CHAPTER III.

ON SOUND-CHANGE.

Language is in a constant state of change; and the changes to which it is subject fall under two very different heads. In the first place, new words find their way into a language, whilst existing words become obsolete and drop out of existence: and, secondly, existing words remain, but gradually alter their pronunciation. It is the second of these phenomena which we have to study in this chapter; and a clear idea of its nature, origin, and progress is indispensable to any real knowledge of philology.

To gain this idea we must carefully consider the processes which occur when we speak. We have to take note of no less than five elements, all of which are present each time that we utter a sound, and these should be carefully distinguished.

In the first place, whether we break silence and begin to speak, or proceed in the course of speaking to any particular sound, our vocal organs must move towards a certain position, in which they must remain during the time of the utterance of the sound. This is equally true whether they are set in motion after a period of rest, or after a position rendered necessary by their utterance of some other sound. Let us take, for instance, the sound which in the word _father_ we represent by the letter _a_. In pronouncing this WORD we BEGIN by putting our lips, tongue, vocal chords, etc., all in such a position that, on the breath passing through them or coming into contact with them, the sound represented by _f_ is produced; and as long as the vocal organs remain in that position, nothing but _f_ can be pronounced. In order, then, to pronounce the _a_ sound, we must alter the position of our vocal organs: our vocal chords must be approximated, our lips relaxed, our mouth opened wider, until the _a_ position is attained. It is clear that the course which we take to reach our goal depends not merely upon the position of that goal, but likewise upon the point whence we start to reach it. Hence the course whereby we reach this _a_ position will vary constantly and considerably, seeing that in our utterance of the _a_ sound we can and do cause many other sounds to precede it. But all these movements agree in one respect, that they terminate in a certain position, which we maintain as long as the _a_ sound lasts.

Secondly, we must notice that this position is maintained only by a certain balance of the tension in the various muscles of our tongue, throat, lips, etc.; and this tension, though we may not indeed be conscious of it, _we feel_.

Thirdly, _we hear_, more or less exactly, the sound which we produce.

Fourthly, this feeling and this sound, like every physical occurrence in which we actively or passively participate, leave behind them in our mind a certain impression. This impression, though it may indeed disappear and sink beneath the level of consciousness, remains nevertheless existent, is strengthened by repetition, and can, under certain conditions, be again recalled to consciousness. We consequently come gradually to acquire a permanent mental impression of both feeling and sound. There is formed in our mind what we may call the memory-picture of the _position_; and

Fifthly, there is likewise formed ‘a memory-picture’ of the _sound_.

It will be readily seen that of these five ‘elements’ only the last two are permanent, and that they, and they only, are psychical. In every individual case of sound-utterance, all that is _physical_ is momentary and transitory. We abandon the position; the corresponding tensions make way for others; the sound dies away: but the memory-pictures alike of position and sound remain in our mind. There is no physical connection between our utterances of the ‘same’ sound, or word, or phrase; there is only a psychical connection: and this reposes upon the two elements which we have already called the memory-pictures of sound and position respectively.

A word must be added on the nature of the association existing between these two. This association, however intimate it may be, is _external_ only; there is no necessary _psychical_ connection between any sensation of vibration in our organs of hearing and any other sensation of tension in the muscles of our vocal organs. If we gained the first-named sensation again and again from hearing others speak, yet we should still be unable to imitate them at once, even though, for whatever reason, we had set our vocal organs repeatedly in the same position. But the fact that when we ourselves utter a sound we also hear it, associates the physical sensations of sound with those of position, and this invariably; and it thus happens that the respective memory-pictures of the two are left closely associated in our mind.

When we speak of these movement- and sound-pictures as lingering or as existing in our memories, it is not implied that we are necessarily conscious of their existence. On the contrary, the speaker, under ordinary circumstances, is wholly unconscious of them: nor has he anything like a clear notion of the various elements of sound which together make up the spoken word, or it may be the sentence, which he utters. It would seem as though the art of writing and spelling, which presupposes some analysis of the sound of words, proved that the speaker, if capable of spelling and writing, must have at least some notion of those elements. But very little consideration will suffice to prove the contrary. In the first place, strictly speaking, it is absolutely impossible to denote in writing all the various elements of sound which combine to form any word or sentence. A word, however correctly and grammatically spelt, does not consist merely of those sounds which we symbolise in our writing. In reality it consists--or at least the syllable consists--of an _unbroken_ series of successive sounds or articulations, and of this series, even if we spell ‘phonetically,’ our letters represent at best no more than the most clearly distinguished points; whereas, between these sounds so symbolised by our letters, there lie an indefinite number of transition sounds, of which no writer or speller takes any notice.

