anything that is rare and
funny and worth rejoicing at. On a summer day's excursion there
was one new a-fo-me-me after the other.
In spite of all this, a point on which all the most distinguished
investigators of children's language of late years are agreed is
that children never invent words. Wundt goes so far as to say
that " the child's language is the result of the child's environment,
the child being essentially a passive instrument in the matter "
(S 1. 196) — one of the most wTong-headed sentences I have ever
read in the works of a great scientist. Meumann says : " Preyer
and after him almost every careful observer among child-psycholo-
gists have strongly held the view that it is impossible to speak
of a child inventing a word." Similarly Meringer, L 220, Stern,
126, 273, 337 ff., Bloomfield, SL 12.
These investigators seem to have been led astray by expressions
such as ' shape out of nothing,' ' invent,' ' original creation '
§ 7] WORD-INVENTIONS 153
(UrschCpfung), and to have taken this doctrinaire attitude in
partial defiance of the facts they have themselves advanced.
Expressions like those adduced occur over and over again in their
discussions, and Meumann says openly : " Invention demands a
methodical proceeding with intention, a conception of an end to
be realized." Of course, if that is necessary it is clear that we
can speak of invention of words in the case of a chemist seeking
a word for a new substance, and not in the case of a tiny child.
But are there not many inventions in the technical world, which
we do not hesitate to call inventions, which have come about
more or less by chance ? Wasn't it so probably with gunpowder ?
According to the story it certainly was so with blotting-paper :
the foreman who had forgotten to add size to a portion of writing-
paper was dismissed, but the manufacturer who saw that the paper
thus spoilt could be turned to account instead of the sand hitherto
used made a fortune. So according to Meumann blotting-paper
has never been ' invented.' If in order to acknowledge a child's
creation of a word we are to postulate that it has been produced
out of nothing, what about bicycles, fountain-j)ens, type\vriters —
each of which was something existing before, carried just a little
further ? Ai'e they on that account not inventions ? One would
think not, when one reads these ^v^iters on children's language,
for as soon as the least approximation to a word in the normal
language is discovered, the child is denied both ' invention ' and
' the speech-forming faculty ' ! Thus Stern (p. 338) says that
his daughter in her second year used some words which might
be taken as proof of the power to create words, but for the fact
that it was here possible to show how these ' new ' words had grown
out of normal words. Eisckei, for instance, was used as a verb
meaning ' go, walk,' but it originated in the words eins, zwei (one,
two) which were said when the child Avas taught to walk. Other
examples are given comparable to those mentioned above (106, 115)
as mutilations of the first period. Now, even if all those words
given by myself and others as original inventions of children
could be proved to be similar perversions of ' real ' words (which
is not likely), I should not hesitate to speak of a word-creating
faculty, for eischei, ' to walk,' is both in form and still more in
meaning far enough from eins, zwei to be reckoned a totally
new word.
We can divide words ' invented ' by children into three classes :
A. The child gives both sound and meaning.
B. The gro\\Ti-up people give the sound, and the child the
meaning.
C. The child gives the sound, grown-up people the meaning.
15 i SOME FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS [cii. viii
But the three classes cannot always be kept apart, especially
when the child imitates the grown-up person's sound so badly or
seizes the meaning so imperfectly that very little is left of what
the grown-up person gives. As a rule, the self-created words
will be very short-lived ; still, there are exceptions.
O'Shea's account of one of these words is very instructive.
" She had also a few words of her own coining which were attached
spontaneously to objects, and these her elders took up, and they
became fixed in her vocabulary for a considerable period. A word
resembling Ndobbin was employed for every sort of thing which
she used for food. The word came originally from an accidental
combination of sounds made while she was eating. By the aid
of the people about her in responding to this term and repeating
it, she ' selected ' it and for a time used it purpose fulh^ She
employed it at the outset for a specific article of food ; then her
elders extended it to other articles, and this aided her in making
the extension herself. Once started in this process, she extended
the term to many objects associated with her food, even objects
as remote from her original experience as dining-room, high-chair,
kitchen, and even apple and plum trees " (O'Shea, 27).
To Class A I assign most of the words already given as the
child's creations, whether the child be great or small.
Class B is that which is most sparsely represented. A child
in Finland often heard the well-knoTvn line about King Karl
(Charles XII), " Han stod i rok och damm " (" He stood in smoke
and dust "), and taldng ro to be the adjective meaning ' red,' imagined
the remaining syllables, which he heard as Tcordamm, to be the
name of some piece of garment. This amused his parents so much
that kordamm became the name of a dressing-gowTi in that family.
To Class C, where the child contributes only the sound and
the older people give a meaning to what on the child's side was
meaningless — a process that reminds one of the invention of
blotting-paper — belong some of the best-known words, which
require a separate section.
Vni.— §8. 'Mamma' and 'Papa.'
In the nurseries of all countries a little comedy has in all ages
been played — the baby lies and babbles his ' mamama ' or
' amama ' or ' papapa ' or * apapa ' or ' bababa ' or ' ababab '
without associating the slightest meaning with liis mouth-games,
and his grown-up friends, in their joy over the precocious child,
assign to these syllables a rational sense, accustomed as thej' are
themselves to the fact of an uttered sound having a content, a
thought, an idea, corresponding to it. So we get a whole class
§8] *MAM1\IA' AND 'PAPA' 155
of words, distinguished by a simplicity of sound-formation — never
two consonants together, generally the same consonant repeated
with an a between, frequently also with an a at the end — words
found in many languages, often in different forms, but with
essentially the same meaning.
First we have words for ' mother.' It is very natural that
the mother who is greeted by her happy child with the sound
' mama ' should take it as though the child were calling her ' mama,'
and since she frequently comes to the cradle when she hears the
sound, the child himself does learn to use these syllables when
he wants to call her. In this way they become a recognized word
for the idea ' mother ' — now with the stress on the first syllable,
now on the second. In French we get a nasal vowel either in
the last syllable only or in both syllables. At times we have only
one syllable, ma. When once these syllables have become a regular
word they follow the speech laws which govern other words ; thus
among other forms we get the German muhme, the meaning of which
(' aunt ') is explained as in the words mentioned, p. 118. In very early
times ma in our group of languages was supplied with a termination,
so that we get the form underlying Greek meter, Lat. mater (whence
Fr. mere, etc.), our own mother, G. mutter, etc. These words
became the recognized grown-up words, while mama itself was
only used in the intimacy of the family. It depends on fashion,
however, how ' high up ' mama can be used : in some countries
and in some periods children are allowed to use it longer than
in others.
The forms mama and ma are not the only ones for ' mother.'
The child's am has also been seized and maintained by the grown-
ups. The Albanian word for ' mother ' is ama, the Old Norse
M'ord for ' grandmother ' is amma. The Latin am-ita, formed from
am with a termination added, came to mean ' aunt ' and became
in OFr, ante, whence E. aunt and Modern Fr. iante. In Semitic
languages the words for ' mother ' also have a vowel before m :
Assyrian ummu, Hebrew '^m, etc.
Baba, too, is found in the sense ' mother,' especially in Slavonic
languages, though it has here developed various derivative mean-
ings, 'old woman,' 'grandmother,' or 'midwife.' In Tonga we
have hama ' mother.'
Forms with n are also found for ' mother ' ; so Sanskrit nana,
Albanian nane. Here we have also Gr. nanne ' aunt ' and Lat.
nonna ; the latter ceased in the early Middle Ages to mean ' grand-
mother ' and became a respectful way of addressing women of a
certain age, whence we know it as nun, the feminine counterpart
of ' monk.' From less known languages I may mention Green-
landic a\na-na 'mother,' ^ana 'grandmother.'
156 SOME FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS [ch. viii
Now we come to words meaning ' father,' and quite natm-allj',
where tlic sound-groups containmg m have already been inter-
preted in the sense ' mother,' a word for ' father ' will be sought
in the syllables with -p. It is no doubt frequently noticed in the
nursery that the bab}^ says mama where one expected papa, and
vice versa ; but at last he learns to deal out the syllables ' rightly,'
as we say. The history of the forms papa, pappa and pa is analo-
gous to the history of the m syllables already traced. We have
the same extension of the sound by tr in the word pater, which
according to recognized laws of sound-change is found in the
French pere, the English father, the Danish fader, the German
vaier, etc. Philologists no longer, fortunately^ derive these words
from a root pa ' to protect,' and see therein a proof of the ' highly
moral spirit ' of our aboriginal ancestors, as Fick and others did.
Papa, as we Imow, also became an honourable title for a reverend
ecclesiastic, and hence comes the name which we have in the
form Pope.
Side by side with the p forms we have forms in b — Italian
babbo, Bulgarian babd, Serbian bdba, Turkish baba. Beginning
with the vowel we have the Semitic forms ab, abu and finally abba,
which is well known, since through Greek abbas it has become the
name for a spiritual father in all European languages, our form
being Abbot.
Again, we have some names for ' father ' with dental soimds :
Sanskrit lata, Russian lata, tyatya, Welsh tat, etc. The English
dad, now so miiversal, is sometimes considered to have been bor-
rowed from this Welsh Avord, which in certain connexions has an
initial d, but no doubt it had an independent origin. In Slavonic
languages ded is extensively used for ' grandfather ' or ' old man.'
Thus also deite, teite in German dialects. Tata ' father ' is found
in Congo and other African languages, also {tatta) in Negro-
English (Surinam). And just as words for ' mother ' change their
meaning from ' mother ' to ' aunt,' so these forms in some lan-
guages come to mean ' uncle ' : Gr. theios (whence Italian zio),
Lithuanian dede, Russian dyadya.
With an initial vowel we get the form atta, in Greek used in
addressing old people, in Gothic the ordinary word for ' father,'
which with a termination added gives the proper name Attila,
originally ' little father ' ; with another ending we have Russian
otec. Outside our own family of languages we find, for instance,
Magyar atya, Turkish ata, Basque aita, Greenlandic a'ta-ta ' father,'
while in the last-mentioned language a-ta means ' grandfather.' ^
^ I subjoin a few additional examples. Basque aita ' father,' ama
' mother,' anaya ' brother ' {Zeitsch. f. rom. Phil. 17, 146). Manchu a77ia
' father,' ewe ' mother ' (the vowel relation aa in haha ' man,' hehe ' woman,'
§8] 'MAMMA' AND 'PAPA' 157
The nurse, too, comes in for her share in these names, as she
too is greeted by the child's babbling and is tempted to take it
as the child's name for her ; thus we get the German and Scandi-
navian amme, Polish niania, Russian nyanya, cf. our Nanny.
These words cannot be kept distinct from names for ' aunt,' cf.
amita above, and in Sanskrit we find mama for ' uncle.'
It is perhaps more doubtful if we can find a name for the
child itself which has arisen in the same way ; the nearest example
is the Engl, babe, baby, German bube (with u as in mnhme above) ;
but babe has also been explained as a word derived normally from
OFr. bavbe, from Lat. balbvs ' stammering.' When the name
Bab or Babs (Babbe in a Danish famil}') becomes the pet-name
for a little girl, this has no doubt come from an interpretation
put on her own meaningless sounds. Ital. bambo {bambino) cer-
tainly belongs here. We may here mention also some terms for
' doll,' Lat. 'pupa or puppa, G. puppe ; with a derivative ending
we have Fr. poupee, E. pupjjet (Chaucer, A 3254, popelote). These
words have a rich semantic development, cf. jjw^a (Dan. pnppe,
etc.) ' chrysalis,' and the diminutive Lat. pt'^'V'i^^vs, pupilla, which
was used for ' a little child, minor,' whence E. pt(pil ' disciple,'
but also for the little child seen in the eye, whence E. (and other
languages) pupil, ' central opening of the eye.'
A child has another main interest — that is, in its food, the
breast, the bottle, etc. In many countries it has been observed
that very early a child uses a long m (without a vowel) as a sign
that it wants something, but we can hardly be right in supposing
that the sound is originallj'' meant by children in this sense. They
do not use it consciously till they see that gro'mi-up people on
hearing the sound come up and find out what the child wants.
And it is the same with the developed forms which are uttered
by the child in its joy at getting something to eat, and which are
therefore interpreted as the child's expression for food : am, mam,
mammam, or the same words with a final a — that is, really the same
groups of sounds which came to stand for ' mother.' The deter-
mination of a particular form to a particular meaning is always
due to the adults, who, however, can subsequently teach it to the
child. Under this heading comes the sound ham, which Taine
observed to be one child's expression for hunger or thirst (h mute ?),
and similarly the word mum, meaning ' something to eat,' invented,
Gabelentz, S 389). Kutenai pw ' brother's daughter,' papa ' grandmother
(said by male), grandfather, grandson,' pat\ 'nephew,' ma 'mother,' nana
' younger sister' (of girl), aZnaria ' sisters,' tite 'mother-in-law,' titu 'father'
(of male) — (Boas, Kutenai Tales, Bureau of Am. Ethnol. 59, 1918). Cf,
also Sapir, "Kinship Terms of the Kootenay Indians " {Amer. Anthropologist,
vol. 20). In the same writer's Yana Terms oj Relationship (Univ. of Cali-
fornia, 1918) there seems to be very little from this source.
158 SOME FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS [ch. viii
as we are told, by Darwin's son and often uttered with a rising
intonation, as in a question, ' Will you give me something to eat ? '
Lindner's child (1.5) is said to have used papj) for everything
eatable and mem or mom for anything drinkable. In normal
language we have forms like Sanslmt mdmsa (Gothic mimz) and
mas " flesh,' our own meat (which formerly, like Dan. mad, meant
any kind of food), German mus ' jam ' (whence also gemiise), and
finally Lat. mandere and mandurare ' to chew ' (whence Fr. manger)
— all developments of this childish ma{m.).
As the child's first nourishment is its mother's breast, its joyous
mamama can also be taken to mean the breast. So we have the
Latin mamma (with a diminutive ending mammilla, whence
Fr. mamelle), and with the other labial sound Engl, pap, Nor-
wegian and Swed. dial, pappe, Lat. papilla; with a different vowel,
It. poppa, Fr. poupe, ' teat of an animal, formerly also of a woman ' ;
with b, G. biibbi, obsolete E. bubby ; with a dental, E. teat (G. zitze),
Ital. tetta, Dan. titte, Swed. dial, tatte. Further we have words
like E. pa]} ' soft food,' Latin papare ' to eat,' orig. ' to suck,'
and some G. forms for the same, pappen, pampen, pampfen.
Perhaps the beginning of the word milk goes back to the baby's
m,a applied to the mother's breast or milk ; the latter half may
then be connected with Lat. lac. In Greenlandic we have amama
' suckle.'
Inseparable from these words is the sound, a long m or am,
which expresses the child's delight over something that tastes
good ; it has by-forms in the Scotch nyam or nyamnyam, the English
seaman's term yam ' to eat,' and with two dentals the French
nanan ' sweetmeats.' Some linguists will have it that the I^atin
amo ' I love ' is derived from this am, which expresses pleasurable
satisfaction. When a father tells me that his son (1.10) vjses
the wonderful words nanana^i for ' chocolate ' and jajajaja for
picture-book, we have no doubt here also a case of a grown
person's interpretation of the originally meaningless sounds of
a child.
Another meaning that grown-up people may attach to syllables
uttered by the child is that of ' good-bye,' as in English tata, which
has now been incorporated in the ordinary language.^ Stern
probably is right when he thinks that the French adieu would
not have been accepted so commonly in Germany and other
countries if it had not accommodated itself so easily, esj^ecially
in the form commonly used in German, ade, to the chiild's natural
word.
* Tata 18 also used for ' a walk ' (to go out for a ta-ta, or to go out ta-tas)
and for ' a hat ' — meanings that may very well have developed from the
child's saying these syllables when going out or preparing to go out.
§8] 'MAMMA' AND 'PAPA' 159
There are some words for ' bed, sleep ' which clearly belong
to this class: Tuscan nanna 'cradle,' Sp. hacer la nana 'go to
sleep,' E. bye-bye (possibly associated with good-bye, instead of
which is also said byebye) ; Stern mentions baba (Berlin), beibei
(Russian), 6060 (Malay), but bischbisch, which he also gives here,
is evidently (like the Danish visse) imitative of the sound used for
hushing.
Words of this class stand in a way outside the common words
of a language, owing to their origin and their being continually
new-created. One cannot therefore deduce laws of sound-change
from them in their original shape ; and it is equally wrong to use
them as evidence for an original kinship between different families
of language and to count them as loan-words, as is frequently
done (for example, when the Slavonic baba is said to be borrowed
from Turkish). The English yapa and inam{m)a, and the same
words in German and Danish, Italian, etc., are almost always
regarded as borrowed from French ; but Cauer rightly points out
that Nausikaa {Odyssey 6. 57) addresses her father as -pappa fil,
and Homer cannot be suspected of borrowing fi'om French. Still,
it is true that fashion may play a part in deciding how long children
may be permitted to say papa and mamma, and a French fashion
may in this respect have spread to other European countries,
especially in the seventeenth century. We may not find these
words in early use in the literatures of the different countries, but
this is no proof that the words were not used in the nursery. As
soon as a word of this class has somewhere got a special application,
this can very well pass as a loan-word from land to land — as we
saw in the case of the words 0660^ and pope. And it may be
granted with respect to the primary use of the words that there
are certain national or quasi-national customs which determine
what grown people expect to hear from babies, so that one nation
expects and recognizes papa, another dad, a third atta, for the
meaning 'father.'
When the child hands something to somebody or reaches out
for something he will generally say something, and if, as often
happens, this is ta or da, it will be taken by its parents and others
as a real word, different according to the language they speak ;
in England as there or thanks, in Denmark as tak ' thanks ' ^ or
tag ■ take,' in Germany as da ' there,' in France as tiens ' hold,'
in Russia as day ' give,' in Italy as to, (= togli) ' take.' The
form te in Homer is interpreted by some as an imperative of
teino 'stretch.' These instances, however, are slightly different
^ The Swede Bolin says that his child said tatt-tatt, which he interprets
as tack, even when handing something to others.
160 SOME FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS [ch. viii
ill character from those discussed in the main part of this
chapter.!
* The views advanced in § 8 have some points in contact with the remarks
found in Stern's ch. xix, p. 300, only that I lay more stress on the arbitrary
interpretation of the child's meaningless syllables on the part of the grown-
ups, and that I cannot approve his theory of the ni syllables as ' centripetal '
and the p syllables as ' centrifugal affective-volitional natural sounds.'
Paul (P § 127) says that the nursery-language with its bowwow, papa, mama,
etc., " is not the invention of the children ; it is handed over to them just
as any other language " ; he overlooks the share children have themselves
in these words, or in some of them ; nor are they, as he says, formed by
tlie grown-ups with a purely pedagogical purpose. Nor can I find that
Wundt's chapter " Angebliche worterfindung des kindes " (S 1. 273-287)
contains decisive arguments. Curtius (K 88) thinks that Gr, pater was
first shortened into pa and this then extended into pdppa — but certainly
it is rather the other way round.
CHAPTER IX
THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHILD ON
LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT
§ 1. Conflicting Views. § 2. Meringer. Analogy. § 3. Herzog's Theory of
Sound Changes. § 4. Gradual Shiftings. § 5. Leaps. § 0. Assimila<
tions, etc. § 7. Stump-words.
IX.— § 1. Conflicting Views.
We all know that in historical times languages have been con-
stantly changing, and we have much indirect evidence that in
prehistoric times they did the same thing. But when it is
asked if these changes, unavoidable as they seem to be, are to be
ascribed primarily to childi'en and their defective imitation of
the speech of their elders, or if children's language in general
plays no part at all in the history of language, we find linguists
expressing quite contrary views, without the question having
ever been really thoroughly investigated.
Some hold that the child acquires its language with such per-
fection that it cannot be held responsible for the changes recorded
in the historj' of languages : others, on the contrary, hold that
the most important source of these changes is to be found in the
transmission of the language to new generations. How undecided
the attitude even of the foremost linguists may be towards the
question is perhaps best seen in the views expressed at different
times by Sweet. In 1882 he reproaches Paul with paying attention
only to the shiftings going on in the pronunciation of the same
individual, and not acknowledging " the much more potent cause
of change which exists in the fact that one generation can learn
the sounds of the preceding one by imitation only. It is an open
question whether the modifications made by the individual in a
sound he has once learnt, independently of imitation of those
around him, are not too infinitesimal to have any appreciable
effect " (CP 153). In the same spirit he asserted in 1899 that
the process of learning our own language in childhood is a very
slow one, " and the results are always imperfect. ... If languages
were learnt perfectly by the children of each generation, then
languages would not change : English children would still speak
a language as old at least as ' Anglo-Saxon,' and there would be
11 161
162 THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHILD [ch. ix
no such languages as French and Italian. The changes in languages
are simjily slight mistakes, -which in the course of generations
completely alter the character of the language " (PS 75). But
only one year later, in 1900, he maintains that the child's imitation
" is in most cases practically perfect " — " the main cause of
sound-change must therefore be sought elsewhere. The real
cause of sound-change seems to be organic shifting — failure to hit
the mark, the result either of carelessness or sloth ... a slight
deviation from the pronunciation learnt in infancy may easily
pass unheeded, especially by those who make the same change
in their own pronunciation" (H 19 f.). By the term "organic
shifting " Sweet evidently, as seen from his preface, meant shifting
in the pronunciation of the adult, thus a modification of the sound
learnt ' perfectly ' in childhood. Paul, who in the first edition
(1880) of his Prhizijnen ch)' SjirachgescMchte did not mention
the influence of children, in all the following editions (2nd, 1886,
p. 58 ; 3rd, 1898, p. 58 ; 4th, 1909, p. 63) expressly says that
" die hauptveranlassung zum lautwandel in der iibertragung der
laute auf neue individuen liegt,'"' while the shiftings within the
same generation are very slight. Paul thus modified his view in
the opposite direction of Sweet ^ — and did so under the influence
of Sweet's criticism of his own first view !
When one finds scholars expressing themselves in this manner
and giving hardly any reasons for their \'iews, one is tempted to
believe that the question is perhaps insoluble, that it is a mere
toss-up, or that in the sentence " children's imitation is nearly
perfect " the stress may be laid, according to taste, now on the word
nearly, and now on the word perfect. I am, however, convinced that
we can get a little farther, though only by breaking up the question,
instead of treating it as one vague and indeterminate whole.
IX.— §2. Meringer. Analogy.
Among recent writers Meringer has gone furthest into the
question, adhering in the main to the general view that, just as
in other fields, social, economic, etc., it is grown-up men who
take the lead in new developments, so it is grown-up men, and
not women or children, Avho carry things forAvard in the field of
^ The same inconsistency is found in Dauzat, who in 1910 thought that
nothing, and in 1912 that nearly everything, was due to imperfect imitation
by the child (V 22 £E., Ph 63, cf. 3). Wechssler (L p. 86) quotes passages
from Bremer, Passy, Rousselot and Wallensk6ld, in which the chief cause
of soimd changes is attributed to the child ; to these niight be added Storm
(Phonetische Studien, 5. 200) and A. Thomson (IF 24, 1909, p. 9), probably
also Crammont {Mdl. linguist. 61). Many writers seem to imagine that
the question is settled when they are able to adduce a certain number of
parallel changes in the pronvmciation cf some child and in the historical
evolution of languages.
§2] MERINGER. ANALOGY 103
language. In one place he justifies his standpoint by a reference
to a special case, and I will take this as the starting-point of my
own consideration of the question. He saj^s : " It can be shown
by various examples that they [changes in language] are decidedly
not due to children. In Ionic, Attic and Lesbian Greek the
words for 'hundreds ' are formed in -kosioi {diakosioi, etc.), while
elsewhere (in Doric and Boeotian) they appear as -kdtioi. How
does the o arise in -kosioi ? It is generally said that it comes
from in the ' tens ' in the termination -konta. Can it be children
who have formed the words for hundreds on the model of the
words for tens, children under six years old, who are just learning
to talk ? Such children generally have other things to attend
to than to practise themselves in numerals above a hundred."
Similar formations are adduced from Latin, and it is stated that
the personal pronouns are especially subject to change, but children
do not use the jDcrsonal pronouns till an age when they are already
in firm possession of the language. Meringer then draws the
conclusion that the share which children take in bringing about
linguistic change is a very small one.
Now, I should like fii'st to remark that even if it is possible to
point to certain changes in language which cannot be ascribed
to little children, this proves nothing with regard to the very
numerous changes which lie outside these limits. And next,
that all the cases here mentioned are examples of formation by
analogy. But from the very nature of the case, the conditions
requisite for the occurrence of such formations are exactly the
same in the case of adults and in that of the children. For what
are the conditions ? Some one feels an impulse to express some-
thing, and at the moment has not got the traditional form at
command, and so is driven to evolve a form of his own from the
rest of the linguistic material. It makes no difference whether
he has never heard a form used by other people which expresses
what he wants, or whether he has heard the traditional form,
but has not got it ready at hand at the moment. The method of
procedure is exactly the same whether it takes place in a three-
year-old or in an eighty-three -year-old brain : it is therefore
senseless to put the question whether formations by analogy are
or are not due to children. A formation by analogy is by
definition a non-traditional form. It is therefore idle to ask if
it is due to the fact that the language is transmitted from generation
to generation and to the child's imperfect repetition of what has
been transmitted to it, and Meringer 's argument thus breaks
down in every respect.
It must not, of course, be overlooked that children naturally
come to invent more formations by analogy than grown-up people,
1G4 THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHH.D [cii, ix
because the latter in many cases have heard the older forms so
often that they find a place in their speech without any effort
being required to recall them. But that does not touch the
problem under discussion ; besides, formations by analogy are
unavoidable and indispensable, in the talk of all, even of the
most 'grown-up': one cannot, indeed, move in language without
having recourse to forms and constructions that are not duectly
and fully transmitted to us : speech is not alone reproduction,
but just as much new-production, because no situation and no
impulse to communication is in every detail exactly the same
as what has occurred on earlier occasions.
IX.— § 3. Herzog's Theory of Sound Changes.
If, leaving the field of analogical changes, we begin to inquire
whether the purely phonetic changes can or must be ascribed to
the fact that a new generation has to learn the mother-tongue
by imitation, we shall first have to examine an interesting theory
in which the question is answered in the affirmative, at least with
regard to those phonetic changes which are gradual and not
brought about all at once ; thus, when in one particular language
one vowel, say [e], is pronounced more and more closely till
finally it becomes [i*], as has happened in E. see, formerly pro-
nounced [se-] with the same vowel as in G. see, now [si']. E.
Herzog maintains that such changes happen through transference
to new generations, even granted that the children imitate the
sound of the grown-up people perfectly. For, it is said, children
with their little mouths cannot produce acoustically the same
sound as adults, except by a different position of the speech-
organs ; this position they keep for the rest of their lives, so that
when they are grown-up and their mouth is of full size they produce
a rather different sound from that previously heard — which altered
sound is again imitated by the next generation with yet another
position of the organs, and so on. This continuous play of
generation v. generation may be illustrated in this way :
Articulation corresponding to Sound.
fyoung Al SI
1st generation|^j^ ^ ^^
fyoung A2
2nd generation|^j^ A2
S2
S2
S3
S3
S4,etc.i
» See E. Herzog, Streitfragen der roman. philologie, i. (1904), p. 57 — I
modify his symbols a little.
« 1 J.- fyoung A3
3rd generation|^j^ ^3
§ 3] HERZOG'S THEORY OF SOUND CHANGES 165
It is, however, easy to prove that this theory cannot be correct.
(1) It is quite certain that the increase in size of the mouth is
far less important than is generally supposed (see my Fonetik,
p. 379 fif., PhG, p. 80 ff. ; cf . above, V § 1). (2) It cannot be proved
that people, after once learning one definite way of producing a
sound, go on producing it in exactly the same way, even if the
acoustic result is a different one. It is much more probable that
each individual is constantly adapting himself to the sounds heard
from those around him, even if this adaptation is neither as
quick nor perhaps as perfect as that of children, who can very
rapidly accommodate their speech to the dialect of new surround-
ings : if very far-reaching changes are rare in the case of grown-up
people, this proves nothing against such small adaptations as
are here presupposed. In favour of the continual regulation of
the sound thi-ough the ear may be adduced the fact that adults
who become perfectly deaf and thus lose the control of sounds
through hearing may come to speak in such a way that their
words can hardly be understood by others. (3) The theory in
question also views the relations between successive generations
in a way that is far removed from the realities of life : from the
wording one might easilj^ imagine that there were living together
at any given time only individuals of ages separated by, say,
thirty years' distance, while the truth of the matter is that a
child is normally surrounded by people of all ages and learns its
language more or less from all of them, from Grannie down to
little Dick from over the way, and that (as has already been
remarked) its cliief teachers are its own brothers and sisters and
other playmates of about the same age as itself. If the theory
were correct, there would at any rate be a marked difference
in vowel-sounds between anyone and his grandfather, or, still
more, great-grandfather : but nothing of the kind has ever been
described. (4) The chief argument, however, against the theory
is this, that were it true, then all shiftings of sounds at all times
and in all languages would proceed in exactly the same direction.
But this is emphatically contradicted bj' the history of language.
The long a in English in one period was rounded and raised into
o, as in OE. sfan, na, ham, which have become stone, no, home ;
but when a few centuries later new long a's had entered the
language, they followed the opposite direction towards e, now
[ei], as in name, male, take. Similarly in Danish, where an old
stratum of long a's have become d, as in dl, gas, while a later stratum
tends rather towards [ae], as in the present pronunciation of gade,
hale, etc. At the same time the long a in Swedish tends towards
the rounded pronunciation (cf . Fr. dme, pas) : in one sister language
wo thus witness a repetition of the old shifting, in the other a
106 THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHILD [cii. ix
teudcnuy in the opposite direction. And it is the same with all
those languages which we can pui'sue far enough back : they all
present the same picture of varying vowel shiftings in different
directions, which is totally incompatible with Herzog's view.
IX.— § 4. Gradual Shiftings.
Wo shall do well to put aside such artificial theories and look
soberly at the facts. When some sounds in one century go one
way, and in another, another, while at times they remain long
unchanged, it all rests on this, that for human habits of this sort
there is no standard measure. Set a man to saw a hundred logs,
measuring No. 2 by No. 1, No. 3 by No. 2, and so on, and you will
see considerable deviations from the original measure — perhaps
all going in the same direction, so that No. 100 is very much
longer than No. 1 as the result of the sum of a great many small
deviations — perhaps all going in the opposite direction ; but it
is also possible that in a certain series he was inclined to make
the logs too long, and in the next series too short, the two sets
of deviations about balancing one another.
It is much the same with the formation of speech sounds :
at one moment, for some reason or other, in a particular mood,
in order to lend authority or distinction to our words, we may
happen to lower the jaw a little more, or to thrust the tongue a
little more forward than usual, or inversely, under the influence
of fatigue or laziness, or to sneer at someone else, or because we
have a cigar or potato in our mouth, the movements of the jaw
or of the tongue may fall short of what they usually are. We
have all the while a sort of conception of an average pronunciation,
of a normal degree of opening or of protrusion, which Ave aim
at, but it is nothing very fixed, and the only measure at our dis-
posal is that we are or are not understood. What is understood
is all right : what does not meet this requirement must be repeated
with greater correctness as an answer to ' I beg 5"our pardon ? '
Everyone thinks that he talks to-day just as he did yesterdaj',
and, of course, he does so in nearly every point. But no one knows
if he pronounces his mother-tongue in every resjaect in the same
manner as he did twenty years ago. May we not suppose that what
happens with faces happens here also ? One lives with a friend day
in and day out, and he appears to be just what he was years ago, but
someone who returns home after a long absence is at once struck
by the changes which have gradually accumulated in the interval.
Changes in the sounds of a language are not, indeed, so rapid
as those in the appearance of an individual, for the simple reason
that it is not enough for one man to alter his pronunciation,
§ 4] GRADUAL SHIFTINGS 167
many must co-opcratc : the social nature and social aim of lan-
guage has the natural consequence that all must combine in the
same movement, or else one neutralizes the changes introduced
by the other ; each individual also is continually under the influ-
ence of his fellows, and involuntarily fashions his pronunciation
according to the impression he is constantl}' receiving of other
people's sounds. But as regards those little gradual shif tings of
sounds which take place in spite of all this control and its con-
servative influence, changes in which the sound and the articulation
alter simultaneously, I cannot see that the transmission of the
language to a new generation need exert any essential influence :
we may imagine them being brought about equally well in a society
which for hundreds of years consisted of the same adults who
never died and had no issue.
IX.— §5. Leaps.
While in the shiftings mentioned in the last paragraphs
articulation and acoustic impression went side by side, it is
different with some shiftings in which the old sound and the new
resemble one another to the ear, but differ in the position of the
organs and the articulations. For instance, when [}?] as in E.
tkich becomes [f] and [6] as in E. mother becomes [v], one can
hardly conceive the change taking place in the pronunciation of
people who have learnt the right sound as children. It is verj''
natural, on the other hand, that children should imitate the
harder sound by giving the easier, which is very like it, and which
they have to use in many other words : forms like fru for through,
wiv, muvver for tvith, mother, are frec[uent in the mouths of children
long before they begin to make their apj)earance in the speech
of adults, where they are now beginning to be very frequent in
the Cockney dialect. (Cf. MEG i. 13. 9.) The same transition is
met with in Old Fr., where we have inuef from modu, nif from
nidu, fief irom feodu, self, now soif, from site, estrif (E. strife) from
stridh, glaive from gladiu, parvis from paradis, and possibly avoidre
from adulteru, poveir, now pouvoir, from potere. In Old Gothonic
we have the transition from p to f before I, as in Goth. ]>laqus=
MHG. vlach, Goth. plaihmi= OB.G. flehan, y>liuhan=011G. fliohan ;
cf. also E. file, G. feile=0'N. y>el, OE. pengel and fengel 'prince,'
and probably G. finster, cf . OHG. dinstar (with d from ]>), OE. '\>eostre.
In Latin we have the same transition, e.g. in fumus, corresponding
to Sansk. dhumds, Gr. thumos}
* In Russian Marfa, Fyodor, etc., we also have/ corresponding to original
]?, but in this case it is not a transition within one and the same language,
but an imperfect imitation on the part of the (adult !) Russians of a sound
in a foreign language (Greek th) which was not found in their own language.
168 THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHILD [en. ix
The change from the back-open consonant [x] — the sound in
G. buch and Scotch loch — to /, which has taken place in enough,
cough, etc., is of the same kind. Here clearly we have no gradual
passage, but a jump, which could hardly take place in the case
of those who had already learnt how to pronounce the back
sound, but is easily conceivable as a case of defective imitation
on the part of a new generation. I suppose that the same remark
holds good with regard to the change from ho to p, which is found
in some languages, for instance, Gr. hijypos, corresponding to Lat.
equus, Gr. he2)omai=Lsit. sequor, he2)ar='Lsit. jecur ; Rumanian
apa from Lat. aqua, Welsh ma]), 'son ' = Gaelic mac, pedzvar=li'.
cathir, 'four,' etc. In Franco I have heard children say [pizin]
and [pidin] for cuisine.
IX. — §6. Assimilations, etc.
There is an important class of sound changes which have
this in common with the class just treated, that the changes take
place suddenly, without an intermediate stage being possible, as
in the changes considered in IX §4. I refer to those cases
of assimilation, loss of consonants in heavy groups and trans-
position (metathesis), with which students of language are familiar
in all languages. Instances abound in the speech of all children ;
see above, V §4.
If now we dared to assert that such pronunciations are never
heard from people who have passed their babyhood, we should
here have foimd a field in which children have exercised a great
influence on the development of language : but of course we
cannot say anything of the sort. Any attentive observer can
testify to the frequency of such mispronunciations in the speech
of grown-up people. In many cases they are noticed neither by
the speaker nor by the hearer, in many they may be noticed, but
are considered too unimportant to be corrected, and finally, in
some cases the speaker stops to repeat what he wanted to say in
a corrected form. Now it would not obviously do, from their
frequency in adult speech, to draw the inference : " These changes
are not to be ascribed to children," because from their frequent
appearance on the lips of the children one could equally well infer :
"They are not to be ascribed to groT\Ti-up people." When we
find in Latin impotens and immeritus with m side by side with
indignus and insolitus with n, or when English handkerchief is
pronounced with [T^k] instead of the original [ndk], the change
is not to be charged against children or growii-up people exclu-
sively, but against both parties together : and so when t is lost
in ivaistcoat [weskat], or postman or castle, or A* in asked. There
§ G] ASSBIILATIONS 169
is certainly this difference, that when the change is made by older
people, we get in the speech of the same individual first the heavier
and then the easier form, while the child may take up the easier
pronunciation first, because it hears the [n] before a lip consonant
as [m], and before a back consonant as [y], or because it fails
altogether to hear the middle consonant in waistcoat, 2^ost'man,
castle and asked. But all this is clearly of purely theoretical
interest, and the result remains that the influence of the two
classes, adults and children, cannot possibly be separated in this
domain.^
IX.— §7. Stump-words.
Next we come to those changes which result in what one may
call 'stump- words.' There is no doubt that words may undergo
violent shortenings both by children and adults, but here I believe
we can more or less definitel}^ distinguish between their respective
contributions to the development of language. If it is the end
of the word that is kept, while the beginning is drojDped, it is
probable that the mutilation is due to children, who, as we have
seen (VII §7), echo the conclusion of what is said to them and
forget the beginning or fail altogether to apprehend it. So we
get a number of mutilated Christian names, w^hich can then be
used by groA^Ti-up people as pet-names. Examples are Bert for
Herbert or Albert, Bella for Ai*abella, Sander for Alexander, Lottie
for Charlotte, Trix for Beatrix, and with childlike sound-substitu-
tion Bess (and Bet, Betty) for Elizabeth. Similarly in other
languages, from Danish I may mention Bine for Jakobine, Line
for Karoline, Sti^ie for Kristine, Dres for Andres : there are many
others.
If this way of shortening a word is natural to a child who
hears the word for the first time and is not able to remember
the beginning when he comes to the end of it, it is quite different
when others clip words which they know perfectly well : they
will naturally keep the beginning and stop before they are half
through the word, as soon as they are sure that their hearers
understand what is alluded to. Dr. Johnson was not the only
one who " had a way of contracting the names of his friends, as
Beauclerc, Beau ; Boswell, Bozzy ; Langton, Lanhj ; Murphy,
Miir ; Sheridan, Sherry ; and Goldsmith, Goldy, which Gold-
^ Reduplications and assimilations at a distance, as in Fr. tante from
the older ayUe (whence E. aunt, from Lat. amita) and porpentine (frequent
in this and analogous forms in Elizabethan writers) for porcupme (porkepine,
porkespine) are different from the ordinary assimilations of neighbouring
sounds in occurring much less frequently in the speech of adults than in
children ; of., however, below, Ch. XV 4.
170 THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHILD [ch. ix
smitli resented" (Boswell, Life, cd. P. Fitzgerald, 1900, i. 48G).
Tliackeray eonstantly says Pen for Aithur Pendennis, Cos for
Costigan, Fo for Foker, Pop for Popjoy, old Col for Colchicuni.
In the beginning of the last century Najioleon Bonaparte was
generally called Nap or Boney ; later we have such shortened
names of jDublic characters as Dizzy for Disraeli, Pam for Palmerston ,
Labby for Labouchere, etc. These evidently are due to adults,
and so are a great many other clippings, some of which have
completely ousted the original long words, such as mob for mobile,
brig for brigantine, fad for fadaise, cab for cabriolet, navvy for
navigator, while others are still felt as abbreviations, such as
plioto for photogi'aj^h, ^;«6 for public-house, caps for capital letters,
spec for speculation, sov for sovereign, ze2'> for Zeppelin, divvy
for dividend, hip for hypochondria, the Cri and the Pavvy for the
Criterion and the Pavilion, and many other clippings of words
which are evidently far above the level of very small children.
The same is true of the abbreviations in which school and college
slang abounds, words like Gym(nastica), V7idergrad{uate), trig-
(onometry), Za6(orator3^), wio/nc(ulation), ^re2>(aration), the Giiv
for the governor, etc. The same remark is true of similar
clippings in other languages, such as kilo for kilogram, G. ober
for oberkellner, French om/o(crate), reac(tionnaire), college terms
like desse for descriptive (geometric d.), philo for philosophic,
^jrew for premier, seu for second ; Danish numerals like tres
for tresindstyve (60), halvfjerds(in.dBiy\e), ytr5(indstyve). We are
certainly justified in extending the principle that abbreviation
through throwing away the end of the word is due to those who
have previous!}^ mastered the full form, to the numerous instances
of shortened Christian names like Fred for Frederick, Em for
Emily, Alec for Alexander, Di for Diana, Vic for Victoria, etc.
In other languages we find similar clippings of names more or
less carried through systematically, e.g. Greek Zeiixis for Zeuxippos,
Old High German Wolfo for Wolfbrand, Wolfgang, etc., Icelandic
Sigga for Sigridr, Siggi for SigurSr, etc.
I see a corroboration of my theory in the fact that there are
hardly an}^ family names shortened by throwing away the begin-
ning : children as a rule have no use for family names.^ The
rule, however, is not laid down as absolute, but only as holding
in the main. Some of the exceptions are easily accounted for.
'Cello for violoncello undoubtedly is an adults' word, originating
^ Karl Sund<^n, in his diligent and painstaking book on Elliptical Words
?n Modern Ei^glish (Upsala, 1904) [i.e. clipped proper names, for common
names are not treated in the long lists given], mentions only two examples
of surnames in which the final part is kept (Bart for Islebart, Piggy for
Guineapig, from obscure novels), though he has scores of examples in which
the beginning is preserved.
§ 7] STUMP-WORDS 171
in Fiance or Italy : but here evidently it would not do to take
the beginning, for then there would be confusion with violin
(violon). Phone for telephone : the beginning might just as well
stand for telegraph. Van for caravan : here the beginning would
be identical with car. Bus, which made its appearance immediately
after the first omnibus was started in the streets of liondon
(1829), probably was thought expressive of the sound of these
vehicles and suggested bustle. But bacco {baccer, baccy) for tobacco
and taters for potatoes belong to a diJBferent sphere altogether :
they are not clippings of the usual sort, but purely phonetic
developments, in which the first vowel has been dropped in rapid
pronunciation (as in / s'pose), and the initial voiceless stop has
then become inaudible ; Dickens similarly writes HicJcerlerly as
a vulgar pronunciation of particularly.^
1 It is often said that stress is decisive of what part is left out in word-
chppings, and from an a priori point of view this is what we should expect.
But as a matter of fact we find in many instances that sj'Uables with weak
stress are preserved, e.g. in JV/ac(donald), Pen{denni8), the Cri, Vic, Nap,
Nat for Nathaniel (orig. pronounced with [t], not [p]), Val for Percival,
Tru, etc. The middle is never kept as such wnth omission of the beginning
and the ending ; Liz (whence Lizzy) has not arisen at one stroke from Eliza-
beth, but mediately through Eliz. Somo of the adults' clippings originate
through abbreviations in writing, thus probably most of the college terms
{exam, trig, etc.), thus also journalists' clippings like ad for advertisement,
par for paragraph ; cf. also caps for capitals. On stump -words see also
below, Ch. XIV, §§8 and 9.
I
CHAPTER X
THE INFLUENCE OF THE CKlLD—continned
§ 1. Confusion of Words. § 2. Metanalysis. § 3. Shif tings of Meanings.
§ 4. Differentiations. § 5. Summary. § 6. Indirect Influence. § 7.
New Languages.
X.— § 1. Confusion of Words.
Some of the most typical childish sound-substitutions can hardly
be supposed to leave any traces in language as permanently
spoken, because they are always thoroughly corrected by the
children themselves at an early age ; among these I reckon the almost
universal pronunciation of t instead of k. When, therefore, we
do find that in some words a t has taken the place of an earlier
Jc, we must look for some more specific cau.se of the change : but
this ma3% in some cases at any rate, be found in a tendency of
children's speech which is totally independent of the inabilitj'
to pronounce the sound of k at an early age, and is, indeed, in
no way to be reckoned among phonetic tendencies, namely, the
confusion resulting from an association of two words of similar
sound (cf. above, p. 122). This, I take it, is the explanation of
the word mate in the sense ' husband or wife,' which has replaced
the earlier 7nake : a confusion was here natural, because the word
mate, ' companion,' was similar not only in sound, but also in
signification. The older name for the ' soft roe ' of fishes was
milk (as Dan. mcelk, G. milch), but from the fifteenth centurj^*
milt has been substituted for it, as if it were the same organ as
the milt, ' the spleen.* Children will associate words of similar
sound even in cases where there is no connecting link in their
significations ; thus we have bat for earlier bak, bakke (the animal,
vespertilio), though the other word bat, ' a stick,' is far removed
in sense.
I think we must explain the following cases of isolated sound -
substitution as due to the same confusion with unconnected words
in the minds of children hearing the new words for the first time :
trunk in the sense of ' proboscis of an elephant,' formerly trnmp,
from Fr. trompe, confused with trunk, ' stem of a tree ' ; stark-
naked, formerly start-naked, from start, ' tail,' confused with stark,
' stiff ' ; ve7it, ' air-hole,' from Fr. fente, confused with vent,
173
§1] CONFUSION OF WORDS 173
' breath ' (for this v cannot be due to the Southern dialectal transi-
tion from /, as in vat from fat, for that transition does not, as a rule,
take place in French loans) ; cocoa for cacao, confused with coco-
nut : match, from Fr. meche, by confusion with the other match ;
chine, 'rim of cask,' from chime, cf, G. kimme, 'border,' confused
with chine, ' backbone.' I give some of these examples with a
little diffidence, though I have no doubt of the general principle
of childish confusion of unrelated words as one of the sources of
irregularities in the development cf sounds.
These substitutions cannot of course be separated from
instances of ' popular etymology,' as when the phrase to cnny
favour was substituted for the former to curry favel, where favel
means ' a fallow horse,' as the t3^pe of fraud or duplicity (cf. G.
den fahlen hengst reiten, 'to act deceitfully,' einen avf einem
fahlen pferde ertappen, ' to catch someone lying ').
X.— §2. Metanalysis.
We now come to the phenomenon for which I have ventured
to coin the term ' metanalysis,' by Avhich I mean that words or
word-groups are by a new generation analyzed differently from
the analysis of a former age. Each child has to find out for himself,
in hearing the connected speech of other people, where one word
ends and the next one begins, or what belongs to the kernel and
what to the ending of a word, etc. (VII §6). In most cases he
will arrive at the same analysis as the former generation, but now
and then he will put the boundaries in another place than formerlj^
and the new analysis may become general. A naddre (the ME.
form for OE. an ncedre) thus became an adder, a napron became
an apron, an naiiger : an auger, a numpire : an umpire ; and in
psychologically the same way an ewte (older form evete, OE. efete)
became a newt : metanalj^sis accordingly sometimes shortens and
sometimes lengthens a word. Riding as a name of one of the three
districts of Yorkshire is due to a metanalysis of North Thriding
(ON. yridjungr, ' third part '), as well as of East Thriding, West
Thriding, after the sound of th had been assimilated to the
preceding t.
One of the most frequent forms of metanalj^sis consists in the
subtraction of an s, which originally belonged to the kernel of a
word, but is mistaken for the plural ending ; in this way we have
pea instead of the earlier peas, pease, cherry for ME. cherris, Fr.
cerise, asset from assets, Fr. assez, etc, Cf. also the vulgar Chinee,
Portuguee, etc.^
* See my MEG ii. 6. 6, and my paper on ' Subtraktionsdannelser," in
Festskrijt til Vilh. Thomsen, 1894, p. 1 ff.
174 THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHILD [en. x
The influence of a new generation is also seen in those cases
in which formerly separate words coalesce into one, as when he
breakfasts, he breakfasted, is said instead of he breaks fast, he broke
fast ; cf, vouchsafe, don (third person, vouchsafes, dovs), instead of
I'owc/t safe, do on (third person, vouches safe, does on). Here, too,
it is not probable that a person who has once learnt the real form
of a word, and thus knows where it begins and where it ends,
should have subsequentl}- changed it : it is much more likelj' that
all such changes originate with children who have once made
a wrong analysis of what they have heard and then go on repeating
the new forms all their lives.
X.— § 3. Shiftings of Meanings.
Changes in the meaning of words are often so gradual that
one cannot detect the different steps of the process, and changes
of this sort, like the corresponding changes in the sounds of M-ords,
are to be ascribed quite as much to people already acquainted
with the language as to the new generation. As examples we
may mention the laxity that has changed the meaning of somi,
which in OE. meant ' at once,' and in the same way of presently,
originally ' at present, now,' and of the old a7i07i. Dinner comes
from OF. disner, which is the infinitive of the verb which in other
forms was desjeun, whence modern French dtjeune (Lat. *desje-
junare) ; it thus meant ' breakfast,' but the hour of the meal
thus termed was gradually shifted in the course of centuries, so
that now we may have dinner twelve hours after breakfast. When
picture, which originally meant ' painting,' came to be applied to
drawings, photographs and other images ; when hard came to
be used as an epithet not only of nuts and stones, etc., but of words
and labour ; when fair, besides the old sense of ' beautiful,'
acquired those of ' blond ' and ' morally just ' ; when meat, from*
meaning all kinds of food (as in siveetmeats, meat and drink), came
to be restricted practically to one kind of food (butcher's meat) ;
when the verb grow, which at first w&s used onlj- of plants, came
to be used of animals, hairs, nails, feelings, etc., and, instead of
implying always increase, might even be combined with such a
predicative as smaller and smaller ; when pretty, from the meaning
'skilful, ingenious,' came to be a general epithet of approval
(cf. the modern American, a cunning child=' sweet '), and, besides
meaning good-looking, became an adverb of degree, as in pretty
bad : neither these nor countless similar shiftings need be ascribed
to any influence on the part of the learners of English ; they can
easily be accounted for as the product of innumerable small
extensions and restrictions on the part of the users of the language
after they have once acquired it.
§3] SHIFTINGS OF MEANINGS 175
But along with changes of this sort we have others that have
come about with a leap, and in ^hich it is imi)ossible to find
intermediate stages betAveen two seemingly heterogeneous meanings,
as when bead, from meaning a ' prayer,' comes to mean ' a per-
forated ball of glass or amber.' In these cases the change is occa-
sioned by certain connexions, where the whole sense can only be
taken in one way, but the syntactical construction admits of
various interpretations, so that an ambiguity at one point gives
occasion for a new conception of the meaning of the word. The
phrase to count your beads originally meant ' to count j'our
prayers,' but because the prayers were reckoned by little balls,
the word beads came to be transferred to these objects, and lost
its original sense. ^ It seems clear that this misapprehension could
not take place in the brains of those who had already associated
the word with the original signification, while it was quite natural
on the part of children \Aho heard and understood the jDhrase
as a whole, but unconsciously analyzed it differently from the
previous generation.
There is another word which also meant ' prayer ' originally,
but has lost that meaning, viz. boon ; through such phrases as
' ask a boon ' and ' grant a boon ' it came to be taken as meaning
' a favour ' or ' a good thing received.'
Orient was frequently used in such connexions as ' orient
pearl ' and ' orient gem,' and as these were lustrous, orient became
an adjective meaning ' shining,' without any connexion with the
geographical orient, as in Shakespeare, Venus 981, "an orient
drop " (a tear), and ]\Iilton, PL i. 546, " Ten thousand banners
rise into the air. With orient colours waving."
There are no connecting links between the meanings of ' glad '
and ' obliged,' ' forced,' but when fain came to be chiefly used
in combinations like ' he was fain to leave the country,' it was
natm-al for the younger generation to interpret the whole plu'ase
as implying necessity instead of gladness.
We have similar phenomena in certain sjTitactical changes.
When me thinks and me likes gave place to / think and / like, the
chief cause of the change was that the cliild heard combinations
like Mother thinks or Father likes, where mother and father can
be either nominative or accusative-dative, and the construction
is thus sjTitactically ambiguous. This leads to a ' shunting ' of
the meaning as well as of the construction of the verbs, which must
^ Semantic changes through ambiguous syntactic combinations have
recently been studied espeeiallj' by Carl Collin ; see his Semasioloffiska stucUer,
1906, and Le Developpement de Sens du Suffixe -ATA, Lund, 1918, ch. iii
and iv, Collin there treats especially of tTie transition from abstract to
concrete nouns ; he does not, as I have done above, speak of the role of
the younger generation in such changes.
176 THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHILD [cii. x
have come about in a new brain which was not originally acquainted
with the old construction.
As one of the factors bringing about changes in meaning many
scholars mention forgetfulness ; but it is important to keep in
■view that what happens is not real forgetting, that is, snapping
of threads of thought that had already existed within the same
consciousness, but the fact that the new individual never develops
the threads of thought which in the elder generation bound one
word to another. Sometimes there is no connexion of ideas in
the child's bram : a word is viewed quite singly as a whole and
isolated, till later perhaps it is seen in its etymological relation.
A little girl of six asked when she was born. " You were born on
the 2nd of October." " Why, then, I was born on my birthday ! "
she cried, her eyes beaming with joy at this wonderfully happy
coincidence. Origmally Fare well was only said to some one going
away. If noAv the departing guest says Farewell to his friend
Avho is staying at home, it can only be because the word Farewell
has been conceived as a fixed formula, without any consciousness
of the nieaning of its parts.
Sometimes, on the other hand, new connexions of thought
arise, as when we associate the word bound with bi7id in the phrase
' he is bound for America.' Our ancestors meant ' he is ready to
go ' (ON. bui7in, ' ready '), not ' he is under an obligation to go.'
The establishment of new associations of this kind seems naturally
to take place at the moment when the young mind makes
acquaintance with the word : the phenomenon is, of course, closely
related to "popular etj-mology " (see Ch. VI §6).
X.— §4. Differentiations.
Linguistic ' splittings ' or differentiations, whereby one word
becomes two, may also be largely due to the trani^mission of the
language to a new generation. The child may hear two pronuncia-
tions of the same word from different people, and then associate
these with different ideas. Thus Paul Passy learnt the word
meule in the sense of ' grindstone ' from his father, and in the
sense of ' haycock ' from his mother ; now the former in both
senses pronounced [moel], and the latter in both [mol], and the
child thus came to distinguish [moel] ' grindstone ' and rmDll
' haycock ' (Ch 23). ■'
Or the child may have learnt the word at two different periods
of its life, associated with different spheres. This, I take it, may
be the reason why some speakers make a distinction betAvecn
two pronunciations of the word medicine, in two and in three
syllables : they take [medsin], but study [mcdisin].
§ 4] DIFFERENTIATIONS 177
Finally, the cliild can itself split words. A friend wiites : " I
remember that when a schoolboy said that it was a good thing that
the new Headmaster was Dr. Wood, because he would then know
when boys were ' shamming,' a schoolfellow remarked, ' Wasn't
it funny ? He did not know the difference between Doctor and
Docter.' " In Danish the Japanese are indiscriminately called
either Japaneme or Japanesernc ; now, I once overheard my bay
(6. 10) lecturing his playfellows : •'" Japaneserne, that is the soldiers
of Japan, but Japaneme, that is students and children and such-
like." It is, of course, possible that he may have heard' one
form originally when showTi some pictiu-es of Japanese soldiers,
and the other on another occasion, and that this may have been
the reason for his distinction. However this may be, I do not
doubt that a number of differentiations of words are to be ascribed
to the transmission of the language to a new generation. Others
may have arisen in the speech of adults, such as the distinction
between off and of (at first the stressed and unstressed form of
the same preposition), or between tJiorough and through (the former
is still used as a preposition in Shakespeare : " thorough bush,
thorough brier "). But complete differentiation is not established
till some individuals from the very first conceive the forms as
two indej)endent words.
X.— §5. Summary.
Listead of saying, as previous writers on these questions have
done, either that children have no influence or that they have
the chief influence on the development of language, it will be
seen that I have divided the question into many, going through
various fields of linguistic change and asking in each what may
have been the influence of the child. The result of this investigation
has been that there are certain fields in which it is both impossible
and really also irrelevant to separate the share of the child and
of the adult, because both will be apt to introduce changes of that
kind ; such are assimilations of neighbouring sounds and di'oppings
of consonants in groups. Also, with regard to those very gradual
shiftings either of sound or of meaning in which it is natural
to assume many intermediate stages through which the sound or
signification must have passed before arriving at the final
result, childi'en and adults must share the responsibility for the
change. Clippings of words occur in the s^Deech of both classes,
but as a rule adults will keep the beginning of a word, while very
small children will perceive or remember only the end of a word
and use that for the whole. But finally there are some kinds of
changes which must wholly or chiefly be charged to the account
12
178 THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHILD [ch. x
of children : such are those leaps in sound or signification in wliich
intermediate stages are out of the question, as well as confusions
of similar words and misdi visions of words, and the most violent
differentiations of words.
I wish, however, here to insist on one point which has, I
think, become more and more clear in the course of our disquisition,
namely, that we ought not really to put the question like this :
Are linguistic changes due to children or to grown-up people ?
The important distinction is not really one of age, which is evidently
one of degree only, but that between the first learners of the sound
or word in question and those who use it after having once learnt
it. In the latter case we have mainly to do with infinitesimal
glidings, the results of which, when summed up in the course of
long periods of time, may be very considerable indeed, but in
which it will always be possible to detect intermediate linLs
connecting the extreme points. In contrast to these changes
occurring after the correct (or original) form has been acquired
by the individual, we have changes occurring simultuneously with
the first acquisition of the word or form in question, and thus
due to the fact of its transmission to a new generation, or, to
speak more generally, and, indeed, more correctly, to new indi-
viduals. The exact age of the learner here is of little avail, as will
be seen if we take some examples of metanal5'sis. It is highly
probable that the first users of forms like a pea or a cherry, instead
of a pease and a cherries, were little children ; but a Chinee and
a Portuguee are not necessarily, or not pre-eminently, children's
words : on the other hand, it is to me indubitable that these forms
do not spring into existence in the mind of someone who has
previously used the forms Chinese and Portuguese in the singular
number, but must be due to the fact that the forms the Chinese
and the Portuguese (used as plurals) have been at once apprehended
as made up of Chinee, Portuguee -{- the plural ending -s b}^ a
person hearing them for the first time ; similarly in all the other
cases. We shall see in a later chapter that the adoption (on the
part of children and adults alike) of sounds and words from a
foreign tongue presents certain interesting points of resemblance
Avith these instances of change : in both cases the innovation
begins when some individual is first made acquainted with
linguistic elements that are new to him.
X. — § 6. Indirect Influence.
We have hitherto considered what elements of the language
may be referred to a child's first acquisition of language. But
we have not yet done with the part which children play in
§G] INDIRECT INFLUENCE 179
linguistic development. There are two things which must be
sharjily distinguished from the phenomena discussed in the pre-
ceding chai)ter — the first, that growii-up people in many cases
catch up the words and forms used by children and thereby give
them a jiower of survival which they would not have otherwise ;
the second, that grown-up people alter their own language so as
to meet children half-way.
As for the first point, we have already seen examples in which
mothers and nurses have found the baby's forms so pretty that
they have adopted them themselves. Generally these forms are
confined to the family circle, but they may under favourable circum-
stances be propagated further. A special case of the highest
interest has been fully discussed in the section about words of
the mamma-clsiss.
As for the second point, gro\vn-up people often adapt their
speech to the more or less imaginary needs of their children by
pronouncing words as they do, saying dood and turn for ' good ' and
' come,' etc. This notion clearly depends on a misunderstanding,
and can only retard the acquisition of the right pronunciation ;
the child understands good and come at least as well, if not better,
and the consequence may be that when he is able himself to pro-
nounce [g] and [k] he may consider it immaterial, because one
can just as well say [d] and [t] as [g] and [k], or may be bewil-
dered as to which words have the one sound and which the other.
It can only be a benefit to the child if all who come in contact
with it speak from the first as correctly, elegantly and clearh^ as
possible — not, of course, in long, stilted sentences and with many
learned book-words, but naturally and easil}^ When the child
makes a mistake, the most effectual way of correcting it is certainly
the indirect one of seeing that the child, soon after it has made
the mistake, hears the correct form. If he says ' A waps stinged
me ' : answer, ' It stung you : did it hurt much when the wasp
stung you ? ' etc. No special emphasis even is needed ; next
time he will probably use the correct form.
But many parents are not so wise ; they will say stinged them-
selves when once they have heard the child say so. And nurses
and others have even developed a kind of artificial nursery
language which they imagine makes matters easier for the little
ones, but which is in many respects due to erroneous ideas of how
children ought to talk rather than to real observation of the way
children do talk. Many forms are handed over traditionally from
one nurse to another, such as totties, tootems or tootsies for ' feet '
(from trotters ?), toothy -peg for ' tooth,' tummy or t^imtum for
* stomach,' tootleums for ' babies,' shooshoo for ' a fly.' I give a
connected specimen of this nursery language (from Egerton,
180 THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHILD [ch. x
Keynotes, 85) : " Didsum was denn 1 Oo did ! Was urns de
prettiest itta sweetums denn ? Oo was. An' did um put 'em in
a nasty shawl an' joggle 'em in an ole pufif-puff, um did, was a
shame ! Hitchy cum, hitchy cum, hitchy cum hi. Chinaman no
likey me." This reminds one of pidgin-English, and in a later
chapter we shall see that that and similar bastard languages are
partly due to the same mistaken notion that it is necessary to
corrupt one's language to be easily understood by children and
inferior races.
Very frequently mothers and nurses talk to children in
diminutives. When many of these have become established in
ordinary speech, losing their force as diminutives and displacing
the proper words, this is another result of nursery language. The
phenomenon is widely seen in Romance languages, where auricula,
Ft. oreille, It. orecchio, displaces auris, and avicdlus, Fr. oiseau.
It. uccello, displaces avis ; we may remember that classical Latin
had already oculus, for ' eye.' ^ It is the same in Modern Greek.
An example of the same tendency, though not of the same formal
means of a diminutive ending, is seen in the English bird (originally
= ' young bird ') and rabbit (originally = ' j'oung rabbit '), which
have displaced fowl and coney.
A very remarkable case of the influence of nursery language
on normal speech is seen in many coimtries, viz. in the displacing
of the old word for ' right ' (as opposed to left). The distinction
of right and left is not easy for small children : some children in
the upper classes at school only know which is which by looking
at some wart, or something of the sort, on one of their hands, and
have to think every time. Meanwhile mothers and nurses will
frequently insist on the use of the right (dextera) hand, and when
they are not understood, will think they make it easier for the
child by saying ' No, the right hand,' and so it comes about that
in many languages the word that originally means ' correct ' is
used with the meaning ' dexter.' So we have in English right,
in German recht, which displaces zeso, Fr. droit, which displaces
desire ; in Spanish also la derecha has begun to be used instead
of la diestra ; similarly, in Swedish den vackra handen instead
of hogra, and in Jutlandish dialects den kjon hand instead of
hojre.
X.— § 7. New Languages.
In a subsequent chapter (XIV § 5) we shall consider the theory
that epochs in which the changes of some language proceed at a
* I know perfectly well that in these and in other similar words there
were reasons for the original word disappearing as unfit (shortness, possibility
of mistakes through similarity with other words, etc.). What interests
me here is the fact that the substitute is a word of the nursery.
§7] NEW LANGUAGES 181
more rapid pace than at others are due to the fact that in times
of fierce, widely extended wars many men leave home and remain
abroad, either as settlers or as corpses, while the women left behind
have to do the field-work, etc., and neglect their homes, the conse-
quence being that the children are left more to themselves, and
therefore do not get their mistakes in speech corrected as much
as usual.
A somewhat related idea is at the bottom of a theory advanced
as early as 1886 by the American ethnologist Horatio Hale (see
"The Origin of Languages," in the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, XXXV, 1886, and "The Development of
Language," the Canadian Institute, Toronto, 1888). As these
papers seem to have been entirely unnoticed by leading philolo-
gists, I shall give a short abstract of them, leaving out what appears
to me to be erroneous in the light of recent linguistic thought and
research, namely, his application of the theory to explain the
supposed three stages of linguistic development, the monosyllabic,
the agglutinative and the flexional.
Hale was struck with the fact that in Oregon, in a region not
much larger than France, we find at least thirty different families
of languages living together. It is impossible to believe that
thirty separate communities of speechless precursors of man should
have begun to talk independently of one another in thirty distinct
languages in this district. Hale therefore concludes that the
origin of linguistic stocks is to be found in the language-making
instinct of very young children. When two children who are
just beginning to speak are thrown much together, they sometimes
invent a complete language, sufficient for all purposes of mutual
intercourse, and yet totally unintelligible to their parents. In
an ordinary household, the conditions under which such a language
v/ould be formed are most likely to occur in the case of twins,
and Hale now proceeds to mention those instances — five in all —
that he has come across of languages framed in this manner by
young children. He concludes : "It becomes evident that, to
ensure the creation of a speech which shall be a parent of a new
language stock, all that is needed is that two or more young children
should be placed by themselves in a condition where they will be
entirely, or in a large degree, free from the presence and influence
of their elders. They must, of course, continue in this condition
long enough to grow up, to form a household, and to have
descendants to whom they can communicate their new speech."
These conditions he finds among the hunting tribes of America,
in which it is common for single families to wander off from the
main band. " In modern times, when the whole country is occu-
pied, their flight would merely carry them into the territory of
182 THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHILD [cii. x
another tribe, among whom, if well received, they would quickly
be absorbed. But in the primitive period, when a vast uninhabited
region stretched before them, it would be easy for them to find
some sheltered nook or fruitful valley. ... If under such circum-
stances disease or the casualties of a hunter's life should carry
off the parents, the survival of the children would, it is evident,
depend mainly upon the nature of the climate and the ease with
which food could be procured at all seasons of the year. In
ancient Europe, after the present climatal conditions were estab-
lished, it is doubtful if a family of children under ten years of
age could have lived through a single winter. We are not,
therefore, surprised to find that no more than four or five language
stocks are represented in Europe. ... Of Northern America,
east of the Rocky Mountains and north of the tropics, the same
may be said. . . . But there is one region where Nature seems
to offer herself as the willing nurse and bountiful stepmother
of the feeble and unprotected . . . California. Its wonderful
climate (follows a long description). . . . Need we wonder that,
in such a mild and fruitful region, a great number of separate
tribes were found, speaking languages which a careful investigation
has classed in nineteen distinct linguistic stocks ? " In Oregon,
and in the interior of Brazil, Hale finds similar climatic conditions
with the same result, a great number of totally dissimilar lan-
guages, while in Australia, whose climate is as mild as that of
any of these regions, we find hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
petty tribes, as completely isolated as those of South America,
but all speaking languages of the same stock — because "the other
conditions are such as would make it impossible for an isolated
group of young children to sm*vive. The whole of Australia
is subject to severe droughts, and is so scantily provided with
edible products that the aborigines are often reduced to the
greatest straits."
This, then, is Hale's theory. Let us now look a little closer
into the proofs adduced. They are, as it will be seen, of a twofold
order. He invokes the language-creating tendencies of young
childi-en on the one hand, and on the other the geographical
distribution of linguistic stocks or genera.
As to the first, it is true that so competent a psychologist as
Wundt denies the possibility in very strong terms.^ But facts
certainly do not justify this foregone conclusion. I must first
refer the reader to Hale's own report of the five instances known
^ " Einige namentlich in der altern litteratiir vorkommende angaben
iiber kinder, die sich zusammen aufwachsend eine eigene sprache gebildet
liaben sollen, sind wohl ein fiir allemal in das gebiet der fabel zu verweisen "
(S 1. 286).
§7] NEW LANGUAGES 188
to him. Unfortunately, the linguistic material collected by him
is so scanty that we can form only a very imperfect idea of the
languages which he says children have developed and of the
relation between them and the language of the parents. But
otherwise his report is very instructive, and I shall call special
attention to the fact that in most cases the children seem to have
been ' spoilt ' by their parents ; this is also the case with regard
to one of the families, though it does not appear from Hale's
own extracts from the book in which he found his facts (G.
Watson, Universe of Language, N.Y., 1878).
The only word recorded in this case is nl-si-boo-a for ' car-
riage ' ; how that came into existence, I dare not conjecture ;
but when it is said that the syllables of it were sometimes so
repeated that they made a much longer word, this agrees very
well with what I have myself observed with regard to ordinary
children's playful word-coinages. In the next case, described by
E. R. Hun, M.D., of Albany, more words are given. Some of
these bear a strong resemblance to French, although neither the
parents nor servants spoke that language ; and Hale thinks that
some person may have " amused herself, innocently enough, by
teaching the child a few words of that tongue." This, however,
does not seem necessary to explain the words recorded. Feu,
pronounced, we are told, like the French word, signified ' fire,
light, cigar, sun ' : it may be either E. fire or else an imitation of
the sound /^ without a vowel, or [fa'] used in blowing out a candle
or a match or in smoking, so as to amuse the child, exactly as
in the case of one of my little Danish friends, who used Jff as the
name for ' smoke, steam,' and later for ' funnel, chimney,' and
finally anything standing upright against the sky, for instance,
a flagstaff. Petee-petee, the name which the Albany girl gave to
her brother, and which Dr. Hun derived from F. petit, may be
just as well from E. pet or petty ; and to explain her word for
' I,' ma, we need not go to F, moi, as E. me or my may obviously
be thus distorted by an j' child. Her word for 'not' is said to
have been ne-pas, though the exact pronunciation is not given.
This cannot have been taken from the French, at any rate not
from real French, as ne and pas are here separated, and ne is more
often than not pronounced without the vowel or omitted altogether ;
the girl's word, if pronounced something like ['nepa*] may be
nothing else than an imperfect childish pronunciation of never,
cf. the negroes' form nebher. Too, ' all, everj^thing,' of course
resembles Fr. tout, but how should anj'one have been able to teach
this girl, who did not speak any intelligible language, a French
word of this abstract character ? Some of the other words admit
of a natural explanation from English : go-go, ' delicacy, as sugar,
184 THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHILD [ch. x
candy or dessert,' is probably goody-goody, or a reduplicated form
of good ; deer, ' money,' may be from dear, ' expensive ' ; odo,
' to send for, to go out, to take away,' is evidently out, as in ma
odo, ' I want to go out ' ; gaan, ' God,' must be the English word,
in spite of the difference in pronunication, for the child would never
think of inventing this idea on its own accord ; pa-7na, ' to go to
sleep, pillow, bed,' is from by-bye or an independent word of the
wamwa-class ; 7nea, ' cat, fur,' of course is imitative of the sound
of the cat. For the rest of the words I have no conjectiues to
offer. Some of the derived meanings are curious, though perhaps
not more startling than many found in the speech of ordinary
children ; pajM and mamma separately had their usual signification,
but papa-mamma meant ' church, prayer-book, cross, priest ' :
the parents were punctual in church observances ; gar odo,
' horse out, to send for the horse,' came to mean ' pencil and
paper,' as the father used, when the carriage was wanted, to write
an order and send it to the stable. In the remaining three cases
of ' invented ' languages no specimens are given, except shindikik,
' cat.' In all cases the children seem to have talked together
fluently when by themselves in their own gibberish.
But there exists on record a case better elucidated than Hale's
five cases, namely that of the Icelandic girl Saeunn. (See Jonasson
and Eschricht in Dansh Maanedsskrift, Copenhagen, 1858.) She
was born in the beginning of the last century on a farm in
Hiinavatns-syssel in the northern part of Iceland, and began early
to converse with her twin brother in a language that was entirely
unintelligible to their surroundings. Her parents were disquieted,
and therefore resolved to send away the brother, who died soon
afterwards. They now tried to teach the girl Icelandic, but
soon (too soon, evidently !) came to the conclusion that she could
not learn it, and then they were foolish enough to learn her
language, as did also her brothers and sisters and even some of
their friends. In order that she might be confirmed, her elder
brother translated the catechism and acted as interpreter between
the parson and the girl. She is described as intelligent — she
even composed poetry in her own language — but shy and dis-
trustful. Jonasson gives a few specimens of her language, some
of which Eschricht succeeds in interpreting as based on Icelandic
words, though strangely disfigured. The language to Jonasson,
who had heard it, seemed totally dissimilar to Icelandic in sounds
and construction ; it had no flexions, and lacked pronouns.
The vocabulary was so limited that she very often had to supple-
ment a phrase by means of nods or gestures ; and it was difficult
to carry on a conversation with her in the dark. The ingenuity
of some of the compounds and metaphors is greatly admired by
§7] NEW LANGUAGES 185
Jonasson, though to the more sober mind of Eschricht they appear
rather childish or primitive, as when a ' wether ' is called mepok-ill
from ine (imitation of the sound) + pok, ' a little bag ' (Icel.
poki) 4" itt, ' to cut.' The only complete sentence recorded is
' Dirfa offo nonona uhuh,' which means : ' Sigurdur gets up
extremely late.' In his analysis of the whole case Eschricht
succeeds in stripping it of the mystical glamour in which it evidently
appeared to Jonasson as well as to the girl's relatives ; he is
undoubtedly right in maintaining that if the parents had persisted
in only talking Icelandic to her, she would soon have forgotten
her own language ; he compares her words with some strange
disfigurements of Danish which he had observed among children
in his own family and acquaintanceship.
I read this report a good many years ago, and afterwards I
tried on two occasions to obtain precise information about similar
cases I had seen mentioned, one in Halland (Sweden) and the
other in Finland, but without success. But in 1903, when I was
lecturmg on the language of children in the University of CoiDcn-
hagen, I had the good fortune to hear of a case not far from
Copenhagen of two children speaking a language of their own.
I investigated the case as well as I could, by seeing and hearing
them several times and thus checking the words and sentences
which their teacher, who was constantly with them, kindly took
down in accordance with my directions. I am thus enabled to
give a fairly full account of their language, though unfortunately
my investigation was interrupted by a long voyage in 1904.
The boys were twins, about five and a half years old when I
saw them, and so alike that even the people who were about them
every day had difficulty in distinguishing them from each other.
Their mother (a single woman) neglected them shamefully when
they were quite small, and they were left very much to shift for
themselves. For a long time, while their mother was ill in a
hospital, they lived in an out-of-the-way place with an old woman,
who is said to have been very deaf, and who at any rate troubled
herself very little about them. When they were four years old,
the parish authorities discovered how sadly neglected they were
and that they spoke quite unintelHgibly, and therefore sent them
to a ' children's home ' in Seeland, where they were properly
taken care of. At first they were extremely shy and reticent,
and it was a long time before they felt at home with the other
children. When I first saw them, they had in so far learnt the
ordinary language that they were able to understand many every-
day sentences spoken to them, and could do what they were
told (e.g. ' Take the footstool and put it in my room near the
stove '), but they could not speak Danish and said very little
18G THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHILD [en. x
in the presence of anybody else. When they were b}' themselves
they conversed pretty freely and in a completely unintelligible
gibberish, as I had the opportunity to convince myself when
standing behind a door one day when they thought they were
not observed. Afterwards I got to be in a way good friends with
them — they called me pij-ma, py being their word for 'smoke,
smoking, pipe, cigar,' so that I got my name from the chocolate
cigars which I used to ingratiate myself with them — and then I
got them to repeat words and jjhrases which their teacher had
written out for me, and thus was enabled to write down everything
phonetically.
