chapter I
have tried to pass in review the various circumstances which make for changes in the phonetic structure of languages. My treatment is far from exhaustive and may have other defects; but I want to point out the fact that nowhere have I found any reason to accept the theory that sound changes always take place according to rigorous or ‘blind’ laws admitting no exceptions. On the contrary, I have found many indications that complete consistency is no more to be expected from human beings in pronunciation than in any other sphere.
It is very often said that if sound laws admitted of exceptions there would be no possibility of a science of etymology. Thus Curtius wrote as early as 1858 (as quoted by Oertel 259): “If the history of language really showed such sporadic aberrations, such pathological, wholly irrational phonetic malformations, we should have to give up all etymologizing. For only that which is governed by law and reducible to a coherent system can form the object of scientific investigation; whatever is due to chance may at best be guessed at, but will never yield to scientific inference.” In his practice, however, Curtius was not so strict as his followers. Leskien, one of the recognized leaders of the ‘young grammarians,’ says (_Deklination_, xxvii): “If exceptions are admitted at will (abweichungen), it amounts to declaring that the object of examination, language, is inaccessible to scientific comprehension.” Since then, it has been repeated over and over again that without strict adherence to phonetic laws etymological science is a sheer impossibility, and sometimes those who have doubted the existence of strict laws in phonology have been looked upon as obscurantists adverse to a scientific treatment of language in general, although, of course, they did not believe that everything is left to chance or that they were free to put forward purely arbitrary exceptions.
There are, however, many instances in which it is hardly possible to deny etymological connexion, though ‘the phonetic laws are not observed.’ Is not Gothic _azgo_ with its voiced consonants evidently ‘the same word’ as E. _ash_, G. _asche_, Dan. _aske_, with their voiceless consonants? G. _neffe_ with short vowel must nevertheless be identical with MHG. _neve_, OHG. _nevo_; E. _pebble_ with OE. _papol_; _rescue_ with ME. _rescowe_; _flagon_ with Fr. _flacon_, though each of these words contains deviations from what we find in other cases. It is hard to keep apart two similar forms for ‘heart,’ one with initial _gh_ in Skt. _hrd_ and Av. _zered-_, and another with initial _k_ in Gr. _kardía_, _kēr_, Lat. _cor_, Goth. _haírto_, etc. The Greek ordinals _hébdomos_, _ógdoos_ have voiced consonants over against the voiceless combinations in _heptá_, _oktṓ_, and yet cannot be separated from them. All this goes to show (and many more cases might be instanced) that there are in every language words so similar in sound and signification that they cannot be separated, though they break the ‘sound laws’: in such cases, where etymologies are too palpable, even the strictest scholars momentarily forget their strictness, maybe with great reluctance and in the secret hope that some day the reason for the deviation may be discovered and the principle thus be maintained.
Instead of exacting strict adherence to sound laws everywhere as the basis of any etymologizing, it seems therefore to be in better agreement with common sense to say: whenever an etymology is not palpably evident, whenever there is some difficulty because the compared words are either too remote in sound or in sense or belong to distant periods of the same language or to remotely related languages, your etymology cannot be reckoned as _proved_ unless you have shown by other strictly parallel cases that the sound in question has been treated in exactly the same way in the same language. This, of course, applies more to old than to modern periods, and we thus see that while in living languages accessible to direct observation we do not find sound laws observed without exceptions, and though we must suppose that, on account of the essential similarity of human psychology, conditions have been the same at all periods, it is not unreasonable, in giving etymologies for words from old periods, to act as if sound changes followed strict laws admitting no exceptions; this is simply a matter of proof, and really amounts to this: where the matter is doubtful, we must require a great degree of probability in that field which allows of the simplest and most easily controllable formulas, namely the phonetic field. For here we have comparatively definite phenomena and are consequently able with relative ease to compute the possibilities of change, while this is infinitely more difficult in the field of significations. The possibilities of semantic change are so manifold that the only thing generally required when the change is not obvious is to show some kind of parallel change, which need not even have taken place in the same language or group of languages, while with regard to sounds the corresponding changes must have occurred in the same language and at the same period in order for the evidence to be sufficient to establish the etymology in question.
It would perhaps be best if linguists entirely gave up the habit of speaking about phonetic ‘laws,’ and instead used some such expression as phonetic formulas or rules. But if we are to keep the word ‘law,’ we may with some justice think of the use of that word in juridical parlance. When we read such phrases as: this assumption is against phonetic laws, or, phonetic laws do not allow us this or that etymology, or, the writer of some book under review is guilty of many transgressions of established phonetic laws, etc., such expressions cannot help suggesting the idea that phonetic laws resemble paragraphs of some criminal law. We may formulate the principle in something like the following way: If in the etymologies you propose you do not observe these rules, if, for instance, you venture to make Gr. _kaléo_ = E. _call_ in spite of the fact that Gr. _k_ in other words corresponds to E. _h_, then you incur the severest punishment of science, your etymology is rejected, and you yourself are put outside the pale of serious students.