The above is true in the case of languages like Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German, where the spelling is more or less consistent: much more is it true in the case of English or French, with their irrational and puzzling inconsistencies. A child which learns that it must represent the sound of the word _but_ by letters to be called respectively bee-you-tea, or the word _though_ by letters nick-named tea-aitch-o-you-gee-aitch, does not receive a lesson in separating the sound-group represented by the letters _but_ into its three, or the sound-group represented by _though_ into its two (or three) elements.

Even in the more correctly spelt languages, there are numerous discrepancies between the spoken and written word, which, until they are pointed out to him, escape the attention of the native speaker or writer. In English, some instances may be here considered. Not a few English people are quite surprised when they are informed that they have two distinct ways of pronouncing _th_, or of pronouncing _x_: the _th_ ‘hard,’ as in _thin_, and ‘soft,’ as in _then_; the _x_ like _ks_, as in _execution_ (eksekyushion), and like _gz_, as in _executive_ (egzekyutiv), _exact_ (egzakt), _example_ (egzampl). And there are fewer still who have ever noticed that in _income_ many pronounce no _n_ at all, but the same guttural and nasal sound as terminates _king_.

_Can_ is frequently pronounced _c^han_, with a distinct _h_ sound after the _c_, without the speaker being aware of it; and the same holds good of similar words. Again, none but the trained observer knows that the _k_ in _keen_ is pronounced differently (more to the front of the mouth) from the _k_ (represented by _c_) in _cool_; but the fact that perhaps more than all excites incredulous wonder is that the sound _i_ is no vowel, but a diphthong, as may be proved by dwelling on it. The speakers to whom these facts are new may nevertheless all be perfectly correct speakers: no doubt they pronounce the elements of the word; but they have probably never paid any attention to the nature of these elements, or at least have not begun to do so till long after the utterance became habitual and natural.

If, then, we speak without consciousness of the separate _sounds_, much more are we completely unconscious of the _movements_ of our vocal organs. It is only very recently that these movements have been carefully investigated, and the results of the science of phonetics are in very many respects as yet _sub judice_, while even the most superficial knowledge of the subject can only be attained by a conscious and careful effort of attention, and by the exercise of much patience in the observation of our precise actions when speaking. It is only the trained observer who can at all follow these movements as he makes them, and even _he_ does not so follow them generally, but thinks of the sense of his words as he speaks, and not of the way in which they are produced.

Moreover, even assuming that the speaker enjoyed a far higher degree of consciousness, both of phonetic elements and of phonetic movement while he is _acquiring_ the faculty of speech, it would none the less remain true that in the ordinary course of word-utterance these facts remain outside the speaker’s consciousness. A precisely parallel instance can be observed in the case of a pupil learning to play the piano or violin. At first every movement he makes is the result of a separate and conscious act of volition; but soon practice, the repetition of conscious action, so much facilitates the playing of scales, arpeggios, etc., that the rapidity of their execution quite precludes all possibility of the bestowal of separate thought, even of the shortest duration, upon each individual note in succession. It is necessary at the outset to insist on this fact of the speaker’s unconsciousness, both of the elements of sound which make up the word, and of the movements of his vocal organs; for, once fully grasped, it will guard against an error which is too prevalent, viz. that sound-change is the result of conscious volition in those who speak.

But though the movements necessary for production of sounds are performed unconsciously, they are by no means beyond control; to illustrate which fact we may once more recur to the parallel instance of the piano-player. Like him, the speaker controls his work by listening to its result: but the player strikes either the right note or the wrong, and, unlike him, the speaker may vary his utterance in one direction or another without serious error; he is not considered to make a MISTAKE unless the difference between his present utterance and that which is usual exceeds a certain limit. In this respect, the violin-player resembles the speaker more closely. They both appeal to their sense of hearing in order to decide on the correctness or otherwise of the sound produced, and the control they can exercise over that sound is exactly proportional to their delicacy of ear. Up to certain limits, the variations are too small to be perceived by the ear, but beyond these, control becomes possible. The slight differences in pronunciation or sound do not yet, however, necessarily expose the speaker (or player) to the charge of incorrect utterance (or performance), and consequently, though he perceives the change, he pays little or no attention to it. He only then corrects himself or guards against repeating the ‘mistake,’ when the change in sound passes those limits which cannot be transgressed without detriment to what in music we term ‘harmony,’ or what in language we term ‘correctness of utterance.’ It commonly happens that these limits are wider than the limits of perception referred to above, more especially in the case of the speaker. A wider licence is accorded to the term ‘correctness’ in speech than is accorded to it in harmony.