An analysis of the sounds occurring in their words showed
me that their vocal organs were perfectly normal. Most of the
words were evidently Danish words, however much distorted and
shortened ; a voiceless I, which does not occur in Danish, and
which I write here Ih, was a very frequent sound. This, combined
with an inclination to make many words end in -jp, was enough
to disguise words very eftectuall}^ as when sort (black) was made
Ihop. I shall give the children's pronunciations of the names of
some of their new playfellows, adding in brackets the Danish
substratum : lliep (Svend), Ihip (Vilhelm), lip (Elisabeth), lop
(Charlotte), hap (Mandse) ; similarly the doctor was called dop.
In many cases there was phonetic assimilation at a distance, as
when milk (mselk) was called be.p, flower (blomst) bop, light (lys)
Ihtjlh, sugar (sukker) Iholh, cold (kulde) Ihulh, sometimes also idh,
bed (seng) scejs, fish (fisk) se-is.
I subjoin a few complete sentences : nina enaj una enaj hceva
mad enaj, ' we shall not fetch food for the young rabbits ' : nina
rabbit (kanin), enaj negation (nej, no), repeated several times in
each negative sentence, as in Old English and in Bantu languages,
una young (unge). Bap ep dop), ' Mandse has broken the hobby-
horse,' literally ' Mandse horse piece.' Hos ia bov Ihalh, ' brother's
trousers are wet, Maria,' literally ' trousers Maria brother water.'
The words are put together without any flexions, and the word
order is totally different from that of Danish.
Only in one case was I unable to identify words that I under-
stood either as ' little language ' forms of Danish words or else
as soimd-imitations ; but then it must be remembered that they
spoke a good deal that neither I nor any of the people about them
could make anything of. And then, unfortunately, when I began
to study it, their language was already to a great extent ' human-
ized ' in comparison to what it was when they first came to the
children's home. In fact, I noticed a constant progress during
the short time I observed the boys, and in some of the last
sentences I have noted, I even find the genitive case employed.
§7] NEW LANGUAGES 187
The idiom of these twins cannot, of course, be called an inde-
pendent, still less a complete or fully developed language ; but
if they were able to produce something so different from the
language spoken around them at the beginning of the twentieth
century and in a civilized country, there can to my mind be no
doubt that Hale is right in his contention that children left to
themselves even more than these were, in an uninhabited region
where they were still not liable to die from hunger or cold, would
be able to develop a language for their mutual understanding
that might become so different from that of their parents as really
to constitute a new stock of language. So that we can now pass
to the other — geographical — side of what Hale advances in favour
of his theory.
So far as I can see, the facts here tally very well with the
theory. Take, on the one hand, the Eskimo languages, spoken
with astonishingly little variation from the east coast of Greenland
to Alaska, an immense stretch of territory in which small children
if left to themselves would be sure to die very soon indeed. Or
take the Finnish-Ugrian languages in the other hemisphere, exhibit-
ing a similar close relationship, though spread over wide areas.
And then, on the other hand, the American languages already
adduced by Hale. I do not pretend to any deeper knowledge of
these languages ; but from the most recent works of very able
specialists I gather an impression of the utmost variety in
phonetics, in grammatical structure and in vocabulary ; see
especially Roland B. Dixon and Alfred L. Kroeber, " The Native
Languages of California," in the American AntJirojJologisf, 1903.
Even where recent research seems to establish some kind of kinship
between families hitherto considered as distinguished stocks (as
in Dixon's interesting paper, " Linguistic Relationships within the
Shasta -Achoraawi Stock," XV Congi-es des Americanistes, 1906)
the similarities are still so incomplete, so capricious and generally
so remote that they seem to support Hale's explanation rather
than a gradual splitting of the usual kind.
As for Brazil, I shall quote some interesting remarks from
C. F. P. V. Martins, Beitrdge zur Ethnographie u. Sprachenkunde
Amerika's, 1867, i. p. 46 : " In Brazil we see a scant and unevenly
distributed native population, uniform in bodily structure, tempera-
ment, customs and manner of living generally, but presenting a
really astonishing diversity in language. A language is often
confined to a few mutually related individuals ; it is in truth a
family heirloom and isolates its speakers from all other people
so as to render any attempt at understanding impossible. On
the vessel in which we travelled up the rivers in the interior of
Brazil, we often, among twenty Indian rowers, could count only
188 THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHILD [ch. x
three or four that were at all able to speak together . . . they
sat there side by side dumb and stupid."
Hale's theory is worthy, then, of consideration, and now, at
the close of our voyage round the world of children's language,
we have gained a post of vantage from which we can overlook
the whole globe and see that the peculiar word-forms which children
use in their ' little language ' period can actually throw light
on the distribution of languages and groups of languages over
the great continents. Yes,
Scorn not the little ones ! You oft will find
They reach the goal, when great ones lag behind.
BOOK III
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE WORLD
CHAPTER XI
THE FOREIGNER
§ 1. The Substratum Theory. § 2. French u and Spanish h. § 3. Gothonic
and Keltic. § 4. Etruscan and Indian Consonants. § 5. Gothonic
Sound-shift. § 6. Natural and Specific Changes. § 7. Power of
Substratum. § 8. Types of Race-mixture. § 9. Summary. § 10.
General Theory of Loan-words. § 11. Classes of Loan-words.
§ 12. Influence on Grammar. § 13. Translation-loans.
XI.— § 1. The Substratum Theory.
It seems evident that if we wish to find out the causes of linguistic
change, a fundamental division must be into —
(1) Changes that are due to the transference of the language
to new individuals, and
(2) Changes that are independent of such transference.
It may not be easy in practice to distinguish the two classes,
as the very essence of the linguistic life of each individual is a
continual give-and-take between him and those around him ;
still, the division is in the main clear, and will consequently be
followed in the present work.
The first class falls again naturally into two heads, according
as the new individual does not, or does already, possess a language.
With the former, i.e. with the native child learning his ' mother-
tongue,' we have dealt at length in Book II, and we now proceed to
an examination of the influence exercised on a language through its
transference to individuals w^ho are already in possession of another
language — let us, for the sake of shortness, call them foreigners.
While some earlier scholars denied categorically the existence
of mixed languages, recent investigators have attached a very
great importance to mixtui'cs of languages, and have studied
actually occurring mixtures of various degrees and characters
with the greatest accuracy : I mention here only one name, that
of Hugo Schuchardt, who combines profundity and width of
knowledge with a truly philosophical spirit, though the form of
his numerous scattered writings makes it difficult to gather a just
idea of his views on many questions.
Many scholars have recently attached great importance to the
subtler and more hidden influence exerted by one language on
another in those cases in which a population abandons its original
191
192 THE FOREIGNER [ch. xi
language and adopts that of another race, generally in consequence
of military conquest. In these cases the theorj'^ is that people
keep many of their speech-habits, especially with regard to articula-
tion and accent, even while using the vocabulary, etc., of the new
language, which thus to a large extent is tinged by the old language.
There is thus created what is now generally termed a substratvm
underlying the new language. As the original substratum modify-
ing a language which gradually spreads over a large area varies
according to the character of the tribes subjugated in different
districts, this would account for many of those splittings-up of
languages which we witness everywhere.
Hirt goes so far as to think it possible by the help of exist-
ing dialect boundaries to determine the extensions of aboriginal
languages (Idg 19).
There is certainl}' something very plausible in this manner of
viewing linguistic changes, for we all know from practical everyday
experience that the average foreigner is apt to betray his nation-
ality as soon as he opens his mouth : the Italian's or the German's
English is just as different from the 'real thing' as, inverselj% the
Englishman's Italian or German is difl^erent from the Italian or
German of a native : the place of articulation, especially that of
the tongue-tip consonants, the aspiration or want of aspiration
of p, t, k, the voicing or non-voicing of b, d, g, the diphthongization
or monophthongization of long vowels, the syllabification, various
peculiarities in quantity and in tone-movements — all such things
are apt to colour the whole acoustic impression of a foreigner's
speech in an acquired language, and it is, of course, a natural
supposition that the aboriginal inhabitants of Europe and Asia
were just as liable to transfer their speech habits to new languages
as their descendants are nowadays. There is thus a priori a strong
probability that linguistic substrata have exercised some influence
on the development of conquering languages. But when we
proceed to apply this natural inference to concrete examples of
linguistic history, we shall see that the theory does not perhaps
suffice to explain everything that its advocates would have it
explain, and that there are certain difficulties which have not
always been faced or ajspraised according to their real value. A
consideration of these concrete examples will naturally lead up to
a discussion of the general principles involved in the substratum
theory.
XI.— § 2. French u and Spanish h.
First I shall mention Ascoli's famous theory that French [y]
for Latin u, as in dur, etc., is due to Gallic influence, cf. Welsh
i in din from dun, which presupposes a transition from u to [y].
§2] FRENCH U AND SPANISH H 198
Ascoli found a proof in the fact that Dutch also has the pronuncia-
tion [y], e.g. in duur, on the old Keltic soil of the Belgie, to which
Schuchardt (SID 126) added his observation of [y] in dialectal
South German (Breisgau), in a district in which there had formerly
been a strong Keltic element. This looks very convincing at
first blush. On closer inspection, doubts arise on many points.
The French transition cannot with certainty be dated very early,
for then c in cure would have been palatalized and changed as
c before i (Lenz, KZ 39. 46) ; also the treatment of the vowel
in French words taken over into English, where it is not identified
with the native [y], but becomes [iu], is best explained on the as-
sumption that about 1200 a.d. the sound had not advanced farther
on its march towards the front position than, say, the Swedish
' mixed-round ' sound in hus. The district in which [y] is foimd
for u is not coextensive with the Keltic possessions ; there were
very few Kelts in what is now Holland, and inversely South German
[y] for u does not cover the whole Keltic domain ; [y] is found
outside the French territory proper, namely, in Franco-Proven9al
(where the substratum was Ligurian) and in Proven9al (where there
were very few Galli ; cf. Wechssler, L 113). Thus the province
of [y] is here too small and there too large to make the argument
conclusive. Even more fatal is the objection that the Gallic
transition from u to y is very uncertain (Pedersen, GKS 1. § 353).
So much is certain, that the fronting of u was not a common Keltic
transition, for it is not found in the Gaelic (Goidelic) branch.^
On the other hand, the transition from [u] to [y] occurs elsewhere,
independent of Keltic influence, as in Old Greek (cf . also the Swedish
sound in hus) : wli}'' cannot it, then, be independent in French ?
Another case adduced by Ascoli is initial h instead of Latin
/ in the country anciently occupied by the Iberians. Now, Basque
has no / sound at all in any connexion ; if the same aversion to
/had been the cause of the Spanish substitution of h for/, we should
expect the substitution to have been made from the moment when
Latin was first spoken in Hispania, and we should expect it to be
found in all positions and connexions. But what do we find
instead ? First, that Old Spanish had / in many cases where modern
Spanish has h (i.e. really no sound at all), and this cannot be
^ Cf. against the assumption of Keltic influence in this instance Meyer*
Liibke, Die Romanischen Sprachen, Kultur der Gegenwart, p. 457, and Ett-
majer in Streit berg's Gesch. 2. 265. H. Mutschmanu, Phonology of the North-
Eastern Scotch Dialect, 1909, p. 53, thinks that the fronting of tt in Scotch
is similar to that of Latin u on GaUic territory, and like it is ascribable to
the Keltic inhabitants : he forgets, however, that the corresponding fronting
is not found in the Keltic spoken in Scotland. Moreover, the complicated
Scotch phenomena cannot be compared with the French transition, for
the sound of [u] remains in many cases, and [i] generally corresponds to
earlier [o], whatever the explanation may be.
13
194 THE FOREIGNER [ch. xi
altogether ascribed to ' Latinizing scribes.' On the contrary, the
transition f >h seems to have taken place many centuiics after the
Roman invasion, since the Spanish-speaking Jews of Salonika,
who emigrated from Spain about 1500, have to this day preserved
the / sound among other archaic traits (see F. Hanssen, Span.
Gramm. 45 ; Wiener, Modern Philology, June 1903, p. 205). And
secondly, that / has been kept in certain connexions ; thus, before
[w], as in fui,fuiste, fue, etc., before r and I, as in fnito, flor, etc.
This certainly is inexplicable if the cause of /> h had been the want
of power on the part of the aborigines to produce the / sound at
all, while it is simple enough if we assume a later transition, taking
place possibly at first between two vowels, with a subsequent
generalization of the /-less forms. Diez is here, as not infrequently,
more sensible than some of his successors (see Gramm. d. roman.
spr., 4th ed., 1. 283 f., 373 f.).
XL— § 3. Gothonic and Keltic.
Feist (KI 480 fE.: cf. PBB 36. 307 ff., 37. 112 fE.) applies the
substratum theory to the Gothonic (Germanic) languages. The
Gothons are autochthonous in northern Europe, and very little
mixed with other races ; they must have immigrated just after
the close of the glacial period. But the arrival of Aiyan (Indo-
germanic) tribes cannot be placed earlier than about 2000 B.C. ;
they made the original inhabitants give up their own language.
The nation that thus Aryanized the Gothons cannot have been
other than the Kelts ; their supremacy over the Gothons is proved
by several loan-words for cultural ideas or state offices, such as
Gothic reiks 'king,' andbahts 'servant.' The Aryan language
which the Kelts taught the Gothons was subjected in the process
to considerable changes, the old North Europeans pronouncing
the new language in accordance with their previous speech habits p
instead of taking over the free Aryan accent, they invariably stressed
the initial syllable, and they made sad havoc of the Arjan flexion.
The theory does not bear close inspection. The number of
Keltic loan-words is not great enough for us to infer such an over-
powering ascendancy on the part of the Kelts as would force the
subjected population to make a complete surrender of their own
tongue. Neither in number nor in intrinsic significance can these
loans be compared with the French loans in English : and yet
the Normans did not succeed in substituting their own language
for English. Besides, if the theory were true, we should not merely
see a certain number of Keltic loan-words, but the whole speech,
the complete vocabulary as well as the entire grammar, would be
Keltic ; yet as a matter of fact there is a wide gulf between Keltic
§8] GOTHONIC AND KELTIC 195
and Gothonic, and many details, lexical and grammatical, in the
latter group resemble other Aryan languages rather than Keltic.
The stressing of the first syllable is said to be due to the aboriginal
language. If that were so, it would mean that this population,
in adopting the new speech, had at once transferred its own habit
of stressing the first sj'llable to all the new words, very much as
Icelanders are apt to do nowadays. But this is not in accordance
with well established facts in the Gothonic languages : we know
that when the consonant shift took place, it found the stress on the
same syllables as in Sanskrit, and that it was this stress on many
middle or final syllables that afterwards changed many of the shifted
consonants from voiceless to voiced (Verner's law).^ This fact in
itself suffices to prove that the consonant shift and the stress shift
cannot have taken place simultaneously, and thus cannot be due
to one and the same cause, as supposed by Feist. Nor can the
havoc wrought in the old flexions be due to the inability of a new
people to grasp the minute nuances and intricate system of another
language than its own ; for in that case too we should have some-
thing like the formless ' Pidgin English ' from the very beginning,
whereas the oldest Gothonic languages still preserve a great
many old flexions and subtle s\Titactical rules which have since
disappeared. As a matter of fact, many of the flexions of primitive
Aiyan were much better preserved in Gothonic languages than
in Keltic.
XI. — §4. Etruscan and Indian Consonants.
In another place in the same work (KI 373) Feist speaks of
the Etruscan language, and says that this had only one kind of
stop consonants, represented by the letters h (c), t, jp, besides the
aapirated stops kh, th, i^Ji, which in some instances correspond to
Latin and Greek tenues. This, he says, reminds one very strongly
of the sound system of High German (oberdeutschen) dialects,
and more particularly of those spoken in the Alps. Feist here
(and in PBB 36. 340 fE.) maintains that these sounds go back to
a Pre-Gothonic Alpine population, which he identifies with the
ancient Rhsetians ; and he sees in this a strong support of a
linguistic connexion between the Rhaetians and Etruscans. He
finds further striking analogies between the Gothonic and the
Armenian soimd systems ; the predilection for voiceless stops
and aspirated sounds in Etruscan, in the domain of the ancient
Rhsetians and in Asia Minor is accordingly ascribed to the speech
habits of one and the same aboriginal race.
^ Curiously enough, Feist uses this argument himself against Hirt in
his earlier paper, PBB 37. 121.
19C THE FOREIGNER [ch. xi
Here, too, there are many points to which I must take exception.
It is not quite certain that the usual interpretation of Etruscan
letters is correct ; in fact, much may be said in favour of the
hypothesis that the letters rendered p, t, k stand really for the
sounds of b, d, g, and that those transcribed ph, th, kh (or Greek <f),
d", x) represent ordinary p, t, k. However this may be, Feist
seems to be speaking here almost in the same breath of the first (or
common Gothonic) shift and of the second (or specially High Ger-
man) shift, although they are separated from each other by several
centuries and neither cover the same geographical ground nor lead
to the same phonetic result. Neither Armenian nor primitive
Gothonic can be said to be averse to voiced stops, for in both we
find voiced 6, d, g for the old 'mediae aspiratae.' And in both
languages the old voiceless stops became at first probably not
aspirates, but simply voiceless spirants, as in English /ather, thing,
and Scotch loc^^. Further, it should be noted that we do not find
the tendency to unvoice stops and to pronounce affricates either
in Rhseto-Romanic (Ladin) or in Tuscan Italian ; both languages
have unaspirated p, t, k and voiced b, d, g, and the Tuscan
pronunciation of c between two vowels as [x], thus in la casa
[la xa'sa], but not in a casa = [akka'sa], could not be termed
' aspiration ' except by a non-phonetician ; this pronunciation
can hardly have anything to do with the old Etruscan language.
According to a theory which is very widely accepted, the
Dravidian languages exerted a different influence on the Aryan
languages when the Aryans first set foot on Indian soil, in making
them adopt the ' cacuminal ' (or ' inverted ') sounds d, t, n with
dh and th, which were not found in primitive Arj^an. But even
this theory does not seem to be quite proof against objections.
It is easy to admit that natives accustomed to one place of articula-
tion of their d, t, n will unconsciously produce the d, <, w of a new
language they are learning in the same place ; but then they will
do it everywhere. Here, however, both Dravidian and Sanskrit
possess pure dental d, t, n, pronounced with the tip of the tongue
touching the upper teeth, besides cacuminal ^, t, n, in which it
touches the gum or front part of the hard palate. In Sanskrit
we find that the cacuminal articulation occurs only under very
definite conditions, chiefly under the influence of r. Now, a trilled
tongue-point r in most languages, for purely physiological reasons
which are easily accounted for, tends to be pronounced further
back than ordinary dentals ; and it is therefore quite natural
that it should spontaneously exercise an influence on neighbouring
dentals by drawing them back to its own point of articulation.
This may have happened in India quite independently of the occur-
rence of the same sounds in other vernaculars, just as we find
§4] ETRUSCAN AND INDIAN CONSONANTS 197
the same influence very pronouncedly in Swedish and in East
Norwegian, where d, t, n, s are cacuminal (supradental) in such
words as bord, kort, barn, forst, etc. According to Grandgent
{Neuere Sprachen, 2. 447), d in his own American English
is pronounced further back than elsewhere before and after r,
as in dry, hard ; but in none of these cases need we conjure
up an extinct native population to account for a perfectly
natural development.
XI.— § 5. Gothonic Sound-shift.
Since the time of Grimm the Gothonic consonant changes
have harassed the minds of linguists ; they became the sound-
shift and were considered as something sui generis, something out
of the common, which required a different explanation from all
other sound-shifts. Several explanations have been offered, to
some of which we shall have to revert later ; none, however, has
been so popular as that which attributes the shift to an ethnic
substratum. This explanation is accepted by Hirt, Feist, Meillet
and others, though their agreement ceases when the question is
asked : What nationality and what language can have been the
cause of the change ? While some cautiously content themselves
with saying that there must have been an original population,
others guess at Kelts, Finns, Rhaetians or Etrurians — all fascinating
names to minds of a speculative turn.
The latest treatment of the question that I have seen is by
K. Wessely (in Anthropos, XII-XIII 540 ff., 1917). He assumes
the following different substrata, beginning with the most recent :
a Rhseto-Romanic for the Upper-German shift, a Keltic for the
common High-German shift, and a Finnic for the first Germanic
shift with the Vernerian law. This certainly has the merit of neatly
separating soimd-shifts that are chronologically apart, except
with regard to the last-mentioned shift, for here the Finns are
made responsible for two changes that were probably separated
by centuries and had really no traits in common. It is curious to
see the transition from p to f and from t to p — both important
elements of the first shift — here ascribed to Finnic, for as a matter
of fact the two sounds/ and J? are not found in present-day Finnish,
and were not found in primitive Ugro -Finnic.^
1 Feist, on the other hand (PBB 36. 329), makes the Kelts responsible
for the shift from p to /, because initial p disappears in Keltic : but dis-
appearance is not the same thing as being changed into a spirant, and there
is no necessity for assuming that the sound before disappearing had been
changed into /. Besides, it is characteristic of the Gothonic shift that it
affects all stops equally, without regard to the place of articulation, while
the Keltic change affects only the one sound p.
198 THE FOREIGNER [en. xi
When Wcssely thinks that the change discovered by Verner
is also due to Finnic influence, his reasons are two : an alleged
parallelism with the Finnic consonant change which he terms
' Setala's law,' and then the assumption that such a shift, conditioned
by the place of the accent, is foreign to the Aryan race (p. 643).
When, however, we find a closely analogous case only four hundred
years ago in English, where a number of consonants were voiced
according to the place of the stress,^ are we also to say that it is
foreign to the Anglo-Saxon race and therefore presupposes some
non-Arj^an substratum ? As a matter of fact, the parallelism
between the English and the old Gothonic shift is much closer
than that between the latter and the Finnic consonant-gradation :
in English and in old Gothonic the stress place is decisive, while
in the Finnic shift it is very doubtful ^^'hether stress goes for any-
thing ; in both English and old Gothonic the same consonants are
afifccted (spirants, in English also the combinations [if, ks], but
otherwise no stops), while in Finnic it is the stops that are primarily
affected. In old Gothonic, as in English, the change is simply
voicing, and we have nothing corresponding to the reduction of
double consonants and of consonant groups in Finnic pcr^^^n / papin,
otta I otat, kukka I kukan, parempi / paremman, jalka / jalan, etc.
On the whole, Wessely's paper shows how much easier it is to
advance hypotheses than to find truths.
XI. — § 6. Natural and Specific Changes.
Meillet (MSL 19. 164 and 172 ; cf. Bulletin 19. 50 and Germ. 18)
thinks that we must distinguish between such phonetic changes
as are natural, i.e. due to universal tendencies, and such as are
peculiar to certain languages. In the former class he includes
the opening and the voicing of intervocalic consonants ; there
is also a natural and universal tendency to shorten long words
and to slur the pronunciation towards the end of a word. In the
latter class (changes which are peculiar to and characteristic of
a particular language) he reckons the consonant shifts in Gothonic
and Armenian, the weakening of consonants in Greek and in
Iranian, the tendency to unround back vowels in English and
Slav. Such changes can only be accounted for on the supposition
of a change of language : they must be due to people whose own
language had habits foreign to Aryan. Unfortimately, Meillet
cannot tell us hoAv to measure the difference between natural and
^ ME. knowlechc, stones [sto-nes], off, with [wij>] become MnE. knowledge,
stones [stounz], of [ov, ev], with [wi5], etc. ; cf. also posse-ss, discern with [z],
exert with [gz], but exercise with [ks]. See my Studier over eng. kasus, 1891,
178 ff., now MEG i. 6. 5 fi., and (for the phonetic explanation) LPh p. 121.
§0] NATURAL AND SPECIFIC CHANGES 199
peculiar shifts ; he admits that they cannot always be clearly
separated ; and A\'hen he says that there are some extreme cases
' relativcment nets,' such as those named above, I must confess
that I do not see whj' the change from the sliarp tenuis, as in Fr.
p, t, k, to a slightly aspirated sound, as in English {Bulletin 19. 50),^
or the relaxing of the closure which finally led to the sounds of
[f , y>, x], should be less ' natural ' than a hundred other changes
and should require the calling in of a deus ex mackina in the shape
of an aboriginal population. The imrounding of E. w in Jmt, etc.,
to which he alludes, began about 1600 — what ethnic substratum
does that postulate, and is any such requii'cd, more than for, say,
the diphthongizing of long a and o ?
Meillet (MSL 19. 172) also says that there are certain speech
sounds which are, as it were, natural and are found in nearly all
languages, thus p, t, k, n, m, and among the vowels a, i, u, while other
sounds are found only in some languages, such as the two English
th sounds or, among the vowels, Fr. u and Russian y. But when
he infers that sounds of the former class are stable and remain
unchanged for many centuries, whereas those of the latter are apt
to change and disappear, the conclusion is not borne out by actual
facts. The consonants p, t, k, n, m are said to have remained
unchanged in many Aryan languages from the oldest times till
the present day — that is, only initially before vowels, which is a
very important reservation and really amounts to an admission
that in the vast majority of cases these sounds are just as unstable
as most other things on this planet, especially if we remember that
notlung could well be more unstable than k before front vowels,
as seen in It. [t/] and Sp. [)?] in cielo, Fr. [s] in del, and [/] in
chien, Eng. and Swedish [t/] in chin, kind, Norwegian [c] in kind,
Russian [t/] in cetyre ' four ' and [s] in sto ' hundred,' etc. As
an example of a typically unstable sound Meillet gives bilabial /,
and it is true that this sound is so rare that it is difficult to find
it represented in any language ; the reason is simply that the upper
teeth normally protrude above the lower jaw, and that consequently
the lower lip articulates easily against the upper teeth, with the
natural result that where we should theoretically expect the bilabial
/ the labiodental / takes its place. And s, which is found almost
universally, and should therefore on Meillet 's theory be very stable,
is often seen to change into h or [x] or to disappear. On the whole,
then, we see that it is not the 'naturalness ' or universality of a
^ Sharp tenues and aspirated tenues may alternate even in the life of
one individual, as I have observed in the case of my own son, who at the
age of 1.9 used the sharp French sounds, but five months later substituted
strongly aspirated p, t, I:, with even stronger aspiration than the usual Danish
Bounds, which it took him ten or eleven months to learn with perfect certainty.
200 THE FOREIGNER [ch. xi
consonant so much as its position in the syllable and word that
decides the question ' change or no change.' The relation between
stability and naturalness is seen, perhaps, most clearly in such an
instance as long [a] : this sound is so natural that English, from
the oldest Aryan to present-day speech, has never been without
it ; yet at no time has it been stable, but as soon as one class of
words with long [a*] is changed, a new class steps into its shoes :
(1) Aryan mater, now mother; (2) lengthening of a short a before
n : gas, brdhta, now goose, brought ; (3) levelling of ai : stun, now
sto7ie ; (4) lengthening of short a : cdld, now cold ; (5) later lengthen-
ing of a in open syllable : name, now [neim] ; (6) mod. carve, calm,
path and others from various sources ; and (7) vulgar speech is now
developing new levellings of diphthongs in [ma-1, pa- (a)] for mile,
power.
XI.— § 7. Power of Substratum.
V. Brondal has made the attempt to infuse new blood into
the substratum theory through his book, Substrater eg Laan i
Romansk og Germansk (Copenhagen, 1917). The effect of a sub-
stratum, according to him, is the establishment of a ' constant
idiom,' working "without regard to place and time " (p. 76) and
changing, for instance, Latin into Old French, Old French into
Classical French, and Classical French into Modern French. His
task, then, is to find out certain tendencies operating at these
various yjeriods ; these are ascribed to the Keltic substratum,
and Brondal then passes in review a great many languages spoken
in districts where Kelts are known to have lived in former times,
in order to find the same tendencies there. If he succeeds in this
to his own satisfaction, it is only because the ' tendencies ' estab-
lished are partly so vague that they will fit into any language,
partly so ill -defined phonetically that it becomes possible to press
different, nay, in some cases even directly contrary movements
into the same class. But considerations of space forbid me to
enter on a detailed criticism here. I must content myself with
taking exception to the principle that the effect of the ethnic
substratum may shoAv itself several generations after the speech
substitution took place. If Keltic ever had ' a finger in the pie,'
it must have been immediately on the taking over of the new
language. An influence exerted in such a time of transition may
have far-reaching after-effects, like anjthing else in history, but
this is not the same thing as asserting that a similar modification
of the language may take place after the lapse of some centuries
as an effect of the same cause. Suppose we have a series of manu-
scripts, A, B, C, D, etc., of which B is copied from A, C from B,
§7] POWER OF SUBSTRATUM 201
etc., and that B has an error which is repeated in all the following
copies ; now, if M suddenly agrees with A (which the copyist has
never seen), we infer that this reading is independent of A, In the
same way with a language : each individual learns it from his contem-
poraries, but has no opportunity of hearing those who have died
before his o^^•n time. It is possible that the transition from a to cb
in Old English (as in feeder) is due to Keltic influence, but when
we find, many centuries later, that a is changed into fae] (the present
sound) in words which had not cb in OE., e.g. crab, hallow, act, it is
impossible to ascribe this, as Brondal does, to a ' constant Keltic
idiom ' working through many generations who had never sjDoken
or heard any Keltic. ' Atavism,' which skips over one or more
generations, is unthinkable here, for words and sounds are nothing
but habits acquired by imitation.
So far, then, our discussion of the substratum theory has brought
us no ver}'' positive results. One of the reasons why the theories
put forward of late j^ears have been on the whole so unsatisfactory
is that they deal with speech substitutions that have taken place
so far back that absolutely nothing, or practically nothing, is known
of those displaced languages which are supposed to have coloured
languages now existing. ^Vllat do we know beyond the mere
name of Ligurians or Veneti or Iberians ? Of the Pre-Germanic
and Pre-Keltic peoples we know not even the names. As to the
old Kelts who play such an eminent role in all these speculations,
we know extremely little about their language at this distant date,
and it is possible that in some cases, at any rate, the Kelts may have
been only comparatively small armies conquering this or that
country for a time, but leaving as few linguistic traces behind
them as, say, the armies of Napoleon in Russia or the Cimbri and
Teutoni in Italy. Linguists have turned from the ' glottogonic '
speculations of Bopp and his disciples, only to indulge in dia-
lectogonic speculations of exactly the same visionary type.
XI. — § 8. Types of Race-mixture.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that the conditions,
and consequently the linguistic results, are always the same,
whenever two different races meet and assimilate. The chief
classes of race-mixture have been thus described in a valuable
paper by George Hempl {Transactions of the American Philological
Association, XXIX, p. 31 ff., 1898).
(1) The conquerors are a comparatively small body, who become
the ruling class, but are not numerous enough to impose their
language on the country. They are forced to learn the language
of their subjects, and their grandchildren may come to know that
202 THE FOREIGNER [ch. xi
language better than they know the language of their ancestors.
The language of the conquerors dies out, but bi^queaths to the native
language its terms pertaining to government, tjie aimy, and those
other spheres of life that the conquerors had specially under their
control. Historic examples are the cases of the Goths in Italy
and Spain, the Franks in Gaul, the Normans in France and the
Norman-French in England. Of course, the greater the number
of the conquerors and the longer they had been close neighbours
of the people they conquered, or maintained the bonds that united
them to their mother-country, the greater was their influence.
Thus the influence of the Franks on the language of France was
greater than that of the Goths on the language of Spain, and the
influence of the Norman-French in England was greater still. Yet
in each case the minority ultimately succumbed.
(2a) The conquest is made by many bodies of invaders, who
bring with them their whole households and are followed for a long
period of time by similar hordes of their kinsmen. The conquerors
constitute the upper and middle classes and a part of the lower
classes of the new community. The natives recede before the
conquerors or become their slaves : their speech is regarded as
servile and is soon laid aside, except for a few terms pertaining
to the humbler callings, the names of things peculiar to the country
and place-names. Examples : Angles and Saxons in Britain
and Europeans in America and Australia, though in the last case
we can hardly speak of race-mixture between the natives and the
immigrants.
(26) A more powerful nation conquers the people and annexes
its territory, which is made a province, to which not only governors
and soldiers, but also merchants and even colonists are sent. These
become the upper class and the influential part of the middle class.
If centuries pass and the province is still subjected to the direct
influence of the ruling country, it will more and more imitate*
the speech and the habits and customs of that country. Such
was the history of Italy, Spain and Gaul under the Romans ;
similar, also, is the story of the Slavs of Eastern Germany and of
the Dutch in New York State ; such is the process going on to-day
among the French in Louisiana and among the Germans in their
original settlements in Penns3ivania.
(3) Immigrants come in scattered bands and at different
times ; they become servants or follow other humble callings.
It is usually not to their advantage to associate with their fellow-
countrjTuen, but rather to mingle with the native population.
The better they learn to speak the native tongue, the faster they
get on in the world. If their children in their dress or speech
betray their foreign origin, they are ridiculed as ' Dutch ' or Irish,
§8] TYPES OF RACE-MIXTURE 203
or whatever it may be. They therefore take pains to rid themselves
of all traces of their alien origin and avoid using the speech of their
parents. In this way vast numbers of newcomers may be assimi-
lated year by j'ear till they constitute a large part of the new race,
while their language makes practically no impression on the lan-
guage of the country. This is the storj' of what is going on in all
parts of the United States to-day.
It will be seen that in classes 1 and 3 the speech of the natives
prevails, while in the two classes comprised under 2 it is that of
the conqueror which eventually triumphs. Further, that, in all
cases except type 26, that language prevails which is spoken by
what is at the time the majority.
Somid substitution is found in class 3 in the case of foreigners
who come to America after they have learnt to speak, and of the
children of foreigners who keep up their original language at home.
If, hoAvever, while they are still young, they are chiefly thrown
with English-speaking people, the}- usually gain a thorough mastery
of the English language ; thus most of the children, and practically
all of the grandchikh-en, of immigrants, by the time they are grown-
up, speak English without foreign taint. Their origin has thus
no permanent influence on their adopted language. The same
thing is true when a small ruling minority drops its foreign speech
and learns that of the majority (class 1), and practically also
(class 2a) when a native minority succumbs to a foreign majority,
though here the ultimate language may be slightly influenced
by the native dialect.
It is different with class 26 : when a whole population comes
in the course of centuries to surrender its natural speech for that
of a ruling minority, sound substitution plaj^s an important part,
and to a great extent determines the character and future of the
language. Hempl here agrees with Hirt in seeing in this fact
the explanation of much (N.B, not all !) of the difference between
the Romanic languages and of the difference between natural
High German and High German spoken in Low German territory,
and he is therefore not surprised when he is told by Nissen that
the dialects of modern Italy correspond geographically pretty
closely to the non -Latin languages once spoken in the Peninsula.
But he severely criticizes Hirt for going so far as to explain the
differentiation of Aryan speech by the theory of soimd substitution.
Hirt assumes conditions like those in class 1, and yet thinks that
the results would be like those of class 2a. " It is essential to Hirt's
theory that the conquering bodies of Indo-Europeans should be
small compared with the number of the people they conquered. . . .
If we wish to prove that the differentiation of Indo-European
speech was like the differentiation of Romance speech, we must
204 THE FOREIGNER [ch. xi
be able to show that the conditions under which the differentiations
took place were alike or equivalent. But even a cursory examina-
tion of the manner in which the Romance countries were Romanized
. . . will make it clear that no parallel could possibly be drawn
between the conditions under which the Romance languages
arose and those that we can suppose to have existed while the
Indo-European languages took shape." Hempl also criticizes the
way in which the Germanic consonant-shift is supposed by Hirt
to be due to sound-substitution : when instead of the original
t th d dh
Germanic has
V y t 5,
these latter sounds, on Hirt's theory, must be either the native
sounds that the conquered people substituted for the original
sounds, or else they have developed out of such sounds as the natives
substituted. If the first be true, we ask ourselves why the con-
quered people did not use their t for the Indo-European t, instead
of substituting it for d, and then substituting ]> for the Indo-Euro-
l^ean t. If the second supposition be true, the native population
introduced into the language sounds very similar to the original
t, ill, d, dh, and all tlie change from that slightly variant form
to the one that we find in Germanic was of subsequent development
— and must be explained by the usual methods after all.
I have dwelt so long on Hempl's paper because, in spite of its
(to my mind) fundamental importance, it has been generally over-
looked by supporters of the substratum theory. To construct
a true theory, it will be necessary to examine the largest possible
number of facts with regard to race-mixture capable of being
tested by scientific methods. In this connexion the observations
of Lenz in South America and of Puscariu in Rumania are espe-*
cially valuable. The former found that the Spanish spoken in Chile
was greatly influenced in its sounds by the speech of the native
Araucanians (see Zeitschr. f. roman. Philohgie, 17. 188 If., 1893).
Now, what were the facts in regard to the population speaking
this language ? The immigrants were chiefly men, who in many
cases necessarily married native women and left the care of their
children to a great extent in the hands of Indian servants. As
the natives were more warlike than in many other parts of
South America, there was for a very long time a continuous
influx of Spanish soldiers, many of whom, after a short time,
settled down peacefully in the country. More Spanish soldiers,
indeed, arrived in Chile in the course of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centimes than in the whole of the rest of
§8] TYPES OF RACE-MIXTURE 205
South America, Accordingly, by the beginning of the eighteenth
century the Indians had been either driven back or else assimi-
lated, and at the beginning of the War of Liberation early in
the nineteenth century Chile was the only State in which there
was a uniform Spanish-speaking population. In the greater part
of Chile the popiilation is denser than anywhere else in South
America, and this population speaks nothing but Spanish, while
in Peru and Bolivia nearlj' the whole rural population still speaks
more or less exclusively Keshua or Aimard, and these languages
are also used occasionally, or at any rate understood, by the whites.
Chile is thus the only country in which a real Spanish people's
dialect could develop. (In Hempl's classification this would be
a ty]Dical case of class 2a.) In the other Spanish American coun-
tries the Spanish-speakers are confined to the upper ruling class,
there being practically no lower class with Spanish as its mother-
tongue, except in a couple of big cities. Thus we understand that
the Peruvian who has learnt his Spanish at school has a purer
Castilian pronunciation than the Chilean ; yet, apart from pro-
nunciation, the educated Chilean's Spanish is much more correct
and fluent than that of the other South Americans, whose language
is stiff and vocabulary scanty, because they have first learnt some
Indian language in cliildhood. Lenz's Chileans, who have often
been invoked by the adherents of the unlimited substratum theory,
thus really serve to show that sound substitution takes place
only under certain well-defined conditions.
Puscariu (in Prinzipienfragen der romanischen Sprachwissen-
schaft, Beihefte zur Zschr. f. rom. Phil., 1910) says that in a Saxon
village which had been almost completely Rumanianized he had
once talked for hours with a peasant without noticing that he
was not a native Rumanian : he was, however, a Saxon, who spoke
Saxon with his wife, but Rumanian with his son, because the
latter language was easier to him, as he had acquired the Rumanian
basis of articulation. Here, then, there was no sound substitution,
and in general we may say that the less related two languages
are, the fewer will be the traces of the original language left on
the new language (p. 49). The reason must be that people who
naturally speak a closely related language are easily understood
even when their acquired speech has a tinge of dialect : there is thus
no inducement for them to give up their pronunciation. Puscariu
also found that it was much more difficult for him to rid himself
of his dialectal traits in Rumanian than to acquire a correct pro-
nunciation of German or French. He therefore disbelieves in a
direct influence exerted by the indigenous languages on the forma-
tion of the Romanic languages (and thus goes much further than
Hempl). All these languages, and particularly Rumanian, during
206 THE FOREIGNER [ch. xi
the first centuries of the IMiddle Ages underwent radical trans-
formations not paralleled in the thousand years ensuing. This
may have been paitly due to an influence exerted by ethnic mixture
on the whole character of the young nations and through that also
on their language. But other factors have certainly also plaj'ed
an important role, especially the grouping round new centres
with other political aims than those of ancient Rome, and conse-
quent isolation from the rest of the Romanic peoples. Add to this
the very important emancipation of the ordinary conversational
language from the j'oke of Latin. In the first Christian centuries
the influence of Latin was so overpowering in official life and in
the schools that it obstructed a natural development. But soon
after the third century the educational level rapidly sank, and
political events broke the power not only of Rome, but also of its
language. The speech of the masses, which had been held in fetters
for so long, now asserted itself in full freedom and with elemental
violence, the result being those far-reaching changes by which
the Romanic languages are marked ofiE from Latin. Language
and nation or race must not be confounded : witness Rumania,
whose language shows very few dialectal variations, though the
populations of its different provinces are ethnically quite distinct
(ib. p. 51).
XI.— §9. Summary.
The general impression gathered from the preceding investiga-
tion must be that it is impossible to ascribe to an ethnic substratum
all the changes and dialectal differentiations which some linguists
explain as due to this sole cause. Many other influences must
have been at work, among which an interruption of intercourse
created by natural obstacles or social conditions of various kinds
would be of prime importance. If we take ethnic substrata as*
the main or sole source of dialectal differentiation, it will be hard
to account for the differences between Icelandic and Norwegian,
for Iceland was very sparsely inhabited when the ' land-taking '
took place, and still harder to account for the very great diver-
gences that we Avitness between the dialects spoken in the Faroe
Islands. A mere turning over the leaves of Bennike and Kris-
tensen's maps of Danish dialects (or the corresponding maps of
France) will show the impossibility of explaining the crisscross of
boundaries of various phonetic phenomena as entirely due to
ethnical differences in the aborigines. On the other hand, the speech
of Russian peasants is said to be remarkably free from dialectal
divergences, in spite of the fact that it has spread in compara-
tively recent times over districts inhabited by populations with
§ 9] SUMMARY 207
languages of totally different types (Finnic, Turkish, Tataric). I
thus incline to think that soimd substitution cannot have pro-
duced radical changes, but has only played a minor part in the
development of languages. There are, perhaps, also interesting
things to be learnt from conditions in Finland. Here Swedish
has for many centuries been the language of the ruling minority',
and it was only in the course of the nineteenth century that Finnish
attained to the dignity of a literary language. The sound sj'stems
of Swedish and Finnish are extremely unlike : Finnish lacks many
of the Swedish sounds, such as b, d (wliat is ^vritten d is either
mute or else a kind of weak r), g and /. No word can begin with
more than one consonant, consequently Swedish strand and skrdd-
dare, ' tailor,' are represented in the form of the loan-words ranta
and rddtdli. Now, in spite of the fact that most Swedish-speaking
people have probably spoken Finnish as children and have had
Finnish servants and playfellows to teach them the language,
none of these peculiarities have influenced their Swedish : what
makes them recognizable as hailing from Finland (' finska
brytningen ') is not simplification of consonant groups or substitu-
tion of 'p for 6, etc., but such small things as the omission of the
' compound tone,' the tendencj^ to lengthen the second consonant
in groups like ns, and European (' back ') u instead of the Swedish
mixed vowel.
But if sound substitution as a result of race -mixture and of
conquest cannot have played any very considerable part in the
differentiation of languages as wholes, there is another domain
in which sound substitution is very important, that is, in the shape
which loan-words take in the languages into which they are intro-
duced. However good the pronunciation of the first introducer
of a word may have been, it is clear that when a word is extensively
used by people with no intimate and fii'st-hand knowledge of the
language from which it was taken, most of them will tend to pro-
nounce it with the only sounds with which they are familiar, those
of their own language. Thus we see that the English and Rus-
sians, who have no [y] in their own speech, substitute for it the
combination [ju, iu] in recent loans from French. Scandinavians
have no voiced [z] and [5] and therefore, in such loans from French
or English as kusine, budget, jockey, etc., substitute the voiceless
[s] and [/j], or [sj]. The English will make a diphthong of the
final vowels of such words as bouquet, beau [bukei, bou], and will
slur the r of such French words as boulevard, etc. The same trans-
ference of speech habits from one's native language also affects
such important things as quantitj^, stress and tone : the English
have no final short stressed vowels, such as are found in bouquet,
beau ; hence their tendency to lengthen as well as diphthongize
208 THE FOREIGNER [cii. xi
these sounds, while the French will stress the final syllable of
recent loans, such as jury, reporter. These phenomena are so uni-
versal and so well known that they need no further illustration.
The more familiar such loan-words are, the more unnatural
it would be to pronounce them with foreign sounds or according
to foreign rules of quantity and stress ; for this means in each
case a shunting of the whole speech-apparatus on to a different
track for one or two words and then shifting back to the original
' basis of articulation ' — an effort that many speakers are quite
incapable of and one that in any case interferes with the natural
and easy flow of speech.
XI.— § 10. General Theory of Loan-words.
In the last paragraphs we have already broached a very im-
portant subject, that of loan-words. ^ No language is entirelj'
free from borrowed words, because no nation has ever been com-
pletely isolated. Contact with other nations inevitably leads to
borrowings, though their number may vary very considerably.
Here we meet with a fundamental principle, first formulated by
E. Windisch (in his paper " Zur Theorie der Mschsprachen und
Lehnworter," Verh. d. sdchsischeyi Qesellsch. d. Wissensch., XLIX,
1897, p. 107 ff.) : " It is not the foreign language a nation learns
that turns into a mixed language, but its own native language
becomes mixed under the influence of a foreign language." When
we try to learn and talk a foreign tongue we do not introduce into
it words taken from our own language ; our endeavour will always
be to speak the other language as purely as possible, and generally
we are painfully conscious of every native word that we intrude
into phrases framed in the other tongue. But what we thus avoid
in speaking a foreign language we very often do in our own.
Frederick the Great prided himself on his good French, and in his
French writings we do not find a single German word, but whenever
he wrote German his sentences were full of French words and
phrases. This being the general practice, we now understand
why so few Keltic words were taken over into French and
English. There was nothing to induce the ruling classes to learn
* I use the terms loan-words and borrowed ivords because thej' are con-
venient and firmly established, not because they are exact. There are two
essential respects in which linguistic borrowing differs from the borrowing
of, say, a knife or money : the lender does not deprive himself of the use
of the word any more than if it had not been borrowed by the other partj', and
the borrower is under no obligation to return the word at any future time.
Linguistic ' borrowing ' is really nothing but imitation, and the only way
in which it differs from a child's imitation of its parents' speech is that here
something is imitated which forms a part of a speech that is not imitated
as a whole.
§10] GENERAL THEORY OF LOAN-WORDS 209
the language of the inferior natives : it could never be fashionable
for them to show an acquaintance with a desi^ised tongue by using
now and then a Keltic word. On the other hand, the Kelt would
have to learn the language of his masters, and learn it well ; and
he would even among his comrades like to show off his knowledge
by interlarding his speech with words and turns from the language
of his betters. Loan-words always show a superiority of the nation
from whose language they are borrowed, though this superiority
may be of many different kinds.
In the first place, it need not be extensive : indeed, in some
of the most typical cases it is of a very partial character and
touches only on one very special point. I refer to those instances
in which a district or a people is in possession of some special
thing or product wanted by some other nation and not produced
in that country. Here quite naturally the name used by the natives
is taken over along with the thing. Obvious examples are the
names of various drinks : ivine is a loan from Latin, tea from Chinese, J
coffee from Arabic, chocolate from Mexican, and punch from Hin- ^'
dustani. A certain type of carriage was introduced about 1500
from Hungary and is known in most European languages by its
Magj'ar name : E. coach, G. kutsche, etc. Moccasin is from
Algonquin, bamboo from Malay, tulip and turban (ultimately the
same word) from Persian. A slightly different case is when some
previously unknown plant or animal is made known through some
foreign nation, as when Ave have taken the name of jasmine from
Persian, chimpanzee from some African, and tapir from some
Brazilian language. It is characteristic of all words of this kind
that only a few of them are taken from each foreign language,
and that they have nearly all of them gone the round of all
civilized languages, so that they are now known practically all
over the world.
Other loan-words form larger groups and bear witness to the
cultural superiority of some nation in some one specified sphere
of activity or branch of knowledge : such are the Arabic words
relating to mathematics and astronomy {algebra, zero, cipher, ^
azimuth, zenith, in related fields turiff, alkali, alcohol), the Italian
words relating to music {piano, allegro, andante, solo, soprano,
etc.) and commerce {bank, bankrupt, balance, traffic, ducat, florin)
— one need not accumulate examples, as everybody interested in
the subject of this book will be able to supply a great many from
his own reading. The most comprehensive groups of this kind
are those French, Latin and Greek \7ords that have flooded the<
M'hole world of Western civilization from the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance and have given a family-character to all those
parts of the vocabularies of otherwise different languages which
14
210 THE FOREIGNER [ch. xi
are concerned with the highest intellectual and teclmical activities.
See the detailed discussion of these strata of loan-words in English
in GS ch. v and vi.
When one nation has imbibed for centuries the cultural influ-
ence of another, its language may have become so infiltrated with
words from the other language that these are found in most sen-
tences, at any rate in nearly every sentence deaUng with things
above the simplest material necessities. The best-known examples
are English since the influx of French and classical words, and
Turkish with its wholesale importations from Arabic. Another
example is Basque, in wliich nearly all expressions for religious
and spiritual ideas are Romanic. Basque is naturally very poor
in words for general ideas ; it has names for special kinds of trees,
but ' tree ' is arbolia, from Spanish drhol, ' animal ' is animale,
' colour ' colore, ' plant ' planta or landare, ' flower ' lore or lili,
' thing ' gauza, ' time ' dembora. Thus also many of its names
for utensils and garments, weights and measures, arms, etc., arc
borrowed ; ' king ' is errege, ' law ' lege, lage, ' master ' maisu,
etc. (See Zs. J. roman. Phil, 17. 140 fl.)
In a great many cases linguistic borrowing must be considered
a necessity, but this is not alwaj's so. When a nation has once
got into the habit of borrowing words, people will very often use
foreign words where it would have been 2:)erfectly possible to ex-
press their ideas by means of native speech-material, the reason
for going out of one's own language being in some cases the desire to
/ be thought fashionable or refined through interlarding one's speech
with foreign words, in others simply laziness, as is very often the
case when people are rendering thoughts they have heard or read
in a foreign tongue. Translators are responsible for the great
majority of these intrusive words, which might have been avoided
by a resort to native composition or derivation, or very often by
turning the sentence a little differently from the foreign text.
The most thoroughgoing speech mixtures are due much less to
real race-mixture than to continued cultural contact, especially
of a literary character, as is seen very clearly in English, where
the Romanic element is only to a very small extent referable to
the Norman conquerors, and far more to the peaceful relations
of the following centuries. That Greek and Latin words have
come in through the medium of literature hardlj' needs sajdng.
Many of these words are superfluous : " The native words cold,
cool, chilly, icy, frosty, might have seemed sufiicient for all pur-
poses, without any necessity for importing frigid, gelid and algid,
which, as a matter of fact, are found neither in Shakespeare nor
in the Authorized Version of the Bible nor in the poetical works
of Milton, Pope, Cowper and Shelley " (GS § 136). But on the
§10] GENERAL THEORY OF LOAN- WORDS 211
other hand it cannot be denied that the imported words have in
many instances enriched the language through enabling its users
to obtain greater variety and to find expressions for many subtle
shades of thought. The question of the value of loan-words can-
not be dismissed offhand, as the ' purists ' in many countries are
inclined to imagine, with the dictum that foreign words should be
shunned like the plague, but requires for its solution a careful
consideration of the merits and demerits of each separate foreign
term viewed in connexion with the native resources for expressing
that particular idea.
XI.— § 11. Classes of Loan-wor5s.
It is quite natural that there should be a much greater inclina-
tion everywhere to borrow " full ' words (substantives, adjectives,
notional verbs) than ' empty ' words (pronouns, prepositions,
conjunctions, auxiliary verbs), to which class most of the ' gram-
matical ' words belong. But there is no hard-and-fast limit between
the two classes. It is rare for a language to take such words as
numerals from another language ; j-et examples are found here
and there — thus, in connexion with special games, etc. Until
comparatively recenth% dicers and backgammon-players counted
in England by means of the French words ace, deuce, tray, cater,
cinque, size, and with the English game of lawn tennis the English
way of counting (fifteen love, etc.) has been lately adoj)ted in
Russia and to some extent also in Denmark. In some parts of
England Welsh numerals were until comparatively recent times
used in the counting of sheep. Cattle-drivers in Jutland used to
count from 20 to 90 in Low German learnt in Hamburg and Holstein,
where they sold their cattle. In this case the clumsiness and want
of perspicuity of the Danish expressions {halvtredsindstyve for Low
German fofdix, etc.) may have been one of the reasons for preferring
the German words ; in the same way the clumsiness of the Eskimo
way of counting (" third toe on the second foot of the fourth man,"
etc.) has favoured the introduction into Greenlandic of the Danish
words for 100 and 1,000 : with an Eskimo ending, tintritigdlit and
tusintigdlit. Most Japanese numerals are Chinese. And of course
million and milliard are used in most civilized countries.
Prepositions, too, are rarely borrowed bj' one language from
another. Yet the Latin (Ital.) per is used in English, German
and Danish, and the French a in the two latter languages, and both
are extending their domain beyond the commercial language in
which they were first used. The Greek kata, at first also commercial,
has in Spanish found admission into the ordinary language and
has become the pronoun cada ' each.'
212 THE FOREIGNER [ch. xi
Personal and demonstrative pronouns, articles and the like are
scarcely over taken over from one language to another. They are
so definitely woven into the innermost texture of a language that
no one would think of giving them up, however much he might
like to adorn his speech with words from a foreign source. If,
therefore, in one instance we find a case of a language borrowing
words of this kind, we are justified in thinking that exceptional
causes must have been at work, and such really proves to be the
case in English, which has adopted the Scandinavian forms they,
them, their. It is usual to speak of English as being a mixture of
native Old English (' Anglo-Saxon ') and French, but as a matter
of fact the French influence, powerful as it is in the vocabulary
and patent as it is to the eyes of everybody, is superficial in com-
parison with the influence exercised in a much subtler way by the
Scandinavian settlers in the North of England. The French
influence is different in extent, but not in kind, from the French
influence on German or the old Gothonic influence on Finnic ;
it is perhaps best compared with the German influence on Danish
in the Middle Ages. But the Scandinavian influence on English
is of a different kind. The number of Danish and Norwegian
settlers in England must have been very large, as is shown by
the number of Scandinavian place-names ; yet that does not
account for everything. A most important factor was the great
similarity of the two languages, in spite of numerous points of
difference. Accordingly'' , when their fighting was over, the invaders
and the original population would to some extent be able to make
themselves understood by one another, like people talking two
dialects of the same language, or like students from Copenhagen
and from Lund nowadays. Many of the most common words
were absolutely identical, and others differed only slightly. Hence
it comes that in the Middle English texts we find a great many
double forms of the same word, one English and the other Scandi-
navian, used side by side, some of these doublets even surviving
till the present day, though now differentiated in sense (e.g. whole,
hale ; no, nay ; from, fro ; shirt, shirt), while in other cases one
only of the two forms, either the native or the Scandinavian, has
survived ; thus the Scandinavian sister and egg have ousted the
English sweostor and ey. We find, therefore, a great many words
adopted of a kind not usually borrowed ; thus, everyday verbs and
adjectives like take, call, hit, die, ill, ugly, wrong, and among sub-
stantives such non-technical ones as fellow, sky, skin, wing, etc.
(For details see my GS ch. iv.) All this indicates an intimate fusion
of the two races and of the two languages, such as is not provided
for in any of the classes described by Hempl (above, § 8). In
most speech-mixtures the various elements remain distinct and can
§11] CLASSES OF LOAN-WORDS 213
be separated, just as after shuffling a pack of cards you can pick
out the hearts, spades, etc. ; but in the case of English and Scandi-
navian we have a subtler and more intimate fusion, very much
as when you put a lump of sugar into a cup of tea and a few minutes
afterwards are quite unable to say which is tea and which is sugar.
XI.— § 12. Influence on Grammar.
The question has often been raised whether speech-mixture
affects the grammar of a language wliich has borrowed largely
from some other language. The older view is expressed pointedly
by Whitney (L 199) : " Such a thing as a language with a mixed
grammatical apparatus has never come under the cognizance of
linguistic students : it ^\ ould be to them a monstrosity ; it seems
an impossibility." This is an exaggeration, and cannot be justified,
for the simple reason that the vocabulary of a language and its
' grammatical apparatus ' cannot be nicely separated in the way
presupposed : indeed, much of the borrowed material mentioned
in our last paragraphs does belong to the grammatical apparatus.
But there is, of course, some truth in Whitney's dictum. When
a word is borrowed it is not as a rule taken over with all the elaborate
flexion which may belong to it in its original home ; as a rule,
one form only is adopted, it may be the nominative or some other
case of a noun, the infinitive or the present or the naked stem of
a verb. This form is then either used unchanged or with the end-
ings of the adopting language, generally those of the most ' regular '
declension or conjugation. It is an exceptional case when more
than one flexional form is taken over, and this case does not occur
in really popular loans. In learned usage we find in older Danish
such case-flexion as gen. Christi, dat. Christo, by the side of nom.
Christus, also, e.g., i theatro, and still sometimes in German we
have the same usage : e.g. mit den pronominibus. In a somewhat
greater number of instances the plural form is adopted as well as
the singular form, as in English fu7igi, formulce, phenomena, sera-
pJiim, etc., but the natural tendency is always towards using the
native endings, funguses, formulas, etc., and this has prevailed in
all popular words, e.g. ideas, circuses, museums. As the formation
of cases, tenses, etc., in different languages is often very irregular,
and the distinctive marks are often so intimately connected with
the kernel of the word and so unsubstantial as not to be easily
distinguished, it is quite natural that no one should think of
borrowing such endings, etc., and applying them to native words.
Schuchardt once thought that the English genitive ending s had
been adopted into Indo-Portuguese (in the East Indies), where gober-
nadors casa stands for ' governor's house,' but he now explains the
214 THE FOREIGNER [ch. xi
form more correctly as originating in the possessive pronoun su :
gobernaclor su casa (clem g. sein haus, Sitzungsber. der preuss.
Akademie, 1917, 524).
It was at one time commonly held that the English plural
ending s, Mhich in Old English was restricted in its application,
owes its extension to the influence of French. This theory, I believe,
was finally disposed of by the six decisive arguments I brought
forAvard against it in 1891 (reprinted in ChE § 39). But after what
has been said above on the Scandinavian influence, I incline to think
that E. Classen is right in thinking that the Danes count for some-
thing in bringing about the final victory of -s over its competitor
-n, for the Danes had no plural in -n, and -s reminded them of
their own -r {Mod. Language Rev. 14. 94 ; cf. also -s in the third
person of verbs, Scand. -r). Apart from this particular point,
it is quite natural that the Scandinavians should have exercised
a general levelling influence on the English language, as many
niceties of grammar would easily be sacrificed where mutual in-
telligibility was so largely brought about by the common vocabu-
lary. Accordingly, we find that in the regions in which the Danish
settlements were thickest the wearing away of grammatical forms
was a couple of centuries in advance of the same process in the
southern parts of the country.
Derivative endings certainly belong to the ' grammatical
apparatus ' of a language ; yet many such endings have been
taken over into another language as parts of borrowed words
and have then been freely combined with native speech-material.
The phenomenon is extremely frequent in English, where Ave have,
for instance, the Romanic endings -ess {shepherdess, seeress), -ment
{endearment, bewilderment), -age {mileage, cleavage,, shortage), -ance
{hindrance, forbearance) and many more. In Danish and German
the number of similar instances is much more restricted, yet we
have, for instance, recent words in -isme, -ismns and -ianer ; cf.
also older words like bageri, bdckerei, etc. It is the same with pre-
fixes : English has formed many words with de-, co-, inter-, pre-,
anli- and other classical prefixes : de-anglicize, co-godfather, inter-
marriage, at pre-war prices, anti-slavery, etc. (quotations in my
GS § 124 ; cf . MEG ii. 14. 66). Ex- has established itself in many
languages : ex-king, ex-roi, ex-konge, ex-kdnig, etc. In Danish
the prefix be-, borrowed from German, is used very extensively
with native words : bebrejde, bebo, bebygge, and tliis is not the only
German prefix that is productive in the Scandinavian languages.
With regard to syntax, very little can be said except in a
general way : languages certainly do influence each other syn-
tactically, and those who knoAv a foreign language only imper-
fectly are apt to transfer to it methods of construction from their
§12] INFLUENCE ON GRAMMAR 215
own tongue. Many instances of this have been collected by
Sehuchardt, SID. But it is doubtful whether these syntactical
influences have the same permanent effects on any language as tho.se
exerted on one's own language by the habit of translating foreign
works into it : in this purely literary way a great many idioms
and turns of phrases have been introduced into English, German
and the Scandinavian languages from French and Latin, and into
Danish and Swedish from German. The accusative and infinitive
construction, which had only a very restricted use in Old English,
has very considerably extended its domain through Latin influence,
and the so-called ' absolute construction ' (in my own grammatical
terminology called ' duplex subjunct ') seems to be entirely due to
imitation of Latin syntax. In the Balkan tongues there are some
interesting instances of sjTitactical agreement between various
languages, which must be due to oral influence through the neces-
sity imposed on border peoples of passing continually from one
language to another : the infinitive has disappeared from Greek,
Rumanian and Albanian, and the definite article is placed after
the substantive in Rumanian, Albanian and Bulgarian.
XI.— § 13. Translation-loans.
Besides direct borrowings we have also indirect borro^^ings or
' translation loan-words,' words modelled more or less closely on
foreign ones, though consisting of native speech-material. I take
some examples from the very full and able paper " Notes sur les
Caiques Lingiiistiques " contributed by Kr. Sandfeld to the Fest-
schrift Vilh. Thomsen, 1912 : cedificatio : G. erbauung, Dan.
opbyggelse ; ceqmlibrium : G. gleichgewicht, Dan. ligevsegt ; bene-
ficium : G. wohltat, Dan. velgerning ; conscientia : Goth, mij'wissi,
G. gewissen, Dan. samvittighed, Swed. samvete, Russ. soznanie ;
omnipoteyis : E. almighty, G. allmachtig, Dan. almsegtig ; arriere-
2}ensee : hintergedanke, bagtanke ; bien-Ure : wohlsein, velva?re ;
exposition : austellung, udstilling ; etc. Sandfeld gives manj''
more examples, and as he has in most instances been able to give
also corresponding words from various Slavonic languages as well
as from jMagyar, Finnic, etc., he rightly concludes that his collec-
tions serve to throw light on that community in thought and ex-
pression which Bally has well termed " la mentalite europeenne."
(But it will be seen that English differs from most European lan-
guages in having a much greater propensity to swallowing foreign
words raw, as it were, than to translating them.)
CHAPTER XII
PIDGIN AND CONGENERS
§ 1. Beacli-la-Mar. § 2. Grammar. § 3. Sounds. § 4. Pidgin. § 5. Grammar,
etc. § 0. General Theory. § 7. Mauritius Creole. § 8. Chinook Jar-
gon. §9. Chinook continued. §10. Makeshift Languages. §11.
Romanic Languages.
XII.— § 1. Beach-la-Mar.
As a first typical example of a whole class of languages now
found in manj^ j)arts of the world where people of European
civilization have come into contact with men of other races, we
may take the so-called Beach-la-mar (or Beche-le-mar, or Beche
de mer English) ; ^ it is also sometimes called Sandalwood
English. It is spoken and understood all over the Western
Pacific, its spread being largely due to the fact that the practice
of ' blackbirding ' often brought together on the same plantation
many natives from different islands with mutually incompre-
hensible languages, whose only means of communication was
the broken English they had picked up from the whites. And
now the natives learn this language from each other, while
in many places the few Europeans have to learn it from the
islanders. " Thus the native use of Pidgin-English la3's down
the rules by which the Europeans let themselves be guided when
learning it. Even Englishmen do not find it quite easy at the
beginning to understand Pidgin-English, and have to learn it
before they are able to speak it properly " (Landtman).
* The etymology of this name is rather curious : Portuguese bidio de m<xr,
from bicho 'worm.' the name of the sea slug or trepang, which is eaten as a
luxury by the Chinese, was in French modified into beche dc mer, 'sea-
spade ' ; this b}' a second popular et\'mology was made into English
beach-la-mar as if a compound of beach.
My sources are H. Schuchardt, KS v. (Wiener Academic, 1883) ; id. in
ESt xiii. 158 ff., 1889; W. Churchill, Beach-la-Mar, the Jargon or Trade
Speech of the Western Pacific (Carnfgie Institution of Washington, 1911);
Jack London, The Cruise of the Snark (Mills & Boon, London, 1911 ?),
G. Landtman in Neuphilologischc Mitlleilungen (Helsingfors, 1918, p. 62 fi.
Landtman calls it " the Pidgin-English of British New Guinea," where he
learnt it, though it really differs from Pidgin-English proper ; see below) ;
*' The Jargon English of Torres Straits " in Reports of the Cambridge
Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. iii. p. 25 1 ff., Cambridge,
1907.
216
§1] BEACH-LA-MAR 217
I shall now try to give some idea of the structure of this
lingo.
The vocabulary is nearly all English. Even most of the
words which ultimately go back to other languages have been
admitted only because the English with whom the islanders were
thrown into contact had previously adopted them into their own
speech, so that the islanders Mere justified in believing that they
were really English. This is true of the Spanish or Portuguese
savvy, 'to know/ and inckaninny, 'child' or 'little one' (a
favourite in manj' languages on account of its symbolic sound ;
see Ch. XX § 8), as well as the Amerindian tomahawk, which in the
whole of Australia is the usual word for a small axe. And if we
find in Beach-la-mar the two Maori words tajm or taboo and
kai, or more often kaikai, ' to eat ' or ' food,' thej- have probably
got into the language through English — we know that both are
very extensively used in Australia, while the former is known all
over the civilized world. Likkilik or liklik, ' small, almost,' is said
to be from a Polynesian word liki, but may be really a perversion
of Engl, little. Landtman gives a few words from unknown
languages used by the Kiwais, though not derived from their
own language. The rest of the words found in my sources are
English, though not alwaj's pure English, in so far as their
signification is often curiously distorted.
Nusipepa means ' a letter, any written or printed document,'
mary is the general term for 'woman ' (of, above, p. 118), j^isupo
(peasoup) for all foreign foods which are preserved in tins ;
squareface, the sailor's name for a' square gin-bottle, is extended
to all forms of glassware, no matter what the shape. One of
the earliest seafarers is said to have left a bull and a cow on one
of the islands and to have mentioned these two words together ;
the natives took them as one word, and now hullamacow or p^du-
makau means ' cattle, beef, also tinned beef ' ; pulomokau is
now given as a native word in a dictionary of the Fijian
language.^ Bulopenn, which means ' ornament,' is said to be
nothing but the English blue paint. All this shows the purely
accidental character of many ' of the linguistic acquisitions of
the Polynesians.
As the vocabulary is extremely limited, composite expres-
sions are sometimes resorted to in order to express ideas for
which we have simple words, and not unfrequentlj'" the devices
used appear to us very clumsy or even comical. A piano is
called ' big fellow bokus (box) you fight him he cry,' and a
^ Similarly the missionary Q. Brown thought that tobi was a native
word of the Duke of York Islands for ' wash,' till one day he accidentally
discovered that it was their pronunciation of English soap.
218 PIDGIN AND CONGENERS [cH. xii
concertina ' little fellow bokus you shove him he cry, you pull
him he cit.' Womati he got Jaminil {'family') inside means
'she is with child.' Inside is also used extensively about mental
states : jump inside ' be startled,' inside tell himself ' to con-
sider,' inside bad ' grieved or sorry,' feel inside ' to know,' feel
another kind inside ' to change one's mind.' 3hj throat he fast
' I was dumb.' He took daylight a long time ' lay awake.' Bring
fellow belong make open bottle ' bring me a corkscrew.' Water
belong stink ' perfumery,' The idea of being bald is thus ex-
pressed : grass belong head belong him all he die finish, or with
another variant, coconut belong him. grass no sfojy, for coconut is
taken from English slang in the sense ' head ' (Schuchardt has
the sentence : You no savvy that fellow white man coconut belong
him no grass ?). For ' feather ' the combination grass belong
pigeon is used, pigeon being a general term for any bird.
A man who wanted to borrow a saw, the word for which he
had forgotten, said : ' You give me brother belong tomahawk,
he come he go.' A servant who had been to Queensland, where
he saw a train, on his return called it ' steamer he walk about
along bush.' Natives who watched Landtman when he en-
closed letters in envelopes named the latter ' house belong letter.'
Many of these expressions are thus picturesque descriptions made
on the spur of the moment if the proper word is not known.
Xn.— §2. Grammar.
These phrases have already illustrated some points of the
very simple grammar of this lingo. Words have only one form,
and what is in our language expressed by flexional forms is
either left unexpressed or else indicated by auxiliary words.
The plural of nouns is like the singular (though the form men
is found in my texts alongside of man) ; when necessary, the
plural is indicated by means of a prefixed all : all he talk ' they
say ' (also him fellow all ' they ') ; all man ' everj'^body ' ; a more
indefinite plural is plenty man or full up man. For ' we ' is
said me two fella or me three fellow, as the case may be ; me two
fellow Lagia means ' I and Lagia.' If there are more, me
altogether man or me plenty man may be said, though we is also
in use. Fellow [fella] is a much-vexed word ; it is required, or
at any rate often used, after most pronouns, thus, that fellow hat,
this fellow knife, me fellow, you fellow, him fellow (not he fellow) ;
it is found very often after an adjective and seems to be required
to prop up the adjective before the substantive : big fellotv
name, big felloio tobacco, another fellow man. In other cases no
fellow is used, and it seems difficult to give definite rules ; after
§2] GRAMMAR 219
a numeral it is frequent : two fellow men {man ?), three fellow
bottle. There is a curious employment in ten fellow ten one
fellow, which means 101. It is used adverbially in that man he
cry big felloiv ' he cries loudly.'
The genitive is expressed by means of belong (or belong-a,
long, along), which also serves for other prepositional relations.
Examples : tail belong him, pappa belong me, wife belong you,
belly belong me walk about too much (I was seasick), me savvee talk
along white man ; rope along bush means liana. Missis ! man
belong bullamacoiv him stop (the butcher has come). What for
you wipe hands belong-a you on clothes belong esseppoon ? (spoon,
i.e. napkin). Cf. above the expressions for ' bald.' Piccaninny
belong banana ' a yoimg b. plant.' Belong also naturally means
' to live in, be a native of ' ; boy belong island, he belong Burri-
burrigan. The preposition along is used about many local rela-
tions (in, at, on, into, on board). From such combinations as
laugh along (1. at) and he speak along this fella the transition is
easy to cases in which alo7ig serves to indicate the indirect
object : he give'm this fella Eve along Adam, and also a kind of
direct object, as in fight alonga him, you gammon along me (deceive,
lie to me), and with the form belong : he puss-puss belong this
fellow {puss-puss orig. a cat, then as a verb to caress, make
love to).
There is no distinction of gender : that woman he brother belong
me = ' she is my sister ' ; he (before the verb) and him (in all
other positions) serve both for he, she and it. There is a
curious use of 'm, um or em, in our texts often written him, after
a verb as a ' vocal sign of warning that an object of the verb is
to follow,' no matter what that object is.
Churchill says that " in the adjective comparison is un-
known ; the islanders do not know how to think comparatively —
at least, they lack the form of Avords by which comparison may
be indicated ; this big, that small is the nearest they can come
to the expression of the idea that one thing is greater than
another." But Landtman recognizes more big and also more
better : ' no good make him that fashion, more better make
him all same.' The same double comparative I find in another
place, used as a kind of verb meaning ' ought to, had better ' :
more better you come out. Too simply means ' much ' : he savvy
too much ' he knows much ' (praise, no blame), he too much talk.
A synonjon is plenty too much. Schuchardt gives the explanation
of this trait : " The white man was the teacher of the black
man, who imitated his manner of speaking. But the former
would constantly use the strongest expressions and exaggerate
in a manner that he would only occasionally resort to in speaking
220 PIDGIN AND CONGENERS [ch. xii
to his own countrymen. He did not say, ' You are very lazy,'
but ' You are too lazy,' and this will account for the fact that
' very ' is called too much in Beach-la-mar as well as tumussi
in the Negro-English of Surinam " {Spr. der Saramakkaneger,
p. iv).
Verbs have no tense-forms ; when required, a future may
be indicated by means of by and by : brother belong-a-me by
and by he dead (my br. is dying), bymby all men lavgh along that
boy ; he small now, bymbye he big. It may be qualified by
additions like bymby one time, bymby little bit, bymby big bit, and
may be used also of the ' postpreterit ' (of futurity relative to a
past time) : by and by boy belong island he speak. Another way of
expressing the future is seen in that woynan he dose np born (!)
him piccaninny ' that woman will shortly give birth to a child.'
The usual sign of the perfect is been, the only idiomatic form of
the verb to be : you been take me alotuj three year ; I been look
round before. But finish may also be used : 7ne look him finish
(I have seen him), he kaikai all finish (he has eaten it all up).
Where we should expect forms of the verb ' to be,' there is
either no verb or else stop is used : no water stop (there is no
water), rain he slop (it rains), iivo white men stoj) Matupi (live in),
other day plenty money he stop ( . . . I had . . . ). For ' have '
they say got. My belly no got kaikai (I am hungry), he got good
hand (is skilful).
XII.— §3. Sounds.
About the phonetic structure of Beach-la-mar I have very
little information ; as a rule the words in my sources are spelt
in the usual English Avay. Churchill speaks in rather vague terms
about difficulties which the islanders experience in imitating the
English sounds, and especially groups of consonants : " Any
English word which on experiment proved impracticable to the
islanders has undergone alteration to bring it within the scope
of their familiar range of sounds or has been rejected for some
facile sjaionym." Thus, according to him, the conjunction if
could not be used on account of the /, and that is the reason
for the constant use of suppose {s'pose, pose, posum = s'pose
him) — but it may be allowable to doubt this, for as a matter of
fact / occurs very frequently in the language — for instance, in the
well-worn words fellow and finish. Suppose probably is pre-
ferred to if because it is fuller in form and less abstract, and there-
fore easier to handle, while the islanders have many occasions
to hear it in other combinations than those in which it is an
equivalent of the conjunction.
§ 3] SOUNDS 221
Landtman says that with the exception of a few sounds
{j, ch, and th as in nothing) the Kiwai Papuans have little diffi-
culty in pronouncing English words.
Schuchardt gives a little more information about pronunci-
ation, and instances esterrong — strong, esseppoon= spoon, essauce-
jien — saucep>an, pellate = plate, coverra = cover, miUit = milk,
bock-kiss = box (in Churchill bokus, bokkis) as mutilations due
to the native speech habits. He also gives the following letter
from a native of the New Hebrides, communicated to him by
R. H. Codrington ; it shows many sound substitutions :
3Iisi Kamesi Arelu Joii no kaniu ruki mi Mi no ruki iou Jou
riiku Mai Poti i ko Mae tete Vakaromala mi raiki i tiripi Ausi
p>arogi ion i rukauti Mai Poti mi nomoa kaikai mi angikele nau
Poti mani Mae i kivi iou Jamu Vari koti iou kivi tamu te p>ci^o
paraogi mi i penesi nomoa te Pako.
Oloraiti Ta, Mataso.
This means as much as :
Mr. Comins, (How) are you ? You no come look me ; me
no look you ; you look my boat he go Mae to-day. Vakaromala
me like he sleep house belong you, he look out my boat, me no
more kaikai, me hungry now, boat man Mae he give you yam
very good, you give some tobacco belong (here = to) me, he
finish, no more tobacco.
All right Ta, Mataso.
There are evidently many degrees of approximation to the
true English sounds.
This letter also shows the characteristic tendency to add a
vowel, generally a short i, to words ending in consonants. This
is old, for I find in Defoe's Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
(1719, p. 211) : " All those natives, as also those of Africa, when
they learn English, they always add two E's at the end of the
words where we use one, and make the accent upon them, as
makee, takee and the like." (Note the un-phonetic expressions !)