In another respect phonetic laws may be compared with what we might call a Darwinian law in zoology, such as this: the fore-limbs of the common ancestor of mammals have developed into flippers in whales and into hands in apes and men. The similarity between both kinds of laws is not inconsiderable. A microscopic examination of whales, even an exact investigation by means of the eye alone, will reveal innumerable little deviations: no two flippers are exactly alike. And in the same way no two persons speak in exactly the same way. But the fact that we cannot in detail account for each of these _nuances_ should not make us doubt that they are developed in a perfectly natural way, in accordance with the great law of causality, nor should we despair of the possibility of scientific treatment, even if some of the flippers and some of the sounds are not exactly what we should expect. A law of fore-limb development can only be deduced through such observation of many flippers as will single out what is typical of whales’ flippers, and then a comparison with the typical fore-limbs of their ancestors or of their congeners among existing mammals. And in the same way we do not find laws of phonetic development until, after leaving what can be examined as it were microscopically, we go on telescopically to examine languages which are far removed from each other in space or time: then small differences disappear, and we discover nothing but the great lines of a regular evolution which is the outcome of an infinite number of small movements in many different directions.
XV.--§ 14. Conclusion.
It has been one of the leading thoughts in the two chapters devoted to the causes of linguistic change that phonetic changes, to be fully understood, should not be isolated from other changes, for in actual linguistic life we witness a constant interplay of sound and sense. Not only should each sound change be always as far as possible seen in connexion with other sound changes going on in the same period in the same language (as in the great vowel-raising in English), but the effects on the speech material as a whole should in each case be investigated, so as to show what homophones (if any) were produced, and what danger they entailed to the understanding of natural sentences. Sounds should never be isolated from the words in which they occur, nor words from sentences. No hard-and-fast boundary can be drawn between phonetic and non-phonetic changes. The psychological motives for both kinds of changes are the same in many cases, and the way in which both kinds spread through imitation is absolutely identical: what was said on this subject above (§ 11) applies without the least qualification to any linguistic change, whether in sounds, in grammatical forms, in syntax, in the signification of words, or in the adoption of new words and dropping of old ones.
We shall here finally very briefly consider something which plays a certain part in the development of language, but which has not been adequately dealt with in what precedes, namely, the desire to play with language. We have already met with the effects of playfulness in one of the chapters devoted to children (p. 148): here we shall see that the same tendency is also powerful in the language of grown-up people, though most among young people. There is a certain exuberance which will not rest contented with traditional expressions, but finds amusement in the creation and propagation of new words and in attaching new meanings to old words: this is the exact opposite of that linguistic poverty which we found was at the bottom of such minimum languages as Pidgin-English. We find it in the wealth of pet-names which lovers have for each other and mothers for their children, in the nicknames of schoolboys and of ‘pals’ of later life, as well as in the perversions of ordinary words which at times become the fashion among small sets of people who are constantly thrown together and have plenty of spare time; cf. also the ‘little language’ of Swift and Stella. Most of these forms of speech have a narrow range and have only an ephemeral existence, but in the world of _slang_ the same tendencies are constantly at work.
Slang words are often confused with vulgarisms, though the two things are 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 ordinary 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 distinction will perhaps appear most clearly in the case of grammar: if a man says _them boys_ instead of _those boys_, or _knowed_ instead of _knew_, these are the normal forms of his language, and he knows no better, but the educated man looks down upon these forms as vulgar. Inversely, an educated man may amuse himself now and then by using forms which he perfectly well knows are not the received forms, thus _wunk_ from _wink_, _collode_ from _collide_, _praught_ from _preach_ (on the analogy of _taught_); “We handshook and _candlestuck_, 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 always particular as to the source whence he takes his unusual words, and he may therefore sometimes 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 hackneyed 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_, _upper works_) in English, _øverste etage_ in Danish, and _oberstübchen_ 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 _pære_ (‘pear’) in Danish, _coco_ or _ciboule_ (or _boule_) in French. Slang words of this character may in some instances give rise to expressions the origin of which is totally forgotten. In old slang there is an expression for the tongue, _the red rag_; this is shortened into _the rag_, and I suspect that the verb _to rag_, ‘to scold, rate, talk severely to’ (“of obscure origin,” NED), is simply from this substantive (cf. _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_, _public-house_, etc. Not unfrequently 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 _Rugby football_ and _Association football_ become _Rugger_ and _Socker_, 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 any word; about 1885 Prince Albert Victor when at Cambridge was nicknamed _the Pragger_; an Agnostic was called a _Nogger_, etc. I strongly suspect that the word _swagger_ is formed in the same way from _swashbuckler_. 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 _crug_ for ‘a quarter of a loaf,’ evidently from _crust_; _sog_ = sovereign, _snag_ = snail (old), _swig_ = swill; words like _fag_, _peg away_, and others are perhaps to be explained from the same tendency. Arnold Bennett in one of his books says of a schoolboy that his vocabulary comprised 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: _-aque_, _-èque_, _-oque_ (Sainéan, _L’Argot ancien_, 1907, 50 and especially 57).