While, then, control is theoretically and practically limited, the possibility of variation is unlimited. Take, for instance, the case of the vowels. All the possible sounds and variations from _u_ (pronounced as _oo_ in _cool_) to _i_ (= _ee_ in _feel_) may be said to form one uninterrupted series. In this series we distinguish only some of the most important varieties. When we pronounce _u_, the lips are rounded, and the tongue is drawn back and raised at the back of the mouth: if we pass from _u_ to _i_, the lips are unrounded, and assume the shape of a narrow and much elongated ellipse, while the tongue is pushed forward with its back depressed and the fore-part (the blade) raised. While this change is going on, the mouth _never_ assumes a position with which we could not produce some vowel or other, but the difference in acoustic quality between any two ‘neighbouring’ vowels would not always be such that we should regard them as distinct or different sounds. On our way from _u_ to _i_, we pass through the positions for the _o_ (_oa_) in _coal_, the _ŏ_ in _god_, the _a_ in _father_, the _ĕ_ in _net_, the _e_ (_a_) in _hare_, the _ĭ_ in _pit_; but between these there lie an indefinite number of possible shades of sound, and every one knows how differently various speakers of the same community pronounce what we call the same vowel. So, too, we need but little attention to notice distinct occasional variations, at different moments, in the same speaker. If, then, one and the same speaker often _perceptibly_ (though unintentionally) varies his pronunciation, we may be perfectly sure that his mode of utterance will vary at different times within those limits where the divergence--though existing--is not noticed. As with the vowels, so it is, though not so completely, with many consonants and series of consonants. The student who is unacquainted with phonetics should pronounce _cool_ and _keen_ one after the other, or better still _coo_ and _kee_, getting rid of the final consonants. He will have no difficulty in noticing the difference between the two _k_ sounds, the first of which requires a much more backward position than the second for its pronunciation. After a little practice, he will be able to pronounce the first (back) _k_ with the _ee_ vowel, and the second (forward, palatal) _k_ with _oo_. Now, between these two sounds of _k_ there is a whole series of intermediate ones, and, if this series be followed in the direction of the palatal _k_ and then continued beyond it, we soon reach the articulation of the palatals proper, and pass, without any appreciable gap, to the linguo-dentals: first to the _t_ which, in words like the French _métier_, sounds so much like _q_ in the form _méquier_ (as the French Canadians actually pronounce it); and next to our own _t_, and to the usual French _t_, which is pronounced more to the front with the tip of the tongue against the roots of the teeth.

Similarly, because perfect though slight closure is not remote from extreme narrowing, we can pass in a practically unbroken series from energetic _p_ to laxly uttered _f_, from _k_ to the guttural fricative of German _ach_--a sound which English, in its modern form, no longer possesses,--etc.

As we noticed in the instance of _k_, and as every one more easily perceives in the case of the vowels, two sounds essentially different in articulation and in acoustic character are often, in daily speech, accepted as identical, more especially where the difference is not great enough, or is not of a nature to cause ambiguity of meaning. If, for instance, there existed words in the English language alike in all respects but that the one began with the _k_ of _cool_ and the other with the _k_ of _keen_, and if these words had different meanings, every Englishman would be aware of the existence of two sounds, which he would most likely indicate by two different letter-signs. As it is, the difference between the two remains unnoticed, and the choice between them depends upon the vowel which follows. If, then, in the ordinary course of speaking, a ‘back’ _k_ is pronounced a little more forward, or a palatal _k_ more to the back, no notice will be taken of it, unless the variation oversteps a certain limit and, as a consequence, the unusual articulation sounds strange. Similarly, for the formation of _t_, the position of the tongue may be varied to a very great extent, and yet, though something unusual in the sound MAY be apprehended, the result will always be perceived as a _t_.

We must now once more emphasise the fact that the memory-picture of the sound, and the (unconscious) memory-picture of the movement and position, and these two alone, connect the various utterances of any sound or sound-group, and decide its character, and the appreciation of speaker and hearer to its correctness.