Landtman, besides this addition, as in belongey, also mentions
a more enigmatic one of lo to words ending in vowels, as clylo for
' cry ' (cf. below on Pidgin).
Xn.— § 4. Pidgin.
I now turn to Pidgin-English. As is well known, this is the
name of the jargon which is very extensively used in China, and
to some extent also in Japan and California, as a means of com-
munication between English-speaking people and the yellow
222 PIDGIN AND CONGENERS [cii. xii
population. The name is derived from the Chinese distortion
of the Engl, word business. Unfortunately, the sources available
for ri(lgin-Engli.sh as actually spoken in the East nowadays are
neither so full nor so exact as those for Beach-la-mar, and the
following sketch, therefore, is not quite satisfactory.^
Pidgin-English must have developed pretty soon after the
first beginning of commercial relations between the English and
Chinese. In Engl. Stiidien, 44. 298, Prick van Wely has printed
some passages of C. F. Noble's Voyafje to the East Indies in 1747
and 1748, in which the Chinese are represented as talking to the
writer in a " broken and mixed dialect of English and Portu-
guese," the specimens given corresponding pretty closely to the
Pidgin of our OAvn days. Thus, he no cari Chinamayi's Joss, hap
oter Joss, which is rendered, ' that man does not worship our
god, but has another god ' ; the Chinese are said to be unable to
pronounce r and to use the word chin-chin for compliments and
jpickenini for ' small.'
The latter word seems now extinct in Pidgin proper, though
we have met it in Beach-la-mar, but Joss is still very frequent
in Pidgin : it is from Portuguese Deiis, Deos (or Span. Dios) :
Joss-house is a temple or church, Joss-pidgin religion, Joss-pidgin
man a clergyman, topside Joss-pidgin man a bishop. Chin-chin,
according to the same source, is from Chinese tsHng-ts'ing,
Pekingese ch'ing-ch'ing, a term of salutation answering to ' thank
you, adieu,' but the English have extended its sphere of appli-
cation very considerably, using it as a noun meaning ' saluta-
tion, compliment,' and as a verb meaning " to worship (by bow-
ing and striking the chin), to reverence, adore, implore, to
deprecate anger, to wish one something, invite, ask " (Leland).
The explanation given here within parentheses shows how the
Chinese word has been interpreted by popular etymology, and
no doubt it owes its extensive use partly to its sound, which has
taken the popular fancy. Chin-chin joss means religious worship
of any kind.
Simpson says : " Many of the words in use are of unknown
origin. In a number of cases the English suppose them to be
^ There are many specimens in Charles G. Leland, Pidgin- English Sing-
Song, or Songs and Stories in the China-English Dialect, with a Vocabulary
(5th ed., London, 1900), but they make the impression of being artificially
made-up to amuse the readers, and contain a much larger proportion of
Chinese words than the rest of my sources would warrant. Besides various
articles in newspapers I have used W. Simpson, " China's Future Place in
Philology " (AlacmiUan's Magazine, November 1873) and Dr. Legge's article
" Pigeon Englisli " in Chajnbcrs's Encyclopcedia. 1901 (s.v. China). The
chapters devoted to Pidgin in Karl Lentzner's Dictionary of the Slang-
English of Australia and of some Mixed Languages (Halle, 1892) give little else
but wholesale reprints of passages from some of the sources mentioned above.
§4] PIDGIN 223
Chinese, Avhile the Chinese, on the other hand, take them to be
English."' Some of tliese, liowcver, admit now of explanation,
and not a few of them point to India, where the ICnglish have
learnt them and brought them further East. Thus chit, chitty,
' a letter, an account,' is Hindustani chitthl ; godoion ' ware-
house ' is an English popular interpretation of Malay gadonrj,
from Tamil gidangi. Chowchow seems to be real Chinese and to
mean ' mixed preserves,' but in Pidgin it has acquired the vsider
signification of ' food, meal, to eat,' besides having various other
applications : a chowchow cargo is an assorted cargo, a ' general
shop ' is a chowchow shop. Cumshaw ' a present ' is Chinese.
But tiffin, which is used all over the East for ' lunch,' is really
an English word, pro])erly tiffing, from the slang verb to tiff, to
drink, esp. to drink out of meal-times. In India it was applied
to the meal, and then reintroduced into England and believed
to be a native Indian word.
Xn.— § 5. Grammar, etc.
Among points not found in BeacJi-la-mar I shall mention
the extensive use of piecee, which in accordance with Chinese
grammar is required between a numeral and the noun indicating
what is counted ; thus in a Chinaman's description of a three-
masted screw steamer with two funnels : " Thlee piecee bam-
boo, two piecee puff-pufF, walk-along inside, no can see " (walk-
along — the engine). Side means any locality : he belongey
China-side now (he is in China), topside above, or high, bottom-
side below, farside bej^ond, this-side here, allo-side around. In
a similar way time (pronounced tim or teem) is used in that-tim
then, when, what-iim when ? one-tim once, only, ttvo-tim twice,
again, nother-tim again.
In one respect the Chinese sound system is accountable for
a deviation from Beach-la-mar, namely in the substitution
of I for r: loom, all light for 'room, all right,' etc., ivhile the
islanders often made the inverse change. But the tendency to
add a vowel after a final consonant is the same : makee, too
muchee, etc. The enigmatic termination lo, which Landtman found
in some words in New Guinea, is also added to some words ending
in vowel sounds in Pidgin, according to Leland, who instances
die-lo, die ; in his texts I find the additional examples biiy-lo, say-lo,
2)ay-lo, hear-lo, besides wailo, or wijlo, which is probably from aicay ;
it means 'go away, away with you! go, depart, gone.' Can it
be the Chinese sign of the i^ast tense la, lao, generalized ?
Among usual expressions must be mentioned number one
{numpa one) ' first-class, excellent,' catchee ' get, possess, hold,
224 PIDGIN AND CONGENERS [ch. xii
bring,' etc., ijloper {plopa) ' proper, good, nice, correct ' : you
belong lAoper ? ' are you well ? '
Another word which was not in use among the South Sea
islanders, namely have, in the form hab or hap is often used in
Pidgin, even to form the perfect. Belong (belongy) is nearly
as frequent as in Beach-la-mar, but is used in a different way :
' My belongy Consoo boy,' ' I am the Consul's servant.' ' You
belong clever inside,' 'you are intelligent.' The usual way of
asking the price of something is ' how much belong ? '
XII.— § 6. General Theory.
Lingos of the same type as Beach-la-mar and Pidgin-English
are found in other parts of the world where whites and natives
meet and have to find some medium of communication. Thus
a Danish doctor living in Belgian Congo sends me a few speci-
mens of the ' Pidgin ' spoken there : to indicate that his master
has received many letters from home, the ' boy ' will say,
" Massa catch plenty mammy-book " {mammy meaning ' woman,
Avife '). Breeze stands for air in general ; if the boy wants to
say that he has pumped up the bicj'cle tjTes, he will say,
" Plenty breeze live for inside," live being here the general term
for 'to be ' (Beach-1. stop) ; ' is your master in ? ' becomes
' JMassa live ? ' and the ans^^'er is ' he no live ' or ' he live for
hup ' (i.e. he is upstairs). If a man has a stomach-ache he will
say ' he hurt me for belly plenty too much ' — too much is thus
used exactly as in Beach-la-mar and Chinese Pidgin. The
similarity of all these jargons, in spite of unavoidable smaller
differences, is in fact very striking indeed.
It may be time now to draw the moral of all this. And first
I want to point out that these languages are not ' mixed
languages ' in the proper sense of that term. Churchill is not
right when he says that Beach-la-mar " gathered material from
every source, it fused them all." As a matter of fact, it is
English, and nothing but English, with very few admixtures,
and all of these are such words as had previously been
adopted into the English speech of those classes of the popu-
lation, sailors, etc., with whom the natives came into contact :
the}' were therefore justified in their belief that these words
formed part of the English tongue and that what they learned
themselves was real English. The natives really adhere to
Windisch's rule about the adoption of loan-words (above, XI § 10).
If there are more Chinese words in Pidgin than there are Poly-
nesian ones in Beach-la-mar, this is a natural consequence
of the fact that the Chinese ci^•ilization ranked incomparably
§6] GENERAL THEORY 225
much higher than the Polynesian, and that therefore the
Enghsh living in China would adopt tliesc words into their own
speech. Still, their number is not very large. And we have
seen that there are some words which the Easterners must
naturally suppose to be English, while the English think that
they belong to the vernacular, and in using them each party
is thus under the delusion that he is rendering a service to the
other.
This leads me to my second point : those deviations from
correct English, those corruptions of pronunciation and those
simplifications of grammar, which have formed the object of
this short sketch, are due just as much to the English as to the
Easterners, and in many points they began with the former
rather than with the latter (of, Schuchardt, Auf anlass des
Volapilks, 1888, 8; KS 4. 35, SID 3G ; ESt 15. 292), From
Schuchardt I take the follo\\ing quotation : " The usual question
on reaching the portico of an Indian bmigalow is. Can missus see ?
— it being a popular superstition amongst the Europeans that
to enable a native to understand English he must be addressed
as if he were deaf, and in the most infantile language." This
tendency to meet the ' inferior races ' half-way in order to facili-
tate matters for them is by Churchill called " the one supreme
axiom of international philology : the proper way to make a
foreigner understand what you would say is to use broken
English. He speaks it himself, therefore give him what he uses."
We recognize here the same mistaken notion that we have seen
above in the language of the nursery, where mothers and others
will talk a curious sort of mangled English which is believed to
represent real babytalk, though it has many traits which are
pm-ely conventional. In both cases these more or less artificial
perversions are thought to be an aid to those who have not yet
mastered the intricacies of the language in question, though the
ultimate result is at best a retardation of the perfect acquisition
of correct speech.
My view, then, is that Beach-la-mar as well as Pidgin is
English, only English learnt imperfectly, in consequence jmrtly
of the difficulties always inherent in learning a totally different
language, partly of the obstacles put in the way of learning by
the linguistic behaviour of the English-speaking people them-
selves. The analogy of its imperfections with those of a baby's
speech in the first period is striking, and includes errors of pro-
nunciation, extreme simplification of grammar, scantiness of
vocabulary, even to such peculiarities as that the word too is
apprehended in the sense of ' very much,' and such phrases as
you better go, etc.
15
226 PIDGIN AND CONGENERS [ch. xii
Xn.— §7. Mauritius Creole.
The view here advanced on the character of these ' Pidgin '
languages is corroborated when we see that other languages under
similar circumstances have been treated in exactly the same w^ay
as English. With regard to French in the island of Mauritius,
formerly He de France, we are fortunate in possessing an ex-
cellent treatment of the subject by M. C. Baissac {ttude sur le
Patois Creole Mauricien, Nancy, 1880 ; cf. the same writer's Le
Folk-lore de Vile-Maurice, Paris, 1888, I^t^s litteratures populaires,
tome xxvii). The island was uninhabited when the French
occupied it in 1715 ; a great many slaves were imported from
Madagascar, and as a means of intercourse between them and
their French masters a French Creole language sprang up, which
has survived the English conquest (1810) and the subsequent
wholesale introduction of coolies from India and elsewhere. The
paramount element in the vocabulary is French ; one may read
many pages in Baissac's texts without coming across any foreign
words, apart from the names of some indigenous animals and
plants. In the i)honetic structure there are a few all-pervading
traits : the front-round vowels are replaced by the corresponding
unrounded vowels or in a few cases by [u], and instead of [/, 5]
we find [s, z] ; thus ir^ heureux, ine plime une plume, saldne
chacun(e), zize juge, zunu genou, suval cheval : I replace Baissac's
notation, which is modelled on the French spelling, by a more
phonetic one according to his own indications ; but I keep his
final e miiet.
The grammar of this language is as simple as possible. Sub-
stantives have the same form for the two numbers : di, sural
deux chevaux. There is no definite article. The adjective is
invariable, thus also sa for ce, cet, cette, ces, ceci, cela, celui,
celle, ceux, celles. Mo before a verb is ' I.' before a substantive
it is possessive : mo koni I laiow, mo lakaze my house ; in the
same way to is you and your, but in the tliird person a dis-
tinction is made, for li is he or she, but his or her is so, and
here we have even a plural, zaute from ' les autres,' which form
is also used as a jjlural of the second person : mo va alle av zaut,
1 shall go with yoii.
The genitive is expressed by word-order without any pre-
position : lakase so papa his father's house ; also with so before the
nominative : so piti ppa Azor old Azor's child.
The form in which the French words have been taken over
presents some curious features, and in some cases illustrates the
difficulty the blacks felt in separating the words which they
heard in the French utterance as one continuous stream of
§7] MAURITIUS CREOLE 227
sounds. There is evidently a disinclination to begin a word with
a vowel, and sometimes an initial vowel is left out, as bitation
habitation, tranz4 etranger, but in other cases z is taken from
the French plural article : zozo oiseau, zistoire, zenfan, zimaze
image, zalfan elephant, zanimo animal, or n from the French
indefinite article : name ghost, nabi (or zabi) habit. In many
cases the whole Fi'ench article is taken as an integral part of the
word, as Urat rat, Uroi, licien chien, latahe table, Ure heure (often
as a conjunction ' when ') ; thus also with the plural article
lizii from les yeux, but without the plural signification : ine
lizii an eye. Similarly ene lazoie a goose. Words that are often
used in French with the so-called partitive article keep this ; thus
disel salt, divin wine, duri rice, ene dipin a loaf ; here also we
meet with one word from the French plural : ine dizij an egg,
from des ceufs. The French mass- word with the partitive article
du momle has become dimunde or dumune, and as it means
' people ' and no distinction is made between plural and singular,
it is used also for ' person ' : ijie vi4 dimunde an old man.
Verbs have only one form, generally from the French infi-
nitive or past participle, which in most cases would fall together
{manze = manger, mange ; kuri = courir, couru) ; this serves
for all persons in both numbers and all moods. But tenses are
indicated by means of auxiliary words : va for the future, ii
(from ite) for the ordinary past, and fine for the perfect : mo
manzi I eat, mo va manzi, I shall eat, mo ti manze I ate, mo
fine manzi I have eaten, mo fine fini I have finished. Further,
there is a curious use of apre to express what in English are called
the progressive or expanded tenses : mo apre manzi I am eating,
mo ti apre manzi I was eating, and of pour to express the imme-
diate future : mo pour manzi I am going to eat, and finally an
immediate past may be expressed by Jik : mo fik manzi I have
just been eating (je ne fais que de manger). As these may be
combined in various ways {mo va fine manze I shall have eaten,
even mo ti va fik manzi I should have eaten a moment ago, etc.),
the language has really succeeded in building up a very fine and
rich verbal system with the simplest possible means and with
perfect regularity.
The French separate negatives have been combined into one word
each : napa not (there is not), narien nothing, and similarly nek only.
In many cases the same form is used for a substantive or
adjective and for a verb : mo soif, mo faim I am thirsty and
hungry ; U content so madame he is fond of his wife.
C6te (or d cote) is a preposition ' by the side of, near,' but
also means ' where ' : la case dcote U resti ' the house in which he
lives ' ; of. Pidgin side.
328 PIDGIN AND CONGENERS [ch. xii
In all this, as will easily be seen, there is very little French
grammar ; this will he especially evident when we compare the
French verbal system ^nth its many intricacies : difference
according to person, number, tense and mood with their endings,
changes of root-vowels and stress-place, etc., with the im-
changed verbal root and the invariable auxiliary syllables of
the Creole. But there is really as little in the Creole dialect of
Malagasy grammar, as I have ascertained b}' looking through
G. W. Parker's Grammar (London, 1883) : both nations in form-
ing this means of communication have, as it were, stripped them-
selves of all their previous grammatical habits and have spoken
as if their minds were just as innocent of grammar as those of
very small babies, whether French or Malagasy. Thus, and
thus only, can it be explained that the grammar of this variety
of French is for all practical purposes identical with the grammar
of those two varieties of English which we have previously ex-
amined in this chapter
No one can read Baissac's collection of folk-tales from
Mauritius without being often struck with the felicity and even
force of this language, in spite of its inevitable naivetd and of the
childlike simplicity of its constructions. If it were left to itself
it might develop into a really fine idiom without abandoning
any of its characteristic traits. But as it is, it seems to be con-
stantly changing through the influence of real French, which is
more and more taught to and imitated by the islanders, and the
day may come when most of the features described in this rapid
sketch will have given place to something which is less original,
but will be more readily understood by Parisian globe-trotters
who may happen to visit the distant island.
Xn.— § 8. Chinook Jargon.
The view here advanced may be further put to the test if
we examine a totally different language developed in another
part of the world, viz. in Oregon. I give its history in an
abridged form from Hale.^ When the first British and American
trading ships appeared on the north-w-est coast of America, towards
the end of the eighteenth century, they found a great number of
distinct languages, the Nootka, Nisqually, Chinook, Chihailish and
1 See An International Idiom. A Manual of the Oregon Trade Language,
or Chinook Jargon, by Horatio Hale (London, 1890). Besides this I have
used a Vocabulary of the Jargon or Trade Language of Oregon [by Lionnet]
published by the Smithsonian Institution (1853), and George Gibbs, A
Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon (Smithsonian Inst., 1863). Lionnet spells
the words according to the French fashion, while Gibbs and Hale spell them
in the English way. I have given them with the continental values of the
vowels in accordance with the indications in Hale'a glossary.
§8] CHINOOK JARGON 229
others, all of them harsh in pronunciation, complex in structure,
and each spoken over a very limited space. The traders learnt
a few Nootka words and the Indians a few English words.
Afterwards the traders began to frequent the Columbia River,
and naturally attempted to communicate with the natives there
by means of the words which they had found intelligible at
Nootka. The Chinooks soon acquired these words, both Nootka
and English. When later the white traders made permanent
establishments in Oregon, a real language was required ; and
it was formed by drawing upon the Chinook for such words as
were requisite, numerals, pronouns, and some adverbs and other
words. Thus enriched, ' the Jargon,' as it now began to be
styled, became of great service as a means of general intercourse.
Now, French Canadians in the service of the fur companies were
brought more closely into contact with the Indians, hunted with
them, and lived with them on terms of familiarity. The con-
sequence was that several French words were added to the slender
stock of the Jargon, including the names of various articles of
food and clothing, implements, several names of the parts of the
body, and the verbs to run, sing and dance, also one conjunction,
'puis, reduced to pi.
" The origin of some of the words is rather whimsical. The
Americans, British and French are distinguished by the terms
Boston, Kinchotsh (King George), and pasaiuks, which is presumed
to be the word Frangais (as neither /, r nor the nasal n can be
pronounced by the Indians) with the Cliinook plural termination
uJcs added. . . . ' Foolish ' is expressed by pelton or pilton, derived
from the name of a deranged person, one Archibald Pelton, whom
the Indians saw at Astoria ; his strange appearance and actions
made such an impression upon them, that thenceforward anyone
behaving in an absurd or irrational manner " was termed pelton.
The phonetic structure is very simple, and contains no sound
or combination that is not easy to Englishmen and Frenchmen
as well as to Indians of at least a dozen tribes. The numerous
harsh Indian velars either disappear entirely or are softened to h
and k. On the other hand, the d, /, r, v, z of the English and
French become in the mouth of a Chinook t, j), I, w, s. Examples :
Chinook
thliakso
yakso
hair
etsghot
itsJiut
black bear
tkalaitanam
kalaitan
arrow, shot, bullet
ntshaika
nesaika
we
mshaika
mesaika
we
thlaitshka
klaska {tlaska)
they
tkhlon
klon (tlun)
three
280
PID
GIN AND CONGENE]
RS [CH.
English :
handkercki
cry
fire
dry
lef hakatshum (kenke^him)
klai, kalai (kai)
paia
tlai, delai
handkerchief
cry, mourn
fire, cook, ripe
dry
French :
courir
la bouche
le mouton
kuli
labus (labush)
lemuto
run
mouth
sheep
The forms in parentheses are those of the French glossary
(1853).
It will be noticed that many of the French words have the
definite article affixed (a trait noticed in many words in the
French Creole dialect of Mauritius). More than half of the words
in Hale's glossary beginning with I have this origin, thus labutai
bottle, lakloa cross, lamie an old woman (la vieille), lapnshet fork
(la fourchette), latld noise (faire du train), lulu finger, lejaub (or
diaub, yaub) devil (le diable), lema hand, liplet missionary (le
pretre), litd tooth. The plural article is found in lisdp egg (les
oeufs) — the same word in which Mauritius French has also
adopted the pliu'al form.
Some of the meanings of English words are rather curious ;
thus, kol besides ' cold ' means ' winter,' and as the j'ears, as with
the old Scandinavians, are reckoned by winters, also ' year.'
Sun {son) besides ' sun ' also means ' day.' Spos (often pro-
nounced pas), as in Beach-la-mar, is a common conjunction, * if,
when.'
The grammar is extremely simple. Nouns are invariable ;
the plural generally is not distinguished from the singular ;
sometimes haiu (ayo) ' much, many ' is added by way of em-
phasis. The genitive is shown by position only : kahta nem
maika papa? (lit., what name thou father) what is the name of
your father ? The adjective precedes the noun, and com-
parison is indicated by periphrasis. ' I am stronger than thou '
would be weke maika skukiim kahkwa naika. lit. ' not thou
strong as I.' The superlative is indicated by the adverb haids
' great, very ' : haids oilman okuk kanim, that canoe is the
oldest, lit., very old that canoe, or (according to Gibbs) by elip
' first, before ' : elip klosh ' best.'
The numerals and pronouns are from the Chinook, but the
latter, at any rate, are very much simplified. Thus the pronoun
for ' we ' is nesaika, from Chinook ntshaika, which is the ex-
clusive form, meaning ' we here,' not including the person or
persons addressed.
Like the nouns, the verbs have only one form, the tense being
left to be inferred from the context, or, if strictly necessary,
§8] CHINOOK JARGON 281
being indicated by an adverb. The future, in the sense of
' about to, ready to,' may be expressed by tike, which means
properly ' wish,' as naika papa tike mimalus {mimelust) my
father is about to die. The verb 'to be ' is not expressed :
maika pelton, thou art foohsh.
There is a much-used verb mdmuk, which means ' make, do,
work ' and forms causatives, as mamuk chako ' make to come,
bring,' mamxik mimalus ' lull.' With a noun : mamuk lalam
(Ft. la rame) ' make oar,' i.e. ' to row,' mamuk pepe (make paper)
' write,' mamuk po (make blow) ' fire a gun.'
There is only one true preposition, kojm, which is used in
various senses — to, for, at, in, among, about, etc. ; but even
this may generally be omitted and the sentence remain intelli-
gible. The two conjunctions spos and pi have already been
mentioned.
Xn. — § 9. Chinook continued.
In this way something is formed that may be used as a
language in spite of the scantiness of its vocabulary. But a
good deal has to be expressed by the tone of the voice, the look
and the gesture of the speaker. " The Indians in general,"
says Hale (p. 18), " are very sparing of their gesticulations. No
languages, probably, require less assistance from this source than
theirs. . . . We frequently had occasion to observe the sudden
change produced when a party of the natives, who had been
conversing in their own tongue, were joined by a foreigner, with
whom it was necessary to speak in the Jargon. The coun-
tenances, which had before been grave, stolid and inexpressive,
were instantly hghted up with animation ; the low, monotonous
tone became lively and modulated ; every feature was active ;
the head, the arms and the whole body were in motion, and
every look and gesture became instinct with meaning."
In British Columbia and in parts of Alaska this larguage is
the prevailing medium of intercourse between the whites and
the natives, and there Hale thinks that it is likely to live " for
hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of years to come." The
language has already the beginning of a literature : songs,
mostly composed by women, who sing them to plaintive native
tunes. Hale gives some lyrics and a sermon preached by Mr.
Eells, who has been accustomed for many years to preach to
the Indians in the Jargon and who says that he sometimes even
thinks in this idiom.
Hale counted the words in this sermon, and found that to
express the whole of its " historic and descriptive details, its
232 PIDGIN AND CONGENERS [ch. xii
arguments and its appeals," only 97 different words were re-
quired, and not a single grammatical inflexion. Of these words,
65 were from Amerindian languages (46 Chinook, 17 Nootka,
2 Salish), 23 English and 7 French.
It is very instructive to go through the t^xts given by Hale
and to compare them with the real Chinook text analysed in
Boas's Hamlbook of American Indian Languages (Washington,
1911, p. 666 ff.) : the contrast could not be stronger between
simplicity carried to the extreme point, on the one hand, and
an infinite complexity and intricacy on the other. But though
it must be admitted that astonishingly much can be expressed
in the Jargon by its very simple and few means, a European
mind, while bewildered in the entangled jumble of the Chinook
language, cannot help missing a great many nuances in the
Jargon, where thoughts are reduced to their simplest formula
and where everj^thing is left out that is not strictly necessary
to the least exacting minds.
XII.— § 10. Makeshift Languages.
To sura up, this Oregon trade language is to be classed
together with Beach-la-mar and Pidgin-English, not perhaps
as ' bastard ' or ' mongrel ' languages — such expressions taken
from biology always convey the \vrong impression that a
langur.ge is an ' organism ' and had therefore better be avoided —
but rather as makeshift languages or minimum languages,
means of expression which do not serve all the purposes of
ordinary languages, but may be used as substitutes where fuller
and better ones are not available.
The analogy between this Jargon and the makeshift languages
of the East is closer than might perhaps aj^pear at first blush,
only we must make it clear to ourselves that Enghsh is in the
two cases placed in exactly the inverse position. Pidgin and
Beach-la-mar are essentially English learnt imperfectly by the
Easterners, the Oregon Jargon is essentially Chinook learnt im-
perfectly by the English. Just as in the East the English not only
suffered but also abetted the yellows in their corruption of the
English language, so also the Amerindians met the English
half-way through simplifying their own speech. If in Polynesia
and China the makeshift language came to contain some Poh'-
nesian and Chinese words, they were those which the English
themselves had borrowed into their own language and which
the yellows therefore must think formed a legitimate part of
the language they wanted to speak ; and in the same w^ay the
American Jargon contains such words from the Eiu-opean
§10] MAKESHIFT LANGUAGES 288
languages as had been previously adopted by the reds. If the
Jargon embraces so many French t^rms for the various parts
of the body, one concomitant reason probably is that these
names in the original Chinook language presented special diffi-
culties through being specialized and determined by possessive
affixes (my foot, for instance, is lekxeps, thy foot tdmeps, its
foot Jelaps, our (dual inclusive) feet tetxaps, your (dual) feet
temtaps ; I simpliiy the notation in Boas's Handbook, p. 58G),
so that it was incomparablj'^ easier to take the French lepi and
use it unchanged in all cases, no matter what the number, and
no matter who the possessor was. The natives, who had learnt
such words from the French, evidently used them to other
whites under the impression that thereby they could make them-
selves more readily understood, and the British and American
traders probably imagined them to be real Chinook ; anyhow,
their use meant a substantial economy of mental exertion.
The cliief point I want to make, however, is with regard to
grammar. In all these languages, both in the makeshift
English and French of the East and in the makeshift Amerindian
of the North- West, the grammatical structure has been simpli-
fied very miich beyond what we fold in any of the languages
involved in their making, and simplified to such an extent that
it may be expressed in very few words, and those nearly the
same in all these languages, the chief rule being common to them
all, that substantives, adjectives and verbs remain alwaj^s un-
changed. The vocabularies are as the poles asunder — in the East
English and French, in America Chinook, etc. — but the morphology
of all these languages is practically identical, because in all of
them it has reached the vanishing-point. This shows conclu-
sively that the reason of this simplicity is not the Chinese sub-
stratum or the influence of Chinese grammar, as is so often
believed. Pidgin-English cannot be described, as is often done,
as Enghsh with Chinese pronunciation and Chinese grammar,
because in that case we should expect Beach-la-mar to be quite
different from it, as the substratum there would be jMelanesian,
which in many ways differs from Chinese, and further we should
expect the Mauritius Creole to be French with Malagasy pro-
nunciation and Malagasy grammar, and on the other hand the
Oregon trade language to be Chinook with English pronunciation
and English grammar — but in none of these cases would this
description tally with the obvious facts. We might just as well
say that the speech of a two-year-old child in England is
English with Chinese grammar, and that of the two-year-old
French child is French modelled on Chinese grammar : the
truth on the contrary, is that in all these seemingly so different
284 PIDGIN AND CONGENERS [ch. xii
cases the aame mental factor is at work, namely, imperfect
mastery of a language, which in its initial stage, in the child
with its first language and in the grown-up with a second
language learnt by imperfect methods, leads to a superficial
knowledge of the most indispensable words, with total disregard
of grammar. Often, here and there, this is combined with a
wish to express more than is possible with the means at hand,
and thus generates the attempts to express the inexpressible by
means of those more or less ingenious and more or less comical
devices, with paraphrases and figurative or circuitous designa-
tions, which we have seen first in the chapters on children's
language and now again in Beach-la-mar and its congeners.
Exactly the same characteristics are found again in the
lingua geral Brazilica, which in large parts of Brazil serves as
the means of communication between the whites and Indians
or negroes and also between Indians of different tribes. It
" possesses neither declension nor conjugation " and " places
words after one another without grammatical flexion, with dis-
regard of nuances in sentence structure, but in energetic brevity,"
it is "easy of pronunciation," with many vowels and no hard con-
sonant groups — in all these respects it differs considerably from the
original Tupi, from which it has been evolved by the Europeans.^
Finally, I would point the contrast between these makeshift
languages and slang : the former are an outcome of linguistic
poverty ; they are born of the necessity and the desire to make
oneself understood where the ordinary idiom of the individual
is of no use, while slang expressions are due to a linguistic exu-
berance : the individual creating them knows perfectly well the
ordinary words for the idea he wants to express, but in youthful
playfulness he is not content with what is everybody's property,
and thus consciously steps outside the routine of everyday
language to produce something that is calculated to excite
merriment or even admiration on the part of his hearers. The
results in both cases may sometimes show related features, for
some of the figurative expressions of Beach-la-mar recall certain
slang words by their bold metaphors, but the motive force in
the two kinds is totally different, and where a comic effect is
produced, in one case it is intentional and in the other unintentional.
Xn. — § 11. Romanic Languages.
When Schuchardt began his studies of the various Creole
languages formed in many parts of the world where EurojDeans
* See Martius, Beitr. zur Ethnogr. und Sprachenkunde Amerikas (Leipzig,
1867), i. 364 fl. and ii 23 £f.
§11] ROMANIC LANGUAGES 285
epealdng various Romanic and other languages had come into
contact with negroes, Poljmesians and other races, it was with
the avowed intention of throwing light on the origin of the
Romanic languages from a contact between Latin and the lan-
guages previously spoken in the countries colonized by the
Romans. We may now raise the question whether Beach-la-
mar — to take that as a typical example of the kind of languages
dealt Avith in this chapter — is likely to develop into a language
which to the English of Great Britain will stand in the same
relation as French or Portuguese to Latin. The answer cannot
be doubtful if we adhere tenaciously to the points of view already
advanced. Development into a separate language would be
imaginable only on condition of a complete, or a nearly com-
plete, isolation from the language of England (and America) —
and how should that be effected nowadays, with our present
means of transport and communication ? If such isolation were
indeed possible, it would also result in the breaking off of com-
munication between the various islands in which Beach-la-mar
is now spoken, and that would probably entail the speedy ex-
tinction of the language itself in favour of the Polynesian language
of each separate island. On the contrary, what will probably
happen is a development in the opposite direction, by which the
English of the islanders will go on constantly improving so as to
approach correct usage more and more in every respect : better
pronunciation and syntax, more flexional forms and a less scanty
vocabulary — in short, the same development that has already
to a large extent taken place in the English of the coloured popu-
lation in the United States. But this means a gradual extinction
of Beach-la-mar as a separate idiom tlirough its complete absorp-
tion in ordinary English (cf. above, p. 228, on conditions at
Mauritius).
Do these ' makeshift languages,' then, throw any light on
the development of the Romanic languages ? They may be
compared to the very first initial stage of the Latin language as
spoken by the barbarians, many of whom may be supposed to
have mutilated Latin in very much the same way as the Pacific
islanders do English. But by and by they learnt Latin much
better, and if now the Romanic languages have simplified the
grammatical structure of Latin, this simplification is not to be
placed on the same footing as the formlessness of Beach-la-mar,
for that is complete and has been achieved at one blow : the
islanders have never (i.e. have not yet) learnt the English form-
system. But the inhabitants of France, Spain, etc., did learn
the Latin form system as well as the syntactic use of the forms.
This is seen by the fact that when French and the other languages
236 PIDGIN AND CONGENERS [cH. xii
began to be written down, there remained in them a large quantity
of forms and syntactic applications that agree with Latin but
have since then become extinct : in its oldest written form,
therefore, French is very far from the amorphous condition of
Beach-la-mar : in its nouns it had many survivals of the Latin
case system (gen. pi. corresponding to -orum ; an oblique case
different from the nominative and formed in various ways ac-
cording to the rules of Latin declensions), in the verbs we find an
intricate system of tenses, moods and persons, based on the
Latin flexions. It is true that these had been already to some
degree simplified, but this must have happened in the same
gradual way as the further simplification that goes on before
our very eyes in the written documents of the following cen-
turies : the distance from the first to the tenth century must have
been bridged over in very much the same way as the distance
between the tenth and the twentieth ccnturj'. No catacl3'sm
such as that through which English has become Beach-la-mar
need on any account be invoked to explain the perfectly natural
change from Latin to Old French and from Old French to
Modern French.
CHAPTER XIII
THE WOMAN
§ 1. Women's Languages. § 2. Tabu. § 3. Competing Languages. § 4. Sans-
krit Drama. § 5. Conservatism. § 6. Phonetics and Grammar
§ 7. Choice of Words. § 8. Vocabulary. § 9. Adverbs. § 10. Periods,
§ 11. General Characteristics.
Xin.— § 1. Women's Languages.
There are tribes in which men and women are said to speak totally
different languages, or at any rate distinct dialects. It will be
worth our while to look at the classical example of this, which is
mentioned in a great many ethnographical and linguistic works,
viz. the Caribs or Caribbeans of the Small Antilles. The first to
mention their distinct sex dialects was the Dominican Breton, who,
in his Dictionnaire Carazbe-franQais (1664), says that the Caribbean
chief had exterminated all the natives except the women, who had
retained part of their ancient language. This is repeated in many
subsequent accounts, the fullest and, as it seems, most reliable
of which is that by Rochefort, who spent a long time among the
Caribbeans in the middle of the seventeenth century : see his
H istoire natureUe et morale lies lies Antilles (2c ed., Rotterdam, 1665,
jD. 449 ff.). Here he says that " the men have a great many expres-
sions peculiar to them, which the Avomen understand but never
pronounce themselves. On the other hand, the women have words
and phrases which the men never use, or they would be laughed
to scorn. Thus it happens that in their conversations it often
seems as if the women had another language than the men. . . . The
savage natives of Dominica say that the reason for this is that when
the Caribs came to occupy the islands these were inhabited by
an Arawak tribe which they exterminated completely, with the
exception of the women, whom they married in order to populate
the country. Now, these w" .nen kept their own language and taught
it to their ^^aughters. . . . But tu<.'igh the boys understand
the speech of their mothers and sisters, they nevertheless follow
their fathers and brothers and conform to their speech from the
age of five or six. ... It is asserted that the^ is some similarity
between the speech of the continental Arawaks and that of the
Carib women. But the Carib men and women on the continent
237
238 THE WOMAN [ch. xin
apeak the same language, as they have never corrupted their
natural speech by marriage with strange women."
This evidently is the account wliich forms the basis of ever^'-
tliing that has since been written on the subject. But it will be
noticed that Rochefort does not really speak of the speech of the
two sexes as totally distinct languages or dialects, as has often
been maintained, but only of certain differences within the same
languaere. If we go through the comparatively full and evidently
careful glossary attached to his book, in which he d(>notes the
words peculiar to the men by the letter H and those of the women
by F, we shall see that it is only for about one-tenth of the vocabu-
lary that such special words have been indicated to him, though the
matter evident!}' interested him very much, so that he would make
all possible efforts to elicit them from the natives. In liis lists,
words special to one or the other sc.x are found most frequently
in the names of the various degrees of kinship ; thus, ' my father '
in the speech of the men in youmdan, in that of the women nou-
kduchili, though both in addressing him saj' bdha ; ' my grand-
father ' is iidinoulou and ndrgoicti respectively, and thus also for
maternal uncle, son (elder son, younger son), brother-in-law, wife,
mother, grandmother, daughter, cousin — all of these are different
according as a man or a woman is speaking. It is the same with
the names of some, though far from all, of the different parts of
the body, and with some more or less isolated words, as friend,
enemy, joy, work, war, house, garden, bed, poison, tree, sun, moon,
sea,, earth. This list comprises nearly every notion for which
Rochefort indicates separate words, and it Avill be seen that there
are innumerable ideas for which men and women use the same
word. Further, we see that where th(;re are differences these do
not consist in small deviations, such as different prefixes or suffixes
added to the same root, but in totally distinct roots. Another
point is very important to my mind : judging by the instances
in which plural forms are given in the lists, the words of the two
sexes are inflected in exactly the same way ; thus the grammar is
common to both, from which we may infer that we hav^e not
really to do with two distinct languages in the proper sense of
the word.
Now, some light may probably be thrown on the problem of
this women's language from a custom mentioned in some of the
old books written by travellers who have visited these islands.
Rochefort himself (p. 497) very briefly says that " the women do
not eat till their husbands have finished their meal," and Lafitau
(1724) says that women never eat in the company of their husbands
and never mention them by name, but must wait upon them as
their slaves ; with this Labat agrees.
§ 2] TABU 380
Xm.— § 2. Tabu.
The fact that a wife is not allowed to mention the name of
her husband makes one think that we have here simply an in-
stance of a custom found in various forms and in var^'ing degrees
throughout tne world — what is called verbal tabu : under certain
circumstances, at certain times, in certain places, the use of one or
more definite words is interdicted, because it is superstitiously
believed to entail certain evil consequences, such as exasperate
demons and the like. In place of the forbidden words it is therefore
necessary to use some kind of figurative paraphrase, to dig up an
otherwise obsolete t^rm, or to disguise the real word so as to render
it more innocent.
Now as a matter of fact we find that verbal tabu was a common
practice with the old Caribs : when they were on the war-path
they had a great number of mysterious words which women were
never alloAved to learn and which even the young men might not
pronounce before passing certain tests of bravery and patriotism ;
these war-words are described as extraordinarily difficult (" un
baragoin fort difficile," Rochefort, p. 450). It is easy to see that
when once a tribe has acquired the habit of using a whole set of
terms under certain frequently recurring circumstances, while
others are at the same time strictly interdicted, this may naturally
lead to so many words being reserved exclusively for one of the
sexes tliat an observer may be tempted to speak of separate
' languages ' for the two sexes. There is thus no occasion to believe
in the story of a wholesale extermination of all male inhabitants
by another tribe, though on the other hand it is easy to understand
how such a m\i;h may arise as an explanation of the linguistic
diflference between men and women, when it has become strong
enough to attract attention and therefore has to be accounted for
In some parts of the world the connexion between a separate
women's language and tabu is indubitable. Thus among the
Bantu people of Africa. With the Zulus a wife is not allowed to
mention the name of her father-in-law and of his brothers, and if
a similar word or even a similar syllable occurs in the ordinary
language, she must substitute something else of a similar meaning.
In the royal family the difficult}' of understanding the women's
language is further increased by the Avoman's being forbidden
to mention the names of her husband, his father and grandfather
as well as his brothers. If one of these names means something
like " the son of the bull,'*' each of these words has to be avoided,
and all kinds of paraphrases have to be used. According to Kranz
the interdiction holds good not only for meaning elements of the
name, but even for certain sounds entering into them ; thus, if
240 THE WOMAN [ch. xiii
the name contains the sound 2, amanzi ' water ' has to be altered
into amandabi. If a woman were to contravene tliis rule she
would be indicted for sorcery and put to death. The substitutes
thus introduced tend to be adopted by others and to constitute a
real women's language.
With the Chiquitos in Bolivia the difference between the grammars
of the two sexes is rather curious (see V, Henry, " Sur le parler
des hommes et le parler des femmes dans la langue chiquita," Revue
de linguistique, xii. 305, 1879). Some of Henry's examples may
be thus summarized : men indicate by the addition of -tii that a
male person is spoken about, while the women do not use this
suffix and thus make no distinction between ' he ' and ' she,' ' hia '
and ' her.' Thus in the men's speech the following distinctions
would be made :
He went to his house : yeboiii ti n-ipoostii.
He went to her house : yebotii ti n-ipooa.
She went to his house : yebo ti n-ipoostii.
But to express all these different meanings the women would have
only one form, viz.
yebo ti n-ipoos,
which in the men's speech would mean only ' She went to her
house.'
To man}' substantives the men prefix a vowel which the women
do not employ, thus o-])etas 'turtle,' u-tumokos ' dog,' i-pis 'wood.'
For some very important notions the sexes use distinct words ; thus,
for the names of kinship, ' ray father ' is iyai and isupu, ' my mother *
ipaJci and ijjapa, ' my brother ' tsaruki and icibausi respectively.
Among the languages of California, Yana, according to Dixon
and &oeber [The American Anthropologist, n.s. 5. 15), is the
only language that shows a difference in the words used hy men
and women — apart from tenns of relationship, Mhere a distinction
according to the sex of the speaker is made among many Californian
tribes as well as in other parts of the world, evidentlj^ " because
the relationship itself is to them different, as the sex is different."
But in Yana the distinction is a linguistic one, and curiouslj^ enough,
the few specimens given all present a trait found already in the
Chiquito forms, namely, that the forms spoken by women are shorter
than those of the men, which appear as extensions, generally by
suffixed -{n)a, of the former.
Tt is surely needless to multiply instances of these customs, which
are found among many wild tribes ; the curious reader may be
referred to Lasch, S. pp. 7-13, and H. Ploss and M. Bartels, Das Weib
in der Natur und Volkerkunde (9th ed., Leipsig, 1908). The latter
§ 2] TABU 241
says that the Suaheli system is not carried through so as to replace
the ordinar}' language, but the Suaheli have for every object which
they do not care to mention by its real name a symbolic word under-
stood by everybody concerned. In especial such symbols are used
by women in their mysteries to denote obscene things. The words
chosen are cither ordinar}' names for innocent things or else taken
from the old language or other Bantu languages, mostly Kiziguha,
for among the Waziguha secret rites play an enormous r61e. Bartels
finally says that with us, too, women have scjiarate names for
everj'thing connected with sexual life, and he thinks that it is the
same feeling of shame that underlies this custom and the inter-
diction of pronouncing the names of male relatives. This, however,
does not explain everything, and, as already indicated, superstition
certainly has a large share in this as in other forms of verbal tabu.
See on this the very full account in the third volume of Frazer's
The Golden Bough.
Xni.— § 3. Competing Languages.
A difference between the language spoken by men and that
spoken by women is seen in many countries where two languages
are struggling for supremacy in a peaceful way — thus without any
question of one nation exterminating the other or the male part
of it. Among German and Scandinavian immigrants in America
the men mix much more with the English-spealdng population,
and therefore have better opportunities, and also more occasion, to
learn English than their wives, who remain more within doors.
It is exactly the same among the Basques, where the school, the
military service and daily business relations contribute to the
extinction of Basque in favour of French, and where these factors
operate much more strongly on the male than on the female popula-
tion : there are families in which the wife talks Basque, while
the husband does not even understand Basque and does not allow
his children to learn it (Bornecque et Miihlen, Les Provinces fran-
Qaises, 5.3). Vilhelm Thomsen informs me that the old Livonian
language, which is now nearly extinct, is kept up with the
greatest fidelity by the women, while the men are abandoning it
for Lettish. Albanian women, too, generally know only Albanian,
while the men are more often bilingual.
Xm.— § 4. Sanskrit Drama.
There are very few traces of real sex dialects in our Arj'^an lan-
guages, though we have the very curious rule in the old Indian
drama that women talk Prakrit (jjrdJcrta, the natural or vulgar
language) while men have the privilege of talking Sanskrit {sam-
16
242 THE WOMAN [ch. xiii
skrta, the adorned language). The distinction, however, is not
one of SOX really, but of rank, for Sanskrit is the language of gods,
kings, princes, brahmans, ministers, chamberlains, dancing-masters
and other men in superior positions and of a very few women of
special religious importance, while Prakrit is spoken by men of an
inferior class, like shopkeepers, law officers, aldermen, bathmen,
fishermen and policemen, and by nearly all women. The difference
between the two ' languages ' is one of degree only : they are two
strata of the same language, one higher, more solemn, stifi and
archaic, and another lower, more natural and familiar, and this easy,
or perhaps we should say slipshod, style is the only one recognized
for ordinary women. The difference may not be greater than that
between the language of a judge and that of a costermonger in a
modern novel, or between Juliet's and her nurse's expressions
in Shakespeare, and if all women, even those we should call the
' heroines ' of the plays, use only the lower stratum of speech, the
reason certainly is that the social position of women was so inferior
that they ranked only with men of the lower orders and had no
share in the higher culture which, with the refined language, was
the privilege of a small class of selected men.
Xin.— §5. Conservatism.
As Prakrit is a ' younger ' and ' worn-out ' form of Sanskrit,
the question here naturally arises : What is the general attitude
of the two sexes to those changes that are constantly going on
in languages ? Can they be ascribed exclusively or predominantly
to one of the sexes ? Or do both equall}^ participate in them ?
An answer that is very often given is that as a rule women are more
conservative than men, and that they do nothing more than keep
to the traditional language which they have, learnt from their
parents and hand on to their children, while innovations are due ,
to the initiative of men. Thus Cicero in an often-quoted passage
says that when he hears his mother-in-law Loelia, it is to him as
if he heard Plautus or Ncevius, for it is more natural for women to
keep the old language uncorrupted, as they do not hear many
people's way of speaking and thus retain what they have fii-st learnt
(De oratore, III. 45). This, however, does not hold good in every
respect and in every people. The French engineer, Victor Renault,
who lived for a long time among the Botocudos (in South America)
and compiled vocabularies for two of their tribes, speaks of the
ease with which he could make the savages who accompanied him
invent new words for anything. " One of them called out the
word in a loud voice, as if seized by a sudden idea, and the others
would repeat it amid laughter and excited shouts, and then it
§ 5] CONSERVATISM 248
was universally adopted. But the curious thing is that it was
nearly always the women who busied themselves in inventing new
words as well as in composing songs, dirges and rhetorical essays.
The word-formations here alluded to are probably names of objects
that the Botocudos had not known previously ... as for horse,
krainejoune, ' head-teeth ' ; for ox, po-kekri, ' foot-cloven ' ; for
donkey, mgo-jonne-orone, ' beast with long ears.' But well-known
objects which have already got a name have often similar new
denominations invented for them, which are then soon accepted by
the family and community and spread more and more " {v. Mar-
tins, Beitr. zur Ethnogr. u. Sprachenkunde Amerikas, 1867, i. 330).
I may also quote what E. R. Edwards says in his Etude phonHique
de la langue japonaise (Leipzig, 1903, p. 79) : " In France and in
England it might be said that women avoid neologisms and are
careful not to go too far away from the written forms : in Southern
England the sound ^vlitten wh [a\.] is scarcely ever pronounced
except in girls' schools. In Japan, on the contrary, women are
less conservative than men, whether in pronunciation or in the
selection of words and expressions. One of the chief reasons is
that women have not to the same degree as men undergone the
influence of the written language. As an example of the liberties
which the women take may be mentioned that there is in the
actual pronunciation of Tokyo a strong tendency to get rid of
the sound {w), but the women go further in the word atashi, which
men pronounce watashi or watakshi, ' I.' Another tendency noticed
in the language of Japanese women is pretty widely spread among
French and English women, namely, the excessive use of intensive
words and the exaggeration of stress and tone-accent to mark
emphasis. Japanese women also make a much more frequent use
than men of the prefixes of politeness o-, go- and mi-."
Xm. — § 6. Phonetics and Grammar.
In connexion with some of the phonetic changes which have
profoundly modified the English sound system we have express
statements by old grammarians that women had a more advanced
pronunciation than men, and characteristically enough these
statements refer to the raising of the vowels in the direction
of [i] ; thus in Sir Thomas Smith (1567), who uses expressions like
" mulierculee qusedam delicatiores, et nonnulli qui volunt isto
modo viJeri loqui urbanius," and in another place " fceminse
qusedam delicatiores," further in Mulcaster (1582)^ and in Milton's
^ " Ai is the man's diphthong, and sonndeth full : et, the woman's,
and soundeth finish [i.e. fineish] in the same both sense, and vse, a woman
is deintie, and Jeinteth soon, the man fainteth not bycause he is nothing daintie."
Thus what is now distinctive of refined as opposed to vulgar pronunciation
was then characteristic of the fair sex.
244 THE WOMAN [cir. xiii
teacher, Alexander Gill (1G21), who speaks about "nostra Mopsse,
qua} quidcra ita omnia attenuant."
In France, about 1700, women were inclined to pronounce e
instead of a; thus Alemand (1688) mentions BarnaM as " fa9on
de prononcer male " and Bernabe as the pronunciation of " les
gens polis et delicats . . . les dames surtout "; and Grimarcst (1712)
speaks of " ces marchandes du Palais, qui au lieu de viadame,
boulevart, etc., prononccnt medeme, boulevert " (Thurot i. 12 and 9).
There is one change characteristic of many languages in which
it seems as if women have played an important part even if they
are not solely responsible for it : I refer to the weakening of the old
fully trilled tongue-point r. I have elsewhere (Fonetik, p. 417 £f.)
tried to show that this weakening, which results in various sounds
and sometimes in a complete omission of the sound in some positions,
is in the main a consequence of, or at any rate favoured by, a
change in social life : the old loud trilled point sound is natural and
justified when life is chiefly carried on out-of-doors, but indoor
life prefers, on the whole, less noisy speech habits, and the more
refined this domestic life is, the more all kinds of noises and even
speech sounds will be toned down. One of the results is that this
original r sound, the rubadub in the orchestra of language, is no
longer allowed to bombard the ears, but is softened down in various
ways, as we see chiefly in the great cities and among the educated
classes, while the rustic population in many countries keeps up
the old sound with much greater conservatism. Now we find that
women are not unfrequently mentioned in connexion with this
reduction of the trilled r ; thus in the sixteenth century in France
there was a tendency to leave off the trilling and even to go further
than to the present English untrilled point r by pronouncing [z]
instead, but some of the old grammarians mention this pronuncia-
tion as characteristic of women and a few men who imitate women
(Erasmus : mulierculse Parisinse ; Sylvius : mulierculae . . . Parrhisinae^
et earum modo quidam parum viri ; Pillot : Parisinse mulierculae
. . . adeo delicatulae sunt, ut pro _2)ere dicantpese). In the ordinary
language there are a few remnants of this tendency; thus, when
by the side of the original chaire we now have also the form chaise,
and it is worthy of note that the latter form is reserved for the
everydaj'' signification (Engl, chair, seat) as belonging more naturally
to the speech of women, while chaire has the more special significa-
tion of ' pulpit, professorial chair.' Now the same tendency to
substitute [z] — or after a voiceless sound [s] — for r is found in our
owTi days among the ladies of Christiania, who will say gznelig
for gruelig andfsygtelig ior frygtelig (Brekke, Bidrag til dansknorshens
lydlcere, 1881, p. 17 ; I have often heard the sound myself). And
even in far-off Siberia we find that the Chuckchi women will say
§6] PHONETICS AND GRA]\IMAR 243
nidzaJc or nizah for the male nirak ' two,' zerka for r'erka ' walrus,*
etc. (Nordqvist ; see fuller quotations in my Fonetik, p. 431).
In present-day Englis^h there are said to be a few dJfTerences
in pronunciation between the two sexes ; thus, according to Daniel
Jones, soft is pronounced with a long vowel [soft] bj' men and with
a short vowel [soft] by women ; similarly [geel] is said to be a
special ladies' pronunciation of girl, which men usually pronounce
[gal] ; cf. also on ivh above, p. 243. So far as I have been able to
ascertain, the pronunciation [//uldran] for [t/ildron] children is
much more frequent in women than in men. It may also be that
women are more inclined to give to the word waistcoat the full
long sound in both syllables, while men, who have occasion to
use the word more frequently, tend to give it the historical form
[weskot] (for the shortening compare breakfast). But even if such
observations were multiplied — as probably they might easily be
by an attentive observer — they would be only more or less isolated
instances, without any deeper significance, and on the whole we
must say that from the phonetic j)oint of view there is scarcely
any difference between the speech of men and that of women : the
two sexes speak for all intents and purposes the same language.
Xm.— § 7. Choice of Words.
But when from the field of phonetics we come to that of vocabu-
lary and style, we shall find a much greater number of difiPerences,
though they have received very little attention in linguistic works.
A few have been mentioned by Greenough and Kittredge : " The
use of common in the sense of ' vulgar ' is distinctly a feminine
peculiarity. It would sound effeminate in the speech of a man. So,
in a less degree, with person for ' woman,' in contrast to ' lady.'
Nice for ' fine ' must have originated in the same way " (W, p. 54).
Others have told me that men will generally say ' It's very
good of you,' where women will say ' It's very kind of you.'
But such small details can hardly be said to be really characteristic
of the two sexes. There is no doubt, however, that women in all
countries are shy of mentioning certain parts of the human body
and certain natural functions by the direct and often rude denomina-
tions which men, and especially young men, prefer when among
themselves. Women vnW therefore invent innocent and euphemistic
words and paraphrases, which sometimes may in the long run come
to be looked upon as the plain or blunt names, and therefore in their
turn have to be avoided and replaced by more decent words.
In Pinero's The Gay Lord Quex (p. 116) a lady discovers some
French novels on the table of another lady, and says : " This is
a little — h'm — isn't it ? " — she does not even dare to say the word
246 THE WOMAN [ch. xiii
* indecent,' and has to express the idea in inarticulate language.
The word ' naked ' is paraphrased in the following description
by a woman of the work of girls in ammunition works : " They
have to take off every stitch from their bodies in one room, and
run in their innocence and nothing else to another room where
the special clothing is " (Bennett, The Pretty Lady, 176).
On the other hand, the old-fashioned prudery which prevented
ladies from using such words as legs and trousers (" those manly
garments which are rarely mentioned by name," says Dickens,
Dombey, 335) is now rightly looked upon as exaggerated and more
or less comical (cf. my GS § 247).
There can be no doubt that women exercise a great and universal
influence on linguistic development through their instinctive
shrinking from coarse and gross expressions and their preference
for refined and (in certain spheres) veiled and indirect expressions.
In most cases that influence will be exercised privately and in the
bosom of the family ; but there is one historical instance in which
a group of women worked in that direction publicly and collectively ;
I refer to those French ladies who in the seventeenth century gathered
in the H6tel de Rambouillet and are generally known under the
name of Precieuses. They discussed questions of spelling and
of purity of pronunciation and diction, and favoured all kinds
of elegant paraphrases by which coarse and vulgar worda might
be avoided. In many ways this movement was the counterpart
of the literary wave which about that time was inundating Europe
under various names — Gongorism in Spain, Marinism in Italy,
Euphuism in England ; but the Precieuses went f lu-ther than their
male confreres in desiring to influence everyday language. When,
however, they used such expressions a«, for ' nose,' ' the door of the
brain,' for ' broom ' ' the instrument of cleanness,' and for ' shirt '
' the constant companion of the dead and the living ' (la com-
pagne perpetuelle des morts et des vivants), and many others, their,
affectation called down on their heads a ripple of laughter, and
their endeavours would now have been forgotten but for the im-
mortal satire of IMoliere in Les Precieuses ridicules and Lcs Femmes
savantes. But apart from such exaggerations the feminine point
of view is unassailable, and there is reason to congratulate those
nations, the English among them, in which the social position of
women has been high enough to secure greater purity and freedom
from coarseness in language than would have been the case if
men had been the sole arbiters of speech.
Among the things women object to in language must be specially
mentioned anything that smacks of swearing ^ ; where a man will
* There are great differences with regard to swearing between different
nations ; but I think that in those countries and in those circles in which
§7] CHOICE OF WORDS 247
say " He told an infernal lie," a womton will rather say, " He told
a most dreadful fib." Such euphemistic substitutes for the simple
word ' hell ' as ' the other place,' ' a very hot ' or ' a very uncom-
fortable place ' probabl}' originated with women. They will also
use ever to add emphasis to an interrogative pronoun, as in
" Whoever told you that ? " or " Whatever do you mean ? "
and avoid the stronger ' who the devil ' or ' what the dickens.'
For surprise we have the feminine exclamations ' Good gracious,'
' Gracious me,' ' Goodness gracious,' ' Dear me ' by the side of the
more masculine ' Good heavens,' ' Great Scott.' ' To be sure ' is said
to be more frequent with women than with men. Such instances
might be multiplied, but these may suffice here. It will easilj' be
seen that we have here civilized counterparts of what was above
mentioned as sexual tabu ; but it is worth noting that the interdic-
tion in these cases is ordained by the women themselves, or perhaps
rather by the older among them, while the young do not "always
willingly comply.
Men will certainly with great justice object that there is a danger
of the language becoming languid and insipid if we are always to
content ourselves ^dth women's expressions, and that vigour and
vividness count for something. Most boys and many men have
a dislike to some words merelj' because they feel that they are used
by everybody and on every occasion : they want to avoid what is
commonplace and banal and to replace it by new and fresh ex-
pressions, whose very newness imparts to them a flavour of their
OA\Ti. Men thus become the chief renovators of language, and
to them are due those changes by which we sometimes see one
term replace an older one, to give wa}^ in turn to a still newer one, and
so on. Thus we see in English that the old verb weorpan, corre-
sponding to G. werfen, was felt as too weak and therefore supplanted
by cast, which was taken from Scandinavian ; after some centuries
cast was replaced by the stronger thro^v, and this now, in the parlance
of boys especially, is gi^ing way to stronger expressions like chuck
and fling. The old verbs, or at any rate cast, may be retained in
certain applications, more particularly in some fixed combinations
and in figurative significations, but it is now hardly possible to say,
as Shakespeare does, " They cast their caps up." Many such
innovations on their first appearance are counted as slang, and
some never make their -wa,y into received speech ; but I am not
in this connexion concerned with the distinction between slang
swearing is common it is found much more extensively among men than
among women : this at any rate is true of Denmark. There is, however, a
general social movement against 8\\eaiing. and now there are many men
who never swear. A friend wiites to me: "The best English men haidly
swear at all. ... I imagine some of our fashionable women now swear as
much as the men they consort with."
248 THE WOMAN [ch. xiii
and recognized language, except in so far as the inclination or
disinclination to invent and to use slang is undoubtedly one of the
"human secondary sexual characters." This is not invalidated
by the fact that quite recently, with the rise of the feminist move-
ment, many j'oung ladies have begun to imitate their brothers in
that as well as in other respects.
Xm.— §8. Vocabulary.
This trait is indissolubly connected with another : the vocabulary
of a woman as a rule is much less extensive than that of a man.
Women move preferably in the central field of language, avoiding
everything that is out of the way or bizarre, while men will often
either coin new words or expressions or take up old-fashioned ones,
if by that means they are enabled, or think they are enabled, to
find a more adequate or precise expression for their thoughts.
Woman as a rule follows the main road of language, where man is
often inclined to turn aside into a narrow footpath or even to strike
out a new path for himself. Most of those who are in the habit
of reading books in foreign languages will have experienced a much
greater average difficulty in books written by male than by female
authors, because they contain man}' more rare words, dialect words,
technical terms, etc. Those who want to learn a foreign language
will therefore always do well at the first stage to read many ladies'
novels, because they will there continually meet ■with just those
everyday words and combinations which the foreigner is above
all in need of, what may be termed the indispensable small-change
of a language.
Tliis may be partlj^ explicable from the education of women,
which has up to quite recent times been less comprehensive and
technical than that of men. But this does not account for every-
thing, and certain experiments made by the American professor
Jastrow would tend to show that we hav^e here a trait that is inde-
pendent of education. He asked twenty-five university students
of each sex, belonging to the same class and thus in possession of
the same preliminary training, to write do\Mi as rapidly as possible a
hundred words, and to record the time. Words in sentences were
not allowed. There were thus obtained 5,000 words, and of these
many were of course the same. But the community of thought
was greater in the women ; while the men used 1,375 different
words, their female class-mates used only 1,123. Of 1,266 unique
words used, 29-8 per cent, were male, only 20-8 per cent, female.
The group into which the largest number of the men's words fell
was the animal kingdom ; the group into which the largest number
of the women's words fell was wearing apparel and fabrics ; while
§ 8] VOCABULARY 249
the men used only 53 words belonging to the class of foods, the
women used 179. " In general the feminine traits revealed by
this study are an attention to the immediate surroundings, to the
finished product, to the ornamental, the individual, and the con-
crete ; wliile the masculine preference is for the more remote, the
constructive, the useful, the general and the abstract." (See
Havelock Ellis, 3Ian and Wotnan, 4th ed., London, 1904,
p. 189.)
Another point mentioned by Jastrow is the tendency to select
words that rime and alliterative words ; both these tendencies
were decided]}- more marked in men than in -women. This sbo-ws
what we may also notice in other ways, that men take greater
interest in words as such and in their acoustic properties, while
women pay less attention to that side of words and merely take
them as they are, as something given once for all. Thus it comes
that some men are confirmed punsters, while women are generally
slow to see any point in a pun and scarcely ever perpetrate one
themselves. Or, to get to something of greater value : the science
of language has very few votaries among women, in spite of the
fact that foreign languages, long before the reform of female educa-
tion, belonged to those things which women learnt best in and out
of schools, because, like music and embroidery, they were reckoned
among the specially feminine ' accomplishments.'
Woman is linguistically quicker than man : quicker to learn,
quicker to hear, and quicker to answer. A man is slower : he
hesitates, he chews the cud to make sure of the taste of words, and
thereby comes to discover similarities with and differences from
other words, both in sound and in sense, thus preparing himself
for the appropriate use of the fittest noun or adjective.
Xm.— § 9. Adverbs.
While there are a few adjectives, such as pretty and nice, that
might be mentioned as used more extensively^ by women than by
men, there are greater differences -with regard to adverbs. Lord
Chesterfield wrote {The World, December 5, 1754) : " Not contented
with enricliing our language by words absolutely new, my fair
countrjn^omen have gone still farther, and improved it by the
application and extension of old ones to various and very different
significations. They take a word and change it, like a guinea into
shillings for pocket-money, to be employed in the several occasional
purposes of the day. For instance, the adjective vast and its
adverb vastly mean anything, and are the fashionable words of the
most fashionable people. A fine woman ... is vastly obliged, or
vastly ofifended, vastly glad, or vastly sorry. Large objects are
/
250 THE WOMAN [ch. xm
vastly great, small ones are vastly little ; and I had lately the
pleasure to hear a fine woman {jronounce, by a happy metonymy,
a very small gold snuff-box, that was produced in company,
to be vastly pretty, because it was so vastly little." Even if
that particular adverb to wliich Lord Chesterfield objected has
now to a great extent gone out of fashion, there is no doubt
that he has here touched on a distinctive trait : the fondness of
women for hj^erbole will very often lead the fashion with regard
to adverbs of intensitj', and these are very often used with disregard
of their proper meaning, as in German riesir/ klcin, English avfully
pretty, terribly nice, French rudement joli, affreusement dtlicienx,
Danish rcedsom morsom (horribly amusing), Russian strast' kakoy
lovkiy (terribly able), etc. Quite, also, in the sense of ' very,' as
in ' she was quite charming ; it makes me quite angry,' is, accord-
ing to Fitzedward Hall, due to the ladies. And I suspect that jxist
sweet (as in Barrie : " Grizol thought it was just sweet of him ")
is equally characteristic of the usage of the fair sex.
There is another intensive which has also something of the
eternally feminine about it, namely so. I am indebted to Stoffel
(Int. 101) for the following quotation from Punch (January 4,
1896) : " This little adverb is a great favourite with ladies, in con-
junction vaih. an adjective. For instance, they are very fond of
using such exjjressions as ' He is so charming ! ' 'It is so lovely ! '
etc." Stoffel adds the following instances of strongly intensive
so as highly characteristic of ladies' usage : ' Thank you so much ! '
' It was so kind of you to think of it ! ' ' That's so like you ! '
' I'm so glad you've come ! ' ' The bonnet is so lovely ! '
The explanation of this characteristic feminine usage is, I think,
that women much more often than men break oft' without finishing
their sentences, because they start talking without having thought
out what they are going to say ; the sentence ' I'm so glad you've
come ' reall}' requires some complement in the shape of a clause
vrith that, ' so glad that I really must kiss you,' or, ' so glad that I
must treat you to something extra,' or whatever the consequence
may be. But very often it is difficult in a hurry to hit upon some-
thing adequate to say, and ' so glad that I cannot express it '
frequently results in the inexpressible remaining unexpressed, and
when that experiment has been repeated time after time, the lin-
guistic consequence is that a strongly stressed so acquires the force
of • very much indeed.' It is the same Math sttch, as in the
following two extracts from a modern novel (in both it is a lady
who is speaking) : " Poor Kitty ! she has been in such a state of
mind," and " Do you know that you look such a duck this afternoon.
. . . This hat suits you so — vou are such a grande dame in it."
Exactly the same thing has happened with Danish sd and sddan,
§9] ADVERBS 251
G. so and solch ; also with French iellemetit, though there x>erhaps
not to the same extent as in EngHsh.
We have the same phenomenon with to a degree, which properly
requires to be supplemented with something that tells us what
the degree is, but is frequently left by itself, as in ' His second
marriage was irregular to a degree.*
Xm.— § 10. Periods.
Tlie frequency with which women thus leave their exclamatory
sentences half-finished might be exemplified from many passages
in our novelists and dramatists. I select a few quotations.
The first is from the beginning of Vanity Fair : " This almost caused
Jemima to faint with terror. ' Well, I never,' said she. ' What
an audacious ' — emotion prevented her from completing either
sentence." Next from one of Hankin's plays. "Mrs. Eversleigh :
I must say ! (but words fail her)." And finally from Compton
Mackenzie's Poor Relations : " ' The trouble you must have taken,'
Hilda exclaimed." These quotations illustrate types of sentences
which are becoming so frequent that they would seem soon to
deserve a separate chapter in modern grammars, ' Did you ever ? *
' Well, I never ! ' being perhaps the most important of these
' stop-short ' or ' pull-uj) ' sentences, as I think they might be
termed.
These sentences are the linguistic sjTnptoms of a peculiarity
of feminine psychology which has not escaped observation. Mere-
dith says of one of his heroines : " She thought in blanks, as girls
do, and some women," and Hardy singularizes one of his by calling
her " that novelty among women — one who finished a thought
before beginning the sentence which was to convey it."
The same point is seen in the typical way in which the two
sexes build up their sentences and periods ; but here, as so often
in this chapter, we cannot establish absolute differences, but
only preferences that may be broken in a great many instances
and yet are characteristic of the sexes as such. If we compare
long periods as constructed by men and by women, we shall in the
former find many more instances of intricate or involute structures
with clause within clause, a relative clause in the middle of a con-
ditional clause or vice versa, T\ith subordination and sub-subordina-
tion, while the typical form of long feminine periods is that of
co-ordination, one sentence or clause being added to another on the
same plane and the gradation between the respective ideas being
marked not grammatically, but emotionally, by stress and intona-
tion, and in writing by underlining. In learned terminology we
may say that men are fond of hypotaxis and women of parataxis.
252 THE WOMAN [ch. xiii
Or we may use the simile that a male period is often like a set of
Chinese boxes, one ^nthin another, while a feminine period is like
a set of pearls joined together on a string of ancls and similar words.
In a Danish comedy a young girl is relating what has happened
to her at a ball, when she is suddenly interrupted by her brother,
who has slyly taken out his watch and now exclaims : " I declare !
you have said and then fifteen times in less than two and a half
minutes."
Xm. — § 11. General Characteristics.
The greater rapidity of female thought is shoATO linguistically,
among other tnings, by the frequency with which a woman will use
a pronoun like he or she, not of the person last mentioned, but
of somebody else to whom her thoughts have already wandered,
while a man with his slower intellect will tliink that she is still
moving on the same path. The difference in rapidity of perception
has been tested experimentally by Romanes : the same paragraph
was presented to various well-educated persons, who were asked
to read it as rapidly as they could, ten seconds being allowed for
twenty lines. As soon as the time was up the ])aragraph was
removed, and the reader immediately wTote down all that he or
she could remember of it. It was found that women were usually
more successful than men in this test. Not only were they able
to read more quickly than the men, but they were able to give a
better account of the paragraph as a whole. One lady, for instance,
could read exactly four times as fast as her husband, and even
then give a better account than he of that small portion of the
paragraph he had alone been able to read. But it was found that
this rapidity was no jjroof of intellectual power, and some of the
slowest readers were highly distinguished men. Ellis {Man and W.
195) explains this in this way : with the quick reader it is as though
every statement were admitted immediately and without inspection
to fill the vacant chambers of the mind, while with the slow reader
every statement undergoes an instinctive process of cross-examina-
tion ; every new fact seems to stir up the accumulated stores of
facts among which it intrudes, and so impedes rapidity of mental
action.
This reminds me of one of Swift's " Thoughts on Various Sub-
jects " : " The common fluency of speech in many men, and most
women, is owing to the scarcity of matter, and scarcity of w ords ; for
whoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will
be apt in speaking to hesitate upon the choice of both : whereas
common speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of words
to clothe them in ; and these are always ready at the mouth. So
§11] GENERAL CIURACTERISTICS 253
people come faster out of a church when it is almost empty, than
when a crowd is at the door " {Works, Dubhn, 1735, i. 305).
The volubihty of women has been the subject of innumerable
jests : it has given rise to popular proverbs in many countries,^ as
well as to Aurora Leigh's resigned " A woman's function plainly
is — to talk " and Oscar Wilde's sneer, " Women are a decorative
sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingl3^"
A woman's thougiit is no sooner formed than uttered. Says Rosa-
lind, " Do you not know I am a woman ? when I think, I must
speak " {As You Like It, in. 2. 264). And in a modern novel a
young girl says : " I talk so as to find out what I think. Don't
j'ou ? Some things one can't judge of till one hears them spoken "
(Housman, John of Jingalo, 346).
The superior readiness of speech of women is a concomitant
of the fact that their vocabulary is smaller and more central than
tJiat of men. But this again is connected with another indubitable
fact, that women do not reach the same extreme points as men,
but are nearer the average in most respects. Havelock Ellis,
who establishes this in various fields, rightly remarks that the
statement that geniiis is imdeniably of more frequent occurrence
among men than among women has sometimes been regarded
by women as a slur upon their sex, but that it does not appear
that women have been equally anxious to find fallacies in the
statement that idiocy is more common among men. Yet the
two statements must be taken together. Genius is more common
among men by virtue of the same general tendency by which idiocy
is more common among men. The two facts are but two aspects
of a larger zoological fact — the greater variability of the male
{Man mvi. IF. 420).
In language we see this very clearly : the highest linguistic
genius and the lowest degree of linguistic imbecility are very
rarely found among women. The greatest orators, the most
famous literary artists, have been men ; but it may serve as a
sort of consolation to the other sex that there are a much greater
number of men than of women who cannot put two words together
intelligibly, who stutter and stammer and hesitate, and are unable
to find suitable expressions for the simplest thought. Between
these two extremes the woman moves with a sure and supple tongue
which is ever ready to find words and to pronounce them in a clear
and intelligible manner.
1 " Ou femme y a, silence n'y a." "Deux femmes font un plaid, troia
un grand caquet, quatre un plein march^." " Due donne e un' oca fanno
una fiera " (Venice). " The tongue is the sword of a woman, and she
never lets it become rusty" (China). "The North Sea vn\\ sooner be found
wanting in water than a woman at a loss for a word" (Jutland).
254 THE WOMAN [ch. xiii
Nor are the reasons far to seek why such differences should have
developed. They are mainly dependent on the division of labour
enjoined in primitive tribes and to a great extent also among more
civilized peoples For thousands of years the work that especially
fell to men was such as demanded an intense display of energy
for a comparatively short period, mainly in war and in hunting.
Here, however, there was not much occasion to talk, nay, in many
circumstances talk might even be fraught with danger. And when
that rough work was over, the man would either sleep or idle his
time away, inert and torpid, more or less in silence. Woman,
on the other hand, had a number of domestic occupations which
did not claim such an enormous output of spasmodic energy. To
her was at first left not only agriculture, and a great deal of other
work which in more peaceful times was taken over by men ; but
also much that has been till quite recently her almost exclusive
concern — the care of the children, cooking, brewing, baking, sewing,
washing, etc., — things which for the most part demanded no deep
thought, which were performed in company and could well be
accompanied with a lively chatter. Lingering effects of this state
of things are seen still, though great social changes are going on
in our times Avhich may eventually modify even the linguistic
relations of the two sexes.
CHAPTER XIV
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 VaUie. §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 change-
able, 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 £f.), 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
,255
256 CAUSES OF CHANGE [ch. xiv
ones lost, but 8imj)ly 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 pro-
nunciation, which are said to have persisted even after the
custom was given up. Thus, according to Mcinhof (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 soimd
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 sj'stem,
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 foimd 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 chmatic
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 Anthrojjologist, 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 Altcrt. 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
§2] GEOGRAPHY 257
diminishing energy, over part of the area of the Franconian dialects.
But having reached the plains of Northern German}', the movement
stops. The same theory applies to languages in which a similar
shifting is found, e.g. Old and Modern Armenian, the Soho lan-
guage 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 chmatic conditions is clear,
because nobody will den}- 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 afifricated 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 foimd among peoples li\ang 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 explana-
tion is not impeccable, for walking in the mountains affects the
way in which we breathe, that is, it primarilj- 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 Icnows whether the sounds
actually found as /, ]> and h for original p, f, 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.
17
258 CAUSES OF CHANGE [ch. xiv
XIV.— § 3. National Psychology.
We are much more Ukely to ' burn,' as the children sa}', 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 modera-
tion 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). Mullenhof saw in
the transition from p, t, k to f, ]>, h & sign of weakening, the
Germans having apparently lost the power of pronouncing the
hard stops ; while further, the giving up of the aspirated ph, ih, kh,
bhy clh, 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 AlUr-
tumsk. 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 aesthetic 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 o£ 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 immi-
grants, 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 naturallj'' 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
§4] SPEED OF UTTERANCE 259
der rede) is now probably greater than formerly, the whole theory
is built up on so man}'- 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 ntirrow 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 prob-
ably 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 pronimciation 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 difi!erent in kind from those that
have made, say, Fr, seve, frere, chien, del, faire, changer out of
Lat. sapa, fratrem, canem, kcelum, 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
260 CAUSES OF CHANGE [ch. xiv
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 generallj',
ma}' 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 parti}' to that increased faciUty of communication between
the two countries in recent times which has made mutual lin-
guistic 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 growTi-up people, and at the
same time each country released itself from the centralizing in-
fluence of Rome, which in the first centuries of the Christian era
had been very powerful in keeping up a fairly uniform and con-
servative pronunciation and phraseology throughout the whole
Empire.^ There were thus at that time various forces at work
which, taken together, are quite sufficient to explain the wide
* The uniformitj'^ 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.