There is also a peculiar class of roundabout expressions in 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, really or seemingly. Instead of saying ‘I want to go to bed,’ he will say, ‘I am for Bedfordshire,’ or in German ‘Ich gehe nach Bethlehem’ or ‘nach Bettingen,’ in Danish ‘gå til Slumstrup, Sovstrup, 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 poverty, etc. (Cf. my paper on “Punning or Allusive Phrases” in _Nord. Tidsskr. 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 everyday expressions. The difference is that where slang looks only for the striking or 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 countries 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 written 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 written language which cannot but have the most disastrous effects on all higher education: the conditions prevailing nowadays 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 neugriechischen Schriftsprache_, Munich, 1902 (for the other side of the case see G. N. Hatzidakis, _Die Sprachfrage in Griechenland_, Athens, 1905) and G. V. Ramamurti, _A Memorandum on Modern Telugu_, Madras, 1913.
FOOTNOTES:
[65] “His pronunciation of some words is so distinct that an idea crossed me once that he might be an actor” (Shaw, _Cashel Byron’s Profession_, 66).
[66] Dickens, _D. Cop._ 2. 149 neverbe_rr_er, 150 I’mafraid you’reno_r_well (ib. also _r_ for _n_: Amigoa_r_awaysoo, Goo_r_i = Good night). | _Our Mut. Fr._ 602 le_rr_ers. | Thackeray, _Newc._ 163 _Whas_ that? | Anstey, _Vice V._ 328 _sh_upper, I _sh_pose, wha_rr_iplease, say tha_rr_again. | Meredith, _R. Feverel_ 272 No_r_ a bi_r_ of it. | Walpole, _Duch. of Wrex._ 323-4 non_sh_en_sh_, Wa_sh_ the matter? | Galsworthy, _In Chanc._ 17 cur_sh_, un_sh_tood’m. Cf. also Fijn van Draat, ESt 34. 363 ff.
[67] The inconveniences arising from having many homophones in a language are eloquently set forth by Robert Bridges, _On English Homophones_ (S.P.E., 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 sound, when he says (p. 22) that unless a vowel like that in _law_ be restored to the 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 rôle 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 mistaking _know_ for _no_, or _knows_ for _nose_, or _knew_ for _new_. I repeat: it is not homophony 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. _humeîs_, ‘ye,’ was due to its identity in sound with _hemeîs_, ‘we’; Hatzidakis says that the new formation _eseîs_ 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 pl. have new forms which are unambiguous: _emeîs_ and _eseîs_ or _seîs_.
[68] The NED has not arrived at this explanation; it says: “_Peer_ is 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_, as earlier forms of _keek_ and _peek_, occur in Chaucer; _pepe_, _peep_ is of later appearance.... The phonetic relations between the forms _pike_, _peek_, _peak_, are as yet unexplained.”
[69] See, for instance, the following strong expressions: “Une langue est sans cesse rongée et menacée de ruine par l’action des lois phonétiques, qui, livrées à elles-mêmes, opéreraient avec une régularité fatale et désagrégeraient le système grammatical.... Heureusement l’analogie (c’est ainsi qu’on désigne la tendance inconsciente à conserver ou recréer ce que les lois phonétiques menacent ou détruisent) a peu à peu effacé ces différences ... il s’agit d’une perpétuelle dégradation due aux changements phonétiques aveugles, et qui est toujours ou prévenue ou réparée par une réorganisation parallèle du système” (Bally, LV 44 f.).
[70] 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.
[71] I.e. “With confused and indistinct articulation; also, with a husky or hoarse voice”--NED.
[72] 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, exclaimed: “Das sind doch _unblaue_ preise!”--coining in the hurry the word _unblaue_ for the Danish _ublu_ (shameless), because the negative prefix _un-_ corresponds to Dan. _u-_, and _au_ very often stands in German where Dan. has _u_ (_haus_ = _hus_, etc.). On hearing his own words, however, he immediately saw his mistake and burst out laughing.
_BOOK IV_
THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE
##