§5] PERIODS OF RAPID CHANGE 261
divergence in linguistic structure that separated French, Proven9al,
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 Ro.ses, decimated the men and made home-life difficult and
unsettled. In the Scandinavian languages the Viking age is prob-
ably 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 childi'en's linguistic education. I am also inchned
to think that the unparalleled rapidity \vith which, during the
last hundred years, the vulgar speech of Enghsh 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 ci\'ilization.
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 w^ere,
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 alien umstanden "
{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
2C2 CAUSES OF CHANGE [cii. xiv
prevailed to the extent that Siitterlin (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.
Sutterlin 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 Sj^mbolism.
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 maj^ as well say that when once one has learnt the art
of writing, it is no longer any effort to form one's letters properlj' ;
and yet how many written commimications 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 alwa3'S 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 opjjosite phonetic develop-
ments, 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
§6] THE EASE THEORY 2G8
cannot serve as an absolute measure. Is [cl] absolutely more^
awkward to produce than [5] ? 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 " (Vcrner 78). In the same sense I wrote in 1904 : " Many
an articulation which obviously requires greater muscular move-
ments 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 ajaplying here the same principle that attributes many
simplifications of form to ' analogy ' : we see the same psycho-
logical 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 ^ — 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
consciousl}'^ two articulations and to choose the easier one !
* " Dass unsere altesten vorfahren sich das sprechen erstaunlich unbequem
gemacht haben," Delbriick, E 155.
264 CAUSES OF CHANGE [ch. xiv
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. ^ 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 efiort 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 ww." 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 move-
ment of the soft palate required for [p], is done away with ^ ;
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 efEected by dropping
superfluous soimds, especially at the end of words, e.g. [g] after
{rf\ 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 soimd is often lengthened
so as to make up for the loss.*
If, then, all assimilations are to be counted as instances of
saving of effort, it is worth noting that a great many phonetic
^ Sometimes appearances may be deceptive r 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 amoimt 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
Boon. If anything, the new group is a trifle easier than the old. See LPh
6. 6 for explanation and examples (E. thunder from }l>unor sb.,}7M?2nan vb. ;
timber, cf. Goth, tlmrian, G. zimmer, etc.).
2 This is rendered most clear by my ' analphabetic ' notation (a means
lips, /^ tip of tongue, c soft palate, velum palati, and € glottis ; stands
for closed position, 1 for approximation, 3 for open position) ; the three
sound combinations are thus analysed (cf. my Lekrbtich der Phonetik) :
3 0(0 03
3 3 3
3 3 3 3
1 3 1 11
' The only clear cases of saving of time are those in which long soxmds
are shortened, and even they must be looked upon as a saving of effort.
§7] SOUNDS IN CONNECTED SPEECH 265
changes which are not always given under the heading of assimila-
tion 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 conse-
quence of an assimilation to the nasal [n] (anticipation of the low
position of the velum), and the subsequent dropping of the conso-
nant [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 soimds, whether consonants (as t in E. castle, post-
man, etc.) or vowels (as in E. p'rhaps, business, 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 re-
tained 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 soimd changes show how the tip is favoured
at the cost of other organs, thus in the frequent transition of
final -m to -w, found, for instance, in old Gothonic, in Mddle
English, in ancient Greek, in Balto-Slavic, in Finnish and in
Cliinese.
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 exaggera-
tion, for in the vast majoritj^ 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 [t/, d,^] or similar combinations, or
when mutation caused by [i] changes [u, o] into [y,0], 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
26C CAUSES OF CHANGE [cii. xiv
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 ex])ression 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 \'iew
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, Avith 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 Avord-
forms that can only be explained by this very laziness in pro-
nouncing, 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 Aveakening of senor
(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 [m5sjoe'r], a
might be expected, sounds [mosjo] and extremely frequently
[msj0] and even [psJ0], 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
mus for master also belong here, as do It. forms for signore, signora :
gnor si, gnor no, gnora si, sor Luigi, la sora sposa, and S]). usted
' you ' for vuestra merced. Formulas of greeting and of politeness
are liable to similar truncations, e.g. E. hoir d{e) do, Dan. [gda'J or
even [da'] for goddag, G. [gmoin, gmo] for guten morgen, [na"mt]
§8] EXTREME WEAKENINGS 267
for guten abend ; Fr. s'il vous i)lait often becomes [siuple, splc],
and the synonymous Dan. var sa god is shortened into vcersgo, of
which often only [sgo'] remains. In Russian poiwlar 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 govoriV ' say,' mol from
rnolviV ' 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. moros. Modern Gr. tha is now a particle
of futurity, but originates in thend, from iliBei, ' he will ' + na from
hina, 'that.' These examples must suffice to show that we have
here to do with a universal tendency in all languages.
XIV.— § 9. The Principle ol 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 owti." ^ Schuchardt {Ueber die lautge-
setze, 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 Avrong, 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
1 In the reprint in Samlede AJhandlinger, ii. 417 (1920), a few lines are
added in which Thomsen fully accepts the explanation which I gave as far
back as 1886.
268 CAUSES OF CHANGE [ch. xiv
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, how-
ever, 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 dAvindle down
to the slightest muscular action possible.
The above instances of the truncation of everyday formulas,
etc., illustrate the length to which the ease princif)le 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 con-
sequently his interest to pronoimce more carefully', and this means
greater conservatism and slower phonetic development on the whole.
There are naturally many degrees of relative value or worth-
lessness, and words may vary accordingl3\ An illustration may
be taken from my own mother -tongue : the two words rigtig nok,
literally ' correct enough,' are pronounced ['recti 'nok] or ['regdi 'nok]
when keeping their full signification, but ^^hen they are reduced
to an adverb with the same imjDort as the weakened English
certainly or {it is) true (that), there are various shortened pronun-
ciations in frequent use : ['rectnog, 'regdnog, 'regnog, 'renog, 'renog].
The worthlessness may affect a whole plirase, 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
§10] APPLICATION TO CASE SYSTEM 2G9
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. stanos and slamim
under the single form stones. The main explanation thus is the
following : a phonetic law, operating without regard to the signi-
fication, 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 con-
sequently lost. Another phonetic law was operating similarly
by causing the loss of final -n, which also played an important
rdle 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 decaj^ 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 1
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 ace. or the dat., or the nom. or ace. pi. neuter {hofn) ; -a
might be the nom. sg. masc. (guma), or the dat. sg. masc. {stina),
270 CAUSES OF CHANGE [ch. xiv
or the gen. sg. fern, (dura), or the nom. pi. masc. or fem., or
finally the gen. pi. ; -an might be the ace. or dat. or gen. sg. or
the nom. or ace. pi., etc. If we look at it from the point of view
of function, we get the same picture ; the nom. pi., 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 [a], which might even be left out without
detriment to the clear understanding of each sentence. ^ 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 ma}^ 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,
* The above remarks are condensed from the argiunent 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 eentencea.
§10] APPLICATION TO CASE SYSTEM 271
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 under-
standing.
But ever3'day 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 un-
stressed 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. ^ 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.
vStress is generally believed to be de^iendent exclusively on
the force with which the air -current is expelled from the lungs,
hence the name of ' expiratory accent ' ; but various observa-
tions and considerations have led me to give another definition
(LPh 7. 32, 1913) : stress is energy, intensive muscular activity not
^ Against this it has been urged that Fr. oncle has not pi-eserved 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 consequenth' treated
it exactly as any other polj'syllablo of the same structure, and avun-
(phonetically [awuj, auu»j]) was naturally made into one syllable. Nothing,
of course, can be protected by a sense of its significance imless it is still
felt as significant. That hardly needs Baying.
272 CAUSES OF CHANGE [ch. xiv
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 am})litude of \'ibrations 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. Tn the upper organs stress is charact(!rized 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 pro-
duced with less exertion in every way : in voiced sounds the
distance between the vocal chords is greater, which leads to the
peculiar ' voice of miirmur ' ; but in voiceless sounds the glottis
is not opened very ^\^de. 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. Noav, all this is of the
greatest importance in the historj' 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 ]\IEG v.). Now,
it is well known that sentence stress plaj's a most important role in
the historical development of any language ; it has determined
not onlj' the difference in vowel between [woz] and [wgz], both
written \vas, or between the demonstrative [(5aet] and the relative
[Sat], 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 role in determining which syllable among
several in long words is stressed most, and in some languages
it has re\'olutionized 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. Jol
§11] STRESS PHENOMENA 278
and Joa is due to the same word being placed in one instance before
a word beginning \vith a vowel and in the otlier 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 wo really have some-
thing external or mechanical, and here we may rightl}' 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 A\ay 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 he 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 tliat 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 pm-poses 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 depart-
ments of language development. It is impossible to draw a sharp
line between phonetic and sjoitactic 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.)tiirellement / (Je ne me) rappelle
plus, etc.
On the other hand, we have aposiopesis if the s^jeaker does
not finish his sentence, either because he hesitates which word
to employ or because he notices that the hearer has ahead}' caught
his meaning. Hence such syntactic shortenings as at Braum'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. PauVs is very grand, etc. Similar abbreviations due to
18
274 CAUSES OF CHANGE [ch. xiv
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 rny 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 Ilaymarket for the Haymarket Theatre, etc. Sometimes these
shortenings become so common as to be scarcel}' 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 : " Voila six mois que je
suis employe aux bureaux du chemin de fer du Nord." " Mais
comment diable n'as-tu pas trouve mieux qu'une place d' employe
au Nord ? " i
The tendency to economzie 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 S2)eech-day, football, breakfast, etc.
Thus also when some nomi or verb of a vague or general meaning
is used because one will not take the trouble to tliink of the exact
expression required, very often thing (sometimes extended thingum-
bob, 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, corii 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 unknouii 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
* 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.
§12] NON-PHONETIC CHANGES 275
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 make-
shift for a future tense of the verb. But considerations of space
prevent me from diving too deeply into questions of semantic
change.
CHAPTER XV
CAUSES OF CHANGE— continued
§ 1. Emotional Exaggerations. § 2. Euphony. § 3. Organic Influences.
§ 4. Lapses and Blendinga. § 5. Latitude of Correctnees. § 6. Equi-
distant and Convergent Changes. § 7. Homophones. § 8. Signifi-
cative 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 gretit length on those
changes which tend to render articulations easier and more con-
venient. But, inij^ortant 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 utter-
ance; 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 circum-
stances ma}'- aspirate them strongly — ' Mais taisez-vcns done ! '
Military commands are characterized by peculiar emphasizings,
even in some cases di.stortions of sounds and words. Pomposity
and consequential airs are manifested in the treatment of speech
sounds as well as in other gestui-es. Irony, scoffing, banter,
amiable chaffing — each different mood or temper leaves its traces
on enunciation. Actors and orators will often use stronger articu-
lations than are strictly necessary to avoid those misunderstand-
ings or that unintelligibility which may ensue from slipshod or
indistinct pronunciation.^ In short, anyone who will take careful
note of the wa}'- in which people do reallj^ talk \^^ll find in the most
everyday conversation as well as on more solemn occasions the
greatest variety of such modilBcations and deviations from what
might be termed ' normal ' pronunciation ; these, however, pass
* " His pronunciation of some words is so distinct that an idea crossed
m« once that he might be an actor " (Shaw, Caahcl Byron'a Profession, 60).
976
§1] KMOTIONAL EXAGGERATIONS 277
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 [ve] 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 somid therefore will be approxi-
mately a [6] or -h weak fricative point [r], etc. Most of these
modifications are so small that they cannot be represented by
letters, even by those of a ver}'^ 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 minutiae. The great majority
of such alterations are of coiu-se 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 pro-
nunciations may set the fashion and be widely imitated
(cf. below, p. 292).
Tender emotions may lead to certain lengthenings of soimds.
The intensifying effect of lengthening was noticed by A. Gill,
Milton's teacher, in 1621, see Jiriczek's reprint, p. 48 : " Atque vt
Hebraei, ad ampliorem vocis alicuius significationem, sj^llabas
adaugent [cf. here below, Ch. XX § 9] ; sic nos syllabarum tempora :
vt, gret [the diseresis denotes vowel-length] magnus, greet ingens ;
moiistrus prodigiosum, monstrus valde prodigiosum, moonstrus
prodigiosum adeo vt hominem stupidet." Cf. also the lengthening
in the exclamation God ! , by novelists sometimes \vritten Gawd
or Gord. But it is cm-ious 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 clergjinen, when speaking with unction, will lengthen
the [1] of glcede 'joy,' wliich is ridiculed b}' comic wTiters through
the unphonetic spelling ge-lcede ; and in the same way I find in
Kapling [Stalky 119) : "We'll make it a be-antiful house," and in
0. 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, whicli I find in recent novels,
are meant to indicate the pronunciation [bl"-Adi], thus the exact
counterpart of the Dani.sh 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 ['dili/] for delicious.
278 CAUSES OF CHANGE [ch. xv
XV.— § 2. Euphony.
It was not uiicomDion in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies 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 gener-
ally supposed to be based on euphony are due chiefly to conveni-
ence, 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 lan-
guage, though joerhaps chiefly in its broad features, while it may
be difficult to point out anj' particular details in phonological
history which have been thus worked upon. There can be no
doubt that the artistic feeling is much more develoi^ed in the French
than in the English nation, and Ave 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 sjoeak
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 laugh-
ing. 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 tne
Cockney unrounding of the vowel in [nau] for no. Schuchardt
§8] ORGANIC INFLUENCES 279
(Zs. f. rom. Phil. 5. 314) says that in Andalusian quia ! instead
of ai ! the lips, under the influence of a certain emotion, are drawn
scoitingly aside. Inversely, the rounding in Josu ! instead of Jesu I
is due to wonder (ib. ) ; and exactly in the same way we have
the surprised or pitying exclamation jeses ! from Jesus in Danish,
Compare also the rounding in Dan. and G. [n0-] for [ne-, nc-] [nej,
nein). Lundell mentions that in Swedish a caressing lilla van
often becomes hjlla von, and I have often observed the same
rounding in Dan. min lille ven. Schuchardt also mentions an
Italian [/] instead of [s] under the influence of pain or anger {mi
duole la tefta ; ti do tino fchiuffo) ; a Danish parallel is the frequent
[/luS'ar] 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
acciu'ately forming the closure necessary for [t], which therefore
becomes [r], and the thin rill necessary for [s], which therefore
comes to resemble [J] ; there is also a general tendency to run
soimds and syllables together. ^
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. Some-
times 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
^ Dickena, D. Cop. 2. 149 neverbe^rer, 150 I'mafraid you'renorwell (ib.
also r for n : Amigoarawaysoo, Goori = Good night). | Our Mut. Fr. 602
lerrers. | Thackeray, Newc. 163 Whas that ? | Anstey, Vice V. 328 s7mpper,
I s/jpose, wharriplease, say tharragain. | Meredith, R. Feverel 272 Nor a
bir of it. I Walpole, Duch. of Wrex. 323-4 nonshensh, Wash the matter ? |
Galsworthy, In Chanc. 17 cnvsh, un«Atood'm. Cf. also Fija van Draat,
Est 34. 363 ff.
280 CAUSES OF CHANGE [ch. xv
similar sounds in close proximity. This is well known from those
* jaw-breaking * tongue-tests with which people amuse them-
selves in all countries and of which I need give only one typical
specimen :
She Bells sea8hell8 on tho seashore ,
The shells she polls are seashells, I'm sure,
For if she sells seashells on the seashore,
Then I'm sure she sells seashore shells.
K 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 immediat^i business, the linguistic result may
be of various kinds. The simplest case of influencing is assimila-
tion of two contiguous sounds, which we have already considered
from a different point of view. Next we have assimilative in-
fluence on a sound at a distance, as A\hen 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
ferfant for sergeant ; a curious mixed case is the prommciation of
transition as [tr3en'si58n] : the normal development is [troen'zi/an],
but the voice-articulation of the two hissing sounds is reversed
(possibly under accessory influence from the numerous words in
which we have [traen.s] with [s], and from words ending in [ijon],
such as vision, division). Further examples of such assimilation
at a distance or consonant-harmonization (malmsey from malvesie,
etc.) maj^ be foimd in my LPh 11. 7, where there are also examples
of the corresponding harmonizings of vowels : Fr. camarade. It.
uguale, Braga/iza, 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, asdldr, ogolor, dorolor, ' fathers, bears, children, muzzles.'
What escaj^es at the ^vrong place and causes confusion maj'
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 Maj^er's Versprechen und Verlesen (Stuttgart, 1895) :
instead of saying Lateinisches lehmvort Ikleringer said Laten-
isches . . . and then corrected himself ; paster noster instead of
pater iwster ; wenn das wesser . . . wetter icieder 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 trans-
§4] LAPSES AND BLENDINGS 381
positions of two sounds which the linguists term ' metathcses.'
They occur most frequently with s in connexion with a stop (icasp,
waps ; ask, ax) and with r (chiefly, perhaps exclusively, the trilled
form of the sound) and a vowel {third, OE. yridda). A more com-
plicated instance is seen in Fr. trisor for tisor, thesaiinim. 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 somid has to be repeated at some
little distance, and we then have the phenomenon termed ' hap-
lology,' as in eighteen, OE. eahtatiene, and in the frequent pronun-
ciation probly for probably, Fr. contrdle, idolatrie for contrerole,
idololutrie, Lat. stipendium for stlpipendium, and numerous similar
instances in every language (LPh II. 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 *flyglo (OE. had an adj. flugol) ; in
recent times flugelman (G. fliigelmann) has become fugleman.
It. has Federigo for Frederigo — thus the exactly opposite result of
what has been brought about in trisor 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,
dtti, niundi, tiundi, but already in ON. we find dttandi by the side
of dtii, 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 dtme
as a substantive). In the names of the months we had the same
formation of a series in OFr. : septembre, octembre, novembre, decem-
bre, 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 zwolf (the vowel being rounded in consequence
of the to) many dialects count zehn, olf, zivolf. 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 gehorst, 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 Sildbayem 99).
282 CAUSES OF CHANGE [ch. xv
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 ex-
press but for which one has not yet chosen the linguistic
form. In many cases two synonyms will rise to the con-
sciousness 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 intimatelj' 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 nx) 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 genera-
tion 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 mereh'' that he is
understood with some little difficulty, or that liis 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 yovi have heard as an incomprehensible string of
syllables will suddenly flash upon you without your knowing how
it has happened. Msunderstandings 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
§5] LATITUDE OF CORRECTNESS 288
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 en or du (in evh, trdume) :
it may begin with [o] or [oe] or even [se, a], and it may end in [i],
or the corresponcUng 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 in-
timate 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 Ioav 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 voice-
less. In initial and medial position, too, there are very few ex-
amples 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 Grcrman ; so the rule laid dowTi in
grammars that the stress falls on the final sj^Uable of the word is
very frequently broken through for rhythmic and other reasons.
Other similar instances might easily be advanced.
284 CAUSES OF CHANGE [ch. xv
XV. — § 6. Equidistant and Convergent Changes.
Phonetic shifta are of two kinds : the sliifted 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 possi-
bilities of confusions and misunderstandings may arise. Now, in
some cases one sound (or series of sounds) marches into a position
wliich 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 : Aiyan 6,
d, g cannot have become Gothonic j), t, k till after primitive ^, t, k
had already become fricatives [f, ^p, 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 [o*] (OE. stan, ME. stoon, stone) could
a new long a develop, chiefly througii lengthening of an old short
a in certain positions. Somewhat later we w itness the great vowel-
raising through which the phonetic value of the long vowels
(written all the time in essentially the same way) has been con-
stantly 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.
Klizabotban.
Present English.
, -' ^
beit
bait bite
bit
bit beet
be-t
bit beat
a'bae-t
a' beit abat
(1) bite bi-ta
(2) bete be-to
(3) bete beta
(4) abate a'ba'ta
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 (aj-] or [e] till
(3) had become a comparatively close e sound. The four vowels,
as it were, climbed the ladder witliout ever reaching each other —
a climbing which took centuries and in each case implied inter-
mediate 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 centur}' class (3) was raised,
§0] EQUIDISTANT AND CONVERGENT CHANGES 285
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 b}^ 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 sub-
stantives and adjectives (like deer dear, leaf lief, shear sheer, week
weak) will generall}' 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 puce, 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 Avill be few and far between, and one understands
that they camiot 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
28G CAUSES OF CHANGE [ch. xv
one of the chief reasons why words fall into disuse, see, e.g.,
Liebisch (PBB XXIII, 228, many German examples in 0. Wcise,
Unsere Mutterspr., 3d ed., 206) and Giilieron, La faillite de V ety-
mologic phonitique (Neuveville, 1919 — a book vihose sensational
title is hardly justified by its contents).
The drawbacks of homophones ^ 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 sim (cf. above p. 120, a childish
instance). Very often it becomes usual to avoid mismiderstand-
ings 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
IVench say un di a coudre or un di a 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). Cliinese, 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 draw-
backs, see, e.g., B. Karlgren, Ordet och pennan i Mittens rike (Stock-
holm, 1918), p. 49 ff. But on the whole we must say th'at the ways
in which these phonetic inconveniences are counteracted are the
same as those in which speakers react against misunderstandings
arising from semantic or sjTitactic causes : as soon as they perceive
that their meaning is not apprehended they tiu-n their phrases in
a different way, choosing some other expression for their thought,
and by this means language is gradually freed from ambiguity.
* The inconveniences arising from having many homophones in a language
are eloquently set forth by Robert Bridges, On English Homophones (S.P.L.,
Oxford, 1919) — but I would not subscribe to all the Laureate's views, least
of all to his practical suggestions and to his unjustifiable attacks on some
very meritorious English phoneticians. He seems also to exaggerate the«
dangers, e.g. of the two words know and no having the same soimd, when
he says (p. 22) that unless a vowel like that in law be restored to tPte negative
no, " I should judge that the verb to know is doomed. The third person
singular of its present tense is nose, and its past tense is new, and the whole
inconvenience is too radical and perpetual to be received all over the world."
But surely the role of these words in connected speech is so different, and
is nearly always made so clear by the context, that it is very difficult to
imagine real sentences in which there would be any serious change of mis-
taking know for no, or knows for nose, or knew for new. I repeat : it is not
homophonj'^ as such — the phenomenon shown in the long lists lexicographers
can draw up of words of the same sound — that is decisive, but the chances
of mistakes in connected speech. It has been disputed whether the loss
of Gr. humeis, ' ye,' was due to its identity in sound with hemeis, ' we ' ;
Hatzidakis says that the new formation eseis is earlier than the falling
together of e and u [y] in the sound [i]. But according to Dieterich and
C. D. Buck {Classical Philology, 9. 90, 1914) the confusion of u and i or e
dates back to the second century. Anyhow, all confusion is now obviated,
for both the first and the second persons pi. have new forms which are
unambiguous : emeia and eaeia or *ef«.
§8] SIGNIFICATIVE SOUNDS PRESERVED 287
XV.— § 8. Significative Sounds preserved.
My contention that the signiticative 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 somids should not be
identified with one of the tenets of the older school (Curtius in-
cluded) against which the ' young grammarians ' raised an
emphatic protest, namely, that a tendency to preserve signi-
ficative sounds and syllables might produce exceptions to the
normal com-se of phonetic change. Delbriick and his friends may
be right in much of what they said against Cm'tius — for instance,
when he explained the retention of i in some Greek optative forms
thi'ough 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 imagin-
able 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 tiling 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 natm-ally be careful
to pronomice 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 explana-
tions (analogy from other forms of the same word, etc.) can gener-
ally 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 [o], 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 gener-
ally pronounced -with the ' neutral ' vowel [a]. But if on were
similarly pronomiced, 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 [anjs in words like drunken,
shaken, deepen, etc., where the forms without -e?i also exist. With
the preposition upon the same considerations do not hold good,
hence the frequency of the pronunciation [apan] in weak position.
Considerations of clearness have also led to the disuse of the for-
merly frequent form o (o') which was the ' natural ' development
of each of the two prepositions on and of. The form written a
288 CAUSES OF CHANGE [ch. xv
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 ivhine ceased to be good echoisms, but some dialects have
peep ' complain,' which keeps the old sound of the former, and
the Irish say wheen (Joj'ce, 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).^ In the same
way, when the old [a*] was changed into [c, 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
somid [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 [gap] was also a common
pronunciation in America. In the chapter on Sound S3'mbolism
(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 neighboiu-ing soimds, position
as initial, medial or final (often with subdivisions, as position
between vowels, etc.), place in a strongly or weakly stressed
S3llable, 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 {cane7n> chien), and e [centum
> cent) ; in amicum> ami it has totally disappeared. Lat. a
^ The NED has not arrived at this explanation; it says : '^ Peer ia not
a phonetic development of pire, and cannot, so far as is at present known,
be formally identified with that word " ; " the verbs keek, peek, and peep
are app. closely allied to each other. Kike and pike, na earlier forms of
keek and peek, occur in Chaucer ; pepe, peep is of later appearance. . . .
The phonetic relations between the forms pike, peek, jyeak, are as yet un-
explained. "
§9] DIVERGENT CHANGES AND ANALOGY 289
becomes e in a stressed open syllable {natum> ne), except before
a nasal {aniat > aivie) ; but after c we have a different treatment
{cancm> chien) , and in a close syllable it is kept {arborem
> arbre) ; in weak syllables it is kept initially {amorem> amour),
but becomes [a] (spelt e) finally {bona> bonne). This enumeration
of the chief rules will serve to show the far-reaching differentia-
tion which in this way may take place among words closely
related as parts of the same paradigm or family of words ;
thus, for Lat. atno, amas, amaf, atnamus, amatis, amant we get
OFr. am, aimes, aime, amons, amez, aiment, until the discrepancy
is removed through analogy, and we get the regular modern
forms aime, aimes, aime, aimoi^s, aimez, aiment. The levelling ten-
dency, however, is not strong enough to affect the initial a in
amour and amant, which are felt as less closel}'' connected with
the verbal forms. Wliat were at first only small differences may
in com'se of time become greater through subsequent changes, as
when the difference between /eeZ and felt, keep and kept, etc., which
was originall}' 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, wliile the Kelts have no objection to ' the same word '
having as manj^ as four different beginnings (for instance t-, d-,
71-, nil-) according to circumstances. In Icelandic the word for
' other, second ' has for centuries in different cases assumed
such different forms as annarr, onnur, o'brum, a^rir, forms which
in the other Scandinavian languages have been levelled down.
It is a natural consequence of the manner in which phono-
logy 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 recon-
structing what would without it be chaos and confusion.^
* See, for instance, the following strong expressions : " Une langue
est sans cesse rongee et menac^e de ruine par Taction des lois phon^tiques,
qui, livr^es k elles-memes, op6rei'aient avec une rdgularit^ fatale et d^eagre-
geraient le syat^me grammatical. . . . Heureusement I'analogie (c'est ainsi
qu'on d6signe la tendance inconsciente A conserver ou reorder ce que lea
lois phon6tiques menacent ou d^truisent) a peu k peu effac6 ces differences . . .
il s'agit d'une perp^tuelle degradation due aux changements phon^tiques
aveugles, et qui est toujours ou pr^venue ou r^par^e par une reorganisation
parallele du aysttme " (Bally, LV 44 f.).
19
290 CAUSES OF CHANGE [ch. xv
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 iiTcgularities, but make
for regularity and a simpler system through abolisliing 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 antiquitj', 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 dis-
sociated 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 ex-
tended to other cases in which the sound in question has a different
origin (' phonetic analog}'' '). An undoubted instance is the un-
historic r in recent English. When the consonantal [r] was
di'opped finally and before a consonant while it was retained before
a vowel, and words like better, here thus came to have two forms
[beta, hia] and [betar (of), liiar (^n 6e'8)] better off, here and there,
the same alternation Avas transferred to words like idea, drama
[ai'dia, dra-ma], so that the sound [r] is now ver}' frequently inserted
before a word beginning with a vowel : Vd iio idea-r-of this, a
drama-Y-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 [e] venu, il est [et] arrive ; les [le] femmes, les [lez] hommes ;
and now vulgar speakers will insert [t] or [z] in the wrong
place between voAvels : pa-t assez, fallai-t ecrire, avant-z-hier,
moi-z-aiLSsi ; this is called ' cuir ' or ' velours.'
In course of time a ' phonetic law ' maj* 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
I when preceded by a consonant, as in bhie, clue ; in these cases
§10] EXTENSION OF SOUND LAWS 291
[j] is never heard. But after I not preceded by another consonant
there is a good deal of vacilhition, thus in Luci/, absolute ; after
[s, z] as in Siisan, resume there is a strong tendency to suppress [j],
though this pronunciation has not yet prevailed,^ 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 the.se 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 t^rms
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 sliifting of the organic feeling or
motor sensation (verschiebung des bewegungsgefiihls) which is
supijosed 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 I com-
binations, after I even when standing alone, after all point con-
sonants ? Each generation of EngUsh 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'zum, tun, 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 provisionallj'^ 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 compaiison 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
^ Some speakers will say [su'] in Susan, supreme, superstition, but will
take care to pronounce [sju*] in suit, sue. Others are more consistent one
way or the other.
292 CAUSES OF CHANGE [cii. xv
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 tliis as in other fields, is
not always the best ; a real valuation of what would be linguis-
tically 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 generalh^ imitate ' their betters,' i.e. those that are
superior to them — in rank, in social position, in wealth, in every-
thing 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, swag-
gering 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 j'outh did dresse themselues.
He had no legges, that practic'd not his gate,
And speaking thicke ^ (which Nature made hia 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 graduallj^ like a wave, until finally it has
pervaded the whole of a linguistic area. It cannot become uni-
versal all at once ; but it is evident that the more natural a new
* I.e. " With confused and indistinct articulation ; also, with a husky
or hoarse voice " — NED.
§11] SPREADING OF SOUND CHANGE 298
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 pro-
nunciation 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 manj'
attempts : it may have arisen many times and have died out
again, until finall}'^ 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 j^eople in those days spoke
in that respect exactly as they do now, whatever the usual spelling
and the testimony of m.uch later grammarians may indicate to
the contrarj'. 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 Avith 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 correspon-
dences, and even occasionally exaggerate them, thereby produc-
ing those ' hj'percorrect ' forms which are of specially frequent
occurrence when dialect speakers try to use the ' received stan-
dard ' 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 o^m native dialect I pronounced new as [nu*].
I have found mj'self in later years inclined to say [nju], especially
Avhen speaking carefulh^ 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] ex-
plosive 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 tvne, 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
294 CAUSES OF CHANGE [cii. xv
adoption of the new sound into self-annexed territory, and creat-
ing [dju'] do and [tjir] two." One more instance from America
may bo 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, jjraira, etc."
(Sturtevant, LCH 79). Similarly, many Ii-ish people, noticing
that refined English has [i] in many cases where they have [e*]
{tea, sea, please, etc.) adopt [i] in these words, and tran.sfcr 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 rni7i, 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 {zaJil, 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.^
It will be easily seen that such hypercorrect forms are closely
related to those ' spelling pronunciations ' which become frequent
M'hen 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 likelj'' to increase in this century —
especially among social upstarts, who are always fond of showing
off their new-gained superioritj'^ in this and similar wa3'^s. 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
^ Even in speaking a foreign language one may unconsciously apply
phonetic correspondences ; a countryman of mine thus told me that he
once, in his anger at being charged an exorbitant price for something, ex-
claimed : " Das sind doch unhlaue preise ! " — coining in the hurrjr the word
unblaue for the Danish ublu (shameless), because the negative prefix un-
corresponds to Dan. u-, and aw very often stands in German where Dan.
has u {haus = hus, etc.). On hearing his own words, however, he imme-
diately saw his mistake and burst out laughing
§ 12] REACTION 295
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 verj' 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 infer-
ence." In his practice, however, Curtius was not so strict as his
followers. Leskien, one of the recognized leaders of the ' young
grammarians,' says {DekUnation, 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 rejDeated 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 lan-
guage 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 vnth its voiced conso-
nants 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. rescoive ; fiagon with Fr. fiacon,
29G CAUSES OF CHANGE [en. xv
though each of these words contains deviations from what wo
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. kardia, ker, Lat. cor, Goth, hairto,
etc. The Greek ordinals Mbdomis, dgdoos have voiced consonants
over against the voiceless combinations in hejUd, okio, and yet
cannot be separated from them. All this goes to show (and many
more cases might be instanced) that there are in everj'^ language
words so similar in sound and signification that thej'^ cannot be
separated, though they break the ' sound laws ' : in such cases,
where etjnnologies are too palpable, even the strictest scholars
momentarilj' 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
agi'eement with common sense to say : whenever an etymology
is not palpably e\ddent, whenever there is some difficulty because
the compared words are cither too remote in sound or in sense or
belong to distant periods of the same language or to remotely
related languages, your etymologj'' cannot be reckoned as j^^oved
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, appUes 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 psj'^chology, conditions have been
the same at all periods, it is not imreasonable, in giving etj-mo-
logies for words from old periods, to act as if sound changes followed
strict laws admitting no exceptions ; this is simplv a matter of
proof, and really amounts to this : where the matter is doubt-
ful, we must require a great degree of j^robability in that field
which allows of the simplest and most easilj^ controllable formulas,
nameh' the phonetic field. For here "\\e have comparatively
definite phenomena and are consequent!}' 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 lan-
guage or group of languages, while with regard to somids 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.
§ 18] SOUND LAWS AND ET\^IOLOGICAL SCIENCE 297
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. Wlien we read such phrases as :
tliis assumption is against phonetic laws, or, phonetic laws do not
allow us this or that etymology, or, the wTiter 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 jjaragraphs of some criminal law. We
may formulate the principle in something like the following way :
If in the etjanologies you propose you do not observe these rules,
if, for instance, you venture to make Gr, kaleo = E. call in sjjite
of the fact that Gr. Jc 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 simi-
larity between both kinds of laws is not inconsiderable. A micro-
scopic 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 ^^ay no two
persons speak in exactly the same wa3^ But the fact that w'e
cannot in detail account for each of these nuances should not
make us doubt that they are developed in a perfectlj^ natural
wa,y, 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 w'hat 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 tj'pical 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.
298 CAUSES OF CHANGE [en. xv
XV.— §14. Conclusion.
It has been one of the leading thought.s in tlic two chapters
devoted to the causes of linguistic change that phonetic changes,
to be fully understood, should not be isolated from other changes,
foi' 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 the}^ occur, nor
M'ords 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 s\aitax, in the signi-
fication of words, or in the adoption of ne^v \^•o^ds and dropping
of old ones.
We shall here finally very briefly consider something which
pla5''3 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 con-
tented 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 ordinarj' 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 kSwift 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.
Slang words are often confused with vulgarisms, though the
§14] CONCLUSION 299
two things arc really different. The vulgar tongue is a class
dialect, and a vulgarism is an element of the normal speech of
low-class people, just as ordinarj?^ dialect words are elements of
the natural speech of peasants in one particular district ; slang
words, on the other hand, are words used in conscious contrast
to the natural or normal speech : they can be found in all classes
of society in certain moods, and on certain occasions when a speaker
wants to avoid the natural or normal word because he thinks it
too flat or uninteresting and wants to achieve a different effect
by breaking loose from the ordinary expression. A vulgarism is
what will present itself at once to the mind of a person belonging
to one particular class ; a slang word is something that is wilfully
substituted for the first word that will present itself. The dis-
tinction will perhaps appear most clearly in the case of grammar :
if a man saj's the^n boys instead of those boys, or knowed instead of
kneiv, these are the normal forms of his language, and he knows
no better, but the educated man looks doMH upon these forms
as vulgar. Inverselj', an educated man may amuse himself now
and then by using forms which he perfectly well knoA\s are not
the received forms, thus vnmk from wink, collode from collide,
'pranght from preach (on the analogy of taught) ; " We handshook
and ca^idlestuck, as somebody said, and went to bed " (H. James).
But, of course, slang is more productive in the lexical than in the
grammatical portion of language. And there is something that
makes it difficult in practice always to keep slang and vulgar speech
apart, namely, that when a person wants to leave the beaten path
of normal language he is not alwa3'8 particular as to the source
whence he takes his unusual words, and he may therefore some-
times take a vulgar word and raise it to the dignity of a slang word.
A slang word is at first individual, but may through imitation
become fashionable in certain sets ; after some time it may either
be accepted by everybody as part of the normal language, or else,
more frequently, be so hacknej'^ed that no one finds pleasure in
using it any longer.
Slang words may first be words from the ordinary language
used in a different sense, generally metaphorically. Sometimes
we meet with the same figurative expression in the slang of various
countries, as when the ' head ' is termed the upper story {upper
loft, upperivorks) in English, >er^'er5/e etage in Danish, and oberstiibchen
in German ; more often different images are chosen in different
languages, as when for the same idea we have nut or chump in
English and pcere (' pear ') in Danish, coco or ciboule (or bovle) in
French. Slang words of this character may in some instances give
rise to expressions the origin of which is totally forgotten. In old
alang there is an expression for the tongue, the red rag ; this is
800 CAUSES OF CHANGE [ch. xv
shortened into the rag, and I suspect that the verb U> rag, ' to scold,
rate, talk severely to ' (" of obscure origin," NED), is simply from
this substantive (of. to jaw).
Secondly, slang words may be words of the normal language
used in their ordinary signification, but more or less modified in
regard to form. Thus we have many shortened forms, exam, quad,
pub, for examination, quadrangle, imhlic-hoiise, etc. Not unfre-
quently the shortening process is combined with an extension,
some ending being more or less arbitrarily substituted for the latter
part of the word, as when football becomes footer, and Rvgby foot-
ball and Association football become Rugger and Soaker, or when
at Cambridge a freshman is called a fresher and a bedmaker a
bedder.
In schoolboys' slang (Harrow) there is an ending -agger which
may be added instead of the latter part of anj' ^\■ord ; about 1885
Prince Albert Victor when at Cambridge ^^•as nicknamed the Prag-
ger ; an Agnostic was called a Nogger, etc. I strongly suspect that
the word swagger is formed in the same way from swashbncMer.
Another schoolboys' ending is -g : fog, seg, lag, for ' first, second,
last,' gag at Winchester for ' gathering ' (a special kind of Latin
exercise). Charles Lamb mentions from Christ's Hospital crvg for
' a quarter of a loaf,' evidently from crust ; sag — sovereign, snag
= snail (old), sivig = swill ; words \i\ie fag, -peg away, and others are
perhajDS to be explained from the same tendenc3\ Ai'nold Bennett
in one of his books says of a schoolboy that his vocabulary com-
prised an extraordinary number of words ending in gs : foggs,
seggs, for first, second, etc. It is interesting to note that in French
argot there are similar endings added to more or less mutilated
words : -ague, -eque, -oque (Sainean, L' Argot ancien, 1907, 50 and
esi^ecially 57).
There is also a peculiar class of roundabout expressions iji
which the speaker avoids the regular word, but hints at it in a
covert way by using some other word, generally a proper name,
which bears a resemblance to it or is derived from it, reallj'' or
seemingly. Instead of saying ' I want to go to bed,' he will say,
' I am for Bedfordshire,' or in German ' leh gehe nach Bethle-
hem ' or ' nach Bettingen,' in Danish ' g& til Slumstrup, Sov-
strup, Hvilsted.' Thus also 'send a person to Birching-lane,'
i.e. to whip him, ' he has been at Hammersmith,' i.e. has been
beaten, thrashed; 'you are on the highway to Needham,' i.e.
on the high-road to povertv, etc. (Cf. my paper on " Punning or
Allusive Phrases " in Nord. Tidsslr. f. Fil. 3 r. 9. 66.)
The language of poetry is closely related to slang, in so far as
both strive to avoid commonplace and everydaj' expressions.
The difference is that where slang looks only for the striking or
§14] CONCLUSION 801
unexpected expression, and therefore often is merely eccentric
or funny (sometimes only would-be comic), poetry looks higher
and craves abiding beauty — beauty in thought as well as
beauty in form, the latter obtained, among other things, by
rhythm, alliteration, rime, and harmonious variety of vowel
sounds.
In some coimtries these forms tend to become stereotyped,
and then may to some extent kill the poetic spirit, poetry becoming
artificiality instead of art ; the later Skaldic poetry may serve
as an illustration. Where there is a strong literary tradition —
and that may be found even where there is no WTitten literature —
veneration for the old literature handed down from one's ancestors
will often lead to a certain fossilization of the literary language,
which becomes a shrine of archaic expressions that no one uses
naturally or can master without great labour. If this state of
things persists for centuries, it results in a cleavage between the
spoken and the WTitten language which cannot but have the most
disastrous effects on all higher education : the conditions pre-
vailing nowadaj'-s in Greece and in Southern India may serve as
a warning. Space forbids me more than a bare mention of this
topic, which would deserve a much fuller treatment ; for details
I may refer to K. Krumbacher, Das Problem der 7ietigriechischen
tSchriftspracke, Munich, 1902 (for the other side of the case see
G. N. Hatzidakis, Die S2irachfrage in Oriechenland, Athens, 1905)
and G. V. Ramamurti, A Memorandum on Modern Telngn
Madras, 1913.
BOOK IV
THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE
CHAPTER XVI
ETYMOLOGY
§ 1. Achievements. §2. Doubtful Cases. §3. Facts, not Fancies. §4. Hope.
§ 5. Requirements. § 6. Blendings. § 7. Echo Words. § 8. Some
Conjunctions. § 9. Object of Etymology. § 10. Reconstruction.
XVI. — § 1. Achievements.
Few things have been more often quoted in works on linguistics
than Voltaire's mot that in etymology vowels count for nothing
and consonants for very little. But it is now said just as often
that the satire might be justlj' levelled at the pseudo-scientific
etymologj^ of the eighteenth centur}-, but has no application to our
own times, in which etjanology knows how to deal with both
vowels and consonants, and — it should be added, though it is
often forgotten — with the meanings of words. One often comes
across outbursts of joy and pride in the achievements of modern
etymological science, like the following, which is quoted here instar
omnium. : " Nowadays etymology has got past the period of more
or less ' happy thoughts ' (giiicklichen einfalle) and has developed
into a science in which, exactly as in any other science, serious
persevering work must lead to reliable results " (H. Schroder,
Ablautstuclien, 1910, X; cf. above, Max Miiller and Whitney, p. 89).
There is no denying that much has been achieved, but it is
equally true that a skeptical mind cannot fail to be struck with
the uncertainty of many proposed explanations : very often
scholars have not got beyond ' happy thoughts,' manj'^ of which
have not even been happy enough to have been accepted by
anybod}' except their first ijerpetrators. From English alone,
which for twelve hundred years has had an abundant written
literature, and which has been studied by manj^ eminent linguists,
who have had many sister-languages with Avhich to com-
pare it, it would be an easy matter to compile a long list of
words, well-known words of everyday occurrence, which etymo-
logists have had to give up as beyond their powers of solution
(fit, put, pull, cut, rouse, pun, fun, job). And equally perplexing
are many words now current all over Europe, some of them
comparatively recent and yet completely enigmatic : race, baron,
baroque, rococo, zinc.
20 305
806 ETY^IOLOGY [ch. xvi
XVI.— § 2. Doubtful Cases.
Or let us take a word of that class which forms the staple
subject of etymological disquisitions, one in which the semantic
side is literally as clear as simshine, namely the word for ' sun.'
Here Ave have, among others, the following forms : (1) sun, OE.
sunne, Goth, sunno; (2) Dan., Lat, sol, Goth, sauil, Gr, helios ;
(3) OE. sigel, scegl, Goth, sugil ; (4) OSlav. slutitce, Russ. solnce
(now with mute /). That these forms are related cannot be
doubted, but their mutual relation, and their relation to Gr. selene,
which means 'moon,' and to OE. sivegel 'sky,' have never been
cleared up. Holthausen derives sunno from the verb sinnan ' go '
and OE. sigel from the verb sigan ' descend, go down ' — but is
it really probable that our ancestors should have thought of the
sun primarily as the one that goes, or that sets ? The word south
(orig. *sun]> ; the n as in OHG. sund is still kept in Dan. senden)
is generally explained as connected with sun, and the meaning
' suimy side ' is perfectly natural ; but now H. Schroder thinks
that it is derived from a word meaning ' right ' (OE. sv)ii>re, orig.
' stronger,' a comparative of the adj. found in G. geschwind),
and he says that the south is to the right when you look at the
sun at sumise — Avhich is j)erfectly true, but why should people
have thought of the south as being to the right when they wanted
to speak of it in the afternoon or evening ?
Let me take one more example to show that om* present methods,
or perhaps our present data, sometimes leave us completely in the
Im'ch with regard to the most ordinaiy words. We have a series
of words which may all, Avithout any formal difficulties, be referred
to a root-form seqw-. Their significations are, respectively —
(1) 'say,' E, say, OE. secgan, ON. segja, G. sagen, Lith. sahjti.
To this is referred Gr. ennepe, enispein, Lat. inseque
and possibly inquamS
(2) ' shoAv, point out,' OSlav. sociti, Lat. signum.
(3) ' see,' E. see, OE. seon, Goth, saihwan, G. sehen, etc.
(4) ' folloAv,' Lat. sequor, Gr. hepomai, Ski-, sdcate. Here
belongs Lat. socius, OE. secg 'man,' orig. 'foUoAver.'
NoAA', are these four groups ' etj-mologically identical ' ?
Ophiions differ Avidely, as may be seen from C. D. Buck, " Words
of Speaking and Saying " {Am. Journ. of Philol. 36. 128, 1915).
They may be thus tabulated, a comma meaning supposed identity
and a dash the opposite :
1, 2-3, 4 Kluge, Talk, Torp.
1, 2, 3-4 Brugmann.
1, 2, 3, 4 Wood, Buck.i
' With regard to Lat. signum it should be noted that it is by others
explained as coming from Lat. secure and as meaning a notch.
§2] DOUBTFUL CASES 307
For the transition in meaning from ' see ' to ' say ' we are
referred to such words as observe, notice, G. bemerkung, while in
G. anweisen, and still more in Lat. dico, there is a similar transition
from 'show' to 'say.' Wood derives the signification 'follow'
from 'point out,' through 'show, guide, attend.' With regard
to the relation between 3 and 4, it has often been said that to see
is to follow with the eyes. In short, it is possible, if you take
some little pains, to discover notional ties between all four groups
which may not be so very much looser than those between other
words which everybody thinks related. And yet ? I cannot see
that the knowledge we have at present enables us, or can enable
us, to do more than leave the mutual relation of these groups an
open question. One man's guess is just as good as another's, or
one man's yes as another man's no — if the comiexion of these
words is ' science,' it is, if I may borrow an expression from the
old archaeologist Samuel Pegge, scientia ad libitum. Personal
predilection and individual taste have not been ousted from
etymological research to the extent many scholars would have
us believe.
Or we may perhaps say that among the etymologies found in
dictionaries and linguistic journals some are solid and fii'm as
rocks, but others are liquid and fluctuate like the sea ; and finally
not a few are in a gaseous state and blow here and there as the
wind listeth. Some of them are no better than poisonous gases,
from which may Heaven preserve us ! ^
XVI.— § 3. Facts, not Fancies.
As early as 1867 IMichel Breal, in an excellent article (reprinted
in M 267 ff.), called attention to the dangers resulting from the
general tendency of comparative linguists to " jump intermediate
steps in order at once to mount to the earliest stages of the lan-
guage," but his warning has not taken effect, so that etjrmologists
in dealing with a word found only in comparatively recent times
will often try to reconstruct what might have been its Proto-
Aryan form and compare that with some word found in some
other language. Thus, Falk and Torp refer G. krieg to an Aryan
primitive form *greigho-, *grtgho-, which is compared with Irish
^ It is, of course, impossible to say how great a proportion of the
etymologies given in dictionaries should strictly be classed under each of
the following heads : (1) certain, (2) probable, (3) possible, (4) improbable,
(5) impossible — but I am afraid the first two classes would be the least
numerous. Meillet (Gr 59) has some excellent remarks to the same effect ;
according to him, " pour une etymologie sure, les dictionnaires en offrent
plus de dix qui sont douteuses et dont, en appliquant une m^thode rigoureuse,
on ne saurait fair© la preuve."
808 ETYMOLOGY [ch. xvi
brig 'force.' But the German word is not found in use till the
middle period ; it is peculiar to German and unknown in related
languages (for the Scandinavian and probably also the Dutch
words are later loans from Germany). These writers do not take
into account how improbable it is that such a word, if it were
really an old traditional word for this fundamental idea, should
never once have been recorded in any of the old documents of the
whole of our family of languages. What should we think of the
man who would refer boche, the French nickname for ' German '
which became current in 1914, and before that time had only been
used for a few years and known to a few people onlj% to a Proto-
Aryan root-form ? Yet the method in both cases is identical ;
it presupposes what no one can guarantee, that the words in
question are of those which trot along the royal road of language
for century after century without a single side-jump, semantic
or phonetic. Such words are the favourites of linguists because
they have always behaved themselves since the days of Noah ;
but others are full of the most unexpected pranks, which no
scientific ingenuity can discover if we do not happen to know the
historical facts. Think of grog, for example. Admiral Vernon,
known to sailors by the nickname of " Old Grog " because he wore
a cloak of grogram (this, by the way, from Fr. gros grain), in 1740
ordered a mixture of rum and water to be served out instead
of pure rum, and the name was transferred from the person
to the drink. If it be objected that such leaps are found
only in slang, the answer is that slang words very often become
recognized after some time, and who knows but that may
have been the case with krieg just as well as with many a
recent word ?
At any rate, facts weigh more than fancies, and whoever wants
to establish the etj-mology of a w'ord must first ascertain all the
historical facts available with regard to the place and time of
its rise, its earliest signification and syntactic construction, its
diffusion, the sjiionyms it has ousted, etc. Thus, and thus only,
can he hope to rise above loose conjectiu'es. Here the great
historical dictionaries, above all the Oxford New English Dictionary,
render invaluable service. And let me mention one model article
outside these dictionaries, in which Hermann I\Ioller has in my
opinion given a satisfactory solution of the riddle of G. ganz :
he explains it as a loan from Slav komcl ' end,' used especially
adverbially (perhaps with a preposition in the form v-konec or
v-konc) ' to the end, completel.y ' ; Slav c = G. z, Slav k pronounced
essentially as South G. g ; the gradual spreading and various
significations and derived forms are accounted for with very great
learning {Zs. f. D. Alt. 36. 326 ff.). It is curious that this article
§3] FACTS, NOT FANCIES 809
should have been generally overlooked or neglected, though the
•vvTiter seems to have met all the legitimate requirements of a
scientific etymology.
XVI.— § 4. Hope.
I have endeavoured to fulfil these requirements in the new
explanation I have given of the word liope (Dan. hahe, Swed.
hoppas, G. hoffen), now used in all Gothonic tongues in exactly
the same signification. Etymologists are at variance about this
word. Kluge connects it with the OE. noun hyht, and from that
form infers that Gothonic *koj)6n stands for *Jmq6n, from an Arj'an
root kug ; he sa3-s that a connexion with Lat. cupio is scarcely
possible. Walde likewise rejects connexion between cupio and
either Jiojye or Goth. Imgjan. To Falk and Torp hope has probably
nothing to do with hylit, but probably with cupio, which is derived
from a root *kup = kvap, found in Lat. vapor ' steam,' and with
a secondary form *kiih, in hope, and "^kvab in Goth, af-hwapjan
' choke ' — a wonderful medlej' of significations. H. Moller
{Indoeur.-Semit. sammenlignende Glossar 63), in accordance with
his usual method, establishes an Aryo-Semitic root '*k-ii-, meaning
' ardere ' and transferred to ' ardere amore, cupiditate, desiderio,'
the root being extended with h- : pi- in hope and cupio, with gh-
in Goth, hugs, and with g- in OE. hyht. Surely a typical example
of the perplexitj- of our et3aiiologists, who disagree in everything
except just in the one thing which seems to me extremely doubtful,
that hope with the present spiritual signification goes back to
common Aryan. Now, what are the real facts of the matter ?
Simply these, that the Vvord hope turns up at a comparatively
late date in historical times at one particular spot, and from there
it gradually spreads to the neighboming countries. In Denmark
{hah, hdbe) and in Sweden [hopp, hoppas) it is first found late in the
Middle Ages as a religious loan from Low German hopie, hopen.
High German hoffen is found very rarely about 1150, but does
not become common till a hundred j-ears later ; it is undoubtedly
taken (with sound substitution) from Low German and moves
in Germany from north to south. Old Saxon has the subst. to-hopa,
which has probably come from OE., where we have the same
form for the subst., to-hopa. This is pretty common in religious
prose, but in poetry it is found only once (Boet.) — a certain indi-
cation that the word is recent. The subst. without to is com-
paratively late (iElfric, ab. 1000). The verb is found in rare
instances about a hundred years earlier, but does not become
common till later. Now, it is important to notice that the verb in
the old period never takes a direct object, but is always comiected
310 ETYMOLOGY [ch. xvi
with the prciDosition to (compare the subst.), even in modern
usage we have to Jwpe to, for, in. Similarly in G. , w here the phrase
was auj elwas hojfen ; later the verb took a genitive, then a pronoun
in the accusative, and finally an ordinarj' object ; in biblical
language we find also zu gott hojfen. Now, I would connect our
Avord with the form hopu, found twice as part of a compoimd in
Beoivulf (450 and 764), where ' refuge ' gives good sense : hopan to,
then, is to ' take one's refuge to,' and to-hojia ' refuge.' This verb
I take to be at first identical with hop (the only OE. instance I
know of tliis is .^Ifric, Horn. 1. 202 : hoppode ongean his drlhten).
We have also one instance of a verb onhupian (Cura Past. 441)
' di-aw back, recoil,' which agrees with ON. Iiojia ' move back-
wards ' (to the quotations in Fritzner may be added Laxd. 49, 15,
peir Osvigssynir hopudu undan).^ The original meaning seems
to have been ' bend, ciu"b, bow, stoop,' either in order to leap,
or to flee, from something bad, or towards something good ;
cf. the subst. hip, OE. hype, Goth, hups, Dan. hofte, G. hiifte, Lat.
cubitus, etc. (Holthausen, Aiujlia Beibl., 1904, 350, deals with
these words, but does not connect them with hop, -hopu, or hope.)
The transition from bodily movement to the spiritual ' hope ' may
have been favoured by the existence of the verb OE. hogian
' think,' but is not in itself more difficult than with, e.g., Lat.
ex{s)ultare 'leap up, rejoice,' or Dan. lide pa 'lean to, confide in,
trust,' tillid ' confidence, reliance ' ; and a new word for ' hope '
was required because the old luen (Goth, wens), vb. wenan, had
at an early age acquired a more general meaning ' opinion,
probability/ vb. ' suppose, imagine.' The difficulty that the
word for ' iiope ' has single or short p (in Swed., however, pp),
while Jtop, OE. hoppian, has double or long p, is no serious
hindrance to our etymology, because the gemination may easily
be accounted for on the principle mentioned below (Ch. XX
§ 9), that is, as giving a more vivid expression of the rapid^
action.
XVL— § 5. Requirements.
It is, of course, impossible to determine once for all by hard-
and-fast rules how gi-eat the correspondence must be for us to
recognize two words as ' etymologically identical,' nor to say
to which of the tAvo sides, the phonetic and the semantic, we
should attach the gi-eater importance. With the rise of historical
phonology the tendency has been to require exact correspondence
in the former respect, and in semantics to be content with
more or less easily fomid parallels. One example v,'\\\ shoAv hoAV
^ Westphalian also has happen ' zuriickweichen,' ESt. 64. 88.
§ 5] REQUIREMENTS 811
particular many scholars are in matters of sound. The word mit
(OE. hnutu, G. miss, ON. knot, Dan. m^d) is by Paul declared " not
related to Lat. mix " and by Kluge " neither originally akin ■with
nor borrowed from Lat. mix," while the NED does not even mention
nux and thus must think it quite impossible to connect it with
the English word. We have here in two related languages two
words resejnbling each other not only in sound, but in stem-
formation and gender, and possessing exactly the same signification,
which is as concrete and definite as possible. And yet we are
bidden to keep them asunder ! Fortunately I am not the first
to protest against such barbarity : H. Pedersen (KZ n.f. 12. 251)
explains both words from *dmih-, which by metathesis has
become *knud-, while Falk and Torp as well as Walde think
the latter form the original one, which in Latin has been
shifted into *dnuk-. WHiich of these views is correct (both may
be wi-ong) is of less importance than the ^ictory of common
sense over phonological pedantry.
There are two explanations which have had very often to do
duty where the phonological correspondence is not exact, namely
root- variation (root-expansion with determinatives) and apophony
(ablaut). Of the former Uhlenbeck (PBB 30. 252) says : " The
theorj'' of root determinatives no doubt contains a kernel of truth,
but it has only been fatal to etymological science, as it has drawn
the attention from real correspondences between well-substantiated
words to delusive similarities between hj^pothetical abstractions."
Apophony inspires more confidence, and in many cases offers fully
reliable explanations ; but this principle, too, has been often
abused, and it is difficult to find its true limitations. Many special
applications of it appear questionable , thus, when G. stumm, Dan.
stum, is explained as an apophonic form of the adj. stam, Goth.
stamms, from which we have the verb stammer, G. stommeln, Dan.
stamme : is it really probable that the designation of muteness
should be taken from the word for stammering 1 This appears
especially improbable when we consider that at the time when
the nev! word stumm made its appearance there was already another
word for ' mute,' namely ditmm, dumb, the word which has been
preserved in English. I therefore propose a new et^nnology :
stumm is a blending of the two synonyms stiU{e) and dum{b), made
up of the beginning of the one and the ending of the other word ;
through adopting the initial st- the word was also associated with
stump, and we get an exact correspondence between dumm, dum,
stumm, stum, applied to persons, and dumpf, stumpf, Dan. dump,
stump, applied to things. Note that in those languages (G., Dan.)
in which the new word stum{m) was used, the unchanged dum{m)
was free to develop the new sense ' stupid ' (or was the creation
312 ETYMOLOGY [cir. xvi
of stum occasioned by the old word tending already to acquire
this secondary meaning ?), while dumb in English stuck to the
old signification.
XVI.— § 6. Blendings.
Blendings of synonyms play a much greater role in the develop-
ment of language than is generally recognized. Many instances
may be heard in everyday life., most of them being immediately
corrected by the speaker (see above, XV § 4), but these momentary
lapses cannot be separated from other instances which are of
more permanent value because they are so natural that they will
occur over and over again until speakers will hardly feel the blend
as anything else than an ordinary word. M. Bloomfield (IF 4. 71)
saj's that he has been many years conscious of an irrepressible
desire to assimilate the two verbs quench and squelch in both
directions by forming squench and quelch, and he has found the
former word in a negro story by Page. The expression ' irre-
pressible desire ' struck me on reading this, for I have myself in
my Danish speech the same feeling whenever I am to speak of
tending a patient, for I nearly' always say phsse as a result of
wavering between ^^Zeje |jJ?ai9] and passe. Man}' examples may be
found in G. A. Bergstrom, On Blendings of Synonymous or Cognate
Expressions in English, Lund, 1900, and Louise Pound, Blends,
Their Relation to English Word Formation, Heidelberg, 1914. But
neither of these two \\Titers has seen the full extent of this principle
of formation, which explains many words of greater importance
than those nonce words which are found so plentifully in Miss
Pound's paper. Let me give some examples, some of them new,
some already found by others :
blot = 6Zemish, bla,ck -f- spof, pZo/, dot ; there is also an
obsolete s'plot.
blunt = blind -}- stunt.
crouch = cringe, crook, crawl, fcrowk -f couch,
flush = fla,sh -\- hlusJi.
frush = frog + thrush (all three names of the same di-sease
in a horse's foot).
glaze (Shakespeare) — glare -\- gaze.
good-bye = good-night, (/ooff-morning + godbye (God be with
ye).
knoll = knell + toll.
scroll = scroiv -f roll.
slash = slay, sling, sht -{■ gash, dash.
slender = slight {slim) -{- tender.
§G] BLENDIXGS 313
Such blends are especially frequent in words expressive of
sounds or in some other way symbolical, as, for instance :
flurry = flhig, flow and many other j^-words + hurry (note
also scurry),
gruff = qruxw, grhw -\- rough,
slide = sZip + gZ/(Ze.
troll — trill + roll (in some senses perhaps rather from
/read, /rundle + roll),
twirl = twist ~ ivhirl.
In slang blends abound, e.g. :
tosh (Harrow) = tub + wash. (Sometimes explained as
toe-wash.)
blarmed = bhmed, 6?essed and other 6/-words + darned
(damned).
be danged = (famned + hanged.
I swow = sive^r + \ow.
brunch = 6reakfast + \unch (so also, though more rarely
br upper (...-}- supper), tunch (tea + hmch), tupper
= ten, + supper).'^
XVI.— § 7. Echo-words.
]\Iost etymologists are verj' reluctant to admit echoism ; thus
Diez rejects onomatopoeic origin of It. pisciare, Fr. _2:)?<sser — an
echo-word if ever there was one — and says, " One can easily go too
far in supposing onomatopoeia : as a rule it is more advisable to
build on existing words " ; this he does by deriving this verb from
a non-existing ^pipisare, 2^ipsare, from pi2M ' pipe, tube.' Falk
and Toi'p refer dumj) (Dan. dumpe) to Swed. dimpa, a Gothonic
root demp, supposed to be an extension of an Aryan root dhen :
thus the}^ are too deaf to hear the sound of the heavy fall expressed
by um{p), cf. Dan. bumpe, bums, plumpe, skumpe, j^impe, and
similar words in other languages.
It may be fancy, but I think I hear the same sound in Lat.
2)lumbum, which I take to mean at first not the metal, but the
plummet that was dumped or plumped into the water and was
denominated from the sound ; as this was generally made of lead,
the word came to be used for the metal. Most etymologists take
it for granted that plumbum is a loan-word, some being honest
enough to confess that they do not know from what language,
while others without the least scruple or hesitation say that it
was taken from Iberian : our ignorance of that language is so
* Lewis Carrol's * portmanteau words ' are, of course, famous.
314 ETYMOLOGY [ch. xvi
deep that no one can enter an expert's protest against such a
supposition.^ But if my h_Aq)othosis is right, the words plummet
(from OFr. plommet, a diminutive of p)lomb) as ^^ell as the verb
Fr. plonger, whence E. plunge, from Lat. *plumbicare, are not
only derivatives from j^l^onbitm (the only thing mentioned by other
scholars), but also echo-words, and they, or at any rate the verb,
must to a great extent owe their diffiision t-o their felicitously
sjnnbolic sound. In a novel I find : " Plump went the lead " —
showing how this sound is still found adequate to express the
falling of the lead in sounding. The NED says under the verb
plum]^ : " Some have compared L. plumbare ... to throw the
lead-line . . . but the approacli of form between j^J^nihar and the
LG. plump-j^hmj} group seems merely fortuitous " (!). I see
sound s3'mbolism in all the words plump, while the NED will only
allow it in the most obvious cases. From the sound of a body
plumping into the water we have interesting developments in the
adverb, as in the following quotations : I said, plump out, that
I couldn't stand any more of it (Bernard Shaw) | The famous
diatribe against Jesuitism points plumb in the same direction
(Morley) [ fall plum into the jaws of certain critics (Swift) | Nollie
was a plumb little idiot (Galsworthy). In the last sense ' entirely '
it is especiallj^ frequent in America, e.g. They lost their senses,
plumb lost their senses (Churchill) | she's plum crazy, it's plum
bad, etc. Related words for fall, etc., are plop, phut, plunk,
plounce. Much might also be said in this connexion of various
pop and 606 words, but I shall refrain.
XVI.— §8. Some Conjunctions.
Sometimes obviouslj- correct etjnnologies yet leave some psycho-
logical points unexplained. One of my pet theories concerns some
adversative conjunctions. Lat. sed has been supplanted by
magis : It. ma, Sp. ma,^, Fr. mais. The transition is easily accounted
for ; from ' more ' it is no far cr}' to ' rather ' (cf. G. viehnehr),
which can readily be emploj-ed to correct or gainsay what has
just been said. The Scandinavian word for ' but ' is me7i, which
came into use in the fifteenth century and is explained as a blending
* Speculation has been rife, but without any generally accepted results,
as to the relation between plnmbiitn and words for the same metal in cognate
languages : Gr. molibos, molubdos and similar forms, Ir. luaide, E. lead (G.
lot, ' plummet, half an ounce '), Scand. bly, OSlav. olovo, OPruss. alwis ; see
Curtius, Prellwitz, Boisacq, Hirt Idg. 686, Schrtuler Sprachvergl. u. Vrgesch.,
3d. ed., ii. 1. 9.5 ; Herm. Mdller, Sml. Olossar 87, says that molibos and
plumbum are extensions of the root m-l ' mollis esse ' and explains the differ-
ence between the initial sounds by referring to multum : comp. plus — certainly
most ingenious, but not convincing. Some of these words may originally
have been echo-words for the plumping plummet.
§8] SOME CONJUNCTIONS 315
of meden in its shortened form men (now mens) ' while ' and Low
German me)i " but,' which stands for older niwan, from the negative
ni and loan ' wanting ' ; the meaning has developed through that
of ' except ' and the sound is easily understood as an instance of
assimilation. The same phonetic development is foimd in Dutch
maar, OFris. mar, from en ivare ' were not,' the same combination
which has yielded G. nur. Thus we have four different ways of
getting to expressions for ' but,' none of which presents the least
difficulty to those familiar \Aith the semantic ways of words. But
why did these various nations seize on new words ? Weren't the
old ones good enough ?
Here I must call attention to two features that are common
to these new conjunctions, first their syntactic position, which
is invariably in the beginning of the sentence, while such synony-
mous words as Lat. autem and G. aher may be placed after one
or more words ; then their phonetic agi'eement in one point : magis,
men, maar all begin with m. Now, both these features are found
in two words for ' but,' about whose etymological origin I can
find no information, Finnic mutta and Santal menkkan, as well as
in me, which is used in the Ancrene Riwle and a few other early
I\Dddle English texts and has been dubiously connected with the
Scandinavian (and French ?) word. How are we to explain these
curious coincidences ? I think by the nature of the sound [m],
which is produced when the lips are closed while the tongue rests
passiveh' and the soft palate is lowered so as to allow air to escape
through the nostrils — in short, the position which is typical of
anybody who is quietly thinking over matters without as yet
saying anything, with the sole difference that in his case the vocal
chords are passive, while they are made to vibrate to bring forth
an m.
Now, it Yeiy often happens that a man wants to say something,
but has not yet made up his mind as to what to say ; and in this
moment of hesitation, while thoughts are in the process of con-
ception, the lungs and vocal chords will often be prematurely
set going, and the result is [m] (sometimes preceded by the cor-
responding voiceless sound), often written hm or h'm, which thus
becomes the interjection of an unshaped contradiction. Not
infrequently this [m] precedes a real word ; thus M'yes (written
in this way by Shaw, Misalliance 154, and Merrick, Conrad 179)
and Dan. mja, to mark a hesitating consent.
This will make it clear why words beginning with m are so
often chosen as adversative conjiinctions : people begin with this
sound and go on with some word that gives good sense and which
happens to begin witli m : mais, maar. The Dan. men in the
mouth of some early speakers is probably this [m], sliding into
310 ETYMOLOGY [cH. xvi
the old conjunction en, just as myes is w + y^ ', while other original
users of men may have been thinking of men = meden, and others
again of Low German rtien : these three et}Tnologies are not
mutually destructive, for all three origins may have concurrently
contributed to the pojDuIaritj' of men. Modern Greek and Serbian
ma are generally explained as direct loans from Italian, but may
be indigenous, as may also dialectal Rumanian ma in the same
sense, for in the hesitating [m] as the initial soimd of objections
we have one of those touches of nature which make the whole
world kin.^
XVL— § 9. Object of Etymology.
What is the object of etymological science 1 " To determine
the true signification of a word," answers one of the masters of
etymological research (Walde, Lat. et. Worterb. xi). But surely
in most cases that can be achieved without the help of etymology.
We know the true sense of hundreds of words about the etymology
of which we are in complete ignorance, and we should know exactly
what the word grog means, even if the tradition of its origin had
been accidentally lost. Many people still believe that an account
of the origin of a name throws some light on the essence of the
thing it stands for ; when they want to define say ' religion ' or
' civilization,' they start b^'^ stating the (real or supposed) origin
of the name — but surely that is superstition, though the first framers
of the name ' etymology ' (from Gr. etumon ' true ') must have had
the same idea in their heads. Etymologj' tells us ncthing about
the things, nor even about the present meaning of a word, but
only about the way in which a word has come into existence.
At best, it tells us not what is true, but what has been true.
The overestimation of etymology is largely attributable to
the " conviction that there can be nothing in language that had
not an intelligible purpose, that there is nothing that is now
irregular that was not at first regular, nothing irrational that was
not originall}' rational " (Max Miiller) — a conviction which is still
found to underlie many utterances about linguistic matters, but
which readers of the present volume will have seen is erroneous
in many M'ays. On the whole, Max Miiller naively gives expression
to what is imconsciously at the back of much that is said and
believed about language ; thus, when he says (L 1. 44) : " I must
ask you at present to take it for granted that everything in language
had originallj' a meaning. As language can have no other object
but to express our meaning, it might seem to follow almost by
^ I have discussed this more in detail and added other »n-words of a
somewhat related character in Studier tillegnade E. Tegnir, 1918, p. 49 fit.
§9] OBJECT OF ET\nVIOLOGY 317
necessity that language should contain neither more nor less than
what is required for that purpose." Yes, so it would if language
had been constructed by an omniscient and omnipotent being,
but as it was developed by imperfect human beings, there is every
possibility of their having failed to achieve their purpose and
having done either more or less than was required to express
their meaning. It would be wrong to say that language (i.e.
speaking man) created first what was strictly necessarj', and after-
wards what might be considered superfluous ; but it would be
equally wrong to say that linguistic luxuries were always created
before necessaries ; yet that view would probably be nearer the
truth than the former. Much of what in former ages was felt
to be necessary to express thoughts was afterwards felt as pedantic
crisscross and gradually eliminated ; but at all times many things
have been found in language that can never have been anything
else but superfluous, exactly as many people use a great many
superfluous gestm'es which are not in the least significant and in
no way assist the comprehension of their intentions, but which
they somehow feel an impulse to perform. In language, as in
life generally, we have too little in some respects, and too much
in others.
XVI. — § 10. Reconstruction.
Kluge somewhere (PBB 37. 479, 1911) says that the establish-
ment of the common Aryan language is the chief task of our
modern science of linguistics (to my mind it can never be more
than a fragment of that task, which must be to understand the
nature of language), and he thinks optimistically that " recon-
structions with their reliable methods have taken so firm root
that we are convinced that we know the common Aryan grund-
sprache just as thoroughly as any language that is more or less
authenticated through literature." This is a palpable exaggera-
tion, for no one nowadays has the com-age of Schleicher to print
even the smallest fable in Proto-Ai-yan, and if by some miraculous
accident we were to find a text wTitten in that language we may
be sure it would puzzle us just as much as Tokharian does.
Reconstruction has two sides, an outer and an inner. With
regard to sounds, it seems to me that very often the masters of
linguistics treat us to reconstructed forms that are little short
of impossible. This is not the place to give a detailed criticism
of the famous theory of ' nasalis sonans,' but I hope elsewhere
to be able to state why I think this theory a disfiguring ex-
crescence on linguistic science : no one has ever been able to find
in any existing language such forms as mnto with stressed syllabic
318 ETYMOLOGY [en. xvi
[n], given as the old form of our word movlh (Falk and Torp even
give stmnto in order to connect the word with Gr. stoma), or as
dhntom (\\ hence Lat. centum, etc.) or bhnjhnties or gnmskete
(Brugmann). Not only are these forms phonetically impossible,
but the theor}- fails to explain the transitions to the forms actually
existing in real languages, and everything is much easier if we
assume forms like [Am, An] with some vowel like that of P]. 7m-.
The use in Proto- Aryan reconstructions of non -syllabic i and u also
in some respects invites criticism, but it will be better to treat
these questions in a special paper.
Semantic reconstruction calls for little comment here. It is
evident from the nature of the subject that no such strict rules
can be given in this domain as in the domain of sound ; but now-
adays scholars are more realistic than formerly. Most of them
will feel satisfied when moo7i and rnontJi are associated with words
having the same two significati{»ns in related languages, without
indulging in explanations of both from a root me ' to measure ' ;
and when our daughter has been connected with Gr. thvgdter,
Skt. duhitdr and corresponding words in other languages, no attempt
is made to go beyond the meaning common to these words
' daughter ' and to speculate what had induced our ancestors to
bestow that word on that particular relation, as when Lassen
derived it fi*om the root duh ' to milk ' and pictured an idyllic
family life, in which it was the business of the young girls to milk
the co\\s, or when Fick derived the same word from the root dheugh
' to be useful ' (G. taugen : ' wie die magd, maid von mogen '), as
if the daughters were the only, or the most, efficient members
of the family. Unfortunately, such speculations are still found
lingering in many recent handbooks of high standing : Kluge
hesitates w'hether to assign the word mutter, another, to the root
ma in the sense ' mete out ' or in the sense found in Sanskrit ' to
form,' used of the foetus in the womb. A resigned acquiescence
in inevitable ignorance and a sense of reality should certainly be
characteristics of future etymologists.
CHAPTER XVII
PROGRESS OR DECAY?
§ 1. Linguistic Estimation. §2. Degeneration? §3. Appreciation of Modern
Tongues. § 4. The Scientific Attitude. § 5. Final Answer. § 6.
Sounds. § 7. Shortenings. § 8. Objections. Result. § 9. Verbal
Forms. § 10. Sj^nthesis and Analysis. § 11. Verbal Concord.
XVn.— § 1. Linguistic Estimation.
The common belief of linguists that one form or one expression
is just as good as another, provided they are both found in actual
use, and that each language is to be considered a perfect vehicle
for the thoughts of the nation speaking it, is in some ways the
exact counterpart of the conviction of the Manchester school of
economics that everything is for the best in the best of all possible
worlds if only no artificial hindrances are put in the way of free
exchange, for demand and supply will regulate everything better
than any Government would be able to. Just as economists were
blind to the numerous cases in which actual wants, even crying
wants, Avere not satisfied, so also linguists were deaf to those in-
stances which are, however, obvious to whoever has once turned
his attention to them, in which the very structure of a language
calls forth misunderstandings in everyday conversation, and in
which, consequently, a word has to be repeated or modified or
expanded or defined in order to call forth the idea intended by
the speaker : he took his stick — no, not John's, but his own ;
or : I mean you in the plural (or, you all, or you girls) ; no, a
box on the ear ; un de a jouer, non i^as un de a coudre ; nein, ich
meine Sie personlich (with very strong stress on Sie), etc. Every
careful writer in any language has had the experience that on
re-reading his manuscript he has discovered that a sentence which
he thought perfectly clear when he wrote it lends itself to mis-
understanding and has to be put in a different way ; sometimes
he has to add a clarifying parenthesis, because his language is
defective in some respect, as when Edward Carpenter {Art o/
Creation 171), in speaking of the deification of the Babe, writes:
"It is not likely that Man — the human male — left to himself
would have done this ; but to woman it was natural," thus avoiding
the misunderstanding that he was speaking of the whole species,
319
820 PROGRESS OR DECAY? [ch. xvii
comprising both sexes. Herbert Spencer writes : " Charles had
recently obtained — a post in the Post Office I Avas about to say,
but the cacophony stopped me ; and then I was about to say,
an office in the Post Office, which is nearly as bad ; let me say —
a place in the Post Office " {Autobiogr. 2. 73 — but of course the
defect is not really one of sound, as implied by the expression
' cacophonj',' but one of signification, as both words post and
office are ambiguous, and the attempted collocation would therefore
puzzle the reader or hearer, because the same word A\ouId have
to be apprehended in two different senses in close succession).
Similar instances might be alleged from any language.
No language is perfect, but if we admit this truth (or truism),
we must also admit by implication that it is not unreasonable
to investigate the relative value of different languages or of different
details in languages. When comparative linguists set themselves
against the narrowmindedness of classical scholars who thought
Latin and Greek the only A\orthy objects of stud}^ and emphasized
the value of all, even the least literary languages and dialects,
they were primarily' thinking of their value to the scientist, who
finds something of interest in each of them, but they had no idea
of comparing the relative value of languages from the point of
view of their users — and yet the latter comparison is of much
greater importance than the former.
XVII.— §2. Degeneration?
People will often use the expressions ' evolution ' rnd ' develop-
ment ' in connexion Avith language, but most linguists, when taken
to task, will maintain that these expressions as applied to languages
should be used without the implication which is commonly attached
to them when used of other objects, namel}^ that there is a pro-
gressive tendency towards something better or nearer perfection. '
They will say that ' evolution ' means here simply changes going
on in languages, without any judgment as to the value of these
changes.
But those who do pronounce such a judgment ncarl}' always
take the changes as a retrogressive rather than a progressive
development : " Tongues, like governments, have a natural ten-
dency to degeneration," said Dr. Samuel Johnson in the Pi-eface
to his Dictionary, and the same lament has been often repeated
since his time. This is quite natural : people have always had
a tendency to believe in a golden age, that is, in a remote past
gloriously different to the miserable present. Why not, then,
have the same belief with regard to language, the more so because
one cannot fail to notice things in contemporary speech which
§2] DEGENERATION? 321
(superficially at any rate) look like corruptions of the ' good old '
forms ? Everything ' old ' thus comes to be considered ' good.'
Lowell and others think they have justified many of the commonly
reviled Americanisms if they are able to show them to have existed
in England in the sixteenth century, and similar considerations
are met with everywhere. The same frame of mind finds support
in the usual grammar-school admiration for the two classical
languages and their literatures. People were taught to look
down upon modern languages as mere dialects or patois and to
worship Greek and Latin ; the richness and fullness of forms found
in those languages came naturally to be considered the very beau
ideal of linguistic structm-e. Bacon gives a classical expression
to this view when he declares " ingenia prior um seculorum nostris
fuisse multo acutiora et subtiliora " {De augm. scient}). To men
fresh from the ordinary grammar-school training, no language
would seem really respectable that had not four or five distinct
cases and three genders, or that had less than five tenses and as
many moods in its verbs. Accordingly, such poor languages as
had either lost much of their original richness in grammatical
forms {e.g. French, English, or Danish), or had never had any, so
far as one knew {e.g. Chinese), were naturally looked upon with
sometliing of the pity bestowed on relatives in reduced circum-
stances, or the contempt felt for foreign paupers. It is well known
how in West-Em-opean languages, in English, German, Danish,
Swedish, Dutch, French, etc., obsolete forms were artificially kept
alive and preferred to younger forms by most grammarians ; but
we see exactly the same point of view in such a language as Magyar,
where, under the influence of the historical studies of the grammarian
Revai, the belief in the excellence of the ' veneranda antiquitas '
as compared with the corruj)tion of the modern language has
been prevalent in schools and in literature. (See Simony i US 259 ;
cf. on Modern Greek and Telugu above, p. SOL)
Comparative linguists had one more reason for adopting this
manner of estimating languages. To what had the great victories
won by their science been due ? Whence had they got the material
for that magnificent edifice which had proved spacious enough
to hold Hindus and Persians, Lithuanians and Slavs, Greeks,
Romans, Germans and Kelts ? Surely it was neither from
Modern English nor Modern Danish, but from the oldest stages of
each linguistic group. The older a linguistic document was, the
1 Quoted here from John Wilkins, An Essay towards a Real Character
and a Philosophical Language, 1668, p. 448 : Wilkins there subjects Bacon's
saying to a crushing criticism, laying bare a great many radical deficiencies
in Latin to bring out the logical advantages of his own artificial ' philo-
sophical ' language.
21
322 PROGRESS OR DECAY? [ch. xvii
more valuable it was to the first generation of comparative linguists.
An English form like had was of no great use, but Gothic habaide-
deima was easily picked to pieces, and each of its several elements
lent itself capitally to comparison with Sanskiit, Lithuanian and
Greek. The linguist was chiefly dependent for his material on
the old and archaic languages ; his interest centred round their
fuller forms : what wonder, then, if in his opinion those languages
were superior to all others ? What wonder if by comparing had
and habaidedeima he came to regard the English form as a mutilated
and worn-out relic of a splendid original ? or if, noting the change
from the old to the modern form, he used strong language and
spoke of degeneration, corruption, depravation, decUne, phonetic
decay, etc. ?
The view that the modern languages of Europe, Persia and
India are far inferior to the old languages, or the one old language,
from which they descend, we have already encountered in the
historical part of this work, in Bopp, Humboldt, Grimm and their
followers. It looms very large in Schleicher, according to whom
the history of language is all a Decline and Fall, and in Max Miiller,
who says that " on the whole, the history of all the Aryan languages
is nothing but a gradual process of decay." Nor is it yet quite
extinct.
XVn.— § 3. Appreciation of Modern Tongues.
Some scholars, however, had an indistinct feeling that this
unconditional and wholesale depreciation of modcx-n languages
could not contain the whole truth, and I have collected various
passages, nearly always of a perfunctory or incidental character,
in which these languages are partly rehabilitated. Humboldt
(Versch 284) speaks of the modern use of auxiliary verbs and
prepositions as a convenience of the intellect which may even in
some isolated instances lead to greater definiteness. On Grimm
see above, p. 62. Rask (SA 1. 191) says that it is possible that the
advantages of simplicity may be greater than those of an
elaborate linguistic structure. Madvig turns against the uncritical
admiration of the classical languages, but does not go fuither
than sajing that the modern analj^tical languages are just as
good as the old sjTithetic ones, for thoughts can be expressed in
both with equal clearness. Ki-auter {Archiv f. nen. spr. 57. 204)
says : " That decay is consistent with clearness and precision
is shown by French ; that it is not fatal to poetry is seen in the
language of Shakespeare." Osthoff {Schriftspr. u. Volksmundart,
1883, 13) protests against a one-sided depreciation of the language
of Lessing and Goethe in favour of the language of Wulfila or
§8] APPRECIATION OF MODERN TONGUES 328
Otfried, or vice versa : a language possesses an inestimable charm
if its phonetic s\''3tem remains unimpaired and its etymologies
are transparent ; but pliancy of the material of language and
flexibility to express ideas is really no less an advantage ; every-
thing depends on the point of view : the student of architecture
has one point of view, the people who are to live in the house
another.
Among those who thus half-heartedly refused to accept the
downhill theory to its full extent must be mentioned Whitney,
many passages in whose writings show a certain hesitation to
make up his mind on this question. When speaking of the loss
of old forms he says that " some of these could well be spared,
but others were valuable, and their relinquishment has impaired
the power of expression of the language." To phonetic corruption
we owe true grammatical forms, which make the wealth of every
inflective language ; but it is also destructive of the very edifice
which it has helped to build. He speaks of " the legitimate
tendency to neglect and eliminate distinctions which are practically
unnecessary," and will not admit " that we can speak our minds
any less distinctly than our ancestors could, with all their apparatus
of inflexions " ; gender is a luxury which any language can well
afford to dispense with, but language is impoverished by the
obliteration of the subjunctive mood. The giving up of grammatical
endings is akin to wastefulness, and the excessive loss in English
makes truly for decay (L 31, 73, 74, 76, 77, 84, 85 ; G 51, 105, 104).
XVn.— § 4. The Scientific Attitude.
Why are all such expressions either of depreciation or of partial
appreciation of the modern languages so utterly unsatisfactory ?
One reason is that they are so vague and dependent on a general
feeling of inferiority or the reverse, instead of being based on a
detailed comparative estimation of real facts in linguistic structure.
If, therefore, we want to arrive at a scientific answer to the question
" Decay or progress ? " we must examine actual instances of changes,
but must take particular care that these instances are not chosen
at random, but are typical and characteristic of the total structure
of the languages concerned. What is wanted is not a comparison
of isolated facts, but the establishment of general laws and ten-
dencies, for only through such can we hope to decide whether
or no we are justified in using terms like ' development ' and
' evolution ' in linguistic history.
The second reason why the earlier pronouncements quoted
above do not satisfy us is that their authors nowhere raise the
question of the method by which linguistic value is to be measured,
824 PROGRESS OR DECAY ? [ch. xvii
by what standard and what tests the comparative merits of
languages or of forms are to be ascertained. Those linguists
who looked upon language as a product of nature were by that
very fact precluded from establishing a rational basis for deter-
mining linguistic values ; nor is it possible to find one if we look
at things from the one-sided point of view of the linguistic historian.
An almost comical instance of this is found when Curtius {Sprach-
wiss. u. cluss. phil. 39) saj's that the Greek accusative poda is
better than Sanskrit padam, because it is possible at once to see
that it belongs to the third declension. What is to be taken into
account is of course the interests of the speaking community,
and if we consistently consider language as a set of human actions
with a definite end in view, namely, the communication of thoughts
and feelings, then it becomes easy to find tests bj^ which to measure
linguistic values, for from that point of view it is evident that
THAT LANGUAGE RANKS HIGHEST ^VHICH GOES FARTHEST IN THE
ART OF ACCOaiPLISHING MUCH WITH LITTLE MEANS, OR, IN OTHER
WORDS, W^HICH IS ABLE TO EXPRESS THE GREATEST AMOUNT OF
MEANING WT;TH THE SIMPLEST MECHANISM.
The estimation has to be thoroughly and frankly anthropo-
centric. This may be a defect in other sciences, in which it is
a merit on the part of the investigator to be able to abstract
himself from human considerations ; in linguistics, on the contrary,
on account of the very nature of the object of study, one must
constantly look to the human interest, and judge everj'thing from
that, and from no other, point of view. Otherwise we run the
risk of going astray in all directions.
It will be noticed that my formula contains two requirements :
it demands a maximum of efficiency and a minimum of effort.
Efficiency means expressiveness, and effort means bodily and
mental labour, and thus the formula is simply one of modern
energetics. But unfortimately we are in possession of no method
by wliich to measure either expressiveness or effort exact Ij-, and
in cases of conflict it may be difficult to decide to which of the
two sides we are to attach the greater importance, how great a
surplus of efficiency is required to counterbalance a surplus
of exertion, or inversely. Still, in many cases no doubt can
arise, and we are often able to state progress, because there
is either a clear gain in efficiency or a diminution of exertion,
or both.
There is one objection wliich is likely to present itself to many
of my readers, namely, that natives handle their language without
the least exertion or effort (cf. XIV § 6, p. 262). Madvig (1857,
73 ff. = Kl 260 ff.) admits that a simplification in linguistic structure
will make the language easier to learn for foreigners, but denies
§4] THE SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDE 325
that it means increased ease for the native. Similarly Wechssler
(L 149) says that " dcr begrifif der schwierigkeit und unbequemheit
fiir die einheimischen nicht existiert." I might quote against
him his countryman Gabclentz, who expressly says that the diffi-
culties of the German languages are felt by natives, a view that
is endorsed by Schuchardt in various places.^ To my mind there
is not the slightest doubt that different languages differ very
much in easiness even to native speakers. In the chapters devoted
to cliildren we have already seen that the numerous mistakes
made by them in every possible way testify to the labour involved
in learning one's own language. This labour must naturally be
greater in the case of a highly complicated linguistic structure
with man}^ rules and still more exceptions to the rules, than in
languages constructed simply and regularly.
Nor is the difficulty of correct speech confined to the first
mastering of the language. Even to the native who has spoken
the same language from a child, its daily use involves no small
amount of exertion. Under ordinary circumstances he is not
conscious of any exertion in speaking ; but such a want of con-
scious feeling is no proof that the exertion is absent. And it is
a strong argument to the contrary that it is next to impossible
for you to speak correctly if you are suffering from excessive
mental work ; you will constantly make slips in grammar and
idiom as well as in pronunciation ; you have not the same com-
mand of language as under normal conditions. If you have to
speak on a difficult and unfamiliar subject, on which you would
not like to say anything but what is to the point or strictlj'' justi-
fiable, you will sometimes find that the thoughts themselves claim
so much mental energy that there is none left for speaking with
elegance, or even with complete regard to grammar : to your
own vexation you will have a feeling that your plu-ases are confused
and your language incorrect. A pianist may practise a difficult
piece of music so as to have it " at his fingers' ends " ; under
ordinary circumstances he will be able to play it quite mechanically,
without ever being conscious of effort ; but, nevertheless, the
effort is there. How great the effort is appears when some
day or other the musician is ' out of humoiu',' that is, when
his brain is at work on other subjects or is not in its usual
working order. At once his execution will be stumbling and
faulty.
1 Cf. also what Paul says (P 144) about one point in German grammar
(strong and weak forms of adjectives) : " But the difficulty of the correct
mamtenance of the distinction is shown in numerous offences made by
writers against the rules of grammar " — of course, not only by writers, but
by ordinary speakers as well.
826 PROGRESS OR DECAY? [ch. xvii
XVn.— § 5. Final Answer.
I may here anticipate the reisultfi of the followhig investigation
and say that in all those instances in which we are able to examine
the history of any language for a sufficient length of time, we
find that languages have a progressive tendency. But if languages
progress towards greater perfection, it is not in a bee-line, nor
are all the changes we witness to be considered steps in the right
direction. The only thing I maintain is that the sum total of these
changes, when we compare a remx)te period with the jiT^sent time,
shows a surplus of progressive over retrogressive or indifferent changes,
so that the structure of modern languages is nearer perfection
than that of ancient languages, if we take them as wholes instead
of picking out at random some one or other more or less signifi-
cant detail. And of course it must not be imagined that pro-
gress has been achieved through deliberate acts of men conscious
that they were improving their mother-tongue. On the contrary,
many a step in advance has at first been a slip or even a
blunder, and, as in other fields of human activity, good results
have only been won after a good deal of bungling and ' muddling
along.' ^ My attitude towards this question is the same as that
of Leslie Stephen, who writes in a letter {Life 454) : " I have a
perhaps unreasonable amount of belief, not in a millennium, but
in the world on the whole blundering rather forwards than
backwards,"
Schleicher on one occasion used the fine simile : " Our words,
as contrasted with Gothic words, are like a statue that has been
rolling for a long time in the bed of a river till its beautiful limbs
have been worn ofif, so that now scarcely anjrthing remains but a
polished stone cylinder with faint indications of what it once was "
(D 34). Let us turn the tables by asking : Suppose, however,
that it would be quite out of the question to place the statue on
a pedestal to be admired ; what if, on the one hand, it was not
ornamental enough as a work of art, and if, on the other hand,
human well-being was at stake if it was not serviceable in a rolhng-
mill : which would then be the better — a rugged and unwieldy
statue, making difficulties at every rotation, or an even, smooth,
easygoing and well-oiled roller ?
After these preliminary considerations we may now proceed
to a comparative examination of the chief differences between
ancient and modern stages of our Western European languages.
1 It has often been pointed out how Great Britain has ' blundered '
into creating her world-wide Empire, and Gretton, in The King's Govern-
ment (1914), applies the same view to the development of governmental
institutions.
§ 6] SOUNDS 327
XVn.— § 6. Sounds.
The student who goes through the chapters devoted to sound
changes in historical and comparative grammars will have great
difficulty in getting at any great lines of development or general
tendencies : everything seems just haphazard and fortuitous ; a
long i is here shortened and there diphthongized or lowered into e,
etc. The history of sounds is dependent on surroundings in many,
though not in all circumstances, but surroundings do not always
act in the same way ; in short, there seem to be so many con-
flicting tendencies that no universal or even general rules can be
evolved from all these ' sound laws,* Still less would it seem
possible to state anything about the comparative value of the
forms before and after the change, for it does not seem to matter
a bit for the speaking community whether it says stdn as in Old
English or sto7ie as now, and thus in innumerable cases. Nay,
from one point of view it may seem that any change militates
against the object of language (cf. Wechssler L 28), but this is
true only of the very moment when the change sets in while people
are accustomed to the old sound (or the old signification), and
even then the change is only injurious provided it impedes under-
standing or renders understanding less easy, which is far from
always being the case.
There is one scholar who has asserted the existence of a uni-
versal progressive tendency in languages, or, as he calls it, a
humanization of language, namely Baudouin de Courtenay {Ver-
menschlichung der Sprache, 1893). He is chiefly thinking of the
somid system,^ and he maintains that there is a tendency towards
eliminating the innermost articulations and using instead sounds
that are formed nearer to the teeth and lips. Thus some back
(postpalatal, velar) consonants become p, b, while others develop
into s sounds ; cf . Slav slovo ' word ' with Lat. clvx), etc. Baudouin
also mentions the frequent palatalization of back consonants, as in
French and Italian ce, ci, ge, gi, but as this is due to the influence
of the following front vowel, it should not perhaps be mentioned
as a universal tendency of human language. It is further said
that throat sounds, which play such a great role in Semitic languages,
have been discarded in most modern languages. But it may be
objected that sometimes throat sounds do develop in modern
periods, as in the Danish ' st0d ' and in English dialectal bu'er for
^ In the realm of significations he sees the ' humanization ' of language
exclusively in the development of abstract terms. An important point
of disagreement between Baudouin and myself is in regard to morphology,
where he sees only ' oscillations ' in historical times, in which he is unable
to discover a continuous movement in any definite direction, while I main-
tain that languages here manifest a definite progressive tendency.
328 PROGRESS OR DECAY ? [ch. xvii
butter, etc. A universal tendency of sounds to move away from
the throat cannot be said to be firml}' established ; but for our
purpose it is more important to sa}'' that even were it true, the
value of such a tendency for the speaking community would not
be great enough to justify us in speaking of progress towards a
truly ' human ' language as opposed to the more beastlike language
of our primeval ancestors. It is true that Baudouin (p. 25) says
that it is possible to articulate in the front and upper part with
less effort and with greater precision than in the interior and
lower parts of the speaking apparatus, but if this is true with regard
to the mouth proper, it cannot be maintained with regard to the
vocal chords, where very important effects may be produced in the
most precise way by infinitely little exertion. Thus in no single
point can I see that Baudouin de Courtenay has made out a strong
case for his conception of ' humanization of language.'
XVn.— § 7. Shortenings.
But there is another phonetic tendency which is much more
universal and infinitely more valuable than the one asserted by
Baudouin de Courtenay, namel}?-, the tendency to shorten words.
Words get shorter and shorter in consequence of a great many
of those changes that we see constantly going on in all languages :
vowels in weak syllables are pronounced more and more indis-
tinctly and finally disappear altogether, as when OE. Ivfu, stdnas,
sende, through ME. luve, stanes, sende with pronounced e's, have
become our modern monosjilables love, stones, send, or when
Latin bonum, homo, viginti have become Fr. bon, on, vingt, and
Lat. bona, hominem, Fr. bonne, homme, where the vowel was kejDt,
because it was a or protected by the consonant group, but has
now also disappeared in normal pronunciation. Final vowels
have been dropped extensively in Danish and German dialects,
and so have the w's and i's in Russian, which are now kept in the
spelling merely as signs of the quality of the preceding consonant.
It would be easy to multiply instances. Nor are the consonants
more stable ; the dropping of final ones is seen most easily in
Modern French, because they are retained in spelling, as in tout,
vers, champ, chant, etc. In the two last examples two con-
sonants have disappeared, the m and n, however, leaving a trace
in the nasalized pronunciation of the vowel, as also in bon, nom,
etc. Final r and I often disappear in Fr. words like quaire, simple,
and medial consonants have been dropped in such cases as cote
from coste, bete from beste, saiif [so'f] from salvo, etc. We have
corresponding omissions in English, where in very old times n
was dropped in such cases as tis, five, other, while the German
§7] SHORTENINGS 829
forms inis, fiinf, ander have kept the old consonants ; in more
recent times I was dropped in half, calm, etc., gh [x] in ligJit, bought,
etc., and r in the prevalent pronunciation of varm, part, etc. Initial
consonants are more firmly fixed in many languages, yet we see
them lost in the E. combinations kn, gn, ivr, where k, g, w used to
be sounded, e.g. in kjioiv, gnatu, urong. Consonant assimilation
means in most cases the same thing as dropping of one consonant,
for no trace of the consonant is left, at any rate after the compen-
sating lengthening has been given up, as is often the case, e.g. in
E. cupboard, blackguard [kAbod, blsega'd].
So far we have given instances of what might be called the most
regular or constant types of phonetic change leading to shorter
forms ; but the same result is the natural outcome of a process
which occurs more sporadicallj\ This is haplology, by which one
sound or one group of sounds is jjronounced once only instead of
twice, the hearer taking it through a kind of acoustic delusion as
belonging both to what precedes and to what follows. Examples
are a goo{d) deal, ivha{t) to do, nex{t) time, simp{le)ly, England
from Englalaiul, eighteen from OE. eahtatiene, honesty from
honestete, Glou{ce)ster, Worcester [wusta], familiarly pro{ba)bly,
vulgarly lib{ra)ry, Febr{uar)y. From other languages may be
quoted Fr. cont{re)r6le, ido(lo)ldtre, Neu{ve)ville, Lat. nu{tri)trix,
8ti{pi)pendium, It. qual{che)cosa, cosa for che cosa, etc. (Cf. my
LPh 11, 9.)
The accumulation through centuries of such influences results
in those instances of seemingly violent contractions with
which every student of historical linguistics is familiar. One
classical example has already been mentioned above, E. had,
corresponding to Gothic habaidedeima ; other examples are lord,
with its three or four sounds, which was formerly laverd, and in
Old English hldford ; the old Gothonic form of the same word
contained indubitably as manj^^ as twelve sounds ; Latin augustum
has in French through aoust become aout, pronounced [au] or even
[u] ; Latin ocidum has shrunk into four sounds in Italian occhio,
three in Sjpanish ojo, and two in Fr. ceil ; It, medesimo, Sp. mismo
and Fr. 7neme represent various stages of the shrinking of
Lat. metipsimum ; cf. also Fr. menage from mansion- + -aticum
Primitive Norse ne veit ek hvat ' not know I what ' has
become Dan. noget ' something,' often pronounced [no""6] or
[no-6].
In all these cases the shortening process has taken centuries,
but we have other instances in which it has come about quite
suddenly, without any intermediate stages, namely, in those
stump-words which we have already considered (Ch. IX § 7 ; cf ^
XIV § 12 on corresponding syntactical shortenings).
880 PROGRESS OR DECAY? [ch. xvii
XVII.— §8. Objections. Result.
There cannot tlierefore be the slightest doubt that the general
tendency of all languages is towards shorter and shorter forms :
the ancient languages of our family, Sanskrit, Zend, etc., abound
in very long words ; the further back we go, the greater the number
of sesquipedalia. It cannot justly be objected that we see some-
times examples of phonetic lengthenings, as in E. sovnd from ME.
soun, Fr. son, E. whiht, amorigst from ME. u-hiles, amonges ; a
similar excrescence of t after s is seen in G. obsi,jjabst, Swcd. eljest
and others ; after n, t is added in G.jemand, nicviand (two syllables,
while there is nothing added to the trisyllabic jedermann) — for
even if such instances might be multiplied, their number and
importance is infinitely smaller than those in tlie opposite direction.
(On the seeming insertion of d in ndr, see p. 264, note). In some
cases wc Avitness a certain reaction against \^ord forms that are
felt to be too short and therefore too indistinct (see Ch. XV § 1,
XX § 9), but on the whole such instances are few and far between :
the prevailing tendency is towards shorter forms.
Another objection must be dealt with here. It is said that
it is only the purely phonetic development that tends to make
words shorter, but that in languages as wholes words do not become
shorter, because non-phonetic forces coimteract the tendency.
In modem languages we thus have some analogical formations
which are longer than the forms they have supplanted, as when
books has one sound more than OE. bcc, or when G. beiregtc takes the
place of beicog. Further, we have in modern languages many auxili-
ary words (prepositions, modal verbs) in places where they were
formerly not required. That this objection is not valid if we
take the whole of the language into consideration may perhaps
be proved statistically if we compute the length of the same long
text in various languages : the Gospel of St. Matthew contains
in Greek about 39,000 syllables, in Swedish about 35,000, in German
33,000, in Danish 32,500, in English 29,000, and in Chinese only
17,000 (the figures for the Authorized English Version and for
Danish are my own calculation ; the other figures I take from
Tegner SM 51, Hoops in Anglia, Beiblait 1896, 293, and Sturtevant
LCh 175). In comparing these figures it should even be taken
into consideration that translations naturally tend to be more
long-winded and verbose than the original, so that the real gain
in shortness may be greater than indicated. ^
^ On the other hand, it is not, perhaps, fair to count the number of
syllables, as these may vary very considerably, and some languages favour
syllables with heavy consonant groups unkno^vn in other tongues. The
most rational measure of length wo\ild be to coimt the numbers of distinct
(not sounds, but) articulations of separate speech organs — but that task
is at any rate beyond my powers.
§8] OBJECTIONS. RESULT 881
Next, wo come to consider the question whether the tendencj'
towards shorter forms is a valuable asset in the development of
languages or the reverse. The answer cannot be doubtful. Take
the old example, English had and Gothic Jiabaidedeima : the
English form is preferable, on the principle that anyone who has
to choose between walking one mile and four miles will, other
things being equal, prefer the shorter cut. It is true that if we
take words to be self-existing natural objects, Jiabaidedeima has
the air of a giant and had of a mere pigmy : this valuation lies
at the bottom of many utterances ev^en by recent linguistic thinkers,
as when Sweet (H 10) speaks of the vanishing of sounds as " a
purely destructive change." But if we adopt the anthropocentric
standard which has been explained above, and realize that what
we call a word is really and primarily the combined action of
human muscles to produce an audible effeet, we see that the shorten-
ing of a form means a diminution of effort and a saving of time
in the communication of our thoughts. If, as it is said, had has
suffered from wear and tear in the long course of time, this means
that the wear and tear of people now using this form in their speech
is less than if they were still encumbered with the old giant habai-
dedeirna. Voltaire was certainly very wide of the mark when
he wrote : " C'est le propre des barbares d'abreger les mots " —
long and clumsy words are rather to be considered as signs
of barbarism, and short and nimble ones as signs of advanced
culture.
Though I thus hold that the development towards shorter
forms of expression is on the whole progressive, i.e. beneficial, I
should not like to be too dogmatic on this point and assert that
it is always beneficial : shortness may be carried to excess and
thus cause obscurity or difi&culty of understanding. This may
be seen in the telegraphic stjde as well as in the literary style of
some writers too anxious to avoid prolixity (some of Pope's lines
might be quoted in illustration of the classical : brevis esse laboro,
obscurus fio). But in the case of the language of a whole com-
munity the danger certainly is very small indeed, for there will
always be a natural and wholesome reaction against such excessive
shortness. There is another misunderstanding I want to guard
against when saying that the shortening makes on the whole
for progress. It must not be thought that I lay undue stress
on this point, which is after all chiefly concerned with a greater
or smaller amount of physical or muscular exertion : this should
neither be underrated ncr overrated ; but it will be seen that
neither in my former work nor in this does the consideration of
this point of mere shortness or length take up more than a fraction
of the space allotted to the more psychical sides of the question,
332 PROGRESS OR DECAY? [en. xvii
to which we shall now turn our attention and to which I attach
much more importance.
XVII.— § 9. Verbal Forms.
We may here recur to Schleicher's example, E. had and Gothic
habaidedeima. It is not only in regard to economy of muscular
exertion that the former carries the day over the latter. Had
corresponds not only to habaidedeima, but it unites in one short
form everything expressed by the Gothic habaida, habaides, habai-
dedu, habaideduts, habaidedum, habaideduy, habaidedun, habaidedjau,
habaidedeis, habaidedi, habaidedeiwa, habaidedeits, habaidedeima,
habaldedeiy, habaidedeina — separate forms for two or three persons
in three numbers in two distinct moods ! It is clear, therefore,
that the English form saves a considerable amount of brainwork
to all English-speaking people — not only to children, who have
fewer forms to learn, but also to adults, who have fewer forms
to choose between and to keep distinct whenever they open their
mouths to speak. Someone might, perhaps, say that on the
other hand English people are obliged always to join personal
pronouns to their verbal forms to indicate the person, and that
this is a draAvback counterbalancing the advantage, so that the
net result is six of one and half a dozen of the other. This, how-
ever, would be a very suj)erficial objection. For, in the fii'st place,
the personal pronouns are the same for all tenses and moods, but
the endings are not. Secondly, the possession of endings does
not exempt the Goths from having separate personr.l pronouns ;
and whenever these are used, as is very often the case in the first
and second persons, those parts of the verbal endings which
indicate jDersons are superfluous. They are no less superfluous
in those extremely numerous cases in which the subject is either
separately expressed by a noun or is understood from the preceding
proposition, thus in the vast majority of the cases of the third
person. If we compare a few pages of Old English prose with a
modern rendering we shall see that in spite of the reduction in
the latter of the person-indicating endings, personal pronouns are
not required in any great number of sentences in which they were
dispensed with in Old English. So that, altogether, the numerous
endings of the older languages must be considered uneconomical.
If Gothic, Latin and Greek, etc., biu-den the memory by the num-
ber of their flexional endings, they do so even more b}'' the many
irregularities in the formation of these endings. In all the lan-
guages of this t3'^pe, anomaly and flexion invariablj^ go together.
The intricacies of verbal flexion in Latin and Greek are well known,
and it requires no small amount of mental energy to master the
§9] VERBAL FORMS 888
various modes of forming the present stems in Sanskrit — to take
onlj' one instance. Many of these irregularities disappear in
course of time, chiefly, but not exchisively, through analogical
formations, and though it is true that a certain number of new
irregularities may come into existence, their number is relatively
small when compared with those that have been removed. Now,
it is not only the forms themselves that are irregular in the early
languages, but also their uses : logical simplicity prevails much
more in Modern English syntax than in either Old Enghsh or
Latin or Greek. But it is hardly necessary to point out that
gro\^^ng regularity in a language means a considerable gain to all
those who learn it or speak it.
It has been said, however, by one of the foremost authorities
on the history of English, that " in spite of the many changes
which this system [i.e. the complicated sj^stem of strong verbs]
has undergone in detail, it remains just as intricate as it was in
Old English " (Bradley, The Making of English 51). It is true
that the way in which vowel change is utilized to form tenses
is rather complicated in Modern English [drink drank, give gave,
hold held, etc.), but otherwise an enormous simplification has taken
place. The personal endings have been discarded with the ex-
ception of -s in the third person singular of the present (and the
obsolete ending -est in the second person, and then this has been
regularized, thou sangest having taken the place of y>u sunge) ; the
change of vowel in ic sang, fu sunge, we sungon in the indicative
and ic sunge, we sungen in the subjunctive has been given up,
and so has the accompan;ying change of consonant in many cases.
Thus, instead of the following forms, ceosan, ceose, ceosep, ceosay>,
ceosen, cea^, curon, cure, curen, coren, we have the following modern
ones, which are both fewer in number and less irregular : choose,
chooses, chose, chosen — certainly an advance from a more to a less
intricate system (cf. GS § 178).
An extreme, but by no means unique example of the simpli-
fication foimd in modern languages is the English cut, which can
serve both as present and past tense, both as singular and plural,
both in the first, second and third persons, both in the infinitive,
in the imperative, in the indicative, in the subjunctive, and as a
past (or passive) participle ; compare with this the old languages
with their separate forms for different tenses, moods, numbers
and persons ; and remember, moreover, that the identical form,
without any inconvenience being occasioned, is also used as a
noun (a cut), and you will admire the economy of the living tongue.
A characteristic featm-e of the structure of languages in their
early stages is that each form contains in itself several minor
modifications whicii are often in the later stages expressed separately
884 PROGRESS OR DECAY? [ch. xvii
by means of auxiliary words. Such a word as Latin cantavisset
unites into one inseparable whole the equivalents of six ideas :
(1) 'sing,' (2) pluperfect, (3) that indefinite modification of the
verbal idea which we term subjunctive, (4) active, (5) third person,
and (6) singular.
XVn.— § 10. Synthesis and Analysis.
Such a form, therefore, is much more concrete than the forms
found in modern languages, of which sometimes two or more
have to be combined to express the composite notion which was
rendered formerly by one. Now, it is one of the consequences
of this change that it has become easier to express certain minute,
but by no means unimportant, shades of thought by laying extra
stress on some particular element in the speech-group. Latin
cantaveram amalgamates into one indissoluble whole what in E.
/ Jiad sung is anal3-8ed into three components, so that you can at
will accentuate the personal element, the tim.e element or the
action. Now, it is possible (who can affirm and who can deny it ?)
that the Romans could, if necessary, make some difference in
speech between cantaveram (non saltaveram) ' I had sung,' and
cantaverdm (non cantabam), ' I had sung ' ; but even then, if it
was the personal element which was to be emphasized, an ego
had to be added. Even the possibility of laying stress on the
temporal element broke down in forms like scripsi, minui, sum,
audiam, and innumerable others. It seems obvious that the
freedom of Latin in this respect must have been inferior to that of
English. Moreover, in English, the three elements, ' I,' ' had,' and
' sung,' can in certain cases be arranged in a different order, and
other words can be inserted between them in order to modify
and qualify the meaning of the sentence. Note also the concise-
ness of such answers as " Who had sung ? " "I had." " "S'^Tiat
had you done ? " " Sung." " I believe he has enjoyed himself."
"I know he has." And contrast the Latin "Cantaveram et
saltaveram et luseram et riseram " with the English " I had sung
and danced and played and laughed." What would be the Latin
equivalent of " Tom never did and never will beat me " ?
In such cases, analysis means suppleness, and sjmthesis means
rigidity ; in analytic languages you have the power of kaleidosco-
pically arranging and rearranging the elements that in sjTithetic
forms like cantaveram are in rigid connexion and lead a Siamese-
twin sort of existence. The synthetic forms of Latin verbs remind
one of those languages all over the world (North America, South
America, Hottentot, etc.) in which such ideas as 'father' or
' mother ' or ' head ' or ' eye ' carmot be expressed separately,
§10] SYNTHESIS AND ANALYSIS 885
but only in connexion with an indication of whose father, etc.,
one is speaking about : in one language the verbal idea (in the
finite moods), in the other the nominal idea, is necessarily fused
with the personal idea.
XVII.— § 11. Verbal Concord.
This formal inseparability of subordinate elements is at the
root of those rules of concord wliich play such a large role in the
older languages of our Aryan family, but which tend to disappear
in the more recent stages. By concord we mean the fact that a
secondary word (adjective or verb) is made to agree with the
primary word (substantive or subject) to which it belongs. Verbal
concord, by which a verb is governed in number and person by
the subject, has disappeared from spoken Danish, where, for
instance, the present tense of the verb meaning ' to travel ' is
uniformly rejser in all persons of both numbers ; while the written
language till towards the end of the nineteenth century kept up
artificially the plural rejse, although it had been dead in the spoken
language for some three hundred years. The old flexion is an
article of luxury, as a modification of the idea belonging properly
to the subject is here transferred to the predicate, where it has
no business ; for when we say ' maendene rejse ' (die manner reisen),
we do not mean to imply that they undertake several journeys
(cf. Madvig Kl 28, Nord. tsk. /. filol., n.r. 8. 134).
By getting rid of this superfluity, Danish has got the start
of the more archaic of its Aryan sister-tongues. Even English,
which has in most respects gone farthest in simplifjdng its flexional
system, lags here behind Danish, in that in the present tense of
most verbs the third person singular deviates fi'om the other
persons by ending in -s, and the verb he preserves some other
traces of the old concord system, not to speak of the form in -st
used with thou in the language of religion and poetry. Small
and unimportant as these survivals may seem, still they are in
some instances impediments to the free and easy expression of
thought. In Danish, for instance, there is not the slightest diffi-
culty in saying ' enten du eller jeg har uret,' as har is used both
in the first and second persons singular and plural. But when
an Englishman tries to render the same simple sentiment he ia
baffled ; ' either you or I are \\Tong ' is felt to be incorrect, and
so is ' either you or I am wrong ' ; he might saj'- ' either you are
wrong, or I,' but then this manner of putting it, if grammatically
admissible (with or without the addition of am), is somewhat stiff
and awkward ; and there is no perfectly natiu-al way out of the
difficulty, for Dean Alford's proposal to say ' either you or I is
386 PROGRESS OR DECAY [ch. xvii
Avrong ' {The Queen's Engl. 155) is not to be recommended. The
advantage of having verbal forms that are no respecters of persons
is seen directly in such perfectly natural expressions as ' either
you or I must be wrong,' or ' either you or I may be wrong,'
or ' either you or I began it ' — and indirectly from the more or
less artificial rules of Latin and Greek grammars on this point ;
in the following passages the Gordian knot is cut in different waj's :
Shakespeare LLL v. 2. 346 Nor God, nor I, deligJits in perjur'd
men | id. As i. 3. 99 Thou and I am one | Tennyson Poet. W. 369
For whatsoever knight against us came Or I or he have easily over-
thrown I Galsworthy D 30 Am I and all women really what they
think us ? | Shakespeare H4B iv. 2. 121 Heauen, and not wee,
haue safely fought to day (Folio, where the Quarto has : God,
and not wee, hath. . . .)
The same difificulty often appears in relative clauses ; Alford
(I.e. 152) calls attention to the fact of the Prayer Book reading
" Thou art the God that doeth wonders," whereas the Bible version
runs " Thou art the God that doest wonders." Compare also :
Shakespeare As ni. 5. 55 'Tis not her glasse, but you that
flatters her | id. Meas. ii. 2. 80 It is the law, not I, condemne your
brother | Carlyle Fr. Rev. 38, There is none but you and I that has
the people's interest at heart (translated from : II n'y a que vous
et moi qui aimions le peuple).
In all such cases the construction in Danish is as easy and
natm-al as it generally is in the English preterit : "It was not her
glass, but you that flattered her." The disadvantage of having
verbal forms wliich enforce the indication of person and number
is perhaps seen most strikingly in a French sentence like this
from Romain Rolland's Jean Christophe (7. 221) : " Ce mot, naturelle-
ment, ce n'est ni toi, ni moi, qui pouvons le dire " — the verb agrees
with that which cannot be the subject (we) ! For what is meant
is really : ' celui qui pent le dire, ce n'est ni moi ni toi.'
CHAPTER XVIII
PROGRESS
§ 1, Xominal Forms. § 2. Irregularities Original. § 3. Syntax. § 4. Ob-
jections. § 5. Word Order. § 6. Gender. § 7. Nominal Concord.
§ 8. The English Genitive. § 9. Bantu Concord. § 10. Word Order
Again. § 11. Compromises. § 12. Order Beneficial ? § 13. Word
Order and Simplification. § 14. Summary.
XVm.— § 1. Nominal Forms.
In the flexion of substantives and adjectives we see phenomena
corresponding to those we have just been considering in the verbs.
The ancient languages of our family have several forms where
modern languages content themselves with fewer ; forms originally
kept distinct are in course of time confused, either through a
phonetic obliteration of differences in the endings or through
analogical extension of the functions of one form. The single
form good is now used where OE. used the forms god, godne, gode,
godum, godes, godre, godra, goda, godan, godena ; Ital. uomo or
French hornme is used for Lat. homo, hominem, homini, homine
— nay, if we take the spoken form into consideration, Fr. [om]
corresponds not only to these Latin forms, but also to homines,
hominibus. Where the modern language has one or two cases,
in an earlier stage it had three or four, and still earlier seven or
eight. The difficulties inherent in the older system cannot, however,
he measured adequately by the number of forms each word is
susceptible of, but are multiplied by the numerous differences
in the formation of the same case in different classes of declension ;
sometimes we even find anomalies which affect one word only.
Those who would be inclined to maintain that new irregularities
may and do arise in modern languages which make up for what-
ever earlier irregularities have been discarded in the course of
the historical development will do well to compile a systematic
list of all the flexional forms of two different stages of the same
languages, arranged exactly according to the same principles :
this is the only way in which it is possible really to balance losses
and profits in a language. This is what I have done in my
Progress in Language §111 ff. (reprinted in ChE §9 ff.), where
I have contrasted the case systems of Old and Modern English :
22 337
888 PROGRESS [ch. xviii
the result is that the former system takes 7 (+ 3) pages, and the
latter only 2 pages. Those pages, with their abbreviations and
tabulations, do not, perhaps, offer very entertaining reading, but
I think thej' are more illustrative of the real tendencies of language
than cither isolated examples or abstract reasonings, and thej''
cannot fail to convince any impartial reader of the enormous gain
achieved through the changes of the intervening nine hundred
years in the general structure of the English language.
For our general purposes it will be -worth our while here to
quote what Friedrich Miiller (Gr i. 2. 7) says about a totally
different language : " Even if the Hottentot distinguishes ' he,'
' she ' and ' it,' and strictly separates the singular from the plural
number, yet by bis expressing ' he ' and ' she ' by one sound in
the third person, and by another in the second, ho manifests that
he has no percej)tion at all of our two grammatical categories of
gender and number, and consequently those elements of his lan-
guage that run porallel to our signs of gender and number must
be of an entirely different nature." Fr. Miiller should not
perhaj)s throw too many stones at the poor Hottentots, for his
own native tongue is no better than a glass house, and we might
mth equal justice say, for instance : " As the Germans express
the plural number in different manners in words like gott — gotter,
hand — hdnde, vater — vdter, frau—Jrauen, etc., they must be en-
tirely lacking in the sense of the category of number." Or let
us take such a language as Latin ; there is nothing to show that
dominus bears the same relation to do7nini as verbum to verba,
urbs to urbes, mensis to menses, cornu to cormia, fnictas to fructus,
etc. ; even in the same M'ord the idea of plurality is not expressed
by the same method for all the cases, as is shown by a com-
parison of dominus — domini, dominam — dominos, domino— dominis,
domini — dominorum. Fr. Muller is no doubt wrong in saying
that such anomalies preclude the speakers of the language from
conceiving the notion of plurality ; but, on the other hand, it
seems evident that a language in which a difference so simple
even to the understanding of very young children as that between
one and more than one can only be expressed by a complicated
apparatus must rank lower than another language in which this
difference has a single expression for all cases in Mhich it occurs.
In this respect, too, Modern English stands higher than the oldest
English, Latin or Hottentot.
XVin.— §2. Irregularities Original.
It was the belief of the older school of comparativists that
each case had originally one single ending, which was added to
§2] IRREGULARITIES ORIGINAL 339
all nouns indifferently (e.g. -as for the genitive sg.), and that the
irregularities found in the existing oldest languages were of later
growth ; the actually existing forms were then derived from the
supposed unity form by all kinds of phonetic tricks and dodges.
Now people have begun to see that the primeval language cannot
have been quite uniform and regular (see, for instance, Walde
in Streitberg's Qesch., 2. 194 ff.). If we look at facts, and not
at imagined or reconstructed forms, we are forced to acknowledge
that in the oldest stages of our family of languages not only did
the endings present the spectacle of a motley variety, but the
kernel of the word was also often subject to violent changes in
different cases, as when it had in different forms different accentua-
tion and (or) different apophony, or as when in some of the most
frequently occurring words some cases were formed from one
' stem ' and others from another, for instance, the nominative
from an r stem and the oblique cases from an n stem. In the
common word for ' water ' Greek has preserved both stems, nom.
hudor, gen. hudatos, where a stands for original [anj. Whatever
the origin of this change of stems, it is a phenomenon belonging
to the earlier stages of our languages, in which we also sometimes
find an alteration between the r stem in the nominative and a
combination of the n and the r stems in the other cases, as in
Lat. jeciir ' liver,' jecinoris ; iter ' voyage,' itineris, which is
supposed to have sup]5lnnted iiinis, formed like feminis iroia femur.
In the later stages we always find a simplification, one single form
running through all cases ; tliis is either the nominative stem, as
in E. water, G. wasser (corresponding to Gr. hudor), or the oblique
case-stem, as in the Scandinavian forms, Old Norse vatn, Swed.
vatten, Dan. vand (corresponding to Gr. hudat-), or finally a con-
taminated form, as in the name of the Swedish lake Vdttern
(Noreen's explanation), or in Old Norse and Dan. skarn ' dirt,'
which has its r from a form like the Gr. skor, and its n from a
form like the Gr. genitive shatos (older [skantos]). The simplification
is carried furthest in English, where the identical form icater is
not only used unchanged where in the older languages difl'erent
case forms would have been used (' the M-ater is cold,' ' the surface
of the water,' ' he fell into the water,' ' he swims in the water '),
but also serves as a verb (' did you water the flowers ? '), and
as an adjunct as a quasi-adjective (' a water melon,' ' water
plants ').
In most cases irregularities have been done away with in the
waj'' here indicated, one of the forms (or stems) being generalized ;
but in other cases it may have happened, as Kretschmer supposes
(in Gercke and Nolde, Einleit. in die Altertumswiss, I, 501) that
irregular flexion caused a word to go out of use entirely ; thus
340 PROGRESS [en. xviii
in Modern Greek M^^ar was supplanted by suhoti} j)?iriar by pegadi,
h&dor by nerd, oils by aphti (= olion), kHon by skulli ; this possibly
also accounts for commando taking the place of Lat. jnbeo.
Some scholars maintain that the medieval languages were
more regular than their modern representatives ; but if we look
more closely into ^^'hat they mean, we shall see that they are not
speaking of any regularity in the sense in which the word has here
been used — the only regularity which is of importance to the
speakers of the language — but of the regular correspondence of
a language with some earlier language from which it is derived.
This is particularly the case with E. Littrc, who, in his essays on
L'Histoire de la Langiie Frangaise, was full of enthusiasm for Old
French, but chiefly for the fidelity with which it had preserved
some features of Ijatin. There was thus the old distinction of
two cases : nom. sg. murs, ace, sg. mur, and in the plural inversely
nom. mur and ace. murs, with its exact correspondence with Latin
murus, murum, pi. muri, muros. When this ' regie de Ts ' was
discovered, and the use or omission of s, which had hitherto been
looked upon as completely arbitrary in Old French, v/as thus
accounted for, scholars were apt to consider this as an admirable
trait in the old language which had been lost in modern French,
and the same view obtained with regard to the case distinction
found in other words, such as OFr. nom. maire, ace. majevr, or
nom. emperere, ace. empereur, corresponding to the Latin forms
with changing stress, major, majdrem, imjJerdtor, hnperatdrem,
etc. But, however interesting such things may be to the historical
linguist, there is no denying that to the users of French the modern
simpler flexion is a gain as compared with this more complex
system, " Des sprachhistorikers freud ist des sprachbrauchers
leid," as Schuchardt somewhere shrewdlj^ remarks.
XVni.— § 3. Syntax.
There were also in the old languages many irregularities in
the syntactic use of the cases, as when some verbs governed the
genitive and others the dative, etc. Even if it may be possible
in many instances to account historically for these uses, to the
speakers of the languages they must have apjjeared to be mere
caprices which had to be learned separately for each verb, and it
is therefore a great advantage when they have been gradually
done away with, as has been the case, to a great extent, even in
a language like German, which has retained many old case forms.
Thus verbs like entbekren, vergessen, bediirfen, u'ahrnehmen, which
formerly took the genitive, are now used more and more with the
^ Thus also the corresponding Lat. jecur by ficatum, Fr. foie.
§3] SYKTAX 341
simple accusative — a simplification ■\\iucli, among other things,
makes the construction of sentences in the passive voice easier
and more regular.
The advantage of discarding the old case distinctions is seen
in the ease Mdth which English and French speakers can say,
e.g., 'with or without my hat,' or 'in and round the church,'
while the correct German is ' mit meinem hut oder ohnc densclben '
and ' in der kirche und uin dieselbe ' ; Wackernagel writes :
" Was in ihm und um ihn und iiber ihm ist." When the preposi-
tions arc followed by a single substantive without case distinction,
German, of course, has the same simple construction as English,
e.g. ' mit oder ohne geld,' and sometimes even good ^vl■iters will
let themselves go and write ' um und neben dem hochaltare '
(Goethe), or ' Hire tochter wird meine frau mit oder gegen ihren
willen ' (these examjjles from Curme, German Grammar 191).
Cf. also : ' Ich kann deinem bruder nicht helfen und ihn unter-
stUtzen.'
Many extremely convenient idioms unknown in the older
synthetic languages have been rendered possible in English through
the doing away with the old case distinctions, such as : Genius,
demanding bread, is given a stone after its possessor's death (Shaw)
(cf . my ChE § 79) | he was offered, and declined, the office of
poet-laureate (Gosse) | the lad was spoken highly of | I love, and
am loved hy, my wife | these laws my readers, whom I consider
as my subjects, are bound to believe in and to obey (Fielding) |
he was heathenishly inclined to believe in, or to worship, the
goddess Nemesis (id.) | he rather rejoiced in, than regretted, lus
bruise (id.) | many a dim had she talked to, and turned away
from her father's door (ThackerajO | their earthly abode, which
has seen, and seemed almost to S3anpathize in, all their honour
(Ruskm).
XVm.— §4. Objections.
Against my view of the superiority of languages with few
case distinctions, Arwid Johannson, in a very able article (in
IF I, see especially p. 247 f.), has adduced a certain number of
ambiguous sentences from German :
Soweit die deutsche zunge klingt und gott im himmel
liedersingt [is gott nominative or dative ?) | Seinem landsmann,
dem er in seiner ganzen bildung ebensoviel verdankte, wie
Goethe (nominative or dative ?) | Doch wiirde die gesellschaft
der Indierin (genitive or dative ?) lastig gewesen sein | Dar-
in hat Caballero wohl nur einen konkurrenten, die Eliot,
welche freilich die spanische dichterin nicht ganz erreicht | Nur
842 PROGRESS [ch. xviii
Diopeithes feindet insgeheim dich an und die schwester des
Kimon und dein weib Tclesippa. (In the last tAvo sentences
what is the subject, and what the object ?)
According to Johannson, these passages show the disadvantages
of doing away with formal distinctions, for the sentences would
have been clear if each separate case had had its distinctive sign ;
" the greater the wealth of forms, the more intelligible the
speech." And they show, he says, that such ambiguities will
occur, even where the strictest rules of word order are observed.
I shall not urge that this is not exactly the case in the last sen-
tence if die schwester and dein weib are to be taken as accusatives,
for then an should have been placed at the very end of the sen-
tence ; nor that, in the last sentence but one, the mention of
George Eliot as the ' konkurrcnt ' of Fernan Caballero seems to
show a partiality to the Spanish authoress on the part of the
writer of the sentence, so that the reader is prepared to take
welche as the nominative case ; freilich would seem to point in the
same direction. But these, of course, are only trifling objections ;
the essential point is that we must grant the truth of Johannson 's
contention that we have here a flaw in the German language ;
the defects of its grammatical system may and do cause a certain
number of ambiguities. Neither is it difficult to find the reasons
of these defects by considering the structure of the language in
its entirety, and by translating the sentences in question into a
few other languages and comparing the results.
First, with regard to the formal distinctions between cases,
the really weak point cannot be the fe-vviiess of these endings,
for in that case we should expect the same sort of ambiguities
to be very common in English and Danish, where the formal
case distinctions are considerably fewer than in German ; but as
a matter of fact such ambiguities are more frequent in German
than in the other two languages. And, however paradoxical it
may seem at first sight, one of the causes of this is the greater
wealth of grammatical forms in German. Let us substitute
other words for the ambiguous ones, and we shall see that the
amphibology will nearly always disappear, because most other
words will have different forms in the two cases, e.g. :
Soweit die deutsche zunge klingt und dem allmdchtigen
(or, der allmdchtige) lieder singt | Seinem landsmann, dem er
ebensoviel verdankte, wie dem grossen dichter (or, der grosse
dichter) | Doch wiirde die gesellschaft des Indiers (or, dem
Indier) lastig gewesen sein | Darin hat Calderon wohl nur
einen konkurrcnten, Shakesijcare, wekher freilich rfen span-
§4] OBJECTIONS 848
iachen dichter nicht erreicht (or, deri . . . der spanische dich-
ter . . .) \ Niir Diopeithes feindct dich insgehoim an, und der
bruder des Kimon und sein freund T. (or, den bruder . . .
seinen freund).
It is this very fact that countless sentences of this sort are
perfectly clear which leads to the employment of similar construc-
tions even where the resulting sentence is by no means clear ;
but if all, or most, words were identical in the nominative and
the dative, like gott, or in the dative and genitive, \\kc der Indierin,
constructions like those used would be impossible to imagine in
a language meant to be an intelligible vehicle of thought. And
so the ultimate cause of the ambiguities is the inconsistency' in the
formation of the several cases. But this inconsistency is found
in all the old languages of the Arj'an farail}' : cases which in one
gender or with one class of stems are kept perfectly distinct,
are in others identical. I take some examples from Latin, because
this is perhaps the best known language of this type, but Gothic
or Old Slavonic would show inconsistencies of the same kind.
Domini is genitive singular and nominative plural (corresponding
to, e.g., verbi and verba) ; verba is nominative and accusative pi.
(corresponding to domini and dominos) ; domino is dative and
ablative ; domince gen. and dative singular and nominative plural ;
ie is accusative and ablative ; qui is singular and plural ; qum
singular fem. and plural fem. and neuter, etc. Hence, while patres
filios amunt or patres filii amant are i)erfectly clear, patres consules
amant allows of two interpretations ; and in how many wa3's
cannot such a proposition as Horativs et Yirgilius poetce Yarii
amid erant be construed ? Menenii patris munus may mean
' the gift of father Menenius,' or ' the gift of Menenius's father ' ;
expers illius periculi either ' free from that danger ' or ' free from
(sharing) that person's danger ' ; in an infinitive construction
with two accusatives, the only way to know which is the subject
and wliich the object is to consider the context, and that is not
always decisive, as in the oracular response given to the ^Eacide
P}Trhus, as quoted by Cicero from Ennius : " Aio te, iEacida,
Romanes vincere pos.se." Such drawbacks seem to be inseparable
from the structure of the highly flexional Aryan languages ; although
they are not logical consequences of a wealth of forms, yet his-
torically they cling to those languages which have the greatest
number of grammatical endings. And as we are here concerned
not with the question how to construct an artificial language
(and even there I should not ad\ase the adoption of many case
distinctions), but with the valuation of natural languages as
actually existing in their earlier and modern stages, we cannot
QU PROGRESS [CH. xviii
accept Johannson's verdict : " The greater the wealth of forms,
the more intelligible the speech."
XVm.— § 5. Word Order.
If the German sentences quoted above are ambiguous, it is
not only on account of the want of clearness in the forms employed,
but also on account of the German rules of word order. One rule
places the verb last in subordinate sentences, and in two of the
sentences there would be no ambiguity in principal sentences :
Die deutsche zunge klingt und singt cjott im himmel licder ; or,
Die deutsche zunge klingt, und gott im himmel singt lieder | Sie
erreicht freilich nicht die spanische dichterin ; or, Die spanische
dichtcrin erreicht sie freilich nicht. In one of the remaining sen-
tences the ambiguity is caused by the rule that the verb must be
placed immediately after an introductory subjunct : if we omit
doch the sentence becomes clear : Die gesellschaft der Indierin
uilrde liistig gewesen sein, or, Die gesellschaft iiiirde der Indierin
lastig gewesen sein. Here, again we see the ill consequences of
inconsistency of linguistic structure ; some of the rules for word
position serve to show grammatical relations, but in certain cases
they have to give waj'^ to other rules, which counteract this useful
pm-pose. If you change the order of words in a German sentence,
you will often find that the meaning is not changed, but the result
will be an unidiomatic construction (bad grammar) ; whWe in
English a transposition will often result in perfectly good grammar,
only the meaning will be an entirely different one from the original
sentence. This does not amount to saying that the German rules
of position are useless and the English ones all useful, but only
to sa3dng that in English word order is utilized to express difference
of meaning to a far greater extent than in German. '
One critic cites against me " one example, which figures in
almost every Rhetoric as a violation of clearness : And thus the
son the fervid sire address' d" and he adds : '" The use of a separate
form for nominative and accusative would clear up the ambiguity
immediately." The retort is obvious : no doubt it would, but
so would the use of a natural word order. Word order is just as
much a part of English grammar as case-endings are in other
languages ; a violation of the rules of word order may cause the
same Avant of intelligibility as the use of dominum instead of
dominus would in Latin. And if the example is found in almost
every English Rhetoric, I am glad to say that equallj'- ambiguous
sentences are \evy rare indeed in other English books. Even in
poetry, where there is such a thing as poetic licence, and where
the exigencies of rhj^thm and rime, as well as the fondness for
§5] WORD ORDER 345
archaic and out-of-the-way expressions, will often induce deviations
from the word order of prose, real ambiguity will very seldom
arise on that account. It is true that it has been disputed which
is the subject in Graj^'s line :
Aiid all the air a solemn stillness holds,
but then it does not matter much, for the ultimate understanding
of the line must be exactly the same whether the air holds stillness
or stillness holds the air. In ordinary language we may find
similar collocations, but it is worth saying with some emphasis
that there can never be any doubt as to which is the subject and
which the object. The ordinary word order is, Subject-Verb-
Object, and where there is a deviation there must always be some
special reason for it. This may be the wish, especially for the
sake of some contrast, to throw into relief some member of the
sentence. If this is the subject, the purpose is achieved by
stressing it, but the word order is not affected. But if it is the
object, this may be placed in the very beginning of the sentence,
but in that case English does not, like German and Danish, require
inversion of the verb, and the order consequently is, Object-Sub-
ject-Verb, which is perfectly clear and unambiguous. See, for
instance, Dickens's sentence: ''Talent, Mr. Micawber has; capital,
Mr. Micawber has not," and the following passage from a recent
novel : " Even Royalty had not quite their glow and glitter ;
Royalty you might see any day, driving, bowing, smiling. The
Queen had a smile for every one ; but the Duchess no one, not
even Lizzie, ever saw." Thus, also, in Shakespeare's :
Things base and vilde, holding no quantity,
Loue can transpose to forme and dignity {Mids. i. 1. 233),
and in Longfellow's translation from Logau :
A blind man is a poor man, and blind a poor man is ;
For the former seeth no man, and the latter no man sees.
The reason for deviating from the order, Subject-Verb-Object,
may again be purely grammatical : a relative or an interrogative
pronoun must be placed first ; but here, too, English grammar
precludes ambiguity, as witness the following sentences : This
picture, which surpasses Mona Lisa | This picture, Mhich Mona
Lisa surpasses | What picture surpasses Mona Lisa ? | What
picture does not IMona Lisa surpass ? In German (dieses bild,
welches die M. L. iibertrifi't, etc.) all four sentences would be
ambiguous, in Danish the two last would be indistinguishable ;
but English shows that a small number of case forms is not
incompatible with perfect clearness and perspicuity. If the famous
346 PROGRESS [ch. xviii
oracular answer {Henry VI, 2nd Part, i. 4. 33), " The Duke yet
liucs, that Henry shall depose," is ambiguous, it is only because
it is in verse, where you expect inversions : in ordinary prose it
could be understood only in one way, as the word order would
be reversed if Henry was meant as the object.
XVm.— § 6. Gender.
Besides case distinctions the older Aryan languages have a
rather complicated system of gender distinctions, which in many
instances agrees with, but in many others is totally independent
of, and even may be completely at war with, the natural distinc-
tion between male beings, female beings and things without sex.
This grammatical gender is sometimes looked upon as something
valuable for a language to possess ; thus Schroeder {Die formale
Unterschcidung 87) says : " The formal distinction of genders
is decidedly an enormous advantage which the Arj^an, Semitic
and Egyptian languages have before all other languages." Aasen
{Norsk Qrammatik 123) finds that the preservation of the old
genders gives vividness and variety to a language ; he therefore,
in constructing his artificial Norwegian ' landsmaal,' based it
on those dialects which made a formal distinction between the
masculine and feminine article. But other scholars have recog-
nized the disadvantages accruing from such distinctions ; thus
Tegner (SM 50) regrets the fact that in Swedish it is impossible
to give such a form to the sentence ' sin make ma man ej svika '
as to make it clear that the admonition is applicable to both
husband and wife, because make, ' mate,' is masculine, and maka
feminine. In Danish, where mage is common to both sexes, no
such difficulty arises. Gabelentz (Spr 234) says : " Das gramma-
tische geschlecht bringt es weiter mit sich dass wir deutschen nie
eine frauensperson als einen menschen und nicht leicht einen
mann als eine person bezeichnen."
As a matter of fact, German gender is responsible for many
difficulties, not only when it is in conflict with natural sex, as when
one may hesitate whether to use the pronoun es or sie in reference
to a person just mentioned as das mddchen or das iveib, or er or
sie in reference to die schildxcache, but also when sexless things
are concerned, and er might be taken as either referring to the
man or to der stuhl or to der wald just mentioned, etc. In France,
grammarians have disputed without end as to the propriety or
not of referring to the (feminine) word personnes by means of the
pronoun ils (see Nyrop, Kongriiens 24, and Gr. iii. § 712) : "Les
personnes que vous attendiez sont tons logis ici." As a negative
pronoun personne is now frankly masculine : ' personne n'est mal-
§ 6] GENDER 847
heureux.' With gens the old feminine gender is still kept up when
an adjective precedes, as in les bonnes gens, thus also toutes les
bonnes gens, but when the adjective has no separate feminine
form, schoolmasters prefer to say tous les honnetes gens, and the
masculine generally prevails when the adjective is at some distance
from ge)is, as in the old school -example, Instruits par I' experience,
toutes les vieilles gens sont soupgonneux. There is a good deal of
artificiality in the strict rules of grammarians on this point, and
it is therefore good that the Arrete ministericl of 1901 tolerates
greater liberty ; but conflicts are unavoidable, and will rise quite
naturally, in any language that has not arrived at the perfect
stage of complete genderlessness (which, of course, is not identical
with inability to express sex-differences).
Most English pronouns make no distinction of sex : /, you,
we, they, who, each, somebody, etc. Yet, when we hear that
Finnic and Magj-ar, and indeed the vast majority of languages
outside the Aryan and Semitic world, have no separate forms
for he and she, our first thought is one of astonishment ; we fail
to see how it is possible to do without this distinction. But if
we look more closely we shall see that it is at times an inconvenience
to have to specify the sex of the person spoken about. Coleridge
{Anima Poetce 190) regretted the lack of a pronoun to refer to
the word person, as it necessitated some stiff and strange construc-
tion like ' not letting the person be aware wherein offence had
been given,' instead of ' wherein he or she has offended.' It
has been said that if a genderless pronoun could be substituted
for he in such a proposition as this : ' It would be interesting if
each of the leading poets would tell us what he considers his best
work,' ladies would be spared the disparaging implication that
the leading poets were all men. Similarly there is something
incongruous in the following sentence found in a German review
of a book : " Was Maria und Fritz so zueinander zog, war, dass
jeder von ihnen am anderen sah, wie er ungliicklich war." Any-
one who has written much in Ido will have often felt how convenient
it is to have the common-sex pronouns lu (he or she), singlu, altru,
etc. It is interesting to see the different ways out of the difficulty
resorted to in actual language. First the cumbrous use of he
or she, as in Fielding TJ 1. 174, the reader's heart (if he or she
have any) j i\Iiss Muloch H. 2. 128, each one made his or her
comment.^ Secondly, the use of he alone : If anybody behaves
in such and such a manner, he will be punished (cf. the wholly
1 This ungainly repetition is frequent in the Latin of Roman law, e.g.
Digest. IV. 5. 2, Qui qiiceve . . . capite diminuti diminutce esse dicentur,
In eoa easve . . . iudicium dabo. | XLIII. 30, Qui quceve, in potestate Lucii
Titii eat, si is cave apud te est, dolov© male tuo factum est quominus apud
348 PROGRESS [ch. xviii
unobjectionable, but not alwa5's applicable, formula : Whoever
behaves in such and such a manner will be punished). This use
of he has been legalized by the Act 13 and 14 Vict., cap. 21. 4 :
" That in all acts words importing the masculine gender shall be
deemed and taken to include females." Third, the sexless but plural
form they may be used. If you try to put the phrase, ' Does
anybody prevent you 1 ' in another way, beginning with ' Nobody
prevents you,' and then adding the interrogatory formula, you
will perceive that ' does he ' is too definite, and ' does he or she '
too clumsy ; and j^ou will therefore naturally say (as Thackeray
does, P 2. 260), " Nobody prevents you, do they ? " In the same
manner Shakespeare writes [Lucr. 125): "Everybody to rest
themselves betake." The substitution of the plural for the
singular is not wholly illogical ; for everybody is much the same
thing as ' all men,' and nobody is the negation of ' all men ' ; but the
phenomenon is extended to cases where this explanation will not
hold good, as in G. Eliot, M. 2. 304, I shouldn't like to punish any
one, even if they'd done me wrong. (For many examples from
good writers sec my MEG. ii. 5, 56.)
The English interrogative who is not, like the quis or quc& of
the Romans, limited to one sex and one number, so that our
question ' Who did it ? ' to be rendered exactly in Latin, would
require a combination of the four : Quis hoc fecit ? Quce hoc
fecit ? Qui hoc fecerunt ? Qiice hoc fecertint ? or rather, the
abstract nature of who (and of did) makes it possible to express
such a question much more indefinitely in English than in any
highly fiexional language ; and indefiniteness in many cases means
greater precision, or a closer correspondence between thought and
expression.
XVIII.— § 7. Nominal Concord.
We have seen in the case of the verbs how widely diffused in
all the old Aryan languages is the phenomenon of Concord. It
is the same with the nouns. Here, as there, it consists in secondary
words (here chiefly adjectives) being made to agree with principal
words, but while with the verbs the agreement was in number and
person, here it is in number, case and gender. This is well known
in Greek and Latin ; as examples from Gothic may here be given
Luk. 1. 72, gamunan triggivos ivtihaizos seinaizos, ' to remember
te esset, ita eum eamvc exhibeas. | XI. 3, Qvii servurn scrvam alicnum alienam
recepisse persuasisseve quid ei dicitur dolo malo, quo eum earn deteriorem
faceret, in eum, quanta ea res exit, in duplum iudiciiun dnbo. I owe these
and some other Latin examples to my late teacher. Dr. O. Siesbye. From
French, Nyrop (Kongruens, p. 12) gives some corresponding examples:
tous ceux et ioutcs cellea qui, ayant 6t6 orphelins, avaient eu une onfance
malheureuse (Philippe), and from Old French : Lors domia congie A ceua
et a ccles que il avoit rescous (Villehardouin).
§7] NOMINAL CONCORD 849
His holy covenant,' and 1. 15, allans dagans vnsarcms, 'all our
days.' The EngHsh translation shows how English has discarded
this trait, for there is notliing in the forms of {his), holy, all and
our, as in the Gothic forms, to indicate what substantive they
belong to.
Wherever the same adjectival idea is to be joined to two
substantives, the concordless junction is an obvious advantage,
as seen from a comparison of the English ' my wife and children '
with the French ' ma femme et mes enfants,' or of ' the local press
and committees ' with ' la presse locale et les comites locaux.'
Try to translate exactly into French or Latin such a sentence as
this : " What are the present state and wants of mankind ? "
(Ruskin). Cf. also the expression ' a verdict of wilful murder
against some person or persons tmknown,' where some and unknown
belong to the singular as well as to the plural forms ; Fielding
wi-ites {TJ 3. 65) : " Some particular chapter, or perhaps chapters,
may be obnoxious.'' Where an English editor of a text will write :
" Some (indifferently singular and j)lural) word or words wanting
here," a Dane will write : " Et (sg.) eller flere (pi.) ord (indifferent)
mangier her." These last examples may be taken as proof that
it might even in some cases be advantageous to have forms in
the substantives that did not show number ; still, it must be
recognized that the distinction between one and more than one
rightly belongs to substantival notions, but logically it has as
little to do with adjectival as with verbal notions (cf. above, Ch.
XVII § 11). In ' black spots ' it is the spots, but not the qualities
of black, that we count. And in ' two black spots ' it is of course
quite superfluous to add a dual or plural ending (as in Latin duo,
duce) in order to indicate once more what the word hvo denotes
sufficiently, namely, that we have not to do with a singular.
Compare, finally, E. to the father and mother, Fr. au pere et a la
mere, G. zu deni vater und der mutter {zum voter und zur mutter).
If it is admitted that it is an inconvenience whenever you
want to use an adjective to have to put it in the form corresponding
in case, number and gender to its substantive, it may be thought
a redeeming feature of the language which makes this demand
that, on the other hand, it allows you to place the adjective at some
distance from the substantive, and yet the hearer or reader will
at once connect the two together. But here, as elsewhere in
' energetics,' the question is whether the advantage counter-
balances the disadvantage ; in other words, whether the fact that
you are free to place your adjective where you will is worth the
price you pay for it in being always saddled with the heavy apparatus
of adjectival flexions. Why should you want to remove the
adjective from the substantive, which naturally must be in your
850 PROGRESS [ch. xviii
thought when you are thinking of the adjective 1 There is one
natural cmploj'ment of the adjective in which it has very often
to stand at some distance from the substantive, namely, when it
is predicative ; but then the example of German shows the needless-
ness of concord in that case, for while the adjunct adjective is
inflected (ein guter mensch, eine gute frau, ein gutes buch, gvte
bucher) the predicative is invariable like the adverb (der mensch
ist gut, die frau ist gut, das buch ist giit, die bucher sind gut). It
is chiefly in poetry that a Latin adjective is placed far from its
substantive, as in Vergil : " Et bene apud memores vetcris stat
gratia facti " (J5n. IV. 539), where the form shows that veteris
is to be taken with facti (but then, where does 6ene belong ? it
might be taken with memores, slat or facti). In Horace's well-
known aphorism : " .^quam memento rebus in arduis servare
mentem," the flexional form of cequam allows him to place it first,
far from mentem, and thus facilitates for him the task of building
up a perfect metrical line ; but for the reader it would certainly
be preferable to have had cequam mentem together at once, instead
of having to hold his attention in suspense for five words, till
finally he comes upon a word with which to connect the adjective.
There is therefore no economizing of the energy of reader or hearer.
Extreme examples may be found in Icelandic skaldic poetry, in
which the poets, to fulfil the requirements of a highly complicated
metrical system, entailing initial and medial rimes, very often
place the words in what logically must be considered the worst
disorder, thereby making their poem as difficult to understand
as an intricate chess-problem is to solve — and certainly coming
short of the highest poetical form.
XVm.— § 8. The English Genitive.
If we compare a group of Latin words, such as opera virorum
omnium bonorum veterum, v,ith a corresponding group in a few other
languages of a less flexional t5'-pe ; OE, ealra godra ealdra manna
weorc ; Danish alle gode gamle mcends vcerker ; Modern English
all good old men's works, we perceive by analyzing the ideas ex-
pressed by the several words that the Romans said really : ' work,'
plural, nominative or accusative -j- ' man,' plural, masculine,
genitive + ' all,' plural, genitive -f ' good,' plural, masculine,
genitive -f ' old,' pliu-al, masculine, genitive. Leaving opera out
of consideration, we find that plural number is expressed fom'
times, genitive case also fom" times, and masculine gender twice ; ^
^ If instead of omnium veterutn I had chosen, for instance, muliorum
antiquorum, the meaning of mascuUne gender would have been rendered
four times : for languages, especially the older ones, are not distinguished
by consistency.
§8] THE ENGLISH GENITIVE 851
in Old English the signs of number and case are found four times
each, while there is no indication of gender ; in Danish the plural
number is marked four times and the case once. And finally,
in Modern English, we find each idea expressed once onlj'^ ; and
as nothing is lost in clearness, this method, as being the easiest and
shortest, must be considered the best. Mathematically the different
ways of rendering the same thing might be represented by the
formulas : anx + bnx + cnx = (an -f bn + cn)x = (a+b+c)nx.
This unusual faculty of ' parenthesizing ' causes Danish,
and to a still greater degree English, to stand outside the definition
of the Aiyan family of languages given by the earlier school of
linguists, according to wliich the Aryan substantive and adjective
can never be without a sign indicating case. Schleicher (NV 52C)
says : " The radical difference between Magyar and Indo-Germanic
(Aryan) words is brought out distinctly by the fact that the post-
positions belonging to co-ordinated nouns can be dispensed with
in all the nouns except the last of the series, e.g. a jd embernek,
' dem guten menschen ' (a for az, demonstrative pronoun, article ;
j6, good ; ember, man, -nek, -nak, postposition with pretty much
the same meaning as the dative case), for az-nak (annak) jd-nak
ember-nek, as if in Greek you should say to ayad'o dv^pwrrco. An
attributive adjective preceding its noun alwaj^s has the form of
the pure stem, the sign of plurality and the postposition indicating
case not being added to it. Magyars say, for instance, Hunyady
Mdtyds m,agyar kirdly-nak (to the Hungarian king Mathew Hun-
yady), -nak belonging here to all the preceding words. Nearly
the same thing takes place where several words are joined together
by means of ' and.' "
Now, this is an exact parallel to the English group genitive
in cases like ' all good old men's works,' ' the King of England's
power,' ' Beaumont and Fletcher's plays,' ' somebody else's
turn,' etc. The way in which this group genitive has developed
in comparatively recent times may be summed up as follows
(see the detailed exposition in my ChE ch. iii.) : In the oldest
English -s is a case-ending, like all others foimd in fiexional lan-
guages ; it forms together with the body of the noun one indivi-
sible whole, in which it is sometimes impossible to tell where the
kernel of the word ends and the ending begins (compare endes
from e7ide and heriges from here) ; only some words have this
ending, and in others the genitive is indicated in other waj's. As
to syntax, the meaning or function of the genitive is complicated
and rather vague, and there are no fixed rules for the position of
the genitive in the sentence.
In coiu-se of time we witness a gradual development towards
greater regularity and precision. The partitive, objective, descrip-
352 PROGRESS [CH. xviii
tive and some other functions of the genitive become obsolete ;
the genitive is invariably put immediatelj'' before the word it
belongs to ; irregular forms disaj^pear, the s ending alone sur\iving
as the fittest, so that at last we have one definite ending with one
definite function and one definite position.
In Old English, when several words belonging together were
to be put in the genitive, each of them had to take the genitive
mark, though this was often different in different words, and thus
we had combinations like anes reades mannes, ' a red man's ' | y>cere
godlican lufe, ' the godlike love's ' j ealra godra ealdra manna
weorc, etc. Now the s used everywhere is much more independent,
and may be separated from the principal word by an adverb like
else or by a prepositional group like of England, and one s is
sufficient at the end even of a long group of words. Here, then, we
see in the full light of comparatively recent history a giving uj)
of the old flexion with its inseparability of the constituent elements
of the word and with its strictness of concord ; an easier and
more regular s3"stem is developed, in which the ending leads a
more independent existence and may be compared with the
' agglutinated ' elements of such a language as Magyar or even
with the ' empty words ' of Chinese grammar. The direction of
this development is the direct ojoposite of that assumed by
most linguists for the development of languages in prehistoric
times.
XVIII.— § 9. Bantu Concord.
One of the most characteristic traits of the history of English
is thus seen to be the gradual getting rid of concord as of some-
thing superfluous. Where concord is found in our family of
languages, it certainly is an heirloom from a jDrimitive age, and
strikes us now as an outcome of a tendency to be more explicit
than to more advanced people seems strictly necessary. It is
on a par with the ' concord of negatives,' as we might term the
emphasizing of the negative idea by seemingly redundant repeti-
tions. In Old English it was the regular idiom to say : nnn man
?iyste wan J-ing, ' no man not-knew nothing ' ; so it was in
Chaucer's time : he weuere yet wo vileynye we sayde In all his
h-f unto wo manner wight ; and it survives in the vulgar speech
of our own daj's : there was wiver wobody else gen (gave) me
wothin ' (George Eliot) ; whereas standard Modern English is
content with one negation : no man knew anything, etc. That
concord is really a primitive trait (though not, of course, found
equally distributed among all ' primitive peoples ') will be seen
also by a rapid glance at the structure of the South African group
§9]
BANTU CONCORD
858
of languages called Bantu, for here we find not only repetition of
negatives, but also other phenomena of concord in specially-
luxuriant growth.
I take the following examples chiefly from W. H. I. Bleek's
excellent, though unfortunately unfinished, Comparative Grammar,
though I am well aware that expressions like si-m-tanda (we love
him) " are never used by natives with this meaning without being
determined by some other expression " (Torrend, p. 7). The
Zulu word for ' man ' is umuntu ; every word in the same or a
following sentence ha\ang anj^ reference to that word must begin
with something to remind j-ou of the beginning of umuntu. This
will be, according to fixed rules, either mu or u, or w or m. In
the following sentence, the meaning of which is ' our handsome
man (or woman) appears, we love him (or her),' these reminders
(as I shall term them) are printed in italics :
umuntw weiu omwchle wyabonakala, simtanda (1)
man ours handsome appears, we love.
If, instead of the singular, we take the corresponding plural
abmtu, ' men, people ' (whence the generic name of Bantu), the
sentence looks quite different :
a6antu 6etu aftachle ftayabonakala, sifeatanda (2).
In the same way, if we successively take as our starting-point
ilizive, ' country,' the corresponding plural amazwe, ' countries,'
isizwe, 'nation,' izizice, 'nations,' intombi, 'girl,' izintombi,
' girls,' we get :
tZizive
/etu
eZ/chle
Ziyabonakala,
siZe'tanda
(5)
airuvLwe
etu
amochle
ayabonakala,
siit-'atanda
(6)
isizwe
setu
estchle
siyabonakala,
sisj'tanda
(7)
izizwe
zetu
ezichle
ziyabonakala.
sizz'tanda
(8)
iwtombi
yetu
enchle
iyabonakala ,
siyitanda
(9)
izivXomhi
zeiu
ezmchle
ziyabonakala.
sizitanda
(10)
(girls)
our
handsome
appear.
we love.^
In other words, every substantive belongs to one of several
classes, of which some have a singular and others a plural meaning ;
each of these classes has its own prefix, by means of which the
concord of the parts of a sentence is indicated. (An inhabitant
^ The change of the initial sound of the reminder belonging to the
adjective is explained through composition with a ' relative particle ' a ;
au becoming o, and ai, e. The numbers within parentheses refer to the
numbers of Bleek's classes. Similar sentences from Tonga are found in
Torrend's Compnr. Or. p. 6 f.
28
854 PROGRESS [cH. xvm
of the country of L/ganda is called mwganda, pi. ftaganda or waganda ;
the language spoken there is Zwganda.)
It will he noticed that adjectives such as ' handsome ' or
' ours ' take different shapes according to the word to which they
refer ; in the Zulu Lord's Prayer ' thy ' is found in the following
forms : Zako (referring to igama, ' name,' for ilig&ma,, 5), fcako,
(w6wkumkani, ' kingdom,' 14), yako (mtando, ' will,' 9). So also
the genitive case of the same noun has a great many different
forms, for the genitive relation is expressed by the reminder of
the governing word + the ' relative particle ' a (which is com-
bined with the following sound) ; take, for instance, inkosi, ' chief,
king':
umuntn it'enkosi, ' the king's man ' (1 ; we for w -\- a -\- i).
a6antu 6enkosi, ' the king's men ' (2).
ilizwe Zenkosi, ' the king's country ' (5).
amazwe enkosi, ' the king's countries ' (6).
isizwe senkosi, ' the king's nation ' (7).
wA;wtanda kwenkosi, ' the king's love ' (15).
Livingstone says that these apparently redundant repetitions
" impart energy and perspicuity to each member of a proposition,
and prevent the possibility of a mistake as to the antecedent."
These prefixes are necessary to the Bantu languages ; still , Bleek
is right as against Livingstone in speaking of the repetitions as
cumbersome, just as the endings of Latin multorum virorum
antiquorum are cumbersome, however indispensable they may
have been to the contemporaries of Cicero.
These African phenomena have been mentioned here chiefly
to show to what lengths concord may go in the speech of some
primitive peoples. The prevalent opinion is that each of these
prefixes (umu, aba, Hi, etc.) was originally an independent word,
and that thus words like umuntu, ilizwe, were at first compounds*
like E. steamship, where it would evidently be possible to imagine
a reference to this word by means of a repeated ship (our ship,
which ship is a great ship, the ship appears, we love the ship) ;
but at any rate the Zulus extend this principle to cases that would
be parallel to an imagined repetition of friendship by means of the
same ship, or to referring to steamer by means of the ending er
(Bleek 107). Bleek and others have tried to find out by an
analysis of the words making up the different classes what may
have been the original meaning of the class-prefix, but very often
the connecting tie is extremely loose, and in manj^ cases it seems
that a word might with equal right have belonged to another
class than the one to which it actually belongs. The connexion
also frequently seems to be a derived rather than an original one,
§9] BANTU CONCORD 855
and much in this class-division is just as arbitrary as the reference
of Aryan nouns to each of the three genders. In several of the
classes the words have a definite numerical value, so that they go
together in pairs as corresponding singular and plural nouns ; but
the existence of a certain number of exceptions shows that these
numerical values cannot originally have been associated with the
class prefixes, but must be due to an extension by analogy
(Bleek 140 ff.). The starting-point may have been substantives
standing to each other in the relation of ' person ' to ' people,'
'soldier' to 'army,' 'tree' to 'forest,' etc. The prefixes of
such words as the latter of each of these pairs will easily acquire
a certain sense of plurality, no matter what they may have meant
originall)', and then they will lend themselves to forming a kind
of plural in other nouns, being either put instead of the prefix
belonging properly to the noun (amazive, ' countries,' 6 ; t7/zwe,
'country,' 5), or placed before it {ma-luto, 'spoons,' 6, Zwto,
'spoon,' 11).
In some of the languages " the forms of some of the prefixes
have been so stronglj^ contracted as almost to defy identification."
(Bleek 234). All the prefixes probably at first had fuller forms
than appear now. Bleek noticed that the ma- prefix never, except
in some degraded languages, had a corresponding ma- as jDarticle,
but, on the contrary, is followed in the sentence by ga-, ya-, or
a-, and mu- (3) generally has a corresponding particle gu-. Now,
Sir Harry Johnston [The Uganda Protectorate, 1902, 2. 891) has
found that on Mount Eldon and in Kavirondo there are some very
archaic forms of Bantu languages, in which giimu- and gama-
are the commonly used forms of the mu- and ma- prefixes, as well
as baba- and bnhu- for ordinary ba-, bu- ; he infers that the original
forms of mu-, wa- were ngumu-, ngama-. I am not so sure that
he is right when he says that these prefixes were originally " words
which had a separate meaning of their own, either as directives
or demonstrative pronouns, as indications of sex, weakness, little-
ness or greatness, and so on " — for, as we shall see in a subsequent
chapter, such grammatical instruments may have been at first
inseparable parts of long words — parts which had no meaning
of their own — and have acquired some more or less vague gram-
matical meaning through being extended gradually to other words
with which they had originally nothing to do. The actual
irregularity in their distribution certainly seems to point in that
direction.
XVm.— § 10. Word Order Again.
Mention has already been made here and there of word order
and its relation to the great question of simpUfication of gram-
856 PROGRESS [ch. xviii
matical structure ; but it will be well in this place to return to the
subject in a more comprehensive way. The theory of word order
has long been the Cinderella of linguistic science : how many even
of the best and fullest grammars are wholly, or almost wholly, silent
about it ! And yet it presents a great many problems of high
importance and of the greatest interest, not onl}' in those languages
in which word order has been extensively utilized for grammatical
purposes, such as English and Chinese, but in other languages
as well.
In historical times we see a gradual evolution of strict rules
for word order, while our general impression of the older stages
of our languages is that words were often placed more or less at
random. This is what we should naturally expect from primitive
man, Avhose thoughts and words are most likely to have come to
him rushing helter-skelter, in wild confusion. One cannot, of
course, apply so strong an expression to languages such as
Sanskrit, Greek or Gothic ; still, compared with our modern
languages, it cannot be denied that there is in them much more
of what from one point of view is disorder, and from another
freedom.
This is especially the case with regard to the mutual position
of the subject of a sentence and its verb. In the earliest times,
sometimes one of them comes first, and sometimes the other.
Then there is a growing tendencj^ to place the subject first, and
as this position is found not only in most European languages
but also in Chinese and other languages of far-away, the phe-
nomenon must be founded in the very nature of human thought,
though its non-prevalence in most of the older Aryan languages
goes far to show that this particular order is only natural to
developed human thought.
Survivals of the earlier st^te of things are found here and
there ; thus, in German ballad style : " Kam ein schlanker bursclf
gegangen." Bat it is well worth noticing that such an arrange-
ment is generally avoided, in German as well as in the other modern
languages of Western Eiu'ope, and in those cases where there is
some reason for placing the verb before the subject, the speaker
still, as it were, satisfies his grammatical instinct by putting a
kind of sham subject before the verb, as in E. there comes a time
when . . ., Dan. der kommer en tid da . . ., G. €5 kommt eine
zeit wo . . ., Fr. il arrive un temps oh. . . .
In Keltic the habitual word order placed the verb first, but
little by little the tendency prevailed to introduce most sentences
by a periphrasis, as in ' (it) is the man that comes,' and as that
came to mean merel}' ' the man comes,' the word order Subject-
Verb was thus brought about circuitously.
§10] WORD ORDER AGAIN 857
Before this particular word order, Subject-Verb, was firmly
established in modern Gothonic languages, an exception obtained
wherever the sentence began with some other word than the
subject ; this might be some important member of the proposition
that was placed first lor the sake of emphasis, or it might be some
unimportant little adverb, but the rule was that the verb should
at any rate have the second place, as being felt to be in some way
the middle or central part of the whole, and the subject had then
to be content to be placed after the verb. This was the rule in
Middle English and in Old French, and it is still strictly followed
in German and Danish : Gestern kam das schiff \ Pigen gav jeg
kagen, ikke dretigen. Traces of the practice are still found in
English in parenthetic sentences to indicate wjio is the speaker
(' Oh, yes,' said he), and after a somewhat long subjunct, if there
is no object (' About this time died the gentle Queen Elizabeth '),
where this word order is little more than a styhstic trick to avoid
the abrupt effect of ending the sentence with an isolated verb
like died. Otherwise the order Subject-Verb is almost universal
in English.
XVm.— §11. Compromises.
The inverted order, Verb -Subject, is used extensively in many
languages to express questions, wishes and invitations. But, as
already stated, this order was not originally peculiar to such
sentences. A question was expressed, no matter how the words
were arranged, b}^ pronouncing the whole sentence, or the most
important part of it, in a peculiar rising tone. This manner of
indicating questions is, of course, still kept up in modern speech,
and is often the only thing to show that a question is meant
(' John ? ' I ' John is here ? '). But although there was thus a
natural manner of expressing questions, and although the inverted
word order was used in other sorts of sentences as well, yet in
course of time there came to be a connexion between the two
things, so that putting the verb before the subject was felt as
implying a question. The rising tone then came to be less neces-
sary, and is much less marked in inverted sentences like ' Is John
here ? ' than in sentences with the usual word order : ' John
is here ? '
Now, after this method of indicating questions had become
comparatively fixed, and after the habit of thinking of the subject
first had become all but universal, these two principles entered
into conflict, the result of which has been, in English, Danish
and French, the establishment in some cases of various kinds of
compromise, in which the interrogatory word order has formally
358 PROGRESS [ch. xviii
carried the day. while really the verb, that is to say the verb wliich
means something, is placed after its subject. In English, this is
attained by means of the auxiliary do : instead of Shakespeare's
" Came he not home to-night ? " {Ro. ii. 4. 2) we now say, " Did
he not (or. Didn't he) come home to-night ? " and so in all cases
where a similar arrangement is not already brought about by the
presence of some other auxiliary, ' Will he come ? ', ' Can he
come ? ', etc. Where we have an interrogatory pronoun as a
subject, no auxiliary is required, because the natural front position
of the pronoun maintains the order Subject- Verb (Who came ? |
What hajjpened ?). But if the pronoun is not the subject, do
is required to establish the balance between the two principles
(Who(m) did you see ? | What does he say ?).
In Danish, the verb mon, used in the old language to indicate
a weak necessity or a vague futurity, fulfils to a certain extent
the same office as the English do ; up to the eighteenth century
mon was really an auxiliary verb, followed by the infinitive : ' Mon
han komme ? ' ; but now the construction has changed, the
indicative is used with mon : ' Mon han kommer ? ', and mx)n is
uo longer a verb, but an interrogatory adverb, which serves the
purpose of placing the subject before the verb, besides making
the qnestion more indefinite and vague : ' Kommer han ? ' means
' Does he come ? ' or ' Will he come ? ' but ' Mon han kommer ? '
means ' Does he come (Will he come), do you think ? '
French, finally, has developed two distinct forms of compromise
between the conflicting principles, for in ' Est-ce que Pierre bat
Jean ? ' est-ce represents the interrogatory and Pierre bat the usual
word order, and in ' Pierre bat-il Jean ? ' the real subject is placed
before and the sham subject after the verb. Here also, as in
Danish, the ultimate result is the creation of ' empty words,' or
interrogatory adverbs : est-ce-que in every respect except in spelling
is one word (note that it does not change with the tense of the
main verb), and thus is a sentence prefix to introduce questions ;
and in popular speech we find another empty word, namely ti
(see, among other scholars, G. Paris, Melanges ling. 276). The
origin of this ti is very curious. While the t of Latin amat, etc.,
coming after a vowel, disappeared at a very early period of the
French language, and so produced il aime, etc., the same t was
kept in Old French wherever a consonant protected it,^ and so
gave the forms est, sont, fait (from fact, for facit), font, chantent,
etc. From est-il, fait-il, etc., the t Avas then by analogy reintro-
duced in aime-t-il, instead of the earlier aime il. Now, towards
the end of the IMiddle Ages, French final consonants were as a rule
^ This protecting consonant was dropped in pronunciation at a later
period.
§11] COMPROMISES 359
dropped in speech, except when followed immediately by a word
beginning with a vowel. Consequently, while / is mute in sentences
like ' Ton frere dit \ Tes fr^res disent,' it is sounded in the corre-
sponding questions, ' Ton frdre dit-il ? Tes fr^res diaent-iU ? '
As the final consonants of il and Us are also generally dropped,
even by educated speakers, the difference between interrogatory
and declarative sentences in the spoken language depends solely
on the addition of ti to the verb : written phonetically, the pairs
will be :
[to frer di — t5 frer di ti]
[te frcr diz — te fre"r di'z ti].
Now, popular instinct seizes upon this ti as a convenient sign
of interrogative sentences, and, forgetting its origin, uses it even
with a feminine subject, turning ' Ta soeur di(t) ' into the question
' Ta soem- di ti ? ', and in the first person : ' Je di ti ? ' ' Nous
dison ti ? ' ' Je vous fais-ti tort ? ' (Maupassant). In novels this
is often ^vi'itten as if it were the adverb y : C'est-y pas vrai ? | Je
suis t'y bete ! | C'est-y vous le monsieur de I'Academie qui va
avoir cent ans ? (Daudet). I have dwelt on this point because,
besides showing the interest of many problems of word order, it also
throws some light on the sometimes unexpected ways by which
languages must often travel to arrive at new expressions for gram-
matical categories.
It was mentioned above that the inverted order, Verb-Subject,
is used extensively, not only in questions, but also to express
wishes and invitations. Here, too, we find in English compromises
with the usual order, Subject-Verb. For, apart from such formulas
as ' Long live the King ! ' a wish is generally expressed by means
of may, which is placed first, while the real verb comes after the
subject : ' Maj'- she be happy ! ', and instead of the old ' Go we ! '
we have now ' Let us go ! ' -with us, the virtual subject, placed
before the real verb. When a pronoun is wanted with an impera-
tive, it used to be placed after the verb, as in Shakespeare : ' Stand
thou forth ' and ' Fear not tJiou,' or in the Bible : ' Turn ye unto
him,' but now the usual order has prevailed : ' You try ! ' ' You
take that seat, and somebody fetch a few more chairs ! ' But if
the auxiliary do is used, we have the compromise order : ' Don't
you stir ! '
XVm.— § 12. Order Beneficial ?
I have here selected one point, the place of the subject, to
illustrate the growing regularity in word order ; but the same
tendency is manifested in other fields as well : the place of the
object (or of two objects, if we have an indirect besides a direct
360 PROGRESS [ch. xviii
object), the place of the adjunct adjective, the place of a eub-
orclinate adverb, which by coming regularly before a certain
case may become a preposition ' governing ' that case, etc. It
cannot be denied that the tendency towards a more regular word
order is universal, and in accordance with the general trend of
this inquiry we must next ask the question : Is this tendency a
beneficial one ? Does the more regular word order found in
recent stages of our languages constitute a progress in linguistic
structure ? Or should it be deplored because it hinders freedom
of movement ?
In answering this question we must first of all beware of
letting our judgment be run away with by the word ' freedom.'
Because freedom is desirable elsewhere, it does not follow that
it should be the best thing in this domain ; just as above we did
not allow ourselves to be imposed on by the phrase ' wealth of
forms,' so here we must be on our guard against the word ' free ' :
what if we turned the question in another way : Which is preferable,
order or disorder ? It may be true that, viewed exclusively from
the standpoint of the speaker, freedom would seem to be a great
advantage, as it is a restraint to him to be obliged to follow strict
rules ; but an orderly arrangement is decidedly in the interest
of the hearer, as it very considerably facilitates his understanding
of what is said ; it is therefore, though indirectly, in the interest of
the speaker too, because he naturally speaks for the purpose
of being understood. Besides, he is soon in his turn to become
the hearer : as no one is exclusively hearer or speaker, there can
be no real conflict of interest between the two.
If it be urged in favour of a free word order that we owe a
certain regard to the interests of poets, it must be taken into con-
sideration, first, that we cannot all of us be poets, and that a
regard to all those of us who resemble Moliere's M. Joixrdain in
speaking prose without being aware of it is perhaps, after all, more
important than a regard for those very few who are in the enviable
position of writing readable verse ; secondly, that a statistical
investigation would, no doubt, give as its result that those poets
who make the most extensive use of inversions are not among the
greatest of their craft ; and, finally, that so many methods are
found of neutralizing the restraint of word order, in the shape of
particles, passive voice, different constructions of sentences, etc.,
that no artist in language need despair.
So far, we have scarcely done more than clear the ground before
answering our question. And now we must recognize that there
are some rules of word order which cannot be called beneficial
in any way ; they are like certain rules of etiquette, in so far as
one can see no reason for their existence, and yet one is obliged to
§12] ORDER BENEFICIAL? 801
bow to them. Historians may, in some cases, be able to account
for their origin and show that they had a raison d'etre at some
remote period ; but the circumstances that called them into exist-
ence then have passed away, and they are now felt to be restraints
with no concurrent advantage to reconcile us to their observance.
Among rules of this class we may reckon those for placing the
French pronouns now before, and now after, the verb, now with
the dative and now with the accusative first, 'elle me le donne | elle
le lui donne | donnez-Ze moi \ ne me le donnez pas.' And, again,
the rules for placing the verb, object, etc., in German subordinate
clauses otherwise than in main sentences. That the latter rules
are defective and are inferior to the English rules, which are the
same for the two kinds of sentences, was pointed out before, when
we examined Johannson's German sentences (p. 341), but here
we may state that the real, innermost reason for condemning them
is their inconsistency : the same rule does not apply in all cases.
It seems possible to establish the important principle that the
more consistent a rule for word order is, the more useful it is in
the economy of speech, not only as facilitating the understanding
of what is said, but also as rendering possible certain thorough-
going changes in linguistic structure.
XVm.— § 13. Word Order and Simplification.
This, then, is the conclusion I arrive at, that as simplification
of grammatical structure, abolition of case distinctions, and so
forth, alwaj'^s go hand in hand with the development of a fixed
word order, tliis cannot be accidental, but there must exist a
relation of cause and effect between the two phenomena. Which,
then, is the prius or cause ? To my mind undoubtedly the fixed
word order, so that the grammatical simplification is the posterivs
or effect. It is, however, by no means uncommon to find a half-
latent conception in people's minds that the flexional endings were
fij-st lost ' by phonetic decay,' or ' through the blind operation
of sound laws,' and that then a fixed word order had to step in
to make up for the loss of the previous forms of expression. But
if this were true we should have to imagine an intervening period
in which the mutual relations of words were indicated in neither
way ; a period, in fact, in which speech was unintelligible and
consequently practically useless. The theory is therefore untenable.
It follows that a fixed word order must have come in first : it
would come quite gradually as a natural consequence of greater
mental development and general maturity, when the speaker's
ideas no longer came into his mind helter-skelter, but in orderly
sequence. If before the establishment of some sort of fixed
862 PROGRESS [ch. xviii
word order any tendency to slur certain final consonants or vowels
of grammatical importance had manifested itself, it could not
have become universal, as it would have been constantly checked
by the necessity that speech should be intelligible, and that there-
fore those marks which showed the relation of different words
should not be obliterated. But when once each word was placed
at the exact spot where it properly belonged, then there was no
longer anything to forbid the endings being weakened by assimila-
tion, etc., or being finally dropped altogether.
To bring out my view I have been obliged in the preceding
paragraph to use expressions that should not be taken too literally ;
I have spoken as if the changes referred to were made ' in the
lump,' that is, as if the word order was first settled in every
respect, and after that the endings began to be dropped. The
real facts are, of course, much more complicated, changes of one
kind being interwoven with changes of the other in such a w&y as
to render it difficult, if not impossible, in any particular case to
discover which was the prius and which the posterius. We are
not able to lay our finger on one spot and say : Here final m or
n was dropped, because it was now rendered superfluous as a case-
sign on account of the accusative being invariably placed after
the verb, or for some other such reason. Nevertheless, the essential
truth of my hypothesis seems to me unimpeachable. Look at
Latin final s. Cicero {Oral. 48. 161) expressly tells us, what is
corroborated by a good many inscriptions, that there existed a
strong tendency to drop final s ; but the tendency did not prevail.
The reason seems obvious ; take a page of Latin prose and try
the effect of striking out all final s's, and you will find that it will
be extremely difficult to determine the meaning of many passages ;
a consonant playing so important a part in the endings of nouns
and verbs could not be left out without loss in a language possessing
so much freedom in regard to word position as Latin. Conse-
quently it was kept, but in course of time word position became
more and more subject to laws ; and when, centm'ies later, after
the splitting up of Latin into the Romanic languages, the tendency
to slur over final s knocked once more at the door, it met no longer
with the same resistance : final s disappeared, first in Italian and
Rumanian, then in French, where it was kept till about the end
of the Middle Ages, and it is now beginning to sound a retreat in
Spanish ; see on Andalusian Fr. Wulflf, Un Chapitre de Phonetique
Andalouse, 1889.
The main line of development in historical times has, I take
it, been the following : first, a period in which words were placed
somewhere or other according to the fancy of the moment, but
many of them provided with signs that would show their mutual
§13] WORD ORDER AND SIMPLIFICATION 868
relations ; next, a period with retention of these signs, combined
with a growing regularity in word order, and at the same time in
many connexions a more copious employment of prepositions ;
then an increasing indistinctness and finally complete dropping
of the endings, word order (and prepositions) being now sufficient
to indicate the relations at fu-st sho^vn by endings and similar
means.
Viewed in this light, the transition from freedom in word
position to greater strictness must be considered a beneficial
change, since it has enabled the speakers to do away with more
circumstantial and clumsy linguistic means. Schiller says :
Jeden anderen mei-ster erkennt man an dem, was er ausspricht ;
Was er weise verschweigt, zeigt mir den meister des stils.
(Every other master is known by what he says, but the master
of style by what he is wisely silent on.) What style is to the
individual, the general laws of language are to the nation, and we
must award the palm to that language which makes it possible
" to be wisely silent " about things which in other languages have
to be expressed in a troublesome way, and which have often to
be expressed over and over again {viTorum omniMm honorum
vetenim, ealra godra ealdra manna). Could any linguistic expedient
be more worthy of the genus homo sapiens than using for different
purposes, with different significations, two sentences like ' John
beats Henry ' and ' Henry beats John,' or the four Danish ones,
' Jens slaar Henrik — Henrik slaar Jens — slaar Jens Henrik ? —
slaar Henrik Jens ? ' (John beats Henry — H. beats J. — does J.
beat H. ? — does H. beat J. ?), or the Chinese use of 6i in different
places (Ch. XIX § 3) ? Cannot this be compared with the ingenious
Arabic system of numeration, in which 234 means something
entirely different from 324, or 423, or 432, and the ideas of *' tens "
and " hundreds " are elegantly suggested by the order of the
characters, not, as in the Roman system, ponderously expressed ?
Now, it should not be forgotten that this system, " where more
is meant than meets the ear," is not only more convenient, but
also clearer than flexions, as actually found in existing languages,
for word order in those languages which utilize it grammatically
is used much more consistently than any endings have ever been
in the old Aryan languages. It is not true, as Johannson would
have us believe, that the dispensing with old flexional endings was
too dearly bought, as it brought about increasing possibilities of
misunderstandings ; for in the evolution of languages the dis-
carding of old flexions goes hand in hand with the development
of simpler and more regular expedients that are rather less liable
than the old ones to produce misunderstandings. Johannson
864 PROGRESS [cH. XVIII
writes : " In contrast to Jesperscn I do not consider that the
masterly expression is the one which is ' A^isely silent,' and conse-
quently leaves the meaning to be partly guessed at, but the one
which is able to impart the meaning of the speaker or -wTiter clearly
and perfectly " — but here he seems rather wide of the mark. For,
just as in reading the arithmetical symbol 234 we are perfectly
sure that two hundred and thirty-four is meant, and not three
hundred and forty-two, so in reading and hearing ' The boy hates
the girl ' we cannot have the least doubt who hates whom. After
all, there is less guesswork in the grammatical understanding of
English than of Latin ; cf. the examples given above, Ch. XVIII § 4,
p. 343.
The tendency toAvards a fixed word order is therefore a pro-
gressive one, directly as well as indirectl3^ The substitution of
word order for flexions means a victory of spiritual over material
agencies.
XVm.— § 14. Summary.
We may here sum up the results of our comparison of the
main features of the grammatical structures of ancient and
modern languages belonging to our family of speech. We have
found certain traits common to the old stages and certain others
characteristic of recent ones, and have thus been enabled to
establish some definite tendencies of development and to find
out the general direction of change ; and we have sho^oTi reasons
for the conviction that this development has on the whole and
in the main been a beneficial one, thus justifjdng us in speaking
about ' progress in language.' The points in wliich the superiority
of the modern languages manifested itself were the following :
(1) The forms are generally shorter, thus involving less
muscular exertion and requiring less time for their enunciation.
(2) There are not so many of them to burden the memory.
(3) Their formation is much more regular.
(4) Their syntactic use also presents fewer irregularities.
(5) Their more analytic and abstract character facilitates
expression by rendering possible a great many combinations and
constructions which were formerly impossible or unidiomatic.
(6) The clumsy repetitions known under the name of concord
have become superfluous.
(7) A clear and unambiguous understanding is secured through
a regular word order.
These several advantages have not been won all at once, and
languages differ very much in the velocity with which they have
been moving in the direction indicated ; thus High German is
in many respects behindhand as compared with Low German ;
§ 14] SUMMARY 305
European Dutch as compared with African Dutch ; Swedish as
compared with Danish ; and all of them as compared with English ;
further, among the Romanic languages we see considerable varia-
tions in this respect. What is maintained is chiefly that there
is a general tendency for languages to develop along the lines here
indicated, and that this development may truly, from the anthropo-
centric point of view, which is the only justifiable one, be termed
a progressive evolution.
But is tliis tendency really general, or even universal, in the
world of languages ? It wll easily be seen that my examples
have in the main been taken from comparativelj^ few languages,
those with which I myself and presumably most of my readers
are most familiar, all of them belonging to the Gothonic and
Romanic branches of the Aryan famil}'. Would the same theory
hold good with regard to other languages ? Without pretending
to an intimate knowledge of the history of many languages, I
yet dare assert that my conclusions are confirmed by all those
languages whose history is accessible to us. Colloquial Irish and
Gaelic have in many ways a simpler grammatical structure than
the Oldest Irish. Russian has got rid of some of the complications
of Old Slavonic, and the same is true, even in a much higher degree,
of some of the other Slavonic languages ; thus, Bulgarian has
greatly simplified its nominal and Serbian its verbal flexions. The
grammar of spoken Modern Greek is much less complicated than
that of the language of Homer or of Demosthenes. The structure
of Modern Persian is nearly as simple as English, though that of
Old Persian was highly complicated. In India we witness a
constant simplification of grammar from Sanskrit through Prakrit
and Pah to the modern languages, Hindi, Hindostani (Urdu),
Bengali, etc. Outside the Aryan world we see the same movement :
Hebrew is simpler and more regular than AssjTian, and spoken
Arabic than the old classical language, Koptic than Old Egyptian.
Of most of the other languages we are not in possession of written
records from very early times ; still, we may afiu-m that in Turkish
there has been an evolution, though rather a slow one, of a similar
kind ; and, as we shall see in a later chapter, Chinese seems to
have moved in the same direction, though the nature of its ^\Titing
makes the task of penetrating into its history a matter of extreme
difficulty. A comparative study of the numerous Bantu languages
spoken all over South Africa justifies us in thinking that their
evolution has been along the same lines : in some of them the
prefixes characterizing various classes of nouns have been reduced
in number and in extent (cf. above, § 9). Of one of them we have
a grammar two hundred years old, by Brusciotto b. Vetralla
(re-editesd by H. Grattan Guirmess, London, 1882). A comparison
860 PROGRESS [ch. xviii
of his description with the language now spoken in the same
region (Mpongwe) shows that the class signs have dwindled down
considerably and the number of the classes has been reduced
from 16 to 10. In short, though we can only prove it with regard
to a minority of the multitudinous languages spoken on the globe,
this minority embraces all the languages known to us for so long
a period that we can talk of their history, and we may, therefore,
confidently maintain that what may be briefly termed the
tendency towards grammatical simplification is a universal fact
of linguistic history.
That this simplification is progressive, i.e. beneficial, was
overlooked by the older generation of linguistic thinkers, because
they saw a kosmos, a beautiful and well-arranged world, in the
old languages, and missed in the modern ones several things that
they had been accustomed to regard with veneration. To some
extent they were right : every language, when studied in the
right spirit, presents so many beautiful points in its systematic
structure that it may be called a ' kosmos.' But it is not in
ever}'^ way a kosmos ; like everything human, it presents fine
and less fine features, and a comparative valuation, such as the
one here attempted, should take both into consideration. There
is undoubtedly an exquisite beauty in the old Greek language,
and the ancient Hellenes, with their artistic temperament, knew
how to turn that beauty to the best account in their literary
productions ; but there is no less beauty in many modern languages
— though its appraisement is a matter of taste, and as such evades
scientific inquiry. But the aesthetic point of view is not the
decisive one : language is of the utmost importance to the whole
practical and spiritual life of mankind, and therefore has to be
estimated by such tests as those applied above ; if that is done,
we cannot be blind to the fact that modern languages as wholes
are more practical than ancient ones, and that the latter present
so many more anomalies and irregularities than our present-day
languages that we may feel inclined, if not to apply to them
Shakespeare's line, "Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,"
yet to think that the development has been from something nearer
chaos to something nearer kosmos.
CHAPTER XIX
ORIGIN OF GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS
§ 1. The Old Theory. § 2. Roots. § 3. Structure of Chinese. § 4. History
of Chinese. § 5. Recent Investigations. § 6. Roots Again. § 7. The
Agglutination Theory. § 8. Coalescence. § 9. Flexional Endings.
§ 10. Validity of the Theory. § 11. Irregularity Original. § 12.
Coalescence Theory dropped. § 13. Secretion. § 14. Extension of
Suffixes. § 15. Tainting of Suffixes. § 16. The Classifying Instinct.
§ 17. Character of Suffixes. § 18. Brugmann's Theory of Gender.
§ 19. Final Considerations.
XIX.— § 1. The Old Theory.
What has been given in the last two chapters to clear up the
problem " Decay or progress ? " has been based, as will readily
be noticed, exclusively on easily controllable facts of linguistic
history. So far, then, it has been very smooth sailing. But
now we must venture out into the open sea of prehistoric
speculations. Our voyage will be the safer if we never lose
sight of land and have a reliable compass tested in known
waters.
In our historical survey of linguistic science we have already
seen that the prevalent theory concerning the prehistoric develop-
ment of our speech is this : an originally isolating language,
consisting of nothing but formless roots, passed through an
agglutinating stage, in which formal elements had been de-
veloped, although these and the roots were mutually independent,
to the third and highest stage found in flexional languages,
in which formal elements penetrated the roots and made insepar-
able unities with them. We shall now examine the basis of this
theory.
In the beginning was the root. This is " the result of strict
and careful induction from the facts recorded in the dialects of
the different members of the family" (Whitney L 260). "The
firm foundation of the theory of roots lies in its logical necessity
as an inference from the doctrine of the historical growth of gram-
matical apparatus " (Whitney G 200). " An instrumentality can-
not but have had rude and simple beginnings, such as, in language,
the so-called roots . . . such imperfect hints of expression as
we call roots " (Whitney, Views of L. 338). These are really
868 ORIGIN OF GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS [ch. xix
three different statements : induction from the facts, a logical
inference from the doctrine about grammatical apparatus (i.e.
the usually accepted doctrine, but on what is that built up except
on the root theory ?), and the a pri)ri argument that an ' instru-
mentality ' must have simple beginnings. Even granted that
these three arguments given at different times, each of them in
turn as the sole argument, must be taken as supplementing each
other, the three-legged stool on which the root theory is thus made
to sit is a very shaky one, for none of the three legs is very solid,
as we shall soon have occasion to see.
XIX.— § 2. Roots.
In the beginning was the root — but what was it like ? Bopp
took over the conception of root from the Indian grammarians,
and like them was convinced that roots were all monosyllabic,
and that view was accepted by his followers. These latter at
times attributed other phonetic qualities to these roots, e.g. that
they always had a short vowel (Curtius C 22). I quote from a
very recent treatise (Wood, " Indo-European Root-formation,"
Journal of Germ. Philol. 1. 291) : "I range myself with those who
believe that IE. roots were monosyllabic . . . these roots began,
for the most part, with a vowel. The vowels certainly were the
first utterances,^ and though we cannot make the beginning of
IE. speech coeval with that of human speech, we may at least
assume that language, at that time, was in a very primitive
state."
The number of these roots was not very great (Curtius, I.e. ;
Wood 294). This seems a natural enough conclusion when we
picture the earliest speech as the most meagre thing possible.
These few short monosj^llabic roots were real words — this is
a necessary assumption if we are to imagine a root stage as a real*
language, and it is often expressly stated ; Curtius, for instance,
insists that roots are real and independent w^ords (C 22, K 132) ;
cf. also Whitney, who says that the root VAK " had also once
an independent status, that it was a word " (L 255). We shall
see afterwards that there is another possible conception of what
a ' root ' is ; but let us here grant that it is a real word. The
question whether a language is possible which contains nothing
but such root words was always answered aflfirmatively by a
reference to Chinese — and it will therefore be well here to
give a short sketch of the chief structural features of that
language.
^ Why ao ? Did sheep and cows also begin with vowels only, adding
6 ard m afterwards to make up their bah and moo ?
§3] STRUCTURE OF CHINESE 309
XIX.— § 3. Structure of Chinese.
Each word consists of one syllable, neither more nor less.
Each of these monosyllables has one of four or five distinct musical
tones (not indicated here). The parts of speech are not distin-
guished : ta means, according to circumstances, great, much,
magnitude, enlarge. Grammatical relations, such as number,
person, t<?nse, case, etc., are not expressed by endings and similar
expedients ; the word in itself is invariable. If a substantive is
to be taken as plural, this as a rule must be gathered from the
context ; and it is only when there is any danger of misunder-
standing, or when the notion of plurality is to be emphasized,
that separate words are added, e.g. ki 'some,' hi 'number.' The
most important part of Chinese grammar is that dealing with
word order : ta knok means ' great state(s),' but kuok ta ' the
state is great,' or, if placed before some other word which can
serve as a verb, * the greatness (size) of the state ' ; tsi niu ' boys
and girls,' but niu tsi ' girl (female child),' etc. Besides words
properly so called, or as Chinese grammarians call them ' full
words,' there are several ' empty words ' serving for grammatical
purposes, often in a wonderfullj- clever and ingenious way. Thus
ci has besides other functions that of indicating a genitive relation
more distinctly than would be indicated by the mere position of
the words ; yniii (people) lik (power) is of itself sufficient to signify
' the power of the people,' but the same notion is expressed more
explicitly by 7ni7i ci lik. The same expedient is used to indicate
different sorts of connexion : if ci is placed after the subject of
a sentence it makes it a genitive, thereby changing the sentence
into a kind of subordinate clause : wang poo min = ' the kmg
protects the people ' ; but if you say wang ci pao min yeu (is like)
fu (father) ci pao ts'i, the whole may be rendered, by means of the
English verbal noun, ' the king's protecting the people is like the
father's protecting his child.' Further, it is possible to change
a whole sentence into a genitive ; for instance, wang pao min ci
tao (manner) k'o (can) kien (see, be seen), ' the manner in which
the king protects (the manner of the king's protecting) his people
is to be seen ' ; and in j^et other positions ci can be used to join
a word-group consisting of a subject and verb, or of verb and
object, as an adjunct (attribute) to a noun ; we have particij)les
to express the same modification of the idea : wang pao ci min
' the people protected by the king * ; pao min ci wang ' a king pro-
tecting the people.' Observe here the ingenious method of dis-
tinguishing the active and passive voices by strictly adhering to
the natural order and placing the subject before and the object
after the verb. If we put i before, and ku after, a single word, it
24
870 ORIGIN OF GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS [ch. xix
means ' on account of, because of ' (cf. E. for . . . 's sake) ; if
we place a whole sentence between these ' brackets,' as we might
term them, they are a sort of conjunction, and must be translated
' because.' ^
XIX.— § 4. History o! Chinese.
These few examples will give some faint idea of the Chinese
language, and — if the whole older generation of scholars is to
be trusted — at the same time of the primeval structure of our
own language in the root-stage. But is it absolutely certain that
Chinese has retained its structure unchanged from the very first
period ? By no means. As early as 1861, R. Lepsius, from a
comparison of Chinese and Tibetan, had derived the conviction
that " the monosyllabic character of Chinese is not original, but
is a lapse (!) from an earlier polysyllabic structure." J. Edkins,
while still believing that the structure of Chinese represents " the
speech first used in the Avorld's grey morning " {The Evolution of
the Chinese Language, 1888), was one of the foremost to examine
the evidence offered hy the language itself for the determination
of its earlier pronunciation. This, of course, is a much more com-
plicated problem in Chinese than in our alphabetically written
languages ; for a Chinese character, standing for a complete word,
may remain unchanged while the pronunciation is changed in-
definitely. But by means of dialectal pronunciations in om* own
day, of remarks in old Chinese dictionaries, of transcriptions of
Sanskrit words made by Chinese Buddhists, of rimes in ancient
poetry, of phonetic or partly phonetic elements in the word-char-
acters, etc., is has been possible to demonstrate that Chmese
pronunciation has changed considerablj^ and that the direction
of change has been, here as elsewhere, towards shorter and easier
word-forms. Above all, consonant groups have been simplified.*
In 1894 I ventured to offer my mite to these investigations
by suggesting an explanation of one phenomenon of pronuncia-
tion in present-day Chinese. I refer to the change sometimes
wrought in the meaning of a word b}'^ the adoption of a different
tone. Thus loayig with one tone is ' king,' with another ' to become
king'; lao with one is 'work,' with another 'pay the work';
tsung with one tone means ' follow,' with another ' follower,'
and vnih. a third ' footsteps ' ; tshi with one tone is ' wife,' with
another ' marry ' ; had is 'good,' and had is ' love.' Nay, meanings
so different as ' acquire ' and ' give ' {sheu) or ' buy ' and ' sell '
(mai) are only distinguished by the tones. Edkins and V. Henry
^ The examples taken from Gabelentz's Orammar and an article in
Teclimor's Intermit. Zeitschrift I.
§4] HISTORY OF CHINESE 871
{Le Musion, Louvain, 1882, i. 435) have attempted to explain this
from gestures ; but this is palpably wrong. In the Danish dialect
spoken in Sundeved, in southernmost Jutland, two tones are dis-
tinguished, one high and one low (see articles by N. Andersen
and m3''self in Dania, vol. iv.). Now, these tones often serve to
keep words or forms of words apart that but for the tone, exactly
as in Cliinese, would be perfect homophones. Thus na with the
low tone is ' fool,' but with the high tone it is either the plural
' fools ' or else a verb ' to cheat, hoax ' ; ri ' ride ' is imperative
or infinitive according to the tone in which it is uttered ; jem in
the low tone is ' home ' and in the high ' at home ' ; and so on
in a great many words. There is no need, however, in this language
to resort to gestures to explain these tonic differences : the low
tone is found in words originally monosyllabic (compare standard
Danish nar, rid, hjeni), and the high tone in words originally
dissyllabic (compare Danish narre, ride, hjemme). The tones belong-
ing formerly to two syllables are now condensed on one syllable.
Although, of course, Chinese tones cannot in every respect be
paralleled with Scandinavian ones, we may provisionally con-
jecture that the above-mentioned pairs of Chinese words were
formerly distinguished by derivative syllables or flexional endings
(see below, p. 373) which have now disappeared without leaving
any traces behind them except in the tonas. This hypothesis
is perhaps rendered more probable by what seems to be an estab-
lished fact — that one of the tones has arisen through the dropping
of final stopped consonants {p, t, k).
However this may be, the death-blow was given to the dogma
of the primitiveness of Chinese speech by Ernst Kuhn's lecture
Ueher Herkitnjt und Sprache der Trausgangetischen Volker (Munich,
1883). He compares Chinese with the surrounding languages of
Tibet, Burmah and Siam, which are certainly related to Chinese
and have essentially the same structure ; they are isolating, have
no flexion, and word order is their chief grammatical instrument.
But the laws of word order prove to be different in these several
languages, and Kuhn draws the incontrovertible conclusion that
it is impossible that any one of these laws of word position should
have been the original one ; for that would imply that the other
nations have changed it without the least reason and at a risk
of terrible confusion. The only likely explanation is that these
differences are the outcome of a former state of greater freedom.
But if the ancestral speech had a free word order, to be at all
intelligible it must have been possessed of other grammatical
appliances than are now found in the derived tongues ; in other
words, it must have indicated the relations of words to each other
by something like our derivatives or flexions.
372 ORIGIN OF GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS [en. xix
To the result thus established by Kuhn, that Chinese cannot
have had a fixed word order from the beginning, wo seem also
to be led if we ask the question, Is primitive man likely to have
arranged his words in this way ? A Chinese sentence, according
to Gabelentz (Spr 426), is arranged with the same logical pre-
cision as the direction on an English envelope, where the most
specific word is placed first, and each subsequent word is like a
box comprising all that precedes — only that a Chinaman would
reverse the order, beginning with the most general word and then
in due order specializing. Now, is it probable that primitive man,
that xmkempt, savage being, who did not yet deserve the proud
generic name of honio sapiens, but would be better termed, if not
fio7no insipiens, at best ho7no incipiens — is it probable that this
urmensch, who was little better than an unmensch, should have
been able at once to arrange his words, or, what amounts to the
same thing, his thoughts, in such a perfect order ? I incline to
believe rather that logical, orderly thinking and speaking have
only been attained by mankind after a long and troublesome
struggle, and that the grammatical expedient of a fixed word
order has come to Chinese as to European languages through
a gradual development in which other, less logical and more
material grammatical appliances have in course of time been
given up.
We have thus arrived at a conception of Chinese which is toto
ccbIo removed from the view formerly current. The Chinese lan-
guage can no longer be adduced in supj^ort of the hj^jothesis that
our Aryan languages, or all human languages, started at first as
a grammarless speech consisting of monosyllabic root-words.
XIX.— § 5. Recent Investigations.
I have rex)rinted the above sketch of Chinese, with a few very^
insignificant verbal changes, as I wrote it about thirty years ago,
because I think that the main reasoning is just as valid now as
then, and because everything I have since then read about this
interesting language has only confirmed the opinion I ventured
to express after what was certainly a very insufficient study.
Chinese pronunciation, including its tones, may now be studied
in two excellent books, dealing with two different dialects — Daniel
Jones and K^\^ng Tong Woo, A Cantonese Phonetic Header, London,
1912, and Bemhard Karlgren, A Mandarin Phonetic Reader in
the Pekinese Dialect, Upsala, Leipzig and Paris, 1917 (Archives
d'jfitudes Orientales, vol. 13). Karlgren is also the author of
Etudes sur la Phonologic Chinoiae (ib. vol. 15, 1915-19), in which
he deals with the history of Chinese sounds and the reconstruction
§5] RECENT INVESTIGATIONS 378
of the old pronunciation in a thoroughly scholarly manner on the
basis of an intimate knowledge of spoken and wTitten Chinese,
and in Ordet och pennan i mittens rike (Stockholm, 1918), he has
given a masterly popular sketch of the structure of the Chinese
language and its system of wiiting.
Of the greatest importance for oiu* purposes is the same
scholar's recent brilUant discovery of a real case distinction in
the oldest Chinese. In classical Chinese there are four pronouns
of the first person (I, we) which have always been considered as
absolutely sjTionj'mous. But Karlgren shows that the two of
them wliich occur as the usual forms in Confucius's conversations
are so far from being used indiscriminately that one is nearly
always a nominative and the other an objective case ; the excep-
tions are not numerous and are easily explained. The present
Mandarin pronunciation of the first is [u], of the second either
[uo] or [i]o]. But if we go back to the sixth century of our
era we are able with certainty to say that the pronunciation of
the former wa^ [t^uo], and of the latter [r/a]. This, then, consti-
tutes a real declension. Now, in the second person Karlgren is
also able to point out a distinction of two pronouns, though not
quite so clearly marked as in the first person, the objective showing
here a greater tendency to encroach on the nominative (Karlgren
here ingeniouslj' adduces the parallel from our languages that
the fii'st person has retained the suppletive system ego : me, while
the second uses the same stem tu : te). The oldest Chinese thus
has the following case flexion :
l8t Per. 2nd Per.
Nom. T^uo niiwo
Obj. ■j^a niia
(See " Le Proto-chinois, langue flexionnelle," Journal Asiatique,
1920, 206 ff.).^
XIX.— § 6. Roots Again.
To return to roots. The influence of Indian grammar on
European linguists Avith regard to the theory of roots extended
also to the meanings assigned to roots, which were all of them
* I must also mention A. Conrady, Eiyie indochinesische Causativ-denomi-
nativ-bildung (Leipzig, 1896), in which Lepsius's theory is carried a great
step further and it is demonstrated with very great learning that many of
the tone relations (as well as modifications of initial sounds) of Chinese
and kindred languages find their explanation in the previous existence of
prefixes which are now extinct, but which can still be pointed out in Tibetan.
Though I ought, therefore, to have spoken of prefixes instead of ' flexional
endings ' above, p. 371, the essence of the contention that prehistoric Chinese
must have had a polysyllabic and non -isolating structure is thus borne out
by the researches of competent specialists in this field.
374 ORIGIN OF GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS [ch. xix
of verbal character, and nearly always highly general or abstract,
such as ' breathe, move, be sharp or quick, blow, go,' etc. The
impossibility of imagining anybody expressing himself by means
of a language consisting exclusively of such abstracts embarrassed
people much less than one would expect : Chinese, of course, has
plenty of words for concrete objects.
The usual assumption was that there was one definite root
period in which all the roots were created, and after which this
form of activity ceased. But Whitney demurred to this (M 36),
saying that E. preach and cost may be considered new roots, though
ultimately coming from Lat. prce-dicare and con-stare : these
old compounds are felt as units, " reducing to the semblance of
roots elements that are really derivative or compound." As
Whitney goes no further than to establish the semblance of new
roots, he might be taken as an adherent rather than as an opponent
of the theory he objects to. But, as a matter of fact, new words
are created in modern languages, and if they form the basis of
derived words, we may really speak of new roots (pun — punning,
punster ; fun — funny ; etc.). Why not say that we have a French
root roul in router, rovlement, roulaye, roulier, rouleau, roulette,
roulis ? This only becomes unjustifiable if we think that the
establishment of this root gives us the ultimate explanation of
these words ; for then the linguistic historian steps in with the
objection that the words have been formed, not from a root, but
from a real word, A\'hich is not even in itself a primary word, but
a derivative, Lat. rotula, a diminutive of rota ' wheel.' (I take
this example from Breal M 407). To the i)oj)ular instinct sorrow
and sorry are undoubtedly related to one another, and we may
say that they contain a root sorr- ; but a thousand jears ago
the}' had nothing to do with one another, and belonged to different
roots : OE. sorg ' care ' and sdrig ' wounded, afflicted.' If all*
traces of Latin and Greek were lost, a linguist would have no
more scruples about connecting scene with see than most illiterate
Englishmen have now. AVho will vouch that manj- Aryan roots
may hot have originated at various times through similar pro-
cesses as these new roots preach, cost, ro2il, sorr, see ?
The proper definition of a root seems to be : what is common
to a certain number of words felt by the popular instinct of the
speakers as etymologically belonging together. In this sense we
may of course speak of roots at an}' stage of an}' language, and
not only at a hypothetical initial stage. In some cases these
roots may be used as separate words (E. preach, fun, etc., Fr.
roul = what is spelt roule, roules, roulent) ; in other cases this is
impossible (Lat. am in atno, amor, amicus ; E. sorr) ; in many
cases because the common element cannot, for phonetic reasons,
§6] ROOTS AGAIN 875
be easily pronounced, as when E. drinh, drank, drunk or sit, sat,
seat, set are naturally felt to belong together, though it is impossible
to state the root excejot in some formula like dr.nk, s.t, where the
dot stands for some vowel. Similar considerations may be adduced
with regard to the consonants if we want to establish what is felt
to be common in give and gift {gi-\- labiodental spirant) or in speak
and speech, etc. ; but this need not detain us here.
In my view, then, the root is something real and important,
though not alwaj's tangible. And as its form is not always easy
to state or pronounce, so must its meaning, as a rule, be somewhat
vague and indeterminate, for what is common to several ideas
must of course be more general and abstiact than either of the
more special ideas thus connected ; it is also natural that it will
oiten be necessary to state the signification of a root in terms
of verbal ideas, for these are more general and abstract than
nominal ideas. But roots thus conceived belong to anj' and all
periods, and we must cease to speak of the earliest period of
human speech as ' the root period.'
XIX.— § 7. The Agglutination Theory.
According to the received theory (see above, § 1) some of the
roots became gradually attached to other roots and lost their
independence, so as to become finally formatives fused with the
root. This theory, generally called the agglutination theory,
contains a good deal of truth ; but we can onl}^ accept it with
three important pro%asos, namely, first, that there has never been
one definite period in which those languages which are now
fiexional were wholly agglutinative, the process of fusion being
liable to occur at an}'- time ; second, that the component parts
which become formatives are not at first roots, but real words ;
and third, that this process is not the only one by which forma-
tives may develop : it may be called the rectilinear process, but
by the side of that we have also more circuitous coiu"ses, which
are no less important in the life of languages for being less
obvious.
In the process of coalescence or integration there are many
possible stages, with may be denominated figuratively by such
expressions as that two words are placed together (that is — in non-
figurative language — pronounced after one another), tied together,
loiit together, glued together (' agglutinated '), soldered together,
welded together, fused together or amalgamated. What is really
the most important part of the process is the degree in which one
of the comi^onents loses its independence, phonetically and
semantically.
arc ORIGIN OF GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS [ch, xix
As ' agglutination ' is thus only one intermediate stage in
a continuous process, it would be better to have another name
for the whole theory of the origin of formatives than ' the agglu-
tination theory,' and I propose therefore to use the term ' coales-
cence theory.' The usual name also fixes the attention too
exclusively on the so-called agglutinative languages, and if we
take the formatives of such a language as Turkish, as in sev-mek
' to love,' sev-il-mek ' to be loved,' sev-dir-mek ' to cause to love,'
sev-dir-il-mek ' to be made to love,' sev-ish-mek ' to love one
another,' sev-ish-dir-il-mek ' to be made to love one another ' —
who will vouch that these formatives were all of them originally
independent words ? Those who are most competent to have
an opinion on the matter seem nowadays inclined to doubt it
and to reject much of what was current in the description of these
languages given bj' the earlier scholars ; see, especially, the inter-
esting final chapter of V. Granbech, Forsttidier til tyrkisk lydhistorie
(KobenhaATi, 1902).
XIX.— §8. Coalescence.
The various degrees of coalescence, and the coexistence at the
same linguistic period of these various degrees, may be illustrated
by the old example, English un-tru-th-jid-ly, and by German iin-
be-stimm-bar-keit. Let us look a little at each of these formatives.
The only one that can still be used as an independent word is
ful{\). From the collocation in ' I have my hand full of peas '
the transition is easy to ' a handful of peas,' where the accentual
subordination of full to ha7id paves the waj^ for the combination
becoming one word instead of two : this is not accomplished till
it becomes possible to put the plural sign at the end {handfxds,
thus also basket fuls and others), while in less familiar combinations^
the s is still placed in the middle {bucketsful, two donkeysjid of
children, see MEG ii. 2. 42). In these substantives -Jul keeps its
full vowel [u]. But in adjectival compounds, such as peaceful,
aivful, there is a colloquial pronunciation with obscured or omitted
vowel [-fal, -fl], in which the phonetic connexion with the full word
is thus weakened ; the semantic connexion, too, is loosened when
it becomes possible to form such words as dreadful, bashful, in which
it is not possible to use the definition ' full of . . .' Here, then,
the transition from a word to a derivative suffix is complete.
English -hood, -head in childhood, maidenhead also is originallj' an
independent word, found in OE. and ME. in the form had, meaning
' state, condition,' Gothic haidus. In German it has two forms,
•heit, as in freiheit, and -keit, whose k was at first the final sound of
the adjective in ewigkeit, MHG. eivecheit, but was later felt as part
§8] COALESCENCE 877
of the suffix and then transferred to cases in which the stem had
no k, as in tapferkeit, ehrbarkeit.
The suffix -ly is from lik, which was a substantive meaning
'form, appearance, body' ('a dead body' in Dan. lig, E. Itch in
lichgate) ; manlik thus is ' having the form or appearance of a
man ' ; the adjective like originally was ge-Uc ' having the same
appearance with ' (as in Lat, con-fcnm-is). In compounds -lik
was shortened into -hj : in some cases we still have com}3eting forms
like gentlemanlike and gentlemanly. The ending was, and is still,
used extensively in adjectives ; if it is now also used to turn
adjectives into adverbs, as in truthful-ly, luxurious-ly, this is a
consequence of the two OE. forms, adj. -He and adv. -lice, having
phonetically fallen together.
It ma}' perhaps be doubtful whether the G. suffix -bar (OHG.
-bari, OE. bcere) was ever really an independent word, but its
connexion with the verb beran, E. bear, camiot be doubted :
friichtbar is what bears fruit (cf. OE. ceppelbcere ' bearing apples '),
but the connexion was later loosened, and such adjectives as ehrbar,
kostbar, offenhar have little or nothing left of the original meaning
of the suffix. The two prefixes in our examples, wi- and be-,
are differentiated forms of the old negative ne and the preposition
by, and the only affix in our two long words which is thus left
unexplained is -th, which makes true into tr^^tJl and is found also
in length, health, etc.
XIX.— § 9. Flexional Endings.
There can be no doubt, therefore, that some at an}- rate of our
suffixes and prefixes go back to independent words which have been
more or less weakened to become derivative formatives. But does
the same hold good Avith those endings which we are accustomed
to term flexional endings ? The answer certainly must be in the
affirmative — with regard to some endings.
Thus the Scandinavian passive originates in a coalescence of
the active verb and the pronoun sik : Old Norse (yeir) finna sik
(' they find themselves ' or ' each other '), gradually becomes one
word (yeir) finna^k, later finnast, finnaz, Swedish {de) finnas, Dan.
(de) findes ' they are found.' In Old Icelandic the pronoun is
still to some extent felt as such, though formally an indistinguish-
able part of the verb ; thus combinations like the following are very
frequent: Bolli kvaz yessu r&6a vilja = kva'S sik vilja; "Bolli dixit
se velle : B. said that he would have his own way " (Laxd. 55). In
Danish a distinction can sometimes be made between a reflexive
and a purely passive employment : de slds with a short vowel is
' they fight (one another),' but with a long vowel ' they are beaten.'
378 ORIGIN OF GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS [ch. xix
A similar coalescence is taking place in Russian, where sja ' himself '
(myself, etc.) dwindles down to a sufl&xeds : kazalos ' it showed itself ,
turned out.'
A similar case is the Romanic future : It. finiro, Sp. finire,
Fr. finirai, from finire habeo (finir ho, etc.), originally ' I have to
finish.' Before the coalescence was complete, it was jDOssible to
insert a pronoun, Old Sp. cantar-te-M ' I shall sing to you.'
A third case in point is the suffixed definite article, if we are
allowed to consider that as a kind of flexion : Old Norse mannenn
{manninn) accusative ' the man,' landet (landit) ' the land ' ; Dan.
nianden, landet, from mann, land -{-the demonstrative pronoun enn,
neuter et. Rumanian domnnl ' the lord,' from Lat. dominu{m)
illu{m), is another example.
XIX.— § 10. Validity of the Theory.
Now, does this kind of explanation admit of universal applica-
tion — in other words, were all our derivative affixes and flexional
endings originally independent words before they were ' glued '
to or fused with the main word ? This has been the prevalent, one
might almost say the orthodox, view of all the leading linguists,
who may be mustered in formidable array in defence of the
agglutination theorJ^^
Against the universahty of this origin for formatives I adduced
in my former work (1894, p. 66 f., cf. Kasus, 1891, p. 36) four
reasons, which I shall here restate in a different order and in a
fuller form.
(1) Nothing can be proved with regard to the ultimate genesis
of flexion in general from the adduced examples, for in all of them
the elements were already fulh^ flexional before the coalescence
(cf. ON. finnask, fannsk ; It. finird, finirai, finira ; ON. ma'^renn,
mannenn, mansens, etc.). What they show, then, is really nothing
but the growth of new flexional formations on an old flexional
soil, and it might be imagined that the fusion would not have taken
place, or not so completely, if the minds of the speakers had not
been alread}"^ prepared to accept formations of this character.
I do not, however, attach much importance to this argument, and
turn to those that are more cogent.
(2) The number of actual forms proved beyond a doubt to
1 Madvig Kl 170, Max Miiller L 1. 271, Whitney OLS 1. 283, G 124, Paul
P Ist ed. 181, repeated in the following editions, see 4th, 1909, 350 and 347,
349; Brugmann VG 1889, 2. 1 (but in 2nd ed. this has been struck out in
favour of hopeless skepticism), Schuchardt, Anlaas d. Volapuks 11, Gabelentz
Spr 189, Tegner SM 53, Sweet, New Engl. Or. § 559, Storm, Engl. Phil. 673,
Rozwadowski, Wortbildung u. Worthed., Uhlenbeck, Karakt. d. bask. Qramm.
24, Siitterlin WGS 1902, 122, Porzezinski, Spr 1910, 229.
§10] VALIDITY OF THE THEORY 379
have originated through coalescence is comparatively small. It is
true that not a few derivative S3'llables were originally independent ;
still, if we compare them with the number of those for which no
such origin has been proved or even proposed, we find that the
proportion is very small indeed. In the list of English suffixes
enumerated in Sweet's Grammar, only eleven can be traced back
to independent words, while 74 are not thus explicable. Anyone
going through the countless suffixes enumerated in the second
volume of Brugmann's Vergleichende Grammatik will, I think,
be struck with the impossibility of any great number of them being
traced back to words in the same way as hood, etc., above : their
forms and, still more, their vague spheres of meaning, and on the
whole their maimer of application, distinctly speak against such
an origin.
As to real flexional endings traceable to words, theii- number
is even comparatively smaller than that of derivative suffixes ;
the three or four instances named above are everywhere appealed
to, but are there so many more than these ? And are they
numerous enough to justify so general an assertion ? IMy impres-
sion is that the basis for the induction is very far from sufficient.
(3) This argument is strengthened when we are able to point
out instances in which, as a matter of fact, flexional endings have
arisen in a way that is totally opposed to the agglutinative, which
then must renounce all claims to be the only possible way for a
language to arrive at flexional formatives. See below (§ 13) on
Secretion.
(4) Assuming the theory to be true, we should expect much
greater regularity, both in formal (morphological) and in semantic
(syntactic) respect than we actually find in the old Aryan languages ;
for if one defuiite element was added to signify one definite modifi-
cation of the idea, we see no reason why it should not have been
added to all words in the same way. As a matter of fact, the
Romanic future, the Scandinavian passive voice and definite article
present much greater regularity than is found in the flexion of
nouns and verbs in old Aryan,
XIX.— § 11. Irregularity Original.
It will be objected that the irregularity which we find in these
old languages is of later growth, and that, in fact, flexion, as
Schuchardt says, is "anomal gewordene agglutination." Whitney
said that '' each suffix has its distinct meaning and office, and is
applied in a whole class of analogous words " (L. 254), and in reading
Schleicher's Compendium one gains the impression that the old
Aryan sounds and forms were like a regiment of well -trained soldiers
380 ORIGIN OF GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS [ch. xix
marching along in the best military style, wliile all irregularities
were the result of later decay in each language separately. But
the trend of the whole scientific development of the last fifty years
has been in the direction of demonstrating more and more irregu-
larity in the original forms : where formerly only one ending was
assumed for the same case, etc., now several are asr^umed. (See, e.g.,
Walde in Streitberg's Oesch., 2. 194, Thumb, ib. 2. 69.) And as
with the forms, so also with the meanings and applications of the
forms, Madvig as early as 1857 (p. 27. Kl 202) had seen that the
signification of the grammatical forms must originally have been
extremely vague and fluctuating, but most scliolars went on imagin-
ing that each case, each tense, each mood had originally stood for
something quite settled and definite, until gradually the progress of
linguistics made away with that conception point by point. In place
of the belief that the original Arj-an verb had a definite system of
tense forms, it is now generally assumed that different ' aspects '
('aktionsarten'), somewhat like those of Slav verbs, were indicated,
and that the notion of ' time ' differences was only afterwards
developed out of the notion of aspect : but if we compare the
divisions and definitions of these aspects given by various scholars,
Me see how essentially vague this notion is ; instead of being a
model system of nice logical distinctions, the original condition
must rather have been one in which such notions as duration,
completion, result, beginning, repetition A^ere indistinctly found
as germs, from which such ideas as perfect and imperfect, past
and present, were finally evolved with greater and greater clearness.
Similar remarks apply to moods. All attempts at finding
out, deductivel}' or inductively, the fundamental notion (grund-
begriff) attached to such a mood as the subjunctive have failed :
it is impossible to establish one original, sharply circumscribed
sphere of usage, from which all the various, partly conflicting,
usages in the actually existing languages can be derived. The
usual theory is that there existed one true subjunctive, charac-
terized by long thematic vowels -e-, -a-, -6-, and distinct from that
an optative, characterized \>y a formative -ie- : -j-,i and that these
two were fused in Latin. But, as Oertel and Morris have shown
in their valuable article " An Examination of the Theories regarding
the Nature and Origin of Indo-European Inflection " {Harvard
Studies in Classical Philol. XVI, 1905) it is probably safer to assume
for the Indo-European period substantial identity of meaning
^ Two explanations of this formative element were given by the old
school: according to Schleicher C §290, it was the root ja of tlie relative
pronoun ; according to Curtius and others it was the root i ' to go,' Greek
Jcr-o-i-mi being analyzed as ' I go to bear,' whence, by an easy (?) transition,
' I should like to bear,' etc.
§11] IRREGULARITY ORIGINAL 381
in the modal formatives ie : I and the long thematic vowels -e-, -a-,
-0-, which were then continued undifferentiated in Latin, while on
the one hand the Germanic branch has practically discarded the
forms with long thematic vowel and confined itself to the t suflSx,
and on the other hand two branches, Greek and Indo-Iranic,
have availed themselves of the formal difference and separated a
' subjunctive ' and an ' optative ' mood.
XIX.— § 12. Coalescence Theory dropped.
In the historical part I have already mentioned some instances
of coalescence explanations of Aryan forms which have been aban-
doned by most scholars, such as the theory that the r of the Latin
passive is a disguised se, which would agree very well with the
Scandinavian passive, but falls to the ground when one remembers
that corresponding forms arc found in Keltic, where the transition
from s to r is otherwise unknown : these forms are now believed
to be related to some r forms found in Sanskrit, but there not
possessed of any passive signification, this latter being thus a
comparatively late acquisition of Keltic and Italic : these two
branches turning an existing, non-meaning consonant to excellent
use in their flexional sj^stem and generalizing it in the new
application. 1
The explanation of the ' weak ' Gothonic preterit from a
coalescence of did {loved = love did) was long one of the strong-
holds of the agglutination theory, Bopp's original collocation of
these forms with other forms which could not be thus explained
(see above 51) having passed into oblivion. Now we have Collitz's
comprehensive book Das schuxiche Prdteritum, 1912, in which the
formative consonant is shown to have been Aryan t, and the close
correspondence not only with the passive participle, but also with
the verbal nouns in -ti is duly emj^hasized.
The impossibility of explaining the Latin perfect in -vi from
composition with fui has been demonstrated by Mcrguet (see Walde
in Streitberg's Gesch., 2. 220). Instead of this rectilinear explana-
tion, scholars now incline to assume an intricate play of various
analogical influences starting from a pre-ethnic perfect in w in
isolated instances.
Many have explained the case ending -8 as a coalesced demon-
strative pronoun sa or, as it is now given, so ; the difficulty that the
same s denotes now the nominative and now the genitive ^^as got over
^ Cf. Sommor, Lat. 528, and on Armenian and Tokharian r forma MSL
18. 10 ff. and Feist KI 455. But it must not be overlooked that H. Pedersen
(KZ 40. 166 ff.) has revived and strengthened the old theory that r in Italic
and Keltic is an original se.
3S2 ORIGIN OF GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS [ch. xix
by Curtius (C 12) by the assumption that sa was added at two distinct
periods, and that each period made a different use of the addition,
though Curtius does not tell us how one or the other function could
be evolved from such a pronoun. The latest attempt at explana-
tion, which reaches me as I am writing this chapter, is by Hermann
Holler (ICZ 49. 219) : according to him the common Aryan and
Semitic nominative ended in o and the genitive in e, but to this was
added in the masculine, and more rarely in the feminine, the pronoun
s as a definite article, so that the primitive form corresponding to
Lat. lupus meant ' the wolf ' and lupu ' (a) wolf ' ; later the s-less
form was given up, and lupus came to be used for both ' the wolf '
and ' wolf ' (similarly presumably in the genitive, if we translate
the presumed original forms into Latin lupis ' the wolf's ' and
hipi ' (a) wolf's,' later lupi in both functions). In Semitic, inversely,
an element m, corresponding to the Aryan accusative ending,
was added as an indefinite article, the w-less form thus becoming
definite, but in the oldest Babylonian-AssjTian the distinction has
been given up, and the form in m is (like the Latin form in s) used
both definitely and indefinitely. Ingenious as these constructions
are, the whole theory seems to me highly artificial, and it is difficult
to imagine that both Aryans and Semites, after ha\dng evolved
such a valuable distinction as that between ' the wolf ' and ' a
wolf,' expressed by simple means, should have wilfully given it
up — to evolve it again in a later period.^ Fortunately one is
allowed to confess one's ignorance of the origin of the case
endings s and m, but if I were on pain of death to choose
between Holler's hypothesis and the suggestion thrown out by
Humboldt (Versch 129), that the light (high-pitched) s symbolized
the living (personal) and active (the subject), and the dark (low-
pitched) m the lifeless (neutral) and passive (the object), I should
certainly prefer the latter explanation.
Hirt (GDS 37) also thinks that the s found in Arj^an cases
is an originally independent word, only he thinks that this se,
so was not originally a demonstrative pronomi, but the particle,
which with the extension i is foimd in Gothic sai ' ecce,' and as
it can thus be compared with the particle c in Lat. Iiic, it is clear
that it might be added in all cases — and as a matter of fact Hirt
finds it in six different cases in the singular and in all cases in the
plural except the genitive. Hirt makes no attempt at explaining
how these various case-forms have come to acquire the signification
(function) with which we find them in the oldest documents ;
" the s element had nothing to do with the denotation of an}' case,
number or gender, and only after it had been added to some cases
* If s was a definite article, why should it be used only with some stems
and not with others ? ^Vhy should neuters never require a definite article 7
§12] COALESCENCE THEORY DROPPED 888
and not to others could it come to be distinctive of cases " (p. 39).
In other words, liis explanation explains just nothing at all. The
same is true with regard to the ' particles ' 07n or em, e, o, i, which
he thinks were added in other cases, and when he ends (p. 42)
by sa3dng that " this must be sufficient to give a glimpse of the
way in which Aryan flexion originated," the only thing we have
really seen is the haphazard waj- in which this flexion is formed,
and the impossibility at present of arriving at a fully satisfactory
explanation of these things. I should especially demur to the two
suppositions underlying Hirt's theory that Aryan had at one
period a completely flexionless structure, and that the same sound
when occurring in various cases must have had the same origin :
it seems much more probable to me that the s of the nominative
and the s of the genitive were not at first identical. ^
That item of the coalescence theory which probably appealed
most to the fancy of scholars and laymen alike was the explanation
of the personal endings in the verbs from the personal pronouns :
we have an m in the first person of the mi-verbs (esmi) and in the
pronoun me, etc., and we have a t in the third person (esti) and
in a third-person pronoun or demonstrative (to) ; it is, therefore,
quite natural to think that esmi is simply the root es 'to be ' -j- the
pronoun mi ' I,' and esti es -f- the other pronoun, and to extend
this view to the other persons. And yet not even this has been
allowed to stand unchallenged by later disrespectful linguists,
headed by A. H. Sayce (Techmer's Zeitschr. /. allg. Sprwiss. i. 22)
and Hirt. As a matter of fact, the theory is based exclusively
on the above-mentioned correspondence in the first and third
persons singular, while the dual and plural endings do not at ail
agi-ee -wdth the corresponding personal pronouns and the endings
of the second person can only be compared with the pronoun
through the employment of phonological tricks unworthy of a
scientific linguist. Even in the first person the correspondence
is not complete, for besides -mi we have other endings : -m, which
cannot be very well considered a shortened -mi (and which agrees,
^ While it is difficult to see the relation between a demonstrative pronoun
or a deictic particle and genitival function, it would be easy enough to under-
stand the latter if we started from a possessive pronoun (ejus, suus), and,
curiously enough, we find this very sound s used as a sign for the genitive
in two independent languages, starting from that notion. In Indo-Portuguese
we have gohernadors casa ' governor's house,' from gobernador su casa (above,
Ch. XI § 12, p. 213), and in the Sovith-African ' Taal ' the usual expression
for the genitive is by means of syn, which is generally shortened into se (s)
and glued enclitically to the substantive, even to feminines and plurals :
Marie-se boek ' Maria's book,' di goivweneur se hond ' the governor's dog '
(H. Meyer, Die Sprache der Buren, I90I, p. 40, where also the confusion
with the adjective ending -s, in Dutch spelt -sch, is mentioned. For the
construction compare G. dem voter sein hut and others from various languages ;
cf. the appendix on E. Bill Stumps his mark in ChE 182 f.).
38i ORIGIN OF GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS [ch. xix
as Saycc remarks, much more closely with the accusative ending
of nouns), -o and -a, neither of which can be explained from any
kno^^•n pronoun. There is thus nothing for it except to say, as
Brugmann does (KG § 770) : " The origin of the personal endings
is not clear"; of, also ISIisteli 47: "The relations between personal
endings and the independent personal pronouns must be much
more evident to justify this view. . . . The Aryan language
offers direct evidence against the assumption that a sentence has
been thus drawn together, because it uses in the verbal forms of
the first and third person sg. pronominal stems which are otherwise
employed only as objects, and, moreover, would here place the
subject after the predicate, though in sentences it observes the
opposite order." Meillet expresses himself ver}' categorically
{Bulletin de la Soc. de Ling. 1911, 143) : "Scarcely any linguist
who has studied Aryan languages would venture to affirm that
*-»nt of the type Gr. femi is an old personal pronoun."
The impression left on us bj^ all these cases is that many
of the earlier explanations by agglutination have proved imsatis-
factory, and that linguists are nowadays inclined either to leave
the forms entirely unexplained or else to admit less rectilinear
developments, in which we see the speakers of the old languages
groping tentatively after means of expression and finding them
only by devious and circuitous courses. It is, of coiu-se, difficult
to classify such explanations, and the agglutination or coalescence
theory has to be supplemented by various other kinds of
explanation ; but I tliink one of these, which has not received
its legitimate share of attention, is important and distinctive
enough to have its own name, and I propose to terra it the
' secretion ' theory.
XIX.— § 18. Secretion.
By secretion I understand the phenomenon that one integral
portion of a word comes to acquire a grammatical signification
Avhich it had not at first, and is then felt as something added to
the word itself. Secretion thus is a consequence of a ' metanalysis '
(above, Ch. X § 2) ; it shows its full force when the element
thus secreted comes to be added to other words not originally
possessing tliis element.
A clear instance is offered in the history of some English posses-
sive pronouns. In Old English min and pin the n is kept through-
out as part and parcel of the words themijelves, the other cases
ha\ing such forms as mine, minitm, minre, exactly as in Gorman
mein, meine, meinem, meiner, etc. But in ^Middle English the
endings wore gradually dropped, and min and pin for a short time
§ 13] SECRETION 385
became the only forms. Soon, however, n was dropped before
substantives beginning with a consonant, but was retained in
other positions {my father — mine uncle, it is mine) ; then the
former form was transferred also to those cases in which the pro-
noun was used (as an adjunct) before words beginning with vowels
{my father, my uncle — ^it is mine). The distinction between my
and mine, thy and thine, which was originally a purely phonetic
one, exactly like that between a and an {a father, an uncle), gradu-
ally acquired a functional value, and now serves to distinguish an
adjunct from a principal (or, to use the terms of some grammars,
a conjoint from an absolute form) ; 7ny came to be looked upon as
the proper form, while the 7i of mine was felt as an ending serving
to indicate the function as a principal word. That this is really
the instinctive feeling of the people is shown by the fact that in
dialectal and vulgar speech the same n is added to his, her, your
and their, to form the new pronouns hisn, hern, yourn, theirn :
" He that prigs what isn't hisn, when he's cotch'd, is sent to
prison. She that prigs what isn't hern, At the treadmill takes
a turn."
Another instance of secretion is -en as a plural ending in E.
oexn, G. ochsen, etc. Here originally n belonged to the word in
all cases and all numbers, just as much as the preceding s ; ox
was an n stem in the same way as, for instance, Lat. (homo),
homi^iem, homiwis, etc., or Gr. kuow, kuwa, kuwos, etc., are n stems.
In Gothic n is foimd in most of the cases of similar n stems.
In OE. the nom. is oxa, the other cases in the sg. oxan, pi. oxan
{oxen), oxnum, oxena, but in ME. the w-less form is found throughout
the singular (gen. analogicallj'' oxes), and the plural only kept -n.
Thus also a great many other words, e.g. (I give the plural forms)
apen, haren, sterren (stars), tungen, siden, eyen, which all of them
belonged to the n declension in OE. When -en had thus become
established as a plural sign, it was added analogically to words
which were not originally n stems, e.g. ME, caren, synnen, treen
(OE. cara, synna, treoio), and this ending even seemed for some
time destined to be the most usual plural ending in the South
of England, until it was finally supplanted by -5, which had been the
prevalent ending in the North ; eyen, foen, shoen were for a time in
competition Avith eyes, foes, shoes, and now -n is only found in oxen
(and children). In German to-day things are very much as they
were in Southern ME. : -en is kept extensively in the old n stems
and is added to some words which had formerly other endings, e.g.
hirten, soldaten, thaten. The result is that now plmality is indicated
by an ending which had formerly no such function (which, indeed,
had no function at all) ; for if we look upon the actual language,
oxen (G. ochsen) is = ox {ochs) singular -|- the plural ending -en ;
25
88G ORIGIN OF GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS [ch. xix
only we must not on any account imagine that the form was
originally thus welded together (agglutinated) — and if in G. soldaten
we may speak of -en being glued on to soldat, this ending is not,
and has never been, an independent word, but is an originally
insignificative part secreted by other words.
A closely similar case is the plural ending -er. The consonant
originally was s, as seen, for instance, in the Gr. and Lat. nom.
genos, genus, gen. Gr. gene{s)os, genous, Lat. generis for older
genesis. In Gothonic languages s, m accordance with a regular
soimd shift in this case, became r (through z) whenever it was
retained, but in the nom. sg. it was dropped, and thus we have
in OE. sg. lamb, lambe, lambes, but in the pi. lambru, lambrum,
lambra. In English only few words show traces of this flexion,
thus OE. did, pi. cildru, ME. child, childer, whence, with an added
-en, our modern children. But in German the class had much more
vitality, and we have not only words belonging to it of old, like
lamm, pi. Idmmer, rind, rinder, but also gradually more and more
words which originally belonged to other classes, but adopted this
ending after it had become a real sign of the plural number, thus
worter, biicher.
There is one trait that should be noticed as highly characteristic
of these instances of secretion, that is, that the occurrence of the
endings originating in this way seems from the first regulated
by the purest accident, seen from the point of view of the speakers :
they are found in some words, but not in others, whereas the
endings treated of under the heading Coalescence are added much
more uniformly to the whole of the vocabulary. But as a simi-
larly irregular or arbitrary distribution is met with in the case
of nearly all fiexional endings in the oldest stages of languages
belonging to our family of speech, the probability is that most
of those endings which it is impossible for us to trace back to
their first beginnings have originated through secretion or similar
processes, rather than through coalescence of independent words
or roots.
XIX.— § 14. Extension o£ Suffixes.
A special subdivision of secretion comj^rises those cases in
which a suffix takes over some sound or sounds from words to which
it was added. Clear instances are found in French, where in
consequence of the mutescence of a final consonant some suffixes
to the popular instinct must seem to begin with a consonant,
though originally this did not belong to the suffix. Thus laitier,
at first formed from lait -f ^^r, now came to be apprehended as
= lai{t) + tier, and cabaretier as cabare{t) -f- tier, and the new
§14] EXTENSION OF SUFFIXES 887
suffix was then used to form such new words as bijoutier, ferblantier,
cafetier and others. In the same way we have tabatiere, where
we should expect tabaquiere, and the predilection for the extended
form of the suffix is evidently strengthened by the syllable division
in frequent formations like ren-tier, por-tier, por-tiere, charpen-tier.
In old Gothonic we have similar extensions of suffixes, when instead
of -ing we get -liiig, starting from words like OHG. ediling from edili,
ON. vesUng from vesall, OE. lytling from lytel, etc. Consequently
we have in English quite a number of words with the extended
enchng : duckling, gosling, hireling, iinderling, etc. In Gothic
some words formed with -assus, such as ]>iudin-assus 'kingdom,'
were apprehended as formed with -nassus, and in all the related
languages the suffix is onl}'- knowTi with the initial n ; thus in E.
-ness : hardness, happiness, eagerness, etc. ; G. -keit with its k from
adjectives in -tchas already been mentioned (376). From criticism,
Scotticism, we have ivitti-cism, and Milton has ivitticaster on the
analogy of criticaster, where the suffix of course is -aster, as in
poetaster. Instead of -ist we also find in some cases -nist :
tobacconist, lutenist (cf. botan-ist, mechan-ist).
To form a new word it is often sufficient that some existing
word is felt in a vague way to be made up of something + an ending,
the latter being subsequently added on to another word. In
Fr. merovingien the v of course is legitimate, as the adjective is
derived from Merovee, Merowig, but this word was made the starting-
point for the word designating the succeeding dynasty : carlovingien,
where v is simply taken over as part of the suffix ; nowadays his-
torians try to be more ' correct ' and prefer the adjective carolin-
gien, which was iinknown to Littre. Oligarchy is olig + archy, but for
the opposite notion the word p oligarchy or polygarchy was framed
from poly and the last two syllables of oli-garchy, and though now
scholars have made polyarchy the usual form, the word with the
intrusive g was the common form two hundred years ago in English,
and corresponding forms are found in French, Spanish and other
languages. Judgmatical is made on the pattern of dogmatical,
though there the stem is dogmat-. In jocular German schwach-
matikus ' valetudinarian,' we have the same suffix Avith a
different colouring, taken from rheumatikus (thus also Dan.
svagmatiker). Swift does not hesitate to speak of a sextumvirate,
which suggests triumvirate better than sexvirate would have done ;
and Bernard Shaw once writes " his equipage (or autopage) " —
evidently starting from the popular, but erroneous, belief that
equipage is derived from Lat. equus and then dividing the word
equi + page. Cf. Scillonian from Scilly on account of Devoniaji
as if this were Dev + onian instead of Devon -f ian.
388 ORIGIN OF GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS [en. xix
XIX.— § 15. Tainting of Suflaxes.
It will be seen that in some of these instances the suffix has
appropriated to itself not only part of the sound of the stem, but
also part of its signification. This is seen very clearly in the case
of dmndelier, in French formed from chandelle ' candle ' with the
suffix -ier, of rather vague signification, ' anything connected with,
or ha\ang to do with ' ; in English the word is used for a hanging
branched frame to hold a number of lights ; consequently a similar
apparatus for gas-burners was denominated gaselier {gasalier,
gasoUer), and with the introduction of electricity the formation
has even been extended to electrolier. Vegetarian is from the stem
veget- with added -ari-an, which ending has no special connexion
with the notion of eating or food, but recently we have seen the
new words fruitarian and nutarian, meaning one whose food consists
(exclusively or chiefly) in fruits and nuts. Cf. solemncholy, which
according to PajTie is in use in Alabama, framed evidently on
melancholy, analj^zed in a way not approved bj^ Greek scholars.
The whole ending of septentrionalis (from the name of the constella-
tion Septem triones, the seven oxen) is used to form the opposite :
meridi-onalis.
A similar case of ' tainting ' is found in recent English. The
NED, in the article on the suffix -eer, remarks that " in many of
the words so formed there is a more or less contemptuous implica-
tion," but does not explain this, and has not remarked that it is
found only in words ending in -teer (from words in -t). I think
this contemptuous implication starts from garreteer and crotcheteer
(perhaps also pamphleteer and privateer) ; after these were formed
the disparaging words sonneteer, pulpiteer. During the war (1916,
I think) the additional word profiteer ^ came into use, but did not
find its way into the dictionaries till 1919 (Cassell's). And only
the other day I read in an American publication a new word of
the same calibre : " Against patrioteering , against fraud and violence
. . . JVIr. Mencken has always nobly and bravely contended."
XIX.— § 16. The Classifying Instinct.
Man is a classifying animal : in one sense it ma}^ be said that the
whole process of spealdng is nothing but distributing phenomena,
1 Cf. Lloyd George's speech at Dundee (The Times, July 6, 1917): '* The
Government will not permit the burdens of the country to be increased
by what is called ' profiteering.' Although I have been criticized for
using that word, I believe on the whole it is a rather good one. It is profit-
eer-ing as distinguished from profit-ing. Profiting is fair recompense for
services rendered, either in production or distribution ; profiteering is an
extravagant recompense given for services rendered. I believe that unfair
in peace. In war it is an outrage."
§16] THE CLASSIFYING INSTINCT 389
of which no two arc alike in every respect, into different classes on
the strength of perceived similarities and dissimilarities. In the
name-giving process we witness the same ineradicable and very use-
ful tendency to see likenesses and to express similarity in the pheno-
mena through similarity in name. Professor Hempl told me that
one of his little daughters, when they had a black kitten which
was called Nig (short for Nigger), immediately christened a gray
kitten Grig and a bro^\^l one Brownig. Here we see the genesis
of a suffix through a natural process, which has little in common
with the gradual weakening of an originally independent word,
as in -hood and the other instances mentioned above. In children's
speech similar instances are not unfrequent (cf. Ch. VII § 5) ;
Meringer L 148 mentions a child of 1.7 who had the following
forms : aiign, ogn, agn, for ' augen, ohren, haare.' How many words
formed or transformed in the same way must we require in order
to speak of a suffix ? Shall we recognize one in Romanic leve,
greve (cf. Fr. grief), which took the place of leve, grave ? Here,
as Schuchardt aptly remarks, it was not only the opposite signi-
fication, but also the fact that the words were frequently uttered
shortlj'- after one another, that made one word influence the other.
The classifying instinct often manifests itself in bringing words
together in form which have something in common as regards
signification. In this way we have smaller classes and larger
classes, and sometimes it is impossible for us to say in what way
the likeness in form has come about : we can only state the fact that
at a given time the words in question have a more or less close
resemblance. But in other cases it is easy to see which word of
the group has influenced the others or some other. In the examples
I am about to give, I have been more concerned to bring together
words that exhibit the classifying tendency than to try to find out
the impetus which directed the formation of the several groups.
In OE. we have some names of animals in -gga : frogga, stugga,
docga, wicga, now frog, stag, dog, loig. Savour and flavour go
together, the latter (OFr. flaur) having its v from the former.
Groin, I suppose, has its diphthong from loin ; the older form was
grine, grynd(e). Claw, paw (earlier powe, OFr. 'pol). Rim, brim.
Hook, nook. Gruff, rough {tough, bluff, huff— miff, tiff, whiff). Fleer,
leer, jeer. Tivig, sprig. Munch, crunch {lunch). Without uttering
or muttering a ivord. The trees were loiiped and toitped. In old
Gothonic the word for ' eye ' has got its vowel from the word
for ' ear,' with which it was frequently collocated : augo{n),
auso{n), but in the modern languages the two words have again
been separated in their phonetic development. In French I
suspect that popular instinct will class the words air, terre, mer
together as names of what used to be termed the ' elements,' in
390 ORIGIN OF GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS [ch. xix
spite of the different spelling and origin of the sounds. In Russian
koQot'' ' griffe ' (claw), nogot'' ' ongle ' (fingernail), and hkoV
' coiide ' (elbow), three names of parts of the body, go together in
flexion and accent (Boyer et Speranski, Manuel de la I. russe 33).
So do in Latin calez ' gnat ' and jmlex ' flea.' Atrox, feror. A
great many examples have been collected by M. Bloomfield, " On
Adaptation of Suffixes in Congeneric Classes of Substantives "
{Am. Journal of Philol. XII, 1891), from which I take a few. A
considerable number of designations of parts of the body were
formed with heteroclitic declension as r-n stems (cf. above, XVIII
§ 2): 'liver,' Or. hepar, hepatos, 'udder,' Gr. outhar, authatos,
' thigh,' Lat. femur, feminis, further Aryan names for blood, wing,
viscera, excrement, etc. Other designations of parts of the body
w^ere partly assimilated to this class, having also n stems in the
oblique cases, though their nominative was formed in a different w ay .
Words for ' right ' and ' left ' frequently influence one another
and adopt the same ending, and so do opposites generally :
Bloomfield explains the t in the Gothonic word corresponding to
E. white, where from Sanskr. we should expect th, Qveta, as due to
the word for ' black ' ; Goth, hweits, swaris, ON. hvitr, svartr, etc.
A great many names of birds and other animals appear with the
same ending, Gr. cjlaux ' owl,' kokkux ' cuckoo,' korax ' crow,' ortux
' quail,' aix ' goat,' alopex ' fox,' bomhux ' silkworm,' lunx ' lynx ' and
many others, also some plant-names. Names for winter, summer,
day, evening, etc., also to a great extent form groups. In a subse-
quent article (in IF vi. 60 ff.) Bloomfield pursues the same line of
thought and explains likenesses in various words of related signi-
fication, in direct opi30sition to the current explanation through
added root-determinatives, as due to blendings (cf. above, Ch. XVII
§ 0). In Latin the inchoative value of the verbs in -esco is due
to the accidentally inherent continuous character of a few verbs
of the class : adolesco, senesco, cresco ; but the same suffix is also
found in the oldest words for ' asking, wishing, searching,' re-
tained in E. ask, loish, G. forsclien, which thus become a small
group linked together by form and meaning alike.
XIX.— § 17. Character of Suffixes.
There seems undoubtedly to be something accidental or hap-
hazard in most of these transferences of sounds from one \Aord
to another through which groups of phonetically and scmantically
similar words are created ; the process works misystematically,
or rather, it consists in spasmodic efforts at regularizing something
which is from the start utterly unsystematic. But where condi-
tions are favourable, i.e. where the notional connexion is patent
§17] CHARACTER OF SUFFIXES 891
and the phonetic element is such that it can easily be added to many
words, the group will tend constantly to grow larger within the
natural boundaries given by the common resemblance in signification.
I have no doubt that the vast majority of our formatives, such
as suffixes and flexional endings, have arisen in this way through
transference of some part, which at first was unmeaning in itself,
from one word to another in which it had originally no business,
and then to another and another, taking as it were a certain colouring
from the words in which it is found, and gradually acquiring a more
or less independent signification or function of its own. In long
words, such as were probably frequent in primitive speech, and which
were to the minds of the speakers as unanalyzable as marmalade
or crocodile is to Englishmen nowadays, it would be perhaps most
natural to keep the beginning unchanged and to modify the final
syllable or syllables to bring about conformity with some word
with, which it was associated ; hence the prevalence of suffixes in
our languages, hence also the less systematic character of these
suffixes as compared with the prefixes, most of which have origin-
ated in independent Avords, such as adverbs. What is from the
merely phonetic jjoint of view the ' same ' suffix, in different lan-
guages may have the greatest variety of meaning, sometimes no
discernible meaning at all, and it is in many cases utterly imjDossible
to find out why in one particular language it can be used with one
stem and not with another. Anyone going through the collections
in Brugmann's great Grammar will be struck with this purely
accidental character of the use of most of the suffixes — a fact
which would be simply unthinkable if each of them bad originally
one definite, well -determined signification, but which is easy to
account for on the hypothesis here adopted. And then many of
them are not added to ready-made words or ' roots,' but form
one indivisible whole with the initial part of the word ; cf., for
instance, the suffix -le in English squabble, struggle, ivriggle, babble,
mumble, bustle, etc.
XIX.— § 18. Brugmann's Theory of Gender.
As I have said, man is a classifAnng animal, and in his language
tends to express outwardly class distinctions which he feels more
or less vaguely. One of the most important of these class di\4sions,
and at the same time one of the most difficult to explain, is that of
the three ' genders ' in our Aryan languages. If we are to believe
Brusmann, we have here a case of what I have in this work termed
secretion. In his well-known paper, " Das Nominalgeschlecht
in den indogermanischen Sprachen " (in Techmer's Zs. f. allgem.
Sprachwissensch. 4. 100 ff., cf. also his reply to Roethe's criticism,
392 ORIGIN OF GRAM3IATICAL ELEMENTS [cii. xix
PBB 15. 522) he puts the question : How did it come about that
the old Arj'ans attached a definite gender (or sex, gepchlecht) to
words meaning foot, head, house, town, Gr. po^^s, for instance,
being mascuHne, kepJiale feminine, oikos masculine, and polis
feminine ? The generally accepted explanation, according to ^\hich
the imagination of mankind looked upon lifeless things as living
beings, is, Brugmann says, unsatisfactory ; the masculine and
feminine of grammatical gender are merely unmeaning forms and
have nothing to do with the ideas of masculinity and femininity ;
for even where there exists a natural difference of sex, language
often employs only one gender. So in German we have der hase,
die mans, and der weibliche liase is not felt to be self -contradictory.
Again, in the historj' of languages we often find words which change
their gender exclusively on account of their form. Thus, in German,
many words in -e, such as traube, niere, wade, wliich were formerly
masculine, have now become feminine, because the great majority
of substantives in -e are feminine {erde, elire, farbe, etc.). Nothing
accordingly hinders us from supposing that grammatical gender
originally had nothing at all to do with natural sex. The cpiestion,
therefore, according to Brugmann, is essentially reduced to this :
How did it come to pass that the suffix -a was used to designate
female beings ? At first it had no connexion with femininity, wit-
ness Lat. aqua ' water ' and hundreds of other words ; but among
the old words with that ending there happened to be some denoting
females : mama ' mother ' and gena ' woman ' (compare E. quean,
queen). Now, in the history of some suffixes we see that, without
any regard to their original etymological signification, they may
adopt something of the radical meaning of the words to \Ahich
they are added, and transfer that meaning to new formations. In
this way mama and gena became the starting-point for analogical
formations, as if the idea of female was denoted by the ending,
and new words were . f oi^med, e.g. Lat. dea 'goddess' from dens
' god,' equa ' mare ' from eqims ' horse,' etc. The suffix -ie- or -i-
probably came to denote feminine sex by a similar process, possibly
from Skr. strl ' woman," which may have given a fem. *iilql ' she-
wolf ' to *n-lqos ' wolf.' The above is a summary of Brugmann's
reasoning ; it may interest the reader to know that a closely similar
point of view had, several years pre\aously, been taken by a far-
seeing scholar in respect to a totally different language, namely
Hottentot, where, according to Blcek, CG 2. 118-22, 202-9. a
class division which had originally nothing to do with sex has
been employed to distinguish natural sex. I transcribe a few of
Bleek's remarks : " The apparent sex-denoting character which
the classification of the nouns now has in the Hottentot language
was evidently imparted to it after a division of the nouns into
§18] BRUGMANN'S THEORY OF GENDER 893
classes ^ had taken place. It probably arose, in the first instance,
from the possibly accidental circumstance that the nouns indica-
ting (respectiveh^) man and woman were formed with different
derivative suffixes, and consequently belonged to different classes
(or genders) of nouns, and that these sufTixes thus began to indicate
the distinction of sex in nouns where it could be distinguished "
(p. 122). "To assume, for example, that the sulTfix of the m. sg.
(-p) had originally the meaning of ' man,' or the fem. sg. (-s)
that of ' woman,' \\ould in no way explain the peculiar division
of the nouns into classes as we find it in Hottentot, and would be
opposed to all that is probable regarding the etymology of these
suffixes, and also to the fact that so many nouns are included in
the sex-denoting classes to which the distinction of sex can only
be applied by a great effort. ... If the word for ' man ' were
formed with one suffix (-p), and the word indicating ' woman '
(be it accidentally or not) by another (-5), then other nouns would
be formed with the same suffixes, in analogy with these, until
the majority of the nouns of each sex were formed with certain
suffixes which would thus assume a sex-denoting character " (p. 298),
Brugmann's view on Aryan gender has not been unchallenged.
The weakest points in his arguments are, of course, that there are
so few old naturally feminine words in -a and -i to take as starting-
points for such a thoroughgoing modification of the grammatical
sj'stem, and that Brugmann was unable to give any striking ex-
planation of the concord of adjectives and pronouns with words
that had not these endings, but w^hich were nevertheless treated as
masculines and feminines respectively It would lead us too far
here f o give any minute account of the discussion which arose on
these points ; ^ one of the most valuable contributions seems to
me Jacobi's suggestion {Comjpositum u. Nebensatz, 1897, 115 ff.)
that the origin of grammatical gender is not to be sought in the
noun, but in the pronoun (he finds a parallel in the Dravidian
languages) — but even he does not find a fully satisfactory explana-
tion, and the Aryan gender distinction reaches back to so remote
an antiquity, thousands of years before any literary tradition, that
we shall most probably never be able to fathom all its m5^steries.
Of late years less attention has been given to the problem of the
feminine, which presented itself to Brugmann, than to the distinc-
tion between two classes, one of which was characterized by the
^ Bleek is here thinking of classes like those of the Bantu languages,
which have nothing to do with sex.
* For bibliography and criticism see Wheeler in Journ. of Germ. Philol.
2. 628 ff., and especially Josselin de Jong in Tijdschr. v. Ned. Taal- en Letterk.
29. 21 fi., and the same writer's thesis De Waardeerlngsonderscheiding van
levend en levenloos iyi het Indogermaansch, vergel. m. hetzelfde verschijnsel i7i
Algonkin-kden (Leiden, 1913). Cf, also Hirt GDS 45 ff.
394 ORIGIN OF GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS [ch. xix
use of a nominative in -s, wliich is now looked upon as a ' transi-
tive-active ' case, and the other by no ending or by an ending
-m, vvFiieh is the same as was used as the accusative in the first
class (an ' intransitive-passive ' case), and an attempt has been
made to see in the distinction something analogous to the division
found in Algonkin languages between a class of ' living ' and
another of ' lifeless ' things — though these two terms are not to be
taken in the strictly scientific sense, for primitive men do not reason
in the same way as we do, but ascribe or deny ' life ' to things
according to criteria which we have great difficult}' in apprehending.
This would mean a twofold division into one class comprising the
historical masculines and feminines, and another comprising the
neuters.
As to the feminine, we saw two old endings characterizing that
gender, a and i. With regard to the latter, I venture to throw
out the suggestion that it is connected with diminutive suffixes
containing that vowel in various languages : on the whole, the
sound [i] has a natural affinity with the notion of small, slight,
insignificant and weak (sec Ch. XX § 8). In some African languages
we find two classes, one comprising men and big things, and the
other women and small things (jMeinhof, Die Sprachen der Hamiten
23), and there is nothing unnatural in the supposition that similar
views may have obtained with om" ancestors. This would naturally
account for Skr. vrk-i ' she-wolf ' (orig. little wolf, ' wolfy ') from
Skr. irJcas, napt-i, Lat. neptis, G. nichte, Skr. dev-i ' goddess,' etc.
But the feminine -a is to me just as enigmatic as, say, the d of
the old ablative
XIX.— § 19. Final Considerations.
The ending -a serves to denote not only female beings, but
also abstracts, and if in later usage it is also applied to males, as
in Latin nauta 'sailor,' auriga 'charioteer,' this is only a derived
use of the abstracts denoting an actiWty, sailoring, driving, etc.,
just as G. die wache, besides the activity of watching, comes to
mean the man on guard, or asjuslice (Sp. eljusticia) conaes to mean
' judge.' The original sense of Antonius collega fait Ciceronis
was ' A. was the co-election of C (Osthoff, Verbum in d. Nominal-
compos., 1878, 263 ff., Delbriick, Syni. Forsch. 4. 6).
The same -a is finally used as the plural ending of most neuters,
but. as is now universally admitted (see cspeciallj' Johannes Schmidt,
Die Pluralbildungen der iiuiogerm. Netitra, 1889), the ending here
was originally neither neuter nor plural, but, on the contrary,
feminine and singular. The forms in -a are properly collective
formations like those found, for instance, in Lat. opera, gen. opercB,
§19] FINAL CONSIDERATIONS 895
' work,' comp. opus ' (a piece of) work' ; Lat. terra ' earth,' comp.
Oscan terinn ' plot of ground ' ; pugna ' boxing, fight,' comp.
pugnus ' fist.' This explains among other things the peculiar
s^Titactic phenomenon, which is found regularly in Greek and
sporadically in Sanskrit and other languages, that a neuter plural
subject takes the verb in the singular. Greek toxa is often used
in speaking of a single bow ; and the Latin poetic use of guttura,
colla, ora, where only one person's throat, neck or face is meant,
points similarly to a period of the past when these words did not
denote the plural. We can now see the reason of this -a being
in some cases also the plural sign of masculine substantives :
Lat. loca from locus, joca from jocus, etc. ; Gr. sita from sitos.
Joh. Schmidt refers to similar plural formations in Arabic ; and as
we have seen (Ch. XIX § 9), the Bantu plural prefixes had probably
a similar origin. And we are thus constantly reminded that lan-
guages must often make the most curious detours to arrive at a
grammatical expression for things which appear to us so self-evident
as the difference between he and she, or that between one and
more than one. Expressive simplicity' in linguistic structure
is not a primitive, but a derived qualitj'.
CHAPTER XX
SOUND SYMBOLISM
§ 1. Sound and Sense. § 2. Instinctive Feeling. § 3. Direct Imitation.
§ 4. Originator of tlie Sound. § 5. Movement. § 6. Things and
Appearances. § 7. States of Mind. § 8. Size and Distance. § 9.
Length and Strength of Words and Sounds. § 10. General Con-
siderations. § 11. Importance of Suggestiveness. § 12. Ancient and
Modern Times.
XX.— § 1. Sound and Sense.
The idea that there is a natural correspondence bet\\een sound
and sense, and that -words acquire their contents and value through
a certain sound symbolism, has at all times been a favourite one
with linguistic dilettanti, the best-known examples being found
in Plato's Kratylos. Greek and Latin grammarians indulge in
the wildest hypotheses to explain the natural origin of such and
such a word, as when Nigidius Figulus said that in pronouncing
vos one puts forward one's lips and sends out breath in the direction
of the other person, while this is not the case with nos. With
these early wiiters, to make guesses at sound sj-mbohsm was the
only way to et3''mologize ; no wonder, therefore, that we with
our historical methods and our wider range of knowledge find
most of their explanations ridiculous and absurd. But this does
not justify us in rejecting any idea of sound sjTnbolism : abusus
non tollit usum !
Humboldt (Versch 79) says that " language chooses to designate
objects by sounds which partly in themselves, partly in comparison
with others, produce on the ear an impiession resembling the effect
of the object on the mind ; thus stehen, stdtig, starr, the impression
of firmness, Sanskrit U ' to melt, diverge,' that of liquidity or
solution (des zerfliessenden). ... In this way objects that
produce similar impressions are denoted by words with essentially
the same sounds, thus wehen, ivind, uvlke, ivirren, u-nnsch, in all
of which the vacillating, wavering motion with its confused im-
pression on the senses is expressed through . . . u\" MacUdg's
objection (1842, 13 = Kl 64) that we need only compare four of
the words Humboldt quotes with the corresponding words in the
very nearest sister-language, Danish blcese, vind, sky, <cnske, to
396
§1] SOUND AND SENSE 897
see how wrong this is, seems to me a Httle cheap : Humboldt
himself expressly assumes that much of primitive sound symbolism
may have disappeared in course of time and warns us against
making this kind of explanation a ' constitutive principle,'
wliich would lead to great dangers ("so setzt man sich grossen
gefabren aus und verfolgt einen in jeder riicksicht scliliipfrigen
pfad "). Moreover bl<xse (E. bloic, Lat. flare) is just as imitative
as tcind, vind : no one of course would pretend that there was
only one way of expressing the same sense perception. Among
Humboldt's examples icolke and unnsch are doubtful, but I do
not see that this affects the general truth of his contention that
there is something like sound symbolism in some words.
NjTop in his treatment of this question (Gr I.V § 545 f.) repeats
Madvig's objection that the same name can denote various objects,
that the same object can be called by different names, and that
the significations of words are constantly changing ; fvn-ther, that
the same gi'oup of sounds comes to mean different things according
to the language in which it occurs. He finally exclaims : " How
to explain [by means of sound symbolism] the difference in
signification between mums, nurus, durus, fwus, etc. 1 "
XX.— § 2. Instinctive Feeling.
Yes, of course it would be absm'd to maintain that all words
at all times in all languages had a signification corresponding
exactly to their sounds, each sound having a definite meaning
once for all. But is there really much more logic in the opposite
extreme, which denies any kind of sound symbolism ^ {apart from
the small class of evident echoisms or ' onomatopoeia ') and sees
in our words only a collection of Avholly accidental and irrational
associations of sound and meaning ? It seems to me that the
conclusion in this case is as false as if you were to infer that because
on one occasion X told a lie, he therefore never tells the truth.
The correct conclusion would be : as he has told a lie once, we
cannot always trust him ; we must be on our guard with him —
but sometimes he may tell the truth. Thus, also, sounds may in
some cases be symbolic of their sense, even if they are not so in
all words. If linguistic historians are averse to admitting sound
symbolism, this is a natural consequence of their being chiefly
occupied with words which have undergone regular changes in
sound and sense ; and most of the words which form the
staple of linguistic books arc outside the domain of sound
sj'^mbolism.
^ " Inner and essential connexion between idea and word . . . there
is none, in any language upon earth," saj's Whitney L 32.
898 SOUND SYMBOLISM [cii. xx
There is no denying, however, that there are words which we
feel instinctively to be adequate to express the ideas they stand
for, and others the sounds of which are felt to be more or less
incongruous with their signification. Future linguists will have
to find out in detail what domains of human thought admit, and
what domains do not admit, of congruous expression through
speech sounds, and further what sounds are suitable to express
such and such a notion, for though it is clear — to take onl}' a few
examples — that there is little to choose between apple and pomme,
or between window and fenster, as there is no sound or sound group
that has any natural affinitj'' with such thoroughly concrete and
composite ideas as those expressed by these words, j^et on the
other hand everybody must feel that the word roll, rouler, rulle,
rollen is more adequate than the corresponding Russian word
kataV, katiV.
It would be an interesting task to examine in detail and
systematically what ideas lend themselves to symbolic presenta-
tion and what sounds are chosen for them in different languages.
That, however, could only be done on the basis of many more
examples than I can find space for in this work, and I shall,
therefore, only attempt to give a preliminary enumeration of the
most obvious classes, with a small fraction of the examples I have
collected.^
XX.— § 3. Direct Imitation.
The simplest case is the direct imitation of the sound, thus
clink, dank, ting, tinkle of various metallic sounds, splash, bubble,
sizz, sizzle of sounds produced by water, bow-wow, bleat, roar of
sounds produced by animals, and snort, sneeze, snir,ger, smack,
whisper, grunt, grumble of sounds produced by human beings.
Examples might easily be multiplied of such ' echoisms ' or
' onomatopoeia ' proper. But, as our speech-organs are not
capable of giving a perfect imitation of all ' unarticulated ' sounds,
the choice of speech-sounds is to a certain extent accidental, and
different nations ha\e chosen different combinations, more or
less conventionalized, for the same sounds ; thus cock-a-doodle-doo,
Dan. kykeliky, Sw. kukeliku, G. kikeriki, Fr. coquelico,ioT the sound
of a cock ; and for whisper : Dan. hviske, ON. kvisa, G. fliistern,
Fr. chuchoter, Sp. susurar. The continuit}"- of a sound is frequently
indicated by Z or r after a stopped consonant : rattle, rumble, jingle,
clatter, chatter, jabber, etc.
^ I have learnt very little from the discussion which followed Wundt'a
remarks on the subject (S 1. 312-347); see Delbnick Grfr 78 £E., Siitterlin
WSG 29 fi., Hilmer Sch 10 ff.
§4] ORIGINATOR OF THE SOUND 899
XX.— § 4. Originator of the Sound.
Next, the echoic word designates the being that produces the
sound, thus the birds cuckoo and peeweet (Dan, vibe, G. kibitz,
Fr. pop, dix-huit).
A special subdivision of particular interest comprises those
names, or nicknames, which are sometimes popularly given to
nations from words continually occurring in their speech. Thus
the Fi'ench used to call an Englishman a god-damn (godon), and in
China an English soldier is called a-says or I -says. In Java a
Frenchman is called orang-deedong (orang ' man '), in America
ding-doyig, and during the Napoleonic wars the French were called
in Spain didones, from dis-donc ; another name for the same nation
is ivi-wi (Australia), man-a-iciwi (in Beach-la-mar), or out-men
(New Caledonia). In Eleonore Christine's Jammersminde 83 I
read, " Ich habe zwei ^mrZe mi franQo gefangen," and correspond-
ingly Goldsmith ^vl'ites (Globe ed, 624) : "Damn the French, the
parle vous, and all that belongs to them. What makes the bread
rising ? the parle vous that devour us." In Rovigno the sur-
rounding Slavs are called cuje from their exclamation cuje ' listen,
I say,' and in Hungary German visitors are called vigec (from
ivie ghVs ?), and customs officers vartajnszli (from ivarV a bissl).
Round Panama everything native is called spiggoty, because in the
early days the Panamanians, when addressed, used to reply, " No
spiggoty [speak] Inglis," In Yokohama an English or American
sailor is called Damuralsu H'to from ' Damn your eyes ' and
Japanese H'to ' people.' ^
XX.— § 5. Movement.
Thirdly, as sound is always produced by some movement and
is nothing but the impression which that movement makes on the
ear, it is quite natural that the movement itself may be expressed
by the word for its sound : the two are. in fact, inseparable. Note,
for instance, such verbs as bubble, splash, clash, crack, peck. Human
actions may therefore be denoted by such words as to bang the
door, or (with slighter sounds) to tap or rap at a door. Hence
also the substantives a tap or a rap for the action, but the sub-
stantive may also come to stand for the implement, as when from
the verb to hack, * to cut, chop off, break up hard earth,' we have
the noun hack, ' a mattock or large pick.'
Then we have words expressive of such movements as are not
to the same extent characterized by loud sounds ; thus a great
1 Schuchardt, KS 5. 12, Zs. J. rom. Phil. 33. 458, Churchill B 53, Sand-
feld-Jensen, Nationaljitlelsen 14, Lentzner, Col. 87, Simonyi US 157, The
Outlook, January 1910, New Quarterly Mag., July 1879.
400 SOUND SYMBOLISM [cir. xx
many words beginning with ^-combinations, fi- : flow, flag (Dan.
flagre), flake, flutter, flicker, fling, flit, flurry, flirt ; si- : slide, slip,
slive ; gl- : glide. Hence adjectives like fleet, slippery, glib. Sound
and sight may have been originall}' combined in such expressions
for an uncertain walk as totter, dodder, dialectical teeter, titter, dither,
but in cases of this kind the audible element may be wanting, and
the word may come to be felt as symbolic of the movement as such.
This is also the case with many exi^ressions for the sudden, rapid
movement by which we take hold of something ; as a short vowel,
suddenly interrupted by a stopped consonant, serves to express
the sound produced by a very rapid striking movement (pat, tap,
knock, etc.), similar sound combinations occur frequently for the
more or less noiseless seizing of a thing (with the teeth or with
the hand) : snap, snack, snatch, catch, Fr. hajjper, attraper, gripper,
E. grip, Dan. hapse, na2Jpe, Lat. capio, Gr. kapto, Armenian kap
' I seize,' Turk kapmak (mak infin. ending), etc. (I shall only
mention one derivative meaning that may develop from this group :
E. sruick ' a hurried meal,' in Swift's time called a S7iap {Journ.
to Stella 270) ; cf. G. schnapps, Dan. snaps ' glass of spirits.')
F. chase and catch are both derived from two dialectically different
French forms, ultimately going back to the same late Latin verb
captiare, but it is no mere accident that it was the form ' catch '
that acquired the meaning ' to seize,' not found in French, for it
naturally associated itself with snatch, and especially'' with the
now obsolete verb latch ' to seize.'
There is also a natural connexion between action and sound
in the word to tickle, G. kiizeln, ON. kitla, Dan. kilde (d mute),
Nubian killi-kilU, and similar forms (Schuchardt, Nubisch. u.
Bask. 9), Lat. titillare ; cp. also the word for the kind of laughter
thus produced : titter, G. kichern.
XX.— § 6. Things and Appearances.
Further, we have the extension of s5^mbolical designation to
things ; here, too, there is some more or less obvious association
of what is only visible with some sound or sounds. This has been
specially studied by Hilmer, to whose book (Sch) the reader is
referred for numerous examples, e.g. p. 237 ff., knap 'a thick stick,
a knot of wood, a bit of food, a protuberance, a small hill ; knop
' a boss, stud, button, loiob, a wart, pimple, the bud of a flower,
a promontory,' with the variants knob, kniip. . . . Hilmer's
word-lists from German and English comprise 170 pages !
There is also a natural association between high tones (sounds
with very rapid vibrations) and light, and inverselj'^ between low
tones and darkness, as is seen in the frequent use of adjectives
§6] THINGS AND APPEARANCES 401
like * light ' and ' dark ' in speaking of notes. Hence the vowel
[i] is felt to be more appropriate for light, and [u] for dark, as
seen most clearly in the contrast between gleam, glimmer, glitter
on the one hand and gloom on the other (Zangwill somewhere
writes : " The gloom of night, relieved only by the gleam from
the street-lamp ") ; the word light itself, which has now a diphthong
which is not so adequate to the meaning, used to have the vowel
[i] like G. Held ; for the opposite notions we have such words as
G. dunkel, Dan. mulm, Gr. amolgds, skdtos, Lat. obscurus, and with
another 'dark' vowel E. miirhj, Dan. mork.
XX.— § 7. States o£ Mind.
From this it is no far cry to words for corresponding states
of mind : to some extent the very same words are used, as gloom
(Dowden ^vrites : " The good news was needed to cast a gleam
on the gloom that encompassed Shelley ") ; hence also glum,
glumpy, glumpish, grumpy, the dumps, sulky. If E. moody and
sullen have changed their significations (OE. modig 'high-spirited,'
ME. solein ' solitary '), sound sjTnbolism, if I am not mistaken,
counts for something in the change ; the adjectives now mean •
exactly the same as Dan. mut, but.
If grumble comes to mean the expression of a mental state of
dissatisfaction, the connexion between the sound of the word and
its sense is even more direct, for the verb is imitative of the sound
produced in such moods, cf. mumble and grunt, gruntle. The
name of Mrs. Grundy is not badly chosen as a representative of
narrow-minded conventional morality.
A long list might be given of symbolic expressions for dislike,
disgust, or scorn ; here a few hints only can find place. First we
have the same dull or dump (back) vowels as in the last paragraph ;
blunder, bungle, bung, clumsy, humdrum, humbug, strum, slum,
slush, slubber, sloven, muck, mud, muddle, mug (various words,
but all full of contempt), juggins (a silly person), numskull (old
numps, nup, nupson), dunderhead, gull, scug (at Eton a dirty or
untidy boy). . . . Many words begin with si- (we have already
seen some) : slight, slim, slack, sly, sloppy, slipslop, slubby, slattern,
slut, slosh. . . . Initial labials are also frequent.^ After the
vowel we have very often the sound [/] or [t/], as in trash, tosh,
slosh, botch, patch ; cf . also G. kitsch (bad picture, smearing),
patsch{e) (mire, anything worthless), quatsch (silly nonsense),
putsch (riot, political coup de main). E. bosh (nonsense) is said
to be a Turkish loan-word ; it has become popular for the same
^ F, for instance, in fop, Joozy, Jogy, fogram (old), all of them more or
less variants of fool.
26
402 SOUND SYMBOLISM [ch. xx
reason for which the French nickname boche for a German was
widely used during the World War. Let me finally mention the
It. derivative suffix -accio, as in j^overaccio (miserable), acqvaccia
(bad water), and -uccio, as in cavalluccio (vile horse).
XX. — § 8. Size and Distance.
The vowel [i], especially in its narrow or thin variety, is par-
ticularly appropriate to express what is small, weak, insignificant,
or, on the other hand, refined or dainty. It is found in a great
many adjectives in various languages, e.g. little, petit, piccolo,
piccino, Magy. kis, E. wee, tiny (by children often pronounced
teeny [ti'ni]), slim, Lat. minor, minimus, Gr. mikros ; further, in
numerous words for small children or small animals (the latter
frequently used as endearing or depreciative words for children),
e.g. child (formerly with [i*] sound), G. kind, Dan. pilt, E. kid,
chit, imp, slip, pigmy, midge, Sp. chico, or for small things : bit,
chip, whit, Lat. quisquilice, mica, E. tip, pin, chink, slit. . . . The
same vowel is found in diminutive suffixes in a variety of languages,
as E. -y, -ie {Bobby, baby, auntie, birdie), Du. -ie, -je (koppie ' little
hill '), Gr. -i- (paid-i-on 'little boy'), Goth, -ein, pronounced [in]
{gumein ' little man '), E. -kin, -ling, Swiss German -li, It. -ino,
Sp. -ico, -ito, -illo. . . .
As smallness and weakness are often taken to be characteristic
of the female sex, I suspect that the Aryan feminine suffix -i, as
in Skr. vrki 'she-wolf,' napti 'niece,' originally denotes smallness
(' wolfy '), and in the same way we find the vowel i in many
feminine suffixes ; thus late Lat. -itta (Julitta, etc., whence Fr. -ette,
Henriette, etc.), -ina (Carolina), fmiher G. -in (konigin), Gr. -issa
{basilissa ' queen '), whence Fr. -esse, E. -ess.
The same vowel [i] is also symbolical of a very short time, as-
in the phrases in a jiff, jiffy, Sc. in a clink, Dan. i en svip ; and
correspondingly we have adjectives like quick, swift, vivid and
others. No wonder, then, that the Germans feel their word for
' lightning,' blitz, singularly appropriate to the effect of light and to
the shortness of duration.^
It has often been remarked ^ that in corresponding pronouns
and adverbs the vowel i frequently indicates what is nearer, and
other vowels, especially a or u, what is farther off ; thus Fr. ci, la,
^ The preceding paragraphs on the .symbolic value of i are an abstract
of a paper which will be printed in Philologica, vol. i.
* Benfey Gesch 791, Misteh 5.39, Wundt S I. 331 (but his examples from
out-of-the-way languages must be used with caution, and curiously enough
he thinks that the phenomenon is limited to primitive languages and is not
found in Semitic or Aryan languages), GRM 1. 638, Simonyi US 255, Meinhof,
Ham 20.
§8] SIZE AND DISTANCE 408
E. here, there, G. dies, das, Low G. dit, dat, Magy. ez, emez ' this,*
az, amaz ' that,' itt ' here,' ott ' there,' Malay iki ' this,' ika ' that,
a little removed,' iku ' yon, farther away.' In Hamitic languages
i symbolizes the near and u what is far away. We may here
also think of the word zigzag as denoting movement in alternate
turns here and there ; and if in the two E. pronouns this and that
the old neuter forms have prevailed (OE. m. yes, se, f. Ipeos, seo,
n. yis, ycet) the reason (or one of the reasons) may have been that
a characteristic difference of vowels in the two contrasted pronouns
was thus secured.
XX.— § 9. Length and Strength of Words and Sounds.
Shorter and more abrupt forms are more appropriate to certain
states of mind, longer ones to others. An imperative may be
used both for command and for a more or less humble appeal or
entreaty ; in Magyar dialects there are short forms for command :
irj, dolgozz ; long for entreaty : irjdl, dolgozzdl (Simonyi US 359, 214).
Were Lat. die, due, fac, fer used more than other imperatives in
commands ? The fact that they alone lost -e might indicate that
this was so. On the other hand the imperatives es, este and i had
to yield to the fuller (and more polite) esto, estate, vade, and
scito is always said instead of sci (Wackernagel, Gott. Ges. d.
Wiss., 1906, 182, on the avoidance of too short forms in general).
Other languages, which have only one form for the imperative,
soften the commanding tone by adding some word like please,
bitte.
An emotional effect is obtained in some cases by lengthening
a word by some derivative syllables, in themselves unmeaning ;
thus in Danish words for ' lengthy ' or ' tiresome ' : langsommelig,
kedsommelig, evindelig for lang{som), kedelig, evig. (Cf. Ibsen,
Ndr vi dffde vaguer 98 : Du er kanske ble't ked af dette evige
samliv med mig. — Evige ? Sig lige sa godt : evindelige.) In the
same way the effect of splendid is strengthened in slang : splen-
diferous, splendidous, splendidious, splendacious. A long word like
aggravate is felt to be more intense than vex (Coleman) — and that
may be the reason why the long word acquires a meaning that is
strange to its etymology. Atid " to disburden one's self of a sense
of contempt, a robust full-bodied detonation, like, for instance,
platitudinous, is, unquestionably, very much more serviceable
than any evanescing squib of one or two syllables " (Fitzedward
Hall). Cf. also multitudinous, multifarious.
We see now the emotional value of some ' mouth-filling ' words,
some of which may be considered symbolical expansions of existing
words (what H. Schroder terms ' streckforraen '), though others
404 SOUND SYMBOLISM [cii. xx
cannot be thus explained ; not unfrequently the effect of length
is combined with some of the phonetic effects mentioned above.
Such words are, e.g., sluhberdegullion ' dirty fellow,' rumbustious
' boisterous,' rumgum'ption, rumfustian, rumbullion (of. rum-
puncheon 'cask of rum' as a term of abuse in Stevenson, Treas.
I si. 48, "the cowardly son of a rum-puncheon"), rmnpallioii
' villain,' rapscallion, ragamuffin ; sculduddery ' obscenity ' ; can-
tankerous ' quarrelsome,' U.S. also rantankerous (cf. cankerous,
rancorous) ; skilUgalee ' miserable gruel,' flabbergast ' confound,'
catawampous (or -ptious) ' fierce ' ("a high-soimding word with no
very definite meaning," NED) ; Fr. hurluberlu ' crazy ' and the
sjTionymous Dan. tnmmelumsk, Norw. tullerusk.
In this connexion one may mention the natural tendency to
lengthen and to strengthen single sounds under the influence of
strong feeling and in order to intensify the effect of the spoken
word ; thus, in ' it's very cold ' both the diphthong [ou] and the [1]
may be pronounced extremely long, in ' terribly dull ' the [1] is
lengthened, in ' extremely long ' either the vowel [o] or the [t^]
(or both) may be lengthened. In Fr. ' c'etait horrible ' the trill
of the [r] becomes very long and intense (while the same effect
is not generally possible in the corresponding English word, because
the English [r] is not trilled, but pronounced by one flap of the
tip). In some cases a lengthening due to such a psj^chological
cause may permanently alter a word, as when Lat. totus in It.
has become tutto (Fr. tout, toute goes back to the same form, while
Sp. todo has preserved the form corresponding to the Lat, single
consonant). An interesting collection of such cases from the
Romanic tongues has been published by A. J. Carnoy {Mod. Philol.
15. 31, July 1917), who justly emphasizes the symbolic value of
the change and the special character of the words in which it
occurs (pet-names, children's words, ironic or derisive words,
imitative words . . .). He says : " While to a phonetician the
phenomenon would seem capricious, its apportionment in the
vocabulary is quite natural to a psychologist. In fact, reduplica-
tion, be it of syllables or of consonants, generall}'' has that character
in languages. One finds it in perfective tenses, in intensive or
frequentative verbs, in the plural, and in collectives. In most
cases it is a reduplication of syllables, but a lengthening of vowels
is not rare and the reinforcement of consonants is also found.
In Chinook, for instance, the emotional words, both diminutive
and augmentative, are expressed by increasing the stress of con-
sonants. It is, of course, also well known that in Semitic the
intensive radical of verbs is regularl}^ formed by a reduplication
of consonants. To a stem qatal, e.g., answers an intensive : Eth.
qattala, Hebr. qittel. Cf. Hebr. shibbar ' to cut in small pieces '
§9] LENGTH AND STRENGTH OF WORDS 405
[cf. below], hillech ' to walk,' qibber ' to bury many,' etc, Cf.
Brockelmann, Vergl. Gramm., p. 244."
I add a few more examples from Misteli (428 f.) of this Semitic
strengthening : the first vowel is lengthened to express a tendency
or an attempt : qatala jaqtulu ' kill ' (in the third person masc,
the former in the prefect-aorist, the latter in the imperfect-
durative, where ja, ju is the sign of the third person m.), qatala
juqdtilu ' try to kill, fight ' ; faXara jufXaru ' excel in fame,'
fdXara jufdXiru ' try to excel, vie,' Through lengthening
(doubling) of a consonant an intensification of the action is denoted :
Hebr. sd^ar jisbor ' zerbrechen,' Hbber jeSabber ' zerschmettern,'
Arab, daraba jadrubu ' strike,' (f,arraba jwjarribii ' beat violently,
or repeatedly ' ; sometimes the change makes a verb into a causative
or transitive, etc.
I imagine that we have exactly the same kind of strengthening
for psychological (symbolical) reasons in a number of verbs where
Danish has pp, tt, kk by the side of b, d, g (spirantic) : pippe pibe,
stritte stride, snitte snide, sk^tte shpde, splitte splide, skrikke skrige,
lukke luge, hikke hige, sikke sige, kikke kige, prikke prige (cf. also
sproekke sprcenge). Some of these forms are obsolete, others
dialectal, but it would take us too far in this place to deal with
the words in detail. It is customary to ascribe this gemination to
an old n derivative (see, e.g., Brugmann VG 1. 390, Streitberg Urg
pp. 135, 138, Noreen UL 154), but it does not seem necessary to
conjure up an n from the dead to make it disappear again imme-
diately, as the mere strengthening of the consonant itself to
express symbolically the strengthening of the action has nothing
mmatural in it. Cf. also G. placken by the side of plagen. The
opposite change, a weakening, may have taken place in E. flag
(cf . OFr. flaquir, to become flaccid), flabby, earlier flappy, drib from
drip, slab, if from OFr. esclape, clod by the side of clot, and possibly
cadge, bodge, grudge, smudge, wliich had all of them originally -tch.
But the common modification in sense is not so easily perceived
here as in the cases of strengthening.
I may here, for the curiosity of the thing, mention that in
a ' language ' coined by two English children (a vocabulary of
which was communicated to me by one of the inventors through
IVIiss I. C. Ward, of the Department of Phonetics, University
College, London) there was a word bal which meant ' place,' but
the bigger the place the longer the vowel was made, so that with
three different quantities it meant ' village,' ' town ' and ' city '
respectively. The word for ' go ' was dudu, " the greater the
speed of the going, the more quickly the word was said — [doe'dce*]
walk slowly." Cf. Humboldt, ed, Steinthal 82 : " In the southern
dialect of the Guarani language the suffix of the perfect yma is
406 SOUND SYMBOLISM [ch. xx
pronounced more or less slowly according to the more or less
remoteness of the past to be indicated."
XX. — § 10. General Considerations.
Sound symbolism, as we have considered it in tliis chapter,
has a very wide range of application, from direct imitation of
perceived natural sounds to such small quantitative changes of
existing non-symbolic words as ma}' be used for purely gram-
matical purposes. But in order to obtain a true valuation of this
factor in the life of language it is of importance to keep in view the
following considerations :
(1) No language utilizes soimd symbolism to its full extent,
but contains numerous words that are indifferent to or may even
jar with symbolism. To express smallness the vowel [i] is most
adequate, but it would be absurd to say that that vowel always
implies smallness, or that smallness is always expressed by words
containing that vowel : it is enough to mention the words biq and
small, or to point to the fact that thick and thin have the same
vowel, to repudiate such a notion.
(2) Words that have been symbolically expressive may cease
to be so in consequence of historical development, either phonetic
or semantic or both. Thus the name of the bird crow is not now
so good an imitation of the sound made by the bird as OE. crawe
was (Dan. krage, Du. kraai). Thus, also, the verbs whine, 'pipe
were better imitations when the voAvel was still [i] (as in Dan.
hvinc, pibe). But to express the sound of a small bird the latter
word is still pronounced with the vowel [i] either long or short
(peep, pip), the word having been constantly renewed and as it
were reshaped by fresh imitation ; cf. on Irish wheen and dialectal
peep, XV § 8. Lat. pipio originally meant any ' peeping bird,'
but when it came to designate one particular kind of birds, it was
free to follow the usual trend of phonetic development, and so
has become Fr. pigeon [pi.50], E. pigeon [pidgin]. E. cuckoo has
resisted the change from [u] to [a] as in cut, because people have
constantly heard the sound and fashioned the name of the bird
from it. I once heard a Scotch lady say [kAku*], but on my inquiry
she told me that there were no cuckoos in her native place ; hence
the word had there been treated as any other word containing the
short [u]. The same word is interesting in another way ; it has
resisted the old Gothonic consonant-shift, and thus has the same
consonants as Skt, kokiWi, Gr. kokkux, Lat. cuculus. On the
general preservation of significative sounds, cf. Ch. XV § 8.
(3) On the other hand, some words have in coiu*se of time
become more expressive than they were at first ; we have some-
§10] GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 40V
thing that may be called secondary echoisra or secondary symbolism.
The verb patter comes from pater (= paternoster), and at first meant
to repeat that prayer, to mumble one's prayers ; but then it was
associated with the homophonous verb patter ' to make a rapid
succession of pats ' and came mider the influence of echoic words
like prattle, chatter, jabber ; it now, like these, means ' to talk rapidly
or glibly 'and is to all intents a truly symbolical word ; cf . also the
substantive patter ' secret lingo, speechif3dng, talk.' Husky may
at first have meant only " full of husks, of the nature of a husk "
(NED), but it could not possibly from that signification have
arrived at the now current sense ' dry in the throat, hoarse ' if it
had not been that the sound of the adjective had reminded one
of the sound of a hoarse voice. Dan. pojt ' poor drink, vile stuS '
is now felt as expressive of contempt, but it originates in Poitou,
an innocent geographical name of a kind of wine, like Bordeaux ;
it is now coimected with other scornful words like sprojt and dojt.
In E. little the symbolic vowel i is regularly developed from
OE. y, lytel, whose i/ is a mutated u, as seen in OSax. luttil ; u also
appears in other related languages, and the word thus originally
had nothing s3anbolical about it. But in Gothic the word is leitils
{ei, sounded [i]) and in ON. litinn, and here the vowel is so difficult
to account for on ordinary principles that the NED in despair
thinks that the two words are "radically miconnected." I have
no hesitation in supposing that the vowel i is due to sound sym-
bolism, exactly as the smaller change introduced in modern E.
' leetle,' with narrow instead of wide (broad) [i]. In the word
for the opposite meaning, much, the phonetic development may
also have been influenced by the tendency to get an adequate
vowel, for normally we should expect the vowel [i] as in Sc. mickle,
from OE. micel. In E. quick the vowel beat adapted to the idea
has prevailed instead of the one found in the old nom. forma
cioiccu, cucu from cwicu (inflected civicne, cwices, etc.), while in the
word ividu, wudu,, which is phonetically analogous, there was no
such inducement, and the vowel [u] has been preserved : wood.
The same prevalence of the symbolic i is noticed in the Dan. adj.
kvik, MLG. quik, while the same word as subst. has become Dan.
kvcBg, MLG. quek, where there was no symbolism at work, as it
has come to mean ' cattle.' I even see symbolism in the preserva-
tion of the k in the Dan. adj. (as against the fricative in kvceg),
because the notion of ' quick " is best expressed by the short [i],
interrupted by a stop ; and may not the same force have been
at work in this adjective at an earlier period ? The second k in
OE. cwicu, ON. kvikr as against Goth, qius, Lat. vivus, has not
been sufficiently explained. An [i], symbolic of smallness, has been
introduced in some comparatively recent E. words : tip from top.
408 SOUND SYMBOLISM [ch. xx
trip ' small flock ' from troop, sip ' drink in small quantities ' from
sup, sop.
Through changes in meaning, too, some words have become
symbolically more expressive than they were formerly ; thus the
agreement between sound and sense is of late growth in miniature,
which now, on account of the i, has come to mean ' a small picture,'
while at first it meant ' image painted with minium or vermilion,'
and in pittance, now ' a scanty allowance,' formerly any pious
donation, whether great or small. Cf. what has been said above
of sullen, moody, catch.
XX. — § 11. Importance of Suggestiveness.
The suggestiveness of some words as felt by present-day
speakers is a fact that must be taken into account if we are to
understand the realities of language. In some cases it may have
existed from the very first : these words sprang thus into being
because that shape at once expressed the idea the speaker wished
to communicate. In other cases the suggestive element is not
original : these words arose in the same waj^ as innumerable others
whose sound has never carried any suggestion. But if the sound
of a word of this class was, or came to be, in some way suggestive
of its signification — say, if a word containing the vowel [ij in a
prominent place meant ' small ' or something small — then the sound
exerted a strong influence in gaining popular favour to the word ;
it was an inducement to people to choose and to prefer that
particular word and to cease to use words for the same notion
that were not thus favoured. Sound symbolism, we may say,
makes some words more fit to survive and gives them considerable
help in their struggle for existence. If we want to denote a little
child by a word for some small animal, we take some word like
kid, chick, kitten, rather than bat or 2>^({l or sing, though these may
in themselves be smaller than the animal chosen.
It is quite true that Fr. rouler, our roll, is derived from Lat.
rota ' wheel ' + a diminutive ending -id-, but the word would
never have gained its immense popularity, extending as it does
through English, Dutch, German and the Scandinavian languages,
if the sound had not been eminently suggestive of the sense, so
suggestive that it seems to us now the natural expression for that
idea, and we have difficulty in realizing that the ^^■ord has not
existed from the ver}' dawn of speech. Or let me take another
example, in which the connexion between sound and sense is even
more 'fortuitous.' About a hundred years ago a member of
Congress, Felix Walker, from Buncombe Count}', North Carolina,
made a long and tedious speech. " Many members left the hall.
§11] IMPORTANTE OF SUGGESTIVENESS 409
Very naively he told those who remained that they might go too ;
he should speak for some time, but ' he was only talking for
Buncombe,' to please his constituents." Now buncombe [buncome,
bunkum) has become a widely used word, not only in the States,
but all over the English-speaking world, for political speaking or
action not resting on conviction, but on the desire of gaining the
favour of electors, or for any kind of empty ' clap-trap ' oratory ;
but does anybody suppose that the name of ]\Ir, Walker's constitu-
ency would have been thus used if he had happened to hail from
Annapolis or Philadelphia, or some other place with a name incapable
of tickling the popular fancy in the same way as Buncombe does ?
(Cf. above, p. 401 on the suggostiveness of the short u.) In a
similar way hullaballoo seems to have originated from the Irish
village Ballyhooly (see P. W. Joyce, English as ice speak it in
Ireland) and to have become popular on account of its suggestive
sound.
In loan-words we can often see that they have been adopted
less on accoimt of any cultural necessity (see above, p. 209) than
because their sound was in some way or other suggestive. Thus
the Algonkin (Natick) word for ' chief,' mugquomp, is used in the
United States in the form of mugivump for a ' great man ' or ' boss,'
and especially, in political life, for a man independent of parties
and thinking himself superior to parties. Now, no one would
have thought of going to an Indian language to express such a
notion, had not an Indian word presented itself which from its
uncouth sound lent itself to purposes of ridicule. Among other
words whose adoption has been favoured by their soimds I may
mention jungle (from Hindi jangal, associated more or less closely
with jumble, tumble, bundle, bungle) ; bobbery, in slang ' noise,
squabble,' " the Anglo-Indian colloquial representation of a common
exclamation of Hindus when in surprise or grief — Bap-re ! or
Bap-re Bap ' Father ! ' " (Hobson-Jobson) ; amuck ; and U.S.
bunco ' swindling game, to swindle,' from It. banco.
XX.— § 12. Ancient and Modern Times.
It will be seen that our conception of echoism and related
phenomena does not carry us back to an imaginary primitive
period : these forces are vital in languages as we observe them
day by day. ^Linguistic writers, however, often assume that
soimd symbolism, if existing at all, must date back to the earliest
times, and therefore can have no reality nowadays. Thus Benfey
(Gesch 288) turns upon de Brosse, who had found rudeness in
Fr. rude and gentleness in Fr. doux, and says : " As if the sounds
of such words, which are distant by an infinite length of time from
410 SOUND SYMBOLISM [ch. xx
the time when language originated, were able to contribute ever
80 little to explain the original designation of things." (But
Benfey is right in saying that the impression made by those two
French words may be imaginary ; as examples they are not par-
ticularly well chosen.) Siitterlin (WW 14) says : " It is bold to
search for such correspondence as still existing in detail in the
language of our own daj^s. For words like liebe, siiss on the one
hand, and zorn, hass, hart on the other, which are often alleged
by dilettanti, prove nothing to the scholar, because their form
is young and must have had totally different sounds in the period
when language was created."
Similarly de Saussure (LG 104) gives as one of the main prin-
ciples of our science that the tie between sound and sense is
arbitrary or rather motiveless (immotive), and to those who would
object that onomatopoetic words are not arbitrary he says that
" they are never organic elements of a linguistic system. Besides,
they are much less numerous than is generally supposed. Such
words as Fr. fouet and glas may strike some ears with a suggestive
ring ; ^ but they have not had that character from the start, as is
sufficiently proved if we go back to their Latin forms (fouet derived
from fagus ' beech,' glas = classicum) ; the quality possessed by,
or rather attributed to, their actual sounds is a fortuitous result
of phonetic development."
Here we see one of the characteristics of modern linguistic
science : it is so preoccupied with etymology, with the origin of
words, that it pays much more attention to what words have
come from than to what they have come to be. If a word has
not always been suggestive on account of its sound, then its actual
suggestiveness is left out of account and may even be declared
to be merely fanciful. I hope that this chapter contains throughout
what is psychologically a more true and linguistically a more
fruitful view.
Though some echo words may be very old, the great majority
are not ; at any rate, in looking up the earliest ascertained date
of a goodly number of such words in the NED, I have been struck
by the fact of so many of them being quite recent, not more than
a few centuries old, and some not even that. To some extent
* I must confess that I find nothing sjonbolical in gins and very little
in fotiet (though the verb fouetier has something of the force of E. tvhip).
On the whole, much of what people ' hear ' in a word appears to me fanciful
and apt to discredit reasonable attempts at gaining an insight into the
essence of sound symbolism ; thus E. Lerch's ridiculous remark on G. loch
in GRM 7. 101 : " loch malt die bewegung, die der anblick eines solchen
im beschauer au8l6st, durch eine entsprechende bewegung der sprachwerk-
zcuge, beginnend mit der liquida zur bezeichnung der rundung und endend
mit dem gutturalen ch tief hinten in der gurgel."
§12] ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES 411
their recent appearance in \^Titing may be ascribed to the general
character of the old literature as contrasted with our modern
literature, which is less conventional, freer in many ways, more
true to life with its infinite variety and more true, too, to the
spoken language of every day. But that cannot account for
everything, and there is every probability that this class of words
is really more frequent in the spoken language of recent times
than it was formerly, because people speak in a more vivid and
fresh fashion than their ancestors of hundreds or thousands of
years ago. The time of psychological reaction is shorter than it
used to be, life moves at a more rapid rate, and people are less
tied dovra to tradition than in former ages, consequently they are
more apt to create and to adopt new words of this particular type,
which are felt at once to be significant and expressive. In all
languages the creation and use of echoic and symbolic words seems
to have been on the increase in historical times. If to this we
add the selective process through which words which have only
secondarily acquired symbolical value survive at the cost of less
adequate expressions, or less adequate forms of the same words,
and subsequently give rise to a host of derivatives, then we may
say that languages in course of time grow richer and richer in
s3anbolic words. So far from believing in a golden primitive age,
in which everything in language was expressive and immediately
intelligible on account of the significative value of each group of
sounds, we arrive rather, here as in other domains, at the con-
ception of a slow progressive development towards a greater
number of easy and adequate expressions — expressions in which
sound and sense are united in a marriage-union closer than was
ever known to our remote ancestors.
CHAPTER XXI
THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH
§ 1. Introduction. § 2. Former Theories. § 3. Method. § 4. Sounds.
§ 5. Grammar. § (^ Units. § 7. Irregularities. § 8. Savage
Tribes. § 9. Law of Development. § 10. Vocabulary. § 11. Poetry
and Prose. § 12. Emotional Songs. § 13. Primitive Singing.
§ 14. Approach to Language. § 15. The Earliest Sentences.
§ 16. Conclusion.
XXI.— § 1. Introduction.
Much of what is contained in the last chapters is preparatory
to the theme which is to occupy us in this chapter, the ultimate
origin of human speech. We have already seen the feeling with
which this subject has often been regarded by eminent linguists,
the feeling which led to an absolute taboo of the question in the
French Societe de linguistique (p. 96). One may here quote
Whitney : " No theme in linguistic science is more often and
more voluminously treated than this, and by scholars of everj'
grade and tendency ; nor any, it may be added, with less i^rofitable
result in proportion to the labour expended ; the greater part of
what is said and written upon it is mere windy talk, the assertion
of subjective views which commend themselves to no mind save
the one that produces them, and which are apt to be offered with
a confidence, and defended with a tenacity, that are in inverse
ratio to their acceptableness. This has given the whole question
a bad repute among sober-minded philologists " (OLS 1. 279).
Nevertheless, linguistic science cannot refrain for ever from
asking about the whence (and about the whither) of linguistic
evolution. And here we must first of all realize that man is not
the only animal that has a ' language,' though at present we know
very little about the real nature and expressiveness of the languages
of birds and mammals or of the signalling system of ants, etc.
The speech of some animals may be more like our language than
most people are willing to admit — it may also in some respects
be even more perfect than human language precisely because it
is unlike it and has developed along lines about which we can know
nothing ; but it is of little avail to speculate on these matters. What
is certain is that no race of mankind is without a language which
il2
§ 1] INTRODUCTION 41 S
in everything essential is identical in character with our own,
and that there are a certain number of circumstances which have
been of signal importance in assisting mankind in developing
language (cf. Gabelentz Spr 294 ff.)-
First of all, man has an upright gait ; this gives him two limbs
more than the dog has, for instance : he can carry things and yet
jabber on ; he is not reduced to defending himself by biting^ but
can use his mouth for other purposes. Feeding also takes less
time in his case than in that of the cow, who has little time for any-
thing else than chewing and a moo now and then. The sexual
life of man is not restricted to one particular time of the year,
the two sexes remain together the whole year round, and thus
sociability is promoted ; the helplessness of babies works in the
same direction through necessitating a more continuous family
life, in which there is also time enough for all kinds of sports, in-
cluding play with the vocal organs. Thus conditions have been
generally favourable for the development of singing and talking,
but the problem is, how could soimds and ideas come to be connected
as thej^ are in language ?
What method or methods have we for the solution of this ques-
tion ? With very few exceptions those v\ ho have written about our
subject have conjured up in their imagination a primitive era, and
then asked themselves : How would it be possible for men or man-
like beings, hitherto unfurnished with speech, to acquire speech as
a means of commimication of thought ? Not only is this method
followed, so to speak, instinctively by investigators, but we are
even positively told (by Marty) that it is the only method possible.
In direct opposition to this assertion, I think that it is chiefly and
principally due to this method and to this way of putting the
question that so little has yet been done to solve it. If we are
to have any hope of success in our investigation we must try new
methods and new ways — and fortunately there are ways which
lead us to a point from wliich we may expect to see the world of
primitive language revealed to us in a new light. But let us first
cast a rapid glance at those theories which have been advanced
b}'' followers of the speculative or a priori method.
XXI.— § 2. Former Theories.
One theory is that primitive words were imitative of sounds :
man copied the barking of dogs and thereby obtained a natural
word with the meaning of ' dog ' or ' bark.' To tnis theory, nick-
named the bow-woio theory, Kenan objects that it seems rather
absurd to set up this chronological sequence : first the lower animals
are original enough to cry and roar ; and then comes man, making
414 THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH [ch. xxi
a lanpfuage for himself by imitating his inferiors. But surely man
would imitate not onl}' the cries of inferior animals, but also those
of his fellow-men, and the salient point of the theory is this : sounds
which in one creature were produced without any meaning, but
which were characteristic of that creature, could by man be used
to designate the creature itself (or the movement or action produc-
tive of the sound). In this way an originally unmeaning sound
could in the mouth of an imitator and in the mind of someone
hearing that imitation acquire a real meaning. In the chapt<^r
on Sound Sjinbolism I have tried to show how from the rudest
and most direct imitations of this kind we may arrive through
many gradations at some of the subtlest effects of human speech,
and how imitation, in the widest sense we can give to this word —
a wider sense than most advocates of the theory seem able to
imagine — is so far from belonging exclusively to a primitive age
that it is not extinct even yet. There is not much of value in Max
Miiller's remark that " the onomatopoeic theory goes very smoothly
as long as it deals with cackling hens and quacking ducks ; but
round that poultry-yard there is a high wall, and we soon find
that it is behind that wall that language really begins " {Life 2. 97),
or in his other remark that " words of this kind (cuckoo) are, like
artificial flowers, without a root. They are sterile, and unfit to
express anything beyond the one object which they imitate "
(ib. 1. 410). But cuckoo may become cuckold(FT. cocu). and from
cock are derived the names Miiller himself mentions, Fr. coquet,
coquetterie, cocart, cocarde, coquelicot. . . . Echoic words may be
just as fertile as any other part of the vocabula^3^
Another theory is the int-erjectional, nicknamed the pooh-pooh,
theory : language is derived from instinctive ejaculations called
forth by pain or other intense sensations or feelings. The adherents
of this theory generally take these interjections for granted, with-
out asking about the way in which they have come into existence.
Darwin, however, in The Expression of the Emotions, gives purely
physiological reasons for some interjections, as when the feeling
of contempt or disgust is accompanied by a tendency " to blow
out of the mouth or nostrils, and this produces sounds like pooh or
pish." Again, " when anyone is startled or suddenly astonished,
there is an instantaneous tendency, likewise from an intelligible
cause, namely, to be ready for prolonged exertion, to open the
mouth widely, so as to draw a deep and rapid inspiration. When
the next full expiration follows, the mouth is slightly closed, and
the lips, from causes hereafter to be discussed, are somewhat
protruded ; and this form of the mouth, if the voice be at all
exerted, produces . . . the sound of the vowel o. Certainly a
deep sound of a prolonged Oh ! may be heard from a whole crowd
§2] FORMER THEORIES 415
of people immediately after witnessing any astonisliing spectacle.
Tf, together with sm'prise, pain be felt, there i.s a tendency to con-
tract all the muscles of the body, including those of the face, and
the lips will then be drawn back ; and this vi'ill perhaps account
for the sound becoming higher and assuming the character of
Ah ! or Ach ! "
To the ordinary inter jectional theory it may be objected that
the usual interjections are abrupt expressions for sudden sensations
and emotions ; they are therefore isolated in relation to the speech
material used in the rest of the language. " Between interjection
and word there is a chasm wide enough to allow us to say that the
interjection is the negation of language, for interjections are
employed only when one either cannot or will not speak " (Benfey
Gesch 295). This ' chasm ' is also shown phonetically by the fact
that the most spontaneous interjections often contain sounds
which are not used in' language proper, voiceless vowels, inspira-
tory sounds, clicks, etc., whence the impossibility properly to
represent them by means of our ordinary alphabet : the spellings
pooh, pish, whew, tut are very poor renderings indeed of the natural
sounds. On the other hand, many interjections are now more
or less conventionalized and are learnt like any other words, con-
sequently with a different form in different languages : in pain a
German and a Seelander will exclaim au, a Jutlander aiis, a French-
man ahi and an Englishman oh, or perhaps ow. Kipling writes
in one of his stories : " That man is no Afghan, for they weep
' Ai ! Ai ! ' Nor is he of Hindustan, for they weep ' Oh ! Ho ! '
He weeps after the fashion of the white men, who say, ' Ow ! Ow ! ' "
A closely related theory is the nativistic, nicknamed the ding-
dong, theory, according to which there is a mystic harmony between
soimd and sense : " There is a law which runs through nearly
the whole of natiire, that everything which is struck rings. Each
substance has its peculiar ring." Language is the result of an
instinct, a " faculty peculiar to man in his primitive state, by which
every impression from without received its vocal expression from
within " — a faculty which " became extinct when its object was
fulfilled." This theory, which Max Mixller propounded and after-
wards wisely abandoned, is mentioned here for the curiosity of the
matter only.
Noire started a fourth theory, nicknamed the yo-he-ho : under
any strong muscular effort it is a relief to the system to let breath
come out strongly and repeatedly, and by that process to let the
vocal chords vibrate in different ways ; when primitive acts were
performed in common, the}' would, therefore, naturally be accom-
panied with some sounds which would come to be associated with
the idea of the act performed and stand as a name for it ; the
416 THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH [ch. xxi
first words would accordingly mean something like ' heave ' or
' haul.'
Now, these theories, here imperfectly reproduced each in a few
lines, are mutually antagonistic : thus Noire thinks it possible to
explain the origin of speech without sound imitation. And yet
what should prevent our combining these several theories and asing
them concmrently ? It would seem to matter very little whether
the first word uttered by man was bow-wow or pooh-pooh, for the
fact remains that he said both one and the other. Each of the three
chief theories enables one to explain parts of language, but still
only parts, and not even the most important parts — the main
body of language seems hardly to be touched by any of them.
Again, with the exception of Noire's theory-, they are too
individualistic and take too little account of language as a
means of human intercourse. Moreover, they all tacitly assume
that up to the creation of language man had remained mute or
silent ; but this is most improbable from a physiological point
of view. As a rule we do not find an organ already perfected
on the first occasion of its use ; it is only by use that an organ
is developed.
XXI.— § 3. Method.
So much for the results of the first method of approaching
the question of the origin of speech, that of trying to picture to
oneself a speechless mankind and speculating on the way in which
language could then have originated. We shall now, as hinted
above (p. 413), indicate the ways in which it is possible to supple-
ment, and even in some measure to supplant, this speculative
or deductive method by means of inductive reasonings. These
can be based on three fields of investigation, namely :
(1) The language of children ;
(2) The language of primitive races, and
(3) The history of language.
Of these, the third is the most fruitful source of information.
First, as to the language of children. Some biologists maintain
that the development of the individual follows on the whole the
same course as that of the race ; the embryo, before it arrives at
full maturity, will have passed through the same stages of develop-
ment which in countless generations have led the whole species
to its present level. It has, therefore, occurred to many that the
acquisition by mankind at large of the faculty of speech may
be mirrored to us in the process by which any child learns to
communicate its thoughts by means of its vocal organs. Accord-
§3] METHOD 417
ingly, children's language has often been invoked to furnish illus-
trations and parallels of the i)rocess gone through in the formation
of primitive language. But many writers have been guilty of an
erroneous iiiference in applying this principle, inasmuch as they have
taken all their examples from a child's acquisition of an already
existing language. The fallacy will be evident if we suppose for
a moment the case of a man endeavouring to arrive at the evolution
of music from the manner in which a child is nowadays taught to
play on tlie piano. Manifestly, the modern learner is in quite
a different position to primitive man, and has quite a different
task set him : he has an instrument ready to hand, and melodies
already composed for him, and finally a teacher \^ho understands
how to draAv these tunes foi'th from the instrument. It is the same
thing with language ; the task of the child is to learn an existing
language, that is, to connect certain sounds heard on the lips of
others with the same ideas that the speakers associate with them,
but not in the least to frame anything new. No ; if we are seeking
some parallel to the primitive acquisition of language, we must
look elsewhere and turn to baby language as it is spoken in the first
year of life, before the cliild has begun to ' notice ' and to make
out what use is made of language by grown-up people. Here,
in the child's first purposeless murmuring, crowing and babbling,
we have real nature sounds ; here we may expect to find some
clue to the infancy of the language of the race. And, again, we
must not neglect the way children have of creating new words
never heard before, and often of attaching a sense to originally
meaningless conglomerations of sound.
As for the languages of contemporary savages, we may in some
instances take them as t\-pical of more primitive languages than
those of civilized nations, and therefore as illustrating a linguistic
stage that is nearer to that in which speech originated. Still,
inferences Trom such languages should be used with great caution,
for it should never be forgotten than even the most backward
race has many centuries of linguistic evolution behind it, and that
the conditions therefore may, or must, be very different from those
of primeval man. The so-called primitive languages Avill therefore
in the following sections be only invoked to corroborate conclusions
at which it is possible to arrive from other data.
The third and most fruitful source from which to gather in-
formation of value for our investigation is the history of language
as it has been considered in previous chapters of this work. While
the propounders of the theories of the origin of speech mentioned
above made straight for the front of the lion's den, we are like
the fox in the fable, who noticed that all the traces led into the den
and not a single one came out ; we will therefore try and steal
27
418 THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH [ch. xxi
into the den from behind. They thought it logically correct,
nay necessary, to begin at the beginning ; let us, for variety's
sake, begin with languages accessible at the present day, and let
us attempt from that starting-point step by step to trace the
backward path. Perhaps in this way we may reach the very
first beginnings of speech.
The method I recommend, and which I think I am the first
to employ consistently, is to trace our modern twentieth-century
languages as far back in time as liistory and our materials will
allow us ; and then, from this comparison of present English with
Old English, of Danish with Old Norse, and of both with ' Common
Gothonic,' of French and Italian with Latin, of modern Lidian
dialects with Sanskrit, etc., to deduce definite laws for the develop-
ment of languages in general, and to try and find a system of lines
which can be lengthened backwards beyond the reach of history.
If we should succeed in discovering certain qualities to be generally
typical of tlie earlier as opposed to the later stages of languages,
we shall be justified in concluding that the same qualities obtained
in a still higher degree in the earliest times of all ; if we are able
witliin the historical era to demonstrate a definite direction of
linguistic evolution, we must be allowed to infer that the direction
was the same even in those primeval periods for which we have
no documents to guide us. But if the change witnessed in the
evolution of modern speech out of older forms of speech is thus
on a larger scale projected back into the childhood of mankind,
and if by tlfis process we arrive fina.llv at uttered sounds of such
a description that they can no longer be called a real language,
but something antecedent to language — why, then the problem
Avill have been solved ; for transformation is something we can
imdcrstand, Avhile a creation out of nothing can never be compre-
hended by human understanding.
This, then, will be the object of the foUoAving rapid sketch :
to search the several departments of the science of language for
general laws of evolution — most of them have already been dis-
cussed at some length in the preceding chapters — then to magnify
the changes observed, and thus to form a picture of the outer
and inner structui'e of some sort of speech more primitive than the
most primitive language accessible to direct observation.
XXI.— § 4. Sounds.
First, as regards the piu-ely phonetic side of language, we
observe overyuhere the tendency to make pronunciation more
easy, so as to lessen the muscular effort ; difficult combinations
of sounds are discarded, those only being retained which are
§4] SOUNDS 419
pronoiuiced with ease (see Ch. XIV § 6 ff.). IModern research has
shown tliat the Proto-Ai-yan sound-system was much more com-
pHcated than was imagined in the reconstructions of the middle
of the nineteenth century. In most languages now onl}' such
somids are used as are produced by expiration, while inbreathed
sounds and clicks or suction-stops are not found in connected
speech. In civilized languages we meet with such sounds only
in interjections, as when an inbreathed voiceless I (generally with
rhythmic variations of strength and corresponding small move-
ments of the tongue) is used to express delight in eating and drink-
ing, or when the click inadequately spelt tut is used to express
imi)atience. In some very primitive South African languages,
on the other hand, clicks are found as integral parts of words ;
and Bleek has rendered it probable that in former stages of these
languages they were in more exten-si^'e use than now. We may
l^erhaps draw the conclusion that primitive languages in general
were rich in all kinds of difficult sounds.
The following point is of more far-reaching consequence. In
some languages we find a gradual disappearance of tone or pitch
accent ; this has been the case in Danish, whereas Norwegian
and Swedish have kept the old tones ; so also in Russian as com-
pared with Serbo-Croatian. In the works of old Indian, Greek
and Latin grammarians we have express statements to the effect
that pitch accent played a prominent part in those languages,
and that the intervals used must have been comparatively greater
than is usual in our modern languages. In modern Greek and in
the Romanic languages the tone element has been obscured, and
now ' stress ' is heard on the sj^llable where the ancients noted
only a liigh or a low tone. About the languages spoken nowadays
by savage tribes we have generallj' very little information, as most
of those who have made a first-hand study of such languages
have not been trained to observe and to describe these delicate
points ; still, there is of late years an increasing number of observa-
tions of tone accents, for instance in African languages, which
may justify us in thinking that tone plays an important part in
many primitive languages.*
^ It may not be superfluous expressly to point out that there is no con-
tradiction between what is said here on the disappearance of tones and the
remarks made above (Ch. XIX § 4) on Chinese tones. There the change
wrought in the meaning of a word by a mere change of tone was explained on
the principle that the difference of meaning was at an earlier stage expressed
by affixes, the tone that is now concentrated on one syllable belonging
formerly to two syllables or perhaps more. But this evidently presupposes
that each syllable had already some tone of its own — and that is what in
this chapter is taken to be the primitive state. Word-tones were originally
frequent, but meaningless ; afterwards they were dropped in some languages,
while in others they were utilized for sense-distinguishing purposes.
430 THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH [ch. xxi
So much for word tones ; now for the sentence melody. It
is a well-known fact that the modulation of sentences is strongly
influenced by the effect of intense emotions in causing stronger
and more rapid raisings and sinkings of the tone. " All passionate
language does of itself become musical — with a finer music than
the mere accent ; the speech of a man even in zealous anger becomes
a chant, a song " (Carlyle). " The sounds of common conversation
have but little resonance ; those of strong feeling have much
more. Under rising ill-temper the voice acquires a metaUic ring.
. . , Grief, unburdening itself, uses tones approaching in timbre
to those of chanting ; and in his most pathetic passages an elo-
quent speaker similarly falls into tones more vibratory than those
common to him. . . . While calm speech is comparatively mono-
tonous, emotion makes use of fifths, octaves, and even wider
intervals " (H. Spencer).
Now, it is a consequence of advancing civilization that passion,
or, at least, the expression of passion, is moderated, and we must
therefore conclude that the speech of unci\'ilized and primitive
men was more passionately agitated than oms, more like music
or song. This conclusion is borne out by what we hear about the
speech of many savages in our own days. European travellers
very often record their impression of the speech of different tribes
in expressions like these : " pronouncing whatever they spoke in
a very singing manner," " the singing tone of voice, in common
conversation, was frequent," " the speech is very much modulated
and resembles singing," " highly artificial and musical," etc.
These facts and considerations all point to the conclusion that
there once was a time when all speech was song, or rather when
these two actions were not yet differentiated ; but perhaps this
inference cannot be established inductively at the present stage
of linguistic science with the same amount of certainty as the '
statements I am now going to make as to the nature of primitive
speech.
As we have seen above (Ch. XVII § 7), a great many of the
changes going on regularly from century to century, as well as some
of the sudden changes which take place now and then in the
history of each language, result in the shortening of words. This
is seen everywhere and at all times, and in consequence of this
universal tendency we find that the ancient languages of our family,
Sanskrit, Zend, etc., abound in very long words ; the further
back we go, the greater the number of sesquipedalia. We have
seen also how the current theory, according to which every language
started with monosyllabic roots, fails at every point to account
for actual facts and breaks down before the established truths of
linguistic history. Just as the history of religion does not pass
§4] SOUNDS 421
from the belief in one god to the belief in many gods, but inversely
from polytheism towards monotheism, so language proceeds from
original polysyllabism towards monosyllabiem : if the development
of language took the same course in prehistoric as in historic times,
we see, by projecting the teaching of history on a larger scale back
into the darkest ages, that early words must have been to present
ones Vvhat the plesiosaurus and gigantosaurus are to present-day
reptiles. The outcome of this phonetic section is, therefore, that
we must imagine primitive language as consisting (chiefly at least)
of very long words, full of difficult sounds, and sung rather than
spoken.
XXI. — §5. Grammar.
Can anything be stated about the grammar of primitive lan-
guages ? Ye.s, I think so, if we continue backwards into the past
the lines of evolution resulting from the investigations of previous
chapters of this volume. Ancient languages have more forms
than modern ones ; forms originally kept distinct are in course
of time confused, either phonetically or analogically, alike in
substantives, adjectives and verbs.
A characteristic feature of the structure of languages in their
early stages is that each form of a word (whether verb or noun)
contains in itself several minor modifications which, in the later
stages, are expressed separately (if at all), that is, by means of
auxiliary verbs or prej)ositions. Such a word as Latin cantavisset
unites in one inseparable whole the equivalents of six ideas :
(1) 'sing,' (2) pluperfect, (3) that indefinite modification of the
verbal idea which we term subjunctive, (4) active, (5) third per-
son, and (6) singular. The tendency of later stages is towards
expressing such modifications analytically ; but if we accept the
terms ' synthesis ' and ' analysis ' for ancient and recent stages,
we must first realize that there exist many gradations of both :
in no single language do we find either synthesis or analysis carried
out with absolute purity and consistency. Everywhere we find
a more or less. Latin is synthetic in comparison with French,
French analytic in comparison with Latin ; but if we were able
to see the direct ancestor of Latin, say two thousand years before
the earliest inscriptions, we should no doubt find a language so
sjTithetic that in comparison with it Cicero's would have to be
termed highly analytic.
Secondly, we must not from the term ' synthesis,' which etymo-
logically means ' composition ' or ' putting together,' draw the
conclusion that synthetic forms, such as we find, for instance, in
Latin, consist of originally Independent elements put together
422 THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH [ch. xxi
and thus in their turn presuppose a previous stage of analysis.
Whoever does not share the usual opinion that all flexional forms
have originated through coalescence of separate words, but sees
as we have seen (in Ch. XIX) also the reverse process of inseparable
portions of words gaining greater and greater independence, will
perhaps do well to look out for a better and less ambiguous word
than synthesis to describe the character of primitive speech. What
in the later stages of languages is analyzed or dissolved, in the earlier
stages was unanalj'zable or indissoluble ; ' entangled ' or ' com-
plicated ' would therefore be better renderings of our impression
of the first state of things.
XXI.— § 6. Units.
But are the old forms really less dissoluble than their modern
equivalents ? This is repeatedly denied even by recent writers,
on whom my words in Progress, p. 117, cannot have made much
impression, if thej- have read them at all ; and it will therefore
be necessary to take up this cardinal point. Let me begin with
quoting what others have said. " Historically considered, the
Latin amat is really two words, as much as its English representative,
the final t being originally a pronoun signifying ' he,' ' she ' or
' it,' and it is only reasons of practical convenience that prevent
us from writing am at or ama t as two and heloves as one word.
. . . The really essential difference between amat and he loves is
that in the former the pronominal element is expressed b}' a suffix,
in the latter by a prefix " (Sweet PS 274, 1899). " It is purely
accidental that the Latin form is not written am-av-it. To the
unsophisticated Frenchman il a aim6 is neither less nor more one
unit than amavit to a Roman. . . . When the locution il a aime
sprang up, each element of it was still to some extent felt separatelj- ;
but after it had become a fixed formula the elements were fused
together into one whole. As a matter of fact, uneducated French
people have not the least idea whether it is one or three words
they speak" (Siitterlin WGS 11, 1902). "In some modern lan-
guages the personal pronoun is, just as in archaic Greek, beginning
to be amalgamated with verbs so as to become a mere termination
{sic : desinence ; prefix must be what is meant) : Fr. ydon\ tu-don',
il-don' (je donne, tu donnes, il donne) and E. i-giv\ we giv', you-giv\
they-giv\ correspond exactlj^ to Gr. dido-mi, dido-si, dido-ti, only
that the personal particle is in a different place " (Dauzat V 155,
1910). " If French were a savage language not jet reduced to
writing, a travelling linguist, hearing the present tense of the verb
aimer pronounced by the natives, would transcribe it in the follow-
ing way : jem, tu em. Hem, nouzimon, vouzimi, ilzem. He would be
§G] UNITS 428
struck particularly with the agglutination of the pronominal
subject and the verb, and would never feel tempted to draw up
a paradigm without pronouns : ai7ne, aimes, aime, aimons, etc.,
in which traditional spelling makes us believe. . . . He would
even, through a comparison of Hem and ilzem, be led to establish
a tendency to incorporation, as the only sign of the plural is a z
infixed in'the verbal complex " (Bally LV 43, 1913).
In these utterances two questions are really mixed together,
that of the origin of Aryan flexional forms and that of the actual
status of some forms in various languages. As to the former
question, we have seen (p. 383) how very uncertain it is that amat
and didosi, etc., contain pronouns. As to the latter question,
it is quite true that we should not let the usual spelling be decisive
when it is asked whether we have one or two or three words ; but
all these writers strangely overlook the really important criteria
which we possess in this matter. Balh-'s traveller could only have
arrived at his result by listening to grammar lessons in which the
three persons of the verb were rattled off one after the other, for
if he had taken his forms from actual conversation he would have
come across numerous instances in which the forms occurred
without pronouns, first in the imperative, aime, aimons, aimez, then
in collocations like celin qni aime, ceux qui aiment, in which there
is no infix to denote the plural ; in le mari aime, les maris aiment,
and innumerable similar groups there is neither pronoun nor infix.
If he were at first inclined to take ilaaime as one word, he would
on further acquaintance with the language discover that the ele-
ments were often separated : il na pas aimA, il nous a tonjours
aim^s, etc. Similarly with the English forms adduced : / never
give, you always give. This is the crucial point : the French and
English combinations are two (three) words because the elements
are not always placed together ; Lat. amat, amavit, are each of
them only one word because they can never be divided, and in the
same way we never find anything placed between am and o in
the first person, amo. These forms are as inseparable as E. loves,
but E. heloves is separable because both he and loves can stand
alone, and can also, in certain combinations, though now rarely,
be transposed : loves he. Some writers would compare French
combinations like il te le disait with verbal forms in certain Amerin-
dian languages, in which subject and direct and indirect object
are alike ' incorporated ' in a ' polysynthetic ' verbal form ; it is
quite true that these French pronominal forms can never be used
by themselves, but only in conjunction with a verb ; still, the French
pronouns are more independent of each other than the elements
of some other more primitive languages. In the first place, this
is shown by the possibility of varying the pronunciation : il te
424 THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH [ch. xxi
le disaii may be either [itlodize] or [itoldizc] or even more solemnly
[iltaladize] ; secondly, by the regularity of these joined pronominal
forms, for they are always the same, whatever the verb may be ;
and lastly, by their changing places in certain cases : it It disait-
il ? dis-lt-lui, etc.
Nor can it be said that English forms like ht's—he is (or he has),
I'd = / had (or / tvould), hell = he will show a tendency towards
' entangling,' for however closely together these forms are gener-
ally pronounced, each of them must be said to consist of two words,
as is shown by the possibility of transposition (Is he ill ?) and of
intercalation of other words (I never had) ; it is also noteworthy
that the same short forms of the verbs can be added to all
kinds of words (the water '11 be . . ., the sea'd been calm). In
the forms dojit, won't, can't there is something like amalgama-
tion of the verbal with the negative idea. Still, it is important
to notice that the amalgamation only takes place with a few
verbs of the auxiliary class. In saying ' I don't write ' the full
verb is not touched by the fusion, and is even allowed to be
unchanged in cases w^here it would have been inflected if no
auxiliary had been used ; compare / write, he writes, I wrote with
the negative / don't write, he doesnt urite, I didnH icrite. It will
be seen, especially if we take into account the colloquial or vulgar
form for the third person, he don't write, that the general movement
here as elsewhere is really rather in the direction of ' isolation '
than of fusion ; for the verbal form write is stripped of all signs
of person and tense, the person being indicated separately (if at
all), and the tense sign being joined to the negation. So also in
interrogative sentences ; and if that tendency which can be observed
in Elizabethan English had prevailed by using the combination
/ do ivrite in positive statements, even where no special emphasis
is intended, English verbs (except a few auxiliaries) would have
been entirely stripped of those elements which to most gram-
marians constitute the very essence of a verb, namely, the marks
of person, number, tense and mood, write being the universal
form, besides the quasi-nominal forms writing and uritten.
Now, it is often said that the history of language shows a sort
of gyration or movement in spirals, in wliich synthesis is followed
by analysis, this by a new synthesis (flexion), and this again by
analysis, and so forth. Latin amabo (which according to the old
theory was once ama -f some auxiliar}') has been succeeded by
amare habeo, which in its turn is fused into amerd, aimerai, and the
latter form is now to some extent giving way to^'e vats aimer. But
this pretended law of rotation is only arrived at by considering a
comparatively small number of phenomena, and not by viewing
the successive stages of the same language as wholes and drawing
§6] UNITS 425
general inferences as to their typically distinctive characters (cf.
above, p. 337). If for every two instances of new flexions springing
up we see ten older ones discarded in favour of analysis or isolation,
are we not entitled to the generalization that flexion or indissolu-
bility tends to give way to anah'sis ? We should beware of being
under the same delusion as a man who, in walking over a moun-
tainous countrj', thinks that he goes down just as many and just
as lona: hills as he goes up, while on the contrary each ascent is
higher than the preceding descent, so that finally he finds himself
unexpectedly many thousand feet above the level from which
he started.
The direction of movement is towards flexionless languages
(such as Chinese, or to a certain extent IModevn English) with
freely combinable elements ; the starting-point was flexional
languages (such as Latin or Greek) ; at a still earlier stage we must
suppose a language in which a verbal form might indicate not only
six things, like cantainsset, but a still larger number, in which verbs
were perhaps modified according to the gender (or sex) of the sub-
ject, as they are in Semitic languages, or according to the object,
as in some Amerindian languages, or according to whether a man,
a woman, or a person who commands respect is spoken to, as in
Basque. But that amounts to the same thing as saying that the
border-line between word and sentence was not so clearly defined
as in more recent times ; cantavisset is really nothing but a sentence-
word, and the same holds good to a still greater extent of the sound
conglomerations of Eskimo and some other North American lan-
guages. Primitive linguistic units must have been much more
complicated in point of meaning, as well as much longer in point
of sound, than those with which we are most familiar.
XXI.— § 7. Irregularities.
Another point of great importance is this : in early languages
we find a far greater number of irregularities, exceptions, anomalies,
than in modern ones. It is true that we not unfrequently see new
irregularities spring up, where the formations were formerly
regular ; but these instances are very far from counterbalancing
the opposite class, in which words once irregularly inflected become
regular, or are given up in favour of regularly inflected words,
or in which anomalies in S3aitax are levelled. The tendency is
more and more to denote the same thing by the same means in
every case, to extend the ending, or whatever it is, that is used in
a large class of words to express a certain modification of the central
idea, until it is used in all other words as well.
Comparative linguistics did not attain a scientific character
426 THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH [ch. xxi
till the principle was established that the relationsliip of two lan-
guages had to be determined by a thoroughgoing conformity in
the most necessary parts of language, namely (besides grammar
proper) pronouns and numerals and the most indispensable of
nouns and verbs. But if this domain of speech, by preserving
religiously, as it were, the old tradition, affords infallible criteria
of the near or remote relationship of different languages, may we
not reasonably expect to find in the same domain some clue to the
oldest grammatical system used by our ancestors ? What sort
of system, then, do we find there ? We see such a declension as
/, we, we, us : the several forms of the ' paradigm ' do not at all
resemble each other, as they do in more recently developed de-
clensions. We find masculines and feminincs, such a.s father, mother,
man, wife, bull, cow ; Avhile such methods of derivation as are seen
in count, countess, he-bear, she-bear, belong to a later time. We
meet with degrees of comparison like good, better, ill, worse, while
regular forms like hajypy, hajypitr, big, bigger, prevail in all the
younger strata of languages. We meet with verbal flexion such
as appears in am, is, was, been, which forms a striking contrast
to the more modern method of adding a mere ending while leaving
the body of the word unchanged. In an interesting book, Vom
Suppletivwesen der indogermanischen Sprachen (1899), H. OsthofiE
has collected a very great number of examples from the old Aryan
languages of different stems supplementing each other, and has
pointed out that this phenomenon is characteristic of the most
necessary ideas occurring every moment in ordinary conversation :
I take at random a few of the best-known of his examples : Fr.
aller, je vais, j'irai, Lat. fero, tuli, Gr. horao, opsomai, eidon, Lat.
bonus, melior, optimus. Osthoff fully agrees with me that we have
here a trait of primitive jDsychology : our remote ancestors were
not able to see and to express what was common to these ideas ;
their minds were very uns3^stematic, and separated in their lin-
guistic expressions things which from a logical point of view are
closely related : much of their grammar, therefore, was really of
a lexical character.
XXI.— § 8. Savage Tribes.
If now it is asked whether the conclusions we have thus arrived
at are borne out by a consideration of the languages of savage
or primitive races nowadays, the answer is that these cannot be
lumped together; there are among them many different types,
even with regard to grammatical structure. But the more these
languages are studied and the more accuratel}^ their structure is
described, the more also students perceive intricacies and anomalies
§8] SAVAGE TRIBES 427
in their grtammari Gabelentz (Spr 386) says that the casual
observer has no idea how manifold and how nicely circumscribed
grammatical categories can be, even in the seemingly crudest lan-
guages, for ordinary grammars tell us nothing about that. P. W.
Schmidt (Die Stellung der Pygmdenvolker, 1910, 129) says that
whoever, from the low culture of the Andamanese, would expect
to find their language very simple and poor in expressions would
be strangely deceived, for its mechanism is highly complicated,
with man}' prefixes and suffixes, which often conceal the root itself.
Meinhof (MSA 136) mentions the multiplicity of plural formations
in African languages, Vilhelm Thomsen, in speaking of the Santhal
(Khervarian) language, says that its grammar is capable of express-
ing a multiplicity of vvances which in other languages must be
expressed by clumsy circumlocutions ; the native speakers go
beyond what is necessary through requiring expressions for many
subordinate notions, the language having, so to speak, only one
fine gold-balance, on which everything, even the simplest and
commonest things, must be weighed by the adding-up of a whole
series of minutiae. Curr speaks about the erroneous belief in the
simplicity of Australian languages, which on the contrary have
a great number of conjugations, etc. The extreme difficulty and
complex structure of Eskimo and of many Amerindian languages
is so notorious that no words need be wasted on them here. And
the forms of the Basque verb are so manifold and intricate that we
understand how Larramendi, in his legitimate pride at having
been the first to reduce them to a system, called his grammar
El Imposible Vencido, ' The Impossible Overcome.' At Beam
they have the story that the good God, wishing to punish the devil
for the temptation of Eve, sent him to the Pays Basque with the
command that he should remain there till lie had mastered the lan-
guage. At the end of seven years God relented, finding the punish-
ment too severe, and called the devil to him. The devil had no
sooner crossed the bridge of Castelondo than he found he had for-
gotten all that he had so hardly learned.
What is here said about the languages of wild tribes (and of
the Basques, who are not exactly savages, but whose language
is generally taken to have retained many primeval traits) is in
exact keeping with everything that recent study of primitive
man has brought to light : the life of the savage is regulated to the
minutest details through ceremonies and conventionalities to be
observed on every and any occasion ; he is restricted in what he
may eat and drink and when and how ; and all these, to our mind,
irrational prescriptions and innumerable jirohibitions have to be
observed with the most scrupulous, nay religious, care : it is the
same with all the meticulous rules of his language.
428 THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH [ch. xxi
XXI. — § 9. Law o! Development.
So far, then, from subscribing to Whitney's dictum that " the
law of simplicity of beginnings applies to language not less natur-
ally and necessarily than to other instrumentalities " (G 226),
we are drawn to the conclusion that primitive language had a super-
abundance of irregularities and anomalies, in sjTitax and word-
formation no less than in accidence. It was capricious and fanciful,
and displayed a luxuriant growth of forms, entangled one with
another like the trees in a primeval forest. " Rien n'entre mieux
dans les esprits grossicrs que les subtilites des langues " (Tarde,
Lois de V imitation 285). Human minds in the early times dis-
ported themselves in long and intricate words as in the wildest
and most wanton play. Nothing could be more beside the mark
than to suppose that grammatical and logical categories were in
primitive languages generally in harmony (as is supposed, e.g., by
Sweet, New Engl. Grammar § 543) : primitive speech cannot have
been distinguished for logical consistency ; nor, so far as w's
can judge, was it simple and facile : it is much more likely
to have been extremely clumsy and un^vieldy. Renan rightly
reminds us of Turgot's wise sa^ang : " Des hommes gros.siers ne
font rien de simple. II faut des hommes perfectionnes pour y
arriver."
We have seen in earlier chapters that the old theory of the
three stages through which human language was supposed alwaj's
to proceed, isolation, agglutination and flexion, was built up
on insufficient materials ; but while we feel tempted totally to
reverse this sj'^stem, we must be on our guard against establishing
too rigid and too absolute a system ourselves. It would not do
simply to reverse the order and sa}^ that flexion is the oldest stage,
from which language tends through an agglutinative stage towards
complete isolation, for flexion, agglutination and isolation do not
include all possible structural types of speech. The possibilities
of development are so manifold, and there are such innumerable
ways of arriving at more or less adequate expressions for human
thought, that it is next to impossible to compare languages of
different families. Even, therefore, if it is probable that English,
Finnish and Chinese are all simplifications of more complex lan-
guages, we cannot say that Chinese, for instance, at one time
resembled English in structure and at some other time Finnish.
English was once a flexional language, and is still so in some
respects, while in others it is agglutinative, and in others again
isolating, or nearly so. But we may perhaps give the following
formula of what is our tot^l imi^ression of the whole preceding
inquiry :
§9] LAW OF DEVELOPMENT 429
The evolution of language shows a progressive ten-
dency FROM inseparable IRREGULAR CONGLOMERATIONS TO
FREELY AND REGULARLY COMBINABLE SHORT ELEMENTS.
The old system of historical linguistics may be likened to an
enormous pyramid ; only it is a pitj' that it should have as its
base the small, square, strong, smart root word, and suspended
above it the unwieldy, lumbering, ill-proportioned, flexion-encum-
bered sentence-vocable. Structures of this sort may with some
adroitness be made to stand ; but their equilibrium is unstable,
and sooner or later they will inevitably tumble over.
XXI.— § 10. Vocabulary.
On the lexical side of language we find a development parallel
to that noticed in grammar ; and, indeed, if we go deep enough
into the question, we shall see that it is really the very same
movement that has taken place. The more advanced a language
is, the more developed is its power of expressing abstract or
general ideas. Everywhere language has first attained to ex-
pressions for the concrete and special. In accounts of the languages
of barbarous races we constantly come across such phrases as
these : " The aborigines of Tasmania had no words representing
abstract ideas ; for each variety of gum-tree and wattle-tree,
etc., they had a name ; but they had no equivalent for the
expression ' a tree ' ; neither could they express abstract qualities,
such as ' hard, soft, warm, cold, long, short, round ' " ; or,
The Mohicans have words for cutting various objects, but none
to convey cutting simply. The Zulus have no word for ' cow,'
but words for ' red cow,' ' white cow,' etc. (Sayce S 2. 5, cf.
I. 121). In Bakairi (Central Brazil) "each parrot has its special
name, and the general idea ' parrot ' is totally unknown, as well
as the general idea ' palm.' But they know precisely the qualities
of each subspecies of parrot and palm, and attach themselves so
much to these numerous particular notions that they take no interest
in the common characteristics. They are choked in the abundance
of the material and cannot manage it economically. They have
only small coin, but in that they must be said to be excessively
rich rather than poor " (K. v. d. Steinen, Unter den Naturvolkem
Brasiliens, 1894, 81). The Lithuanians, like many primitive
tribes, have many special, but no common names for various
colours : one word for gray in spealdng about wool and geese,
one about horses, one about cattle, one about the hair of men and
some animals, and in the same way for other colours (J. Schmidt,
Kritik d. Sonantentheorie 37). Many languages have no word
for ' brother,' but words for ' elder brother ' and ' younger brother ' ;
430 THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH [ch. xxi
others have different words according to whose (person and ninnber)
father or brother it is (see, e.g., the paradigm in Gabclentz 8pr 421),
and the same applies in many languages to names for various
parts of the body. In Cherokee, instead of one word for ' washing '
we find different words, according to what is washed : kuhiwo
" I wash myself,' hdestula ' I wash my head,' tsestula ' I wash
the head of somebody else,' kttkusxco ' I wash my face,' tsekuswo
' I wash the face of somebody else,' takasula ' I wash my hands
or feet,' takunkela ' I wash my clothes,' takuiega ' I wash dishes,'
tsejmvu ' I wash a child,' kowela ' I wash meat ' (see, hoAvever, the
criticism of Hewitt, Am. Anthropologist, 1893, 398). Primitive
man did not see the wood for the trees. ^
In some Amerindian languages there are distinct series of
numerals for various classes of objects ; thus in Kwakiatl and
Tsimoshian (Sapir, Language and Environment 239) ; similarly
the Melanesians have special words to denote a definite number-
of certain objects, e.g. a buku niu ' two coconuts,' a bum ' ten
coconuts,' a koro ' a himdred coconuts,' a selavo ' a thousand
coconuts,' a uduudu 'ten canoes,' a bola 'ten fishes,' etc. (Gabe-
lentz, Die melan. Spr. 1. 23). In some languages the numerals
are the same for all classes of objects counted, but require after
them certain class-denoting words varjdng according to the
character of the objects (in some respects comparable to the
English twenty Jiead of cattle, Pidgin piecey ; cf . Yule and
Burnell, Hobson-Jobson s.v. Numerical Affixes). This reminds
one of the systems of weights and measures, which even in
civilized countries up to a comparatively recent period varied
not only from country to country, sometimes even from district
to district, but even in the same country according to the
things weighed or measm-ed (in England stone and ton still vary
in this way).
In old Gothonic poetry we find an astonishing abundance of
words translated in our dictionaries by ' sea,' ' battle,' ' sword,'
' hero,' and the like : these may certainly be considered as relics
of an earlier state of things, in which each of these words had its
separate shade of meaning, which was subsequently lost and which
it is impossible now to determine with certainty. The nomenclature
of a remote past was undoubtedly constructed upon similar
principles to those which are still preserved in a word-group like
horse, mare, stallion, foal, colt, instead of he-horse, she-horse, young
horse, etc. This sort of grouping has only survived in a few cases
in which a lively interest has been felt in the objects or animals
concerned. We may note, however, the different terms employed
^ On the lack of abstract and general terms in savage languages, see
also Ginneken LP 108 and the works there quoted.
§10] VOCABULARY 431
for essentially the same idea in a fioch of sheep, a pack of wolves,
a herd of cattle, a beuy of larks, a covey of partridges, a shoal of
iish. Primitive language could show a far greater number of
instances of this description, and, so far, had a larger vocabulary
than later languages, though, of com-se, it lacked names for a
great number of ideas that were outside the sphere of interest
of unci\'ilized people.
There was another reason for the richness of the vocabulary
of primitive man : his superstition about words, which made
him avoid the use of certain words under certain circumstances —
during war, when out fishing, during the time of the great cultic
festivals, etc. — because he feared the anger of gods or demons
if he did not religiously observe the rules of the linguistic tabu.
Accordingly, in many cases he had two or more sets of words for
exactly the same notions, of which later generations as a rule
preserved only one, unless they differentiated these words by
utilizing them to discriminate objects that were similar but not
identical.
XXI.— § 11. Poetry and Prose.
On the whole the development of languages, even in the matter
of vocabulary, must be considered to have taken a beneficial course ;
still, in certain respects one may to some extent regret the conse-
quences of this evolution. Wliile our words are better adapted
to express abstract things and to render concrete things with
definite precision, they are necessarily comparatively colourless.
The old words, on the contrary, spoke more immediately to the
senses — they were manifestly more suggestive, more graphic and
pictorial : while to express one single thing we are not unfrequently
obliged to piece the image together bit by bit, the old concrete
words ^\ ould at once present it to the hearer's mind as a whole ;
they were, accordingly, better adapted to poetic purposes. Nor
is this the only point in which we see a close relationship between
primitive words and poetry.
If by a mental effort we transport ourselves to a period in
which language consisted solely of such graphic concrete words,
we shall discover that, in spite of their number, they -would not
suflSce, taken all together, to cover everytliing that needed ex-
pression ; a wealth in such words is not incompatible with a
certain poverty. They would accordingly often be required to
do service outside of their proper sphere of application. That a
figurative or metaphorical use of words is a factor of the utmost
importance in the life of all languages is indisputable ; but I
am probably right in thinking that it played a more prominent
482 THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH [ch. xxi
part in old times than now. In the course of ages a great many
metaphors have lost their freshness and vividness, so that nobody
feels them to be metaphors any longer. Examine closely such a
sentence as this : " He came to look upon the low ebb of morals
as an outcome of bad taste" and you will find that nearly every
word is a dead metaphor.^ But the bettor stocked a language
is with those ex-metaphors which have become regular expressions
for definite ideas, the less need there is for going out of one's way
to find new metaphors. The expression of thought therefore
tends to become more and more mechanical or prosaic.
Primitive man, however, on account of the nature of his language,
was constantly reduced to using words and phrases figuratively :
he was forced to express his thoughts in the language of poetry.
The speech of modern savages is often spoken of as abounding
in similes and all kinds of figurative phrases and allegorical
expressions. Just as in the literature transmitted to us poetry
is found in every country to precede prose, so poetic language
is on the whole older than prosaic language ; lyrics and cult songs
come before science, and Oehlenschlager is right when he sings
(in N. Meller's translation) :
Thus Nature drove us ; warbling rose
Man's voice in verse before he spoke in prose.
XXI.— § 12. Emotional Songs.
If we noAV try to sum up what has been inferred about primi-
tive speech, we see that by our backward march we arrived at
a language whose units had a very meagre substance of thought,
and this as specialized and concrete as possible ; but at the same
time the jihonetic body was ample ; and the bigger and longer
the words, the thinner the thoughts ! Much cry and little wool !
No period has seen less taciturn people than the first framers of
speech ; primitive speakers were not reticent and reserved beings,
but youthful men and women babbling merrily on, without being
so very particular about the meaning of each word. They did
not narrowly weigh every syllable — what were a couple of syllables
more or less to them ? They chattered away for the mere pleasure
of chattering, resembling therein many a mother of our own time,
who will chatter away to baby without measuring her words or
looking too closely into the meaning of each ; na}', who is not
a bit troubled by the consideration that the little deary does not
understand a single word of her affectionate eloquence. But
^ Of course, if instead of look upon and outcoine we had taken the corre-
sponding terms of Latin root, consider and result, the metaphors would
have been still more dead to the natural linguistic instinct.
§12] EMOTIONAL SONGS 433
primitive speech — and we return here to an idea thrown out above —
still more resembles the speech of little baby himself, before he
begins to frame his own language after the pattern of the grown-
ups ; the language of our remote forefathers was like that ceaseless
humming and crooning with which no thoughts are as yet con-
nected, which merely amuses and delights the little one. Language
originated as play, and the organs of speech were first trained in
this singing sport of idle hours.
Primitive language had no great store of ideas, and if we consider
it as an instrument for expressing thoughts, it was clumsy, un-
wieldy and ineffectual ; but M'hat did that matter ? Thoughts
were not the first things to press forward and crave for ex-
pression ; emotions and instincts were more primitive and far
more powerful. But what emotions were most powerful in pro-
ducing germs of speech ? To be sm-e not hunger and that which
is connected with hunger : mere individual self-assertion and
the struggle for material existence. This prosaic side of life was
only capable of calling forth short monosyllabic interjections,
howls of pain and grunts of satisfaction or dissatisfaction ; but
these are isolated and incapable of much further development ;
they are the most immutable portions of language, and remain
now at essentially the same standpoint as thousands of years ago.
If after spending some time over the deep metaphysical specula-
tions of a number of German linguistic philosophers j'ou turn to
men like Madvig and Whitne}'', 5'^ou are at once agreeably im-
pressed by the sobriet}^ of their reasoning and their superior clearness
of thought. But if you look more closely, you caimot help thinldng
that they imagine our primitive ancestors after their own image
as serious and well-meaning men endowed with a large share of
common-sense. By their laying such great stress on the com-
munication of thought as the end of language and on the benefit
to primitive man of being able to speak to his fellow-creatures
about matters of vital importance, they leave you with the im-
pression that these " first framers of speech " were sedate citizens
with, a strong interest in the purely business and matter-of-fact
side of life ; indeed, according to Madvig, women had no share
in the creating of language.
In opposition to this rationalistic view I should like, for once
in a way, to bring into the field the opposite \dew : the genesis
of language is not to be sought in the prosaic, but in the poetic
side of life ; the source of speech is not gloomy seriousness, but
merry play and youthful hilarity. And among the emotions
which were most powerful in eliciting outbursts of music and of
song, love must be placed in the front rank. To the feeling of love,
which has left traces of its vast influence on countless points in
28
484 THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH [ch. xxi
the evolution of organic nature, are due not only, as Darwin has
shown, the magnificent colours of birds and flowers, but also many
of the things that fill us with joy in human life ; it inspired many
of the first songs, and through them was instrumental in bringing
about human language. In primitive speech I hear the laughing
cries of exultation when lads and lasses vied with one another
to attract the attention of the other sex, when everybody sang
his merriest and danced his bravest to lure a pair of eyes to throw
admiring glances in his direction. Language was born in the
courting days of mankind ; the first utterances of speech I fancy
to myself like something between the nightly love-lyrics of puss
upon the tiles and the melodious love-songs of the nightingale.^
XXL— § 13. Primitive Singing.
Love, however, was not the only feeling -sAliich tended to call
forth primitive songs. Any strong emotion, and more particularly
any pleasurable excitement, might result in song. Singing, like
any other sort of play, is due to an overflow of energy, which is
discharged in " unusual vivacity of every kind, including vocal
vivacity." Out of the full heart the mouth sings ! vSavages
will sing whenever they are excited : exploits of war or of the
chase, the deeds of their ancestors, the coming of a fat dog, any
incident " from the arrival of a stranger to an earthquake " is
turned into a song ; and most of these songs are composed extem-
^ From tlie experience I had with my previous book. Progress, from
which this chapter has, with some alterations and amphfications, passed
into this vohime, I feel impelled here to warn those critics who do me the
honour to mention my theory of the origin of language, not to look upon it
as if it were contained simply in my remarks on primitive love-songs, etc.,
and as if it were based on a priori considerations, like the older speculative
theories. What I may perhaps claim as my original contribution to the
solution of this question is the inductive method based on the three sources
of information indicated on p. 416, and especially on the ' backward ' con-
sideration of the history of language. Some critics think they have
demolished my view by simply representing it as a romantic dream of a
primitive golden age in which men had no occupation but courting and
singing. I have never believed in a far-off golden age, but rather incline
to believe in a progressive movement from a very raw and barbarous age
to something better, though it must be said that our own age, with its national
wars, world wars and class wars, makes one sometimes ashamed to think
how little progress our so-called civilization has made. But primitive ages
were probably still worse, and the only thing I have felt bold enough to
maintain is that in those days there were some moments consecrated to
youthful hilarity, and that this gave rise, among other merriment, to vocal
play of such a character as closely to resemble what we may infer from the
known facts of linguistic history to have been a stage of language earlier
than any of those accessible to us. There is no ' romanticism ' (in a bad
sense) in such a theory, and it can only bo refuted by showing that the view
of language and its development on which it is based is erroneous from
beginning to end.
§18] PRIMITIVE SINGING 485
pore. " Wlicn rowing, the Coast negroes sing eitlier a description
of some love intrigue or the praise of some woman celebrated for her
beauty." The Malay's beguile all then* leisure hours with the
repetition of songs, etc. " In singing, the East African contents
himself \vith imjjrovising a few words without sense or rime and
repeats them till they nauseate." (These quotations, and many
others, are found in Herbert Spencer's Essay on the Origin of
Musky with his Postscript.) The reader of Karl Bucher's pains-
taking work Arbeit %ind Rhytlimus (2te aufl. 1899) will know from
liis numerous examples and illustrations what an enormous idle
rhythmic singing plays in the dail}' life of savages all over the
world, how each land of work, especially if it is doTie by many
jointly, has its ovm. kind of song, and how nothing is done except
to the sound of vocal music. In many instances savages are
mentioned as very expert in adapting the subjects of their songs
to current events. Nor is this sort of singing on every and any
occasion confined to savages ; it is found wherever the indoor
life of ci\'ilization has not killed all open-air hilarity ; formerly
in our Western Europe people sang much more than they do now.
The Swedish peasant Jonas Stolt (ab. 1820) WTites : "I have
known a time when yoimg people were singing from morning till
eve. Then they were carolling both out- and indoors, behind the
plough as well as at the threshing-floor and at the spinning-wheel.
This is all over long ago : nowadays there is silence everywhere ;
if someone were to try and sing in our days as we did of old, people
would term it bawling."
The first things that were expressed in song were, to be sure,
neither deep nor wise ; how could you expect it ? Note the
frequency with which we are told that the songs of savages consist
of or contain totally meaningless syllables. Thus we read about
American Indians that " the native word which is translated
' song ' does not suggest any use of words. To the Indian, the
music is of primal importance ; words may or may not accompany
the music. When words are used in song, they are rarelj' employed
as a narrative, the sentences are not apt to be complete " (Louise
Pound, Mod. Lang. Ass. 32. 224), and similarly : " Even where
the slightest vestiges of epic poetry are missing, lyiic poetry of
one form or another is always present. It may consist of the
musical use of meaningless sj'llables that sustain the song ; or
it may consist largely of such syllables, with a few interspersed
■v^ords suggesting certain ideas and certain feelings ; or it may
rise to the expression of emotions connected with warlike deeds,
with religious feeling, love, or even to the praise of the beauties of
nature " (Boas, International Jonm. Amer. Ling. 1. 8). The
magic incantations of the Greenland Eskimo, according to
430 THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH [ch. xxi
W. Thalbitzer, contain many incomprehensible words never used
outside these songs (but have they ever been real words ?), and
the same is said about the mystic religious formulas of Maoris
and African negroes and many other tribes, as well as about the
old Roman hymns of the Arval Brethren. The mere joy in sonorous
combinations here no doubt counts for very much, as in the
splendid but meaningless metrical lists of names in the Old
Norse Edda, and in many a modern refrain, too. Lot me give
one example of half (or less than half) understood strings of
syllables fiom "The Oath of the Canting Crew" (1749, Farmer's
Musa Pedestris, 51) :
No dimber, dambler, angler, dancer,
Prig of cackler, prig of prancer ;
No swigman, swaddler, clapper-dudgeon,
Cadge-gloak, curtal, or curmudgeon ;
No whip-jack, palliard, patrico ;
No jarkman, be he high or low ;
No dummerar or romany . . .
Nor any other will I suffer.
In the cultic and ceremonial songs of savage tribes in many
parts of the world this is a prominent trait : it seems, indeed,
to be universal. Even with us the thoughts associated with
singing are generally neither very clear nor very abstruse ; like
humming or whistling, singing is often nothing more than an
almost automatic outcome of a mood ; and " What is not worth
saying can be sung." Besides, it has been the case at all times
that things transient and trivial have found readier expression
than Socratic wisdom. But the frivolous use tuned the instrument,
and rendered it little by little more serviceable to a multiplicity
of purposes, so that it became more and more fitted to express
everj'-thing that touched human souls.
Men sang out their feelings long before they were able to speak
their thoughts. But of course we must not imagine that " singing "
means exactly the same thing here as in a modern concert hall.
When we say that speech originated in song, what we mean is
merely that our comparatively monotonous spoken language and
our highly developed vocal music are differentiations of primitive
utterances, which had more in them of the latter than of the
former. These utterances were at first, like the singing of birds
and the roaring of many animals and the crying and crooning
of babies, exclamative, not communicative — that is, they came
forth from an inner craving of the individual without an}' thought
of any fellow-creatures. Our remote ancestors had not the slight^est
notion that such a thing as communicating ideas and feelings to
someone else was possible. They little suspected that in singing
§18] PRIMITIVE SINGING 437
as nature prompted them they were paving the way for a
language capable of rendering minute shades of thought ; just
as thej- could not suspect that out of their coarse pictures of
men and animals there should one day grow an art enabling men
of distant coimtrics to speak to one another. As is the art of
writing to primitive painting, so is the art of speaking to primitive
singing. And the development of the two vehicles of com-
munication of thought presents other curious and instructive
parallels. Li primitive picture-^Titing, each sign meant a whole
sentence or even more — the image of a situation or of an incident
being given as a whole ; this developed into an ideographic
WTiting of each word b}' itself ; this system was succeeded by
S3'llabic methods, which had in their turn to give place to alpha-
betic wziting, in which each letter stands for, or is meant to
stand for, one sound. Just as here the advance is due to a further
analysis of language, smaller and smaller units of speech being
progressively represented by single signs, in an exactly similar
way, though not quite so unmistakably, the history of language
shows us a progressive tendency towards analyzing into smaller
and smaller imits that which in the earlier stages Avas taken as an
inseparable whole.
One point must be constantlj' kept in mind. Althougli we
now regard the communication of thought as the main object
of speaking, there is no reason for thinking that this has always
been the case ; it is ix?rfectl3^ possible that s^jeech has developed
from something wliich had no other purpose than that of exercising
the muscles of the mouth and throat and of amusing oneself and
others by the production of i^leasant or possibly only strange
sounds. The motives for uttering sounds may have changed
entirely in the course of centuries without the speakers being at any
point conscious of this change within them.
XXI.— § 14. Approach to Language.
We get the first approach to language proper when com-
municativeness takes precedence of exclamativeness, when sounds
are uttered in order to ' tell ' fellow-creatures something, as
when birds warn their young ones of some imminent danger. In
the case of human language, communication is infinitely more
full and rich and elaborate ; the question therefore is a very
complex one : How did the association of sound and sen.se come
about ? How did that which originallj' was a jingle of meaningless
sounds come to be an instrument of thought ? How did man
become, as Hnmboldt has somewhere defined him, " a singing
creature, only associating thoughts with the tones " ?
438 THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH [ch. xxi
111 the case of aji onomatopoetic or echo-word like boiv-wow
and an interjection like pooh-pooh the association was easy and
direct ; such words were at once emploj'ed and understood as
signs for the corresponding idea. But this was not the case with
the great bulk of language. Here association of sound with sense
must have been arrived at by devious and circuitous ways, which
to a great extent evade inquiry and make a detailed exposition
impossible. But this is in exact conformity with very much
that has taken place in recent periods ; as we have learnt in previous
chapters, it is only by indirect and roundabout ways that many
Avords and grammatical expedients have acquired the meanings
they now have, or have acquired meaning where they originally
had none. Let me remind the reader of the word grog (p. 308),
of interrogative particles (p. 358), of word order (p. 356), of
many endings (Ch. XIX § 13 £E.), of tones (Ch. XIX §5), of the
Frencli negative pas, of vowel -alternations like those in drink,
drank, drunk, or in foot, feet, etc. Language is a complicated
affair, and no more than most other human inventions has it
come about in a simple way : mankind has not moved in a
straight line towards a definitely perceived goal, but has muddled
along from moment to moment and has thereby now and then
stumbled on some happj^ expedient which has then been retained
in accordance with the principle of the sur\aval of the fittest.
We may perhaps succeed in forming some idea of the most
primitive process of associating sound and sense if we call to mind
what was said above on the signification of the earliest words,
and try to fathom what that means. The first words must have
been as concrete and specialized in meaning as possible. Now,
what are the words whose meaning is the most concrete and the
most specialized ? Without any doubt proper names — that is,
of course, proper names of the good old Ijind, borne by and denoting
only one single individual. How easily might not such names
spring up in a primitive state such as that described above !
In the songs of a particular individual there would be a constant
recurrence of a particular series of sounds sung with a particular
cadence ; no one can doubt the possibility of such individual
habits being contracted in olden as well as in present times.
Suppose, then, that " in the spring time, the onlj^ prettj- ring
time " a lover was in the habit of addressing his lass " with a hey,
and a ho, and a hey nonino." His comrades and rivals woald
not fail to remark this, and would occasionally banter him by
imitating and repeating his " hey-and-a-ho-and-a-hey-nonino."
But when once this had been recognized as what Wagner Avould
term a ])orson'8 ' leitmotiv,' it would be no far cry from mimicking
it to using the " hey-and-a-ho-and-a-hey-nonino " as a sort of
§14] APPROACH TO LANGUAGE 489
nickname for the man concerned ; it might be employed, for
instance, to signal liis arrival. And when once proper names
had been bestowed, common names (or nouns) \\ould not be slow
in following ; we see the transition from one to the other class in
constant operation, names originally used exclusively to denote
an individual being used metaphorically to connote that person's
most characteristic peculiarities, as when we say of one man that
he is a ' Croesus ' or a ' Vanderbilt ' or ' Rockefeller,' and of
another that he is ' no Bismarck.' A German schoolboy in
the 'eighties said in his history lesson that Hannibal swore he
would always be a Frenchman to the Romans. This is, at least,
one of the ways in which language arrives at designations of such
ideas as 'rich,' 'statesman' and 'enemy.' From the proper
name of Ccesar we have both the Russian tsar' and the German
kaiser, and from Karol (Charlemagne) Russian koroV ' king '
(also in the other Slav languages) and Magyar kirdly. Besides
being designations for persons, proper names may also in some
cases come to mean tools or other objects, originally in most cases
probably as a term of endearment, as when in thieves' slang a
crowbar or lever is called a betty or jemmy ; E. derrick and dirk,
as well as G. dietrich, Dan. dirk, Swed. dyrk, is nothing but
Dietrich {Derrick, Theodoricus), and thus in innumerable instances.
In the Ecole polytechnique in Paris there are many words of the
same character : bacha ' cours d'allemand ' from a teacher, M.
Bacharach, borius ' bretelles ' from General Borius, malo ' ^peron '
from Captain Malo, etc. (MSL 15. 179). Pamphlet is from Pamphilet,
originally Pamphilus seu de Amore, the name of a popular
booklet on an erotic subject. Compare also the history of the
words bluchers, jack (boot-jack, jack for turning a spit, a pike, etc.,
also jacket), pantaloon, hansom, boycott, to burke, to name only
a few of the best-loiov^Ti examples.
XXI.— § 15. The Earliest Sentences.
Again, we saw above that the further back we went in the
history of known languages, the more the sentence was one indis-
soluble whole, in which those elements which we are accustomed
to think of as single words were not yet separated. Now, the
idea that language began with sentences, not with words, appears
to Whitney {Am. Journ. of Philol. 1. 338) to be, "if capable of
any intelligent and intelligible statement, a fortiori, too wild and
baseless to deserve respectful mention " (cf. also Mad\ig Kl 85).
But the absurdity appears only if we think of sentences like those
found in our languages, consisting of elements (words) capable
of being used in other combinations and there forming other
440 THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH [ch. xxi
sentences: this seems to be what Gabelentz (Spr 351) imagines;
but it is not so wild to imagine as the first beginning something
which can be translated into our languages by means of a sentence,
but which is not ' articulated ' in the same way as such a sentence ;
we translate or explain the dental click (' tut ') by means of the
sentence ' that is a pity,' but the interjection is not in other
respects a grammatical ' sentence.' Or we may take an illustration
from the modern use of a telegraphic code : if suzaw means ' I
have not received your telegram,' or sem2io ' reserve one single
room and bath at first-class hotel ' — we have unanalyzable wholes
capable of being rendered in complete sentences, but not in every
way analogous to these sentences.
Now, it is just units of this character (though not, of course,
with exactly the same kind of meaning as the two code words)
whose genesis Ave can most easily imagine on the supi)Osition of
a primitive period of meaningless singing. If a certain number
of people have together witnessed some incident and have
accompanied it with some sort of impromptu song or refrain, the
two ideas are associated, and later on the same song will tend to
call forth in the memor}^ of those who were present the idea of the
whole situation. Suppose some dreaded enemy has been defeated
and slain ; the troop will dance round the dead body and strike
up a chant of triumph, say something like ' Tarara-boom-de-ay ! '
This combination of sounds, sung to a certain melodj', will now
easily become what might be called a proper name for that particular
event ; it might be roughly translated, ' The terrible foe fi'om
beyond the river is slain,' or ' We have killed the dreadful man
from beyond the river,' or, ' Do you remember when we killed
him ? ' or something of the same sort. Under slightly altered
circumstances it may become the proper name of the man who
slew the enemy. The development can now proceed further by
a metaphorical transference of the expression to similar situations
(' There is another man of the same tribe : let us kill him as wo
did the first ! ') or by a blending of two or more of these projDer-
narae melodies. How this kind of blending may lead to the de-
velopment of something like derivative affixes maj^ be gathered
from our chapter on Secretion ; it may also result in parts of
the whole melodic utterance being disengaged as something more
like our ' words.' From the nature of the subject it is impossible
to give more than hints, but I seem to see ways by which primitive
' lieder ohne worte ' may have become, first, indissoluble rigmaroles,
with something like a dim meaning attached to them, and then
gradually combinations of word-like smaller units, more and more
capable of being analyzed and combined with others of the same
kind. Anyhow, this theory seems to explain better than any
§15] THE EARLIEST SENTENCES 441
other the great part which fortuitous coincidence and irregularity
always play in that part of any language which is not immediately
intelligible, thus both in lexical and grammatical elements.
Primitive iuan came to attach meaning to what were originally
rambling sequences of syllables in pretty much the same way
as the child comes to attach a meaning to many of the words he
hears from his elders, the whole situation in which they are heard
giving a clue to their interpretation. The difference is that in
the latter case the speaker has already associated a meaning with
the sound ; but from the point of view of the hearer this is com-
paratively immaterial : the savage of a far-distant age hearing
some syllables for the first time and the child hearing them nowa-
days are in essentially the same position as to their interpreta-
tion. Parallels are also found in the words of the mamma class
(Ch. VIII § 9), in which hearers give a signification to something
pronounced unintentionall}', the same syllables being then capable
of serving afterwards as real words. If one of our forebears on
some occasion accidentally produced a secjuence of sounds, and
if the people around him were seen (or heard) to respond apprecia-
tively, he would tend to settle on the same string of sounds and
repeat it on similar occasions, and in this way it would gradually
become ' conventionalized ' as a symbol of what was then fore-
most in his and in their minds. As in agriculture primitive man
reaped before he sowed, so also in his vocal outbm-sts he first
reaped understanding, and then discovered that by intentionally
sowing the same seed he was able to call forth the same result.
And as with corn, he would slowly and graduall}^ b}' weeding
out (i.e. by not using) what was less useful to him, improve the
quality, till finally he had come into possession of the marvellous,
though far from perfect, instrument which we now call our
language. The development of our ordinary speech has been
largely an intellectualization, and the emotional quality which
played the largest part in primitive utterances has to some
extent been repressed ; but it is not extinct, and still gives a
definite colouring to all passionate and eloquent speaking and to
poetic diction. Language, after all, is. an art — one of the finest
of arts.
XXI.— § 16. Conclusion.
Language, then, began with half-musical unanalyzed expressions
for individual beings and solitary events. Languages comi^osed
of, and evolved from, such words and quasi -sentences are clumsy
and insufficient instruments of thought, being intricate, capricious
and difficult. But from the beginning the tendency has been
442 THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH [en. xxi
one of progress, slow and fitful progress, but still progress towards
gi'cater and greater clearness, regularity, ease and j)liancy. No
one language has arrived at perfection ; an ideal language would
always ex])ress the same thing by the same, and similar things
by similar means ; any irregularity or ambiguity would be banished ;
sound and sense would be in perfect harmony ; any number of
delicate shades of meaning could be expressed with equal ease ;
poetry and prose, beauty and truth, thinking and feeling would
be equally provided for : the human spirit would Jiave found a
garment combining freedom and gracefulness, fitting it closely
and yet allowing full plaj' to any movement.
But, however far our present languages are from that ideal,
we. must be thankful for what has been achieved, seeing that —
Language is a perpetual orphic song,
Which rules with Daedal harmony a throng
Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.
INDEX
a Sanskrit, 52; -a in foni., 392;
in pi., 394
abbot, 15G
ablaut, see apophony
abstract terms, 429
accent, see stress and tone
accusative, name, 20
actors, 276
adaptation of suffixes, 38G f.
adjective flexion, 129 ; concord, 348 f.
African languages, see Bantu
agglutination, 54, 58, 76, 376 ; ag-
glutination theory, 367 ff., 376 fi.
agreement, see concord
ambiguities, 319, 341 ff.
America, race mixtures, 203 ff.
American English, 260
American Indian languages, 57, 181,
187, 229, 233, 256, 334, 425, 427,
430
analogy, 70, 93 f., 129 f., 162 f., 289
analytic languages, 36, 334 ff., 422 ff.
anatomical causes of change, 255
aphesis, 273
apophony, 46, 53, 91 ff., 311
aposiopesis, 273
appreciation of languages, 29 ff.,
57 f., 60, 62, 319 £E.; formula, 324
archaic forms, 294
Armenian, 195 f.
article, 378
Aryan, name, 63 f. ; languages, pas-
sim
as, root, 49
AscoH, 192 ff.
assimilation, 109, 168 f., 264 f., 280
auxihary words, 358
babe, 157
bacco, 171
back-formations, 173, 178
Balkan tongues, agreements, 215
Bantu, 239, 352 ff., 365
-bar, suffix, 377
Basque, 210, 427
Baudouin de Courtenay, 327
Bavarian ivost bist, 281
Beach-la-Mar, 216 ff.
head, 175
hhu, root, 49
bilinguism, 147 ff.
biographical or biological science of
language, 8
blending, 132, 281 f., 311, 312 f., 390
Bloomfield, 390
boon, 175
Bopp, 47 fi'., 56 n.
borrowing of words, 208
hound, 176
bow-wow theory, 413
boys, 146
Bredsdorff, 43 n., 70
Bridges, 286
BrOndal, 200
Brugmann, 92 f. ; on gender, 391
Mibe, 157
buncombe, 409
cacuminals, 196
Caribbean, 237 ff.
Carlyle, 145
case-system, English, 268 ff. ; in old
languages, 337 ff. ; importance,
341
catch, 400
ch becomes /, 168
changes, causes of, 255 ff.
child, 103 fi. ; sounds, 105 ; under-
standing, 113; classification of
things, 114 f.; vocabulary, 124;
grammar, 128 ff. ; sentences, 133 ;
echoism, 135 ; why learns so well,
140 ; influence of other children,
147 ; word-invention, 151 ff. ;
influence of, 161 ff. ; indirect in-
fluence, 178 ; new languages,
180 ff.
Chinese, 36, 54, 57, 286, 369 ff.
Chinook, 228 flf.
classification of languages, 35 f., 54,
76 ff.
classifying instinct, 388
clicks, 415, 419
climate, 256
clippings, see stump-words
coalescence of words, 174, 376 ff.
Coeurdoux, 33
CoUitz, 45 n., 257, 381
concord, verbal, 335 ; nominal, 348 ;
in Bantu, 352 ff.
4«3
444
INDEX
concrete words, 429
Ckindillac, 27
confusion of words, 122, 172
congeneric groups, 389 f.
conjugation, see verb
consciousness, 130; threshold of, 138
consonant-shift, 43 fi'., 195, 197, 204,
250. 258 f.
contamination, see blending
convergent changes, 284 f.
copula, 48 f.
correctness, latitude of, 282 ff.
creation of new words, 151 ff.
Creole, 2261?.
cuckoo, 406
cultural loan-words, 209
curry favour, 173
curtailing of words, 108, 1G9 £.,
328 f.
Curtius, 83, 94
•d in loved, 51, 381
Darwin, 414
dead languages, 67
decay, 55, 59, 62, 77, 319 ff.
declension, see case-system
Delbriick, 93, 96
dialect, study of, 68 ; spoken by
children, 147
Diez, 85
differentiations, 176, 272
diminutives, 180, 402
ding-dong theory, 415
divergent changes, 288
doublets, 272
Dravidian influence on Indian, 19G
drunken speech, 279
dump, 313
e original in Aryan, 52, 91
ease theory, 261 ff.
echoism, 135 ; cf. echo-words
echo-words, 313, 398 ff.
economizing of effort, see ease-theory
effort in speaking, 261 fi., 324 ff.
eglino, 281
emotion, influence on sound, 276
-en. in plural, 385
ending, see flexion, suffix
English, Grimm's appreciation, 62 ;
foreign influence, 202, 210, 212 ff. ;
rapid change, 261 ; case-system,
268 ff. ; future tense, 274 ; vowel-
shift, 243, 284 ; word-order, 344 f. ;
genitive, 350
entangling, 422
equidistant changes, 284
•er in plural, 386
estimation of languages, see appre-
ciation
Etruscan, 195
etymology, sound laws, 295 ; prin-
ciples, 305 ff. ; object of, 316 ;
etymology of rag, 300 ; of sun,
my, see, 306 ; of krieg, 307 ; of
grog, ganz, 308; of hope, 309; of
nut, atumm, 311 ; of mais, maar,
men, 315 ; of moon, daughter,
mother, 318
euphemism, 245 ff.
euphony, 278
exceptions to sound-laws, 296 ff.
exertion in speaking, 261 ff., 324 ff.
expressive sounds preserved, 288
extension of sound laws, 290 ; of
suffixes, 386 ff.
extra-lingual influences, 278
/ for th, 167 ; in enough, etc., 168 ;
in Spanish, 193
fable in Proto-Aiyan, 81
fain, 175
fashion in language, 291
father, 117
Feist, 194 ff.
feminine, 391 ff. ; in -i, 394, 402 ;
cf. woman
Finnic, 197 f., 207
flexion, 35, 54 f., 58 f., 76 ff., 79;
origin of, 377 ff.
foreign languages, mistakes in noting
down, 116 f. ; influence of, 191 ff.
forgetfulness, 176
forms, number of, 332, 337 ; origin
of, 49, 58, 377 ff.
French influence on English, 202,
209, 214 ; pronouns and verbs,
422 f.
frequency, influence on phonetic
development, 267
■ful, suffix, 376
Gabelentz, 98, 369
ganz, 308
gape, 288
gender, 346 f., 391ft".
general and specific terms, 274,
429 f.
genitive, name, 20 ; group, 351 ;
s in, 382, 383 n.
geographical distribution of lan-
guages, 187 ; influence on change,
256
German language, appreciation of,
29, 31, 60; sound-shift, 43 ff.,
195 f., 283 ; forms, 341 ff. ; word-
order, 344
Germanic, see Gothonic
gibberish, 149 f.
girls, 146
gleam, gloom, 401
glottogonic theoriea abandoned, 96
INDEX
445
Qothonic (Germanic, Teutonic), 42 ;
sound-shift, see consonant-shift
gradation, see apophony
grammar, children's, 128 ff. ; foreign
influence, 213 ; of primitive lan-
guages, 421
grammatical elements, origin, 48,
58, 61
Greek linguistic speculation, 19 f. ;
vowels, 91 ; personal pronouns,
286 n. ; Modern Greek, 301
Grimm, 37, 40 ff., 60 ff.
Grimm's Law, 43 f. ; see consonant-
shift
grog, 308
group genitive, 129, 351 ; groups of
words with similar meaning, 389
h for / in Spanish, 193 ; for 3, etc.,
263
habaidedeima, 322, 329, 331 f.
Hale, 181 ff.
haplology, 281, 329
harmony of vowels, 280
Hebrew, 21
Hegel, 72 f.
Hempl, 201 ff.
Herder, 27 f.
hereditary aptness for a language,
75, 141
Hermann, 48
Hervas, 22
Herzog, 164 f.
hide, 121
Hirt, 192, 203 f., 382 f.
historical point of view, 32, 42
homophones, 285 f.
■hood, suffix, 376
hope, 309
humanization of language, 327 f.
Humboldt, 55 ff.
hypercorrect forms, 294
I, the pronoun, 123 f.
i denoting small, feminine, near, 402
idioms, 139
imitation, 291 ff. ; of somids, 398,
413 f.
imperative, 403
incorporation, 58, 79, 425
Indian grammarians, 20 ; cacuminals,
196 ; of. Amex'ican Indian, San-
skrit
indirect ways of obtaining expres-
sions, 438
indissoluble expressions of several
ideas, 334, 422 ft., 428 ff.
Indo-European (Indo-Germanic), see
Aryan
indolence, see ease-theory
inflexion, see flexion
interjections, 414
interrogative sentences, 137 ; par-
ticles, 358
invention of words, 151 ff.
irregularities in old languages, 338 f.,
379, 425
isolating languages, 36, 76, 366 £f.
Japanese, 243
jaw-breakers, 280
jaw-measurements, 104
Jenisch, 29 H.
Johannson, 341 ff.
Jones, William, 33
[ju], 290 f.
Karlgren, 372 f.
Keltic languages, 38, 39, 53 ; sub-
stratum, 192 ff.
Kuhn, 371
kw becomes p, 168
languages, rise of new, 180 ff.
language-teaching, 145
lapses, 279
Latin, study of, 22 f. ; influence, 209,
215; forms, 334, 338 f., 343;
word-order, 350
latitude of correctness, 282
law as applied to sound -changes,
297
leaps in phonetic development, 167 ;
in meanings, 175
Leibniz, 22
lengthening, emotional, 277, 403 ;
of words, 330
Lenz, 204
Lepsius, 370
Leskien, 93
life as applied to language, 7
lingua geral, 234
linguistics, position of, 64 f., 73, 86,
97
little, 407
little language, 103, 106, 144, 147
living languages, study of, 97
loan-words, sound-substitution, 207 ;
general theory, 208 ; culture,
209; classes, 211 ; with symbolic
sounds, 409
loss of sounds, 108, 168, 328 f.
love-songs, 433 f.
Luxemburg, bilinguism in, 148
•ly, suffix, 377
m in adversative conjunctions, 314 ff.;
case-ending, 382
ma, maar, 314 f.
Madvig, 84, 433
magis, mais, 314 f.
makeshift languages, 232 ff.
446
INDEX
mamma y 154 ff.
man and woman, 142, 237 ff.
Mauritius Creole, 22G ff.
meaning, delimitation of, 118 f.;
worda of opposite meaning, 120;
words with several meanings,
121 ; shifting of meaning, 174 ;
cf. semantic changes
meaningless gibberish, 149 f.; sing-
ing, 43G
Meillet, 55, 198 f.
memory, children's, 143
men, 315
mental states, worda for, 401
Meringer, lG2f., 280, 291
metanalysis, 173
metaphors, 431
metathesis, 108, 281
Meyer-Benfey, 256
milk, 158
Misteli, 79
misunderstandings, 282, 286 f., 319
mixed languages, 191 ff.
modem languages, study of, 68 ;
compared with ancient, 322 ft.
Mailer, H., 139, 308, 382
mon, 358
monosyllabic languages, 36, 307 U,
month, 318
moods, 380
moon, 318
mother, 155, 318
mother-tongue, 146
movement, words denoting, 399
mountains, linguistic changes in,
256 f.
mouth-filling words, 403
Miiller, Friedrich, 79, 338
Midler, Max, 88 ff., 414
Murray, 269
iTiutation, 37, 46
mutilation of lips, 256 ; of words, 266
my, 384 f.
-n in mine, 384 f.
names of relations, 118 ; proper, 439
nasalis sonans, 92, 317 f.
national psychology, 258
negation, 136 ; redundant, 352
neo -grammarians, see young-gram-
marians
new languages, 180 ff.
Noir6, 415
nominal forms, 337 ff. ; concord,
348 ff.
number in verbs, 335 ; in pronouns,
347 ; in nouns, 129, 349, 355, 385,
394 f.
numerals, 119 ; borrowed, 211 ; in sue*
cession, 281 ; distinct for various
classes, 430
nursery language, 179
nui, 311
original in Arj'^an, 52, 91
old languages compared with modern,
322 ff.
on, 287
oncle, 271 n.
onomatopa?ia, 150, 313, 398 ff.
opposite meaning, 120
order of words, see word-order
organism, language as an, 7, 65
organs of speech, used for other
purposes, 278 ; development, 410,
430
orient, 175
origin of language, 26 ff., 61, 412 ff. ;
of grammatical elements, 367 ft".
Osthoff, 93
ox, oxen, 385
palatal law, 90 f.
Panini, 20
pap, 158
papa, 154 ff.
parenthesizing, 350 f.
passive, Scandinavian, 50, 377 ;
Latin, 50, 381
patter, 407
Paul, 94 f., 102
periods of rapid change, 259
personal forms in verbs, 53, 335, 383
pet-names, 108, 109
philology, 04 f., 97
phonetic laws, see sound changes,
sound laws
Pidgin-Enghsh, 221 ff.
pittance, 408
Plato, 19, 390
playfulness, 148, 298 f., 432 ff.
plumbum, plummet, plunge, 313 f.
plural, sec number
poetry, 300, 431 f.
polysynthetic, 423, 425
pooh-pooh theor}', 414
2iope, 156
popular etymology, 122
portmanteau words, 313
possessive pronouns, 384 f.
prepositions, 137 f. ; borrowed, 211
prescriptive grammar, 24
preterit, weak, 61, 381
primitive languages, 417 ff.
progressive tendency, 319 ff.
pronouns, 123; borrowed, 212; pos-
sessive, 384 ; French, 422
proper names, 436
prosiopesis, 273
Proto- Aryan, 80 f., 90 f.
punning phrases, 300
pupil, 157
INDEX
447
puppet, 157
Puscaiiu, 205
question, 137 ; word-order and aux-
iliaries, 357 fE.
quick, 407
r in Latin passive, 381 ; soiuid of r
weakened, 24-t ; r- and n- stems,
339, 390
race and language, 75 ; race-mixture,
201 ff.
rapidity of change, 259
Rapp, 68 ff.
Kask, 3Gff., 43, 46
rational, everything originally r., 316
reaction against change, 293
reconstruction, 80 ff., 317
reduplication, 109, 169
relationship between languages, 38,
53; terms of, 117, 154 ff.
right, 180
roll, 374, 408
Romanic languages, 202, 205 f.,
234 ff., 260; future, 378
root-determinatives, 311
roots, 52, 367 ff., 373 ff.
Rousseau, 26
* in passive, 50, 377, 381 ; case-
ending, 213, 381 ff. ; in English
plural, 214 ; in Russian and
Spanish, 266 ; Latin disappears,
362
Sandfeld, 215
Sanskrit, 33, 67 ; vowels, 52, 90 f. ;
consonants, 90 f., 196 ; drama,
241 f.
savages, languages of, 417, 426 ff.
saving of effort, of space, of time,
264
Scandinavian influence on English,
212, 214; passive, 50, 377;
article, 378
Scherer, 96
Schlegel, A. W., 36
Schlegel, F., 34 f.
Schleicher, 71 ff.
Schuchardt, 191, 213, 219, 267
scorn, words expressive of, 401
Scotch, 193 n.
screaming, 103
secondary echoism, 406
secret languages, 149 f.
secretion, 384 ff.
semantic changes, 174 f., 274 ff.
Semitic, 36, 52
sentences, 133 ; the earliest, 439 ff. ;
sentence stress, 272
separative linguistics, 67
seqw; 306 f.
sex, 146, 237 ff. ; cf. gender
shifters, 123
shortening, 328 f. ; cf. stump-words,
signification, how apprehended,
113 ff. ; cf. semantic changes
significative sounds preserved, 267 f.,
271, 287
similarities cause confusion, 120 f.
simplification, 332 ff,
singing, 420, 432 ff.
slang, 247, 299 f.
small, words for, 402
smile, 278
so, 250
Societe de Lingnistique, 96, 412
son, E., 120, 286
songs, primitive, 420, 432 ff.
sound changes, passim ; see especially
161 ff., 191 ff., 242 ff., 255 ff.
sound laws, 93; in children, 100 f. ;
extension and metamorphosis,
290 ; destructive, 289 ; spreading,
291 ; in the science of etymology,
295 ff.
sound-shift, Gothonic, see consonant-
shift
special terms in primitive speech,
429 ff.
speed of utterance, 258
spelling pronunciations, 294
splitting, see differentiation
Spoonerism, 280
stable and unstable soimds, 199 f.
Steinthal, 79, 87
strengthening of somids, 404 f.
stress, Aryan, 93 ; Gothonic, 195 ;
nature and influence of, 271 ff.
stumm, 311
stump-words, 108, 169 f.
substantive, see nominal and flexion
substratum theory, 191 ff.
subtraction, 173
suffixes, origin, 376 f. ; extension,
386 f. ; tainting, 388
suggestiveness, 408 ; cf. symbolism
suppletivwesen, 426
Sweet, 97, 161, 264
syllables, number of, 330
symbolism, 396 ff.
syntax, 66, 95 ; foreign influence,
214; blends, 282; simplification,
340
synthetic languages, 36, 334 ff.,
421 f.
ta, 159
tabu, 239 ff., 431
tainting of suffixes, 388
tata, 158
■teer, suffix, 388
Telugu, 301
44d
INDEX
tempo, 258
Teutonic, see Cothonic
th becomes/, v, 167
they for he or she, 347
this and that, 403
Thomsen* 90 n., 267, 427
threshold, under the, 138
ti, 358 f.
time, a child's conception of, 120
tone, 111; in Chinese, 369, 370 ; in
Danish dialect, 371 ; in primitive
languages, 419
Tooke, Home, 49
translation-loans, 215
translators introduce foreign words,
210
tripos, 115
twins having separate language.
185 f.
«, French, 192 ff. ; English, 290 f.
umlaut, 37
understanding, a baby's, 113f.
units of language, 422
value, influence on phonetic develop-
ment, 266 ff.
verb, substantive, 48 ; flexional
forms, 130 ; simplification, 332 ff. ;
concord, 335
verbal character of roots, 374 f.
Verner, 93; Verner's Law, 195,
197 f.
vocabulary, extent of, 124 ff. ; in
primitive speech, 429
voicing of consonants, in Gothonic
and English, 198 ; symbolic, 405
vowel-harmony, 280
vowels, number of Aryan, 44, 52, 91
vulgar speech, 261, 299
wars, influence on language, 260
weak preterit, 51, 381
weakening of words, 266
Wossely, 197
Wheeler, 293
Whitney, 88, 323, 367
Windisch, 208
women as language teachers, 142 ;
women's language, 237 ff.
word, what constitutes one. 125,
422 f.
word-division, a 32, 173 f.
word-formation, 131 ; of. invention,
suffixes
word-order, 344 ff., 355 ff. ; in
Chinese, 369 ff.
worthless words or sounds, 266 ff.
Wundt, 98, 258
yesterday, 120
yo-he-ho theory, 415
you for /, 124
5'oung-grammaiians, 93
Zulu, see Bantu
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