These memory-pictures and their nature and growth are therefore of the highest importance. They are the results of _all_ preceding cases of utterance, _of which, however, the last always has the greatest influence_. Every variation in pronunciation entails a variation in the memory-picture; and this, small as may be the change, is cumulative and permanent, unless the different deviations happen to balance one another exactly. Now, in the main this will be the case when the speaker finds himself amid his usual surroundings, and where no external causes co-operate to impel his deviations into one direction rather than into another: but let us suppose him transferred to another community, and brought in contact with a certain pronunciation habitual there and novel to him. His memory-picture of the SOUND is made up of his own pronunciation _and_ of what he hears from others. At first the new pronunciation strikes him as new, and _two_ pictures stand side by side in his mind. If, however, the difference be not too great, these soon blend, and, the former one fading while the other constantly gains in force, his pronunciation becomes influenced without his own knowledge; he pronounces more and more like the surrounding speakers, and every time he does so his memory-picture of POSITION gets slightly altered (always in the same direction) until nothing but conscious effort of memory or renewed intercourse with former surroundings can recall the one thus lost.

The same thing happens essentially and effectually, though the change is slower and less violent, where external causes favour deviation in any special direction amongst an entire community. As far as the nature of the effect goes, it can make no difference whether we consider the case of a man entering a new community to find there a pronunciation which differs from his own, or that of an entire community which alters its existing pronunciation. But the process will go on much more slowly in the latter case, since it has to operate in a number of individuals, and the steps by which each of them proceeds are in ordinary cases imperceptibly small.

Of all causes which may tend to alter our pronunciation in any special direction, facility of utterance is the most conspicuous and the most easily understood. There are, in all probability indeed, several others: climate, habits of diet, etc., all _seem_ to have some effect, but no one has as yet been able to explain how they operate. Even ease of pronunciation is not yet thoroughly understood in all its bearings. We must not forget that ease is something essentially subjective, and that the memory-pictures of movement and sound and the attempt at correct reproduction of the usual movement and sound are the main factors, while the striving after facility of utterance is a very subordinate one.

Yet there is no doubt whatever that in a number of instances the new pronunciation is easier than its predecessor: we now say _last_ instead of _latst_, examples of which earlier form may be found in the Ormulum, for instance. Similarly, _best_ is easier than _betst_, _impossible_ than _inpossible_; and we may refer also to the numerous words still written with a _gh_ which is no longer pronounced. In the word _knight_, the _k_ was formerly sounded before the _n_, and the _gh_ represents a sound which may still be heard in the German word _knecht_; and, in fact, all spellings like _know_, _gnat_, _night_, _though_, etc., with their numerous mute letters, represent older and undoubtedly more laborious pronunciations. That all these sounds have been dropped has unquestionably facilitated the utterance of the words, and there is a similar gain of ease in all the well-known instances of complete or partial assimilation in all languages. So in Italian _otto_ for Latin _octo_, Latin _accendo_ for _adcendo_, etc. When, however, we come to estimate the comparative facility of separate single sounds, or even many combinations, we find ourselves as yet without any certainty of result or fixed standard. Much that has been advanced is individual and subjective: all depends on practice; and this practice we acquire at an age when we are as yet wholly unable to form or pronounce an opinion on any question. In fact, most of our facility of speech comes to us in infancy.

But whatever the cause, we now understand that the memory-picture of movement and position is shifting and unstable in its very nature. Unless the majority of pronunciations around us all alter in the same direction, the _sound_-picture does not alter, and it exerts a retarding control upon the rapidity with which our _position_-picture, and therewith our own pronunciation, might otherwise do so. Here, however, we must draw attention to the fact that we spoke of the majority of _pronunciations_ around us and not of speakers. For our sound-picture the number of persons from whom we hear a word is immaterial; it is the number of times we hear it pronounced that is alone of importance.

All that we have hitherto said has had reference to changes of pronunciation in _the same speaker_, and in this case alone can we speak of alteration or change in the strict sense of the word. But when we say that ‘a language has altered,’ we use the term in a wider sense, and include the case when one generation is found to use a new pronunciation in place of one current at a former time; when, in fact, it would be strictly correct to say that an old pronunciation has died out, and that the new one--created instead--differs more or less from that which was its model.

A child, in learning to speak, attempts to imitate the sound it hears; and, as long as the resulting imitation _sounds_ sufficiently correct, any small peculiarity of pronunciation is generally overlooked. In such a case, therefore, the child acquires a movement or position-picture which at once materially differs from that of the former generation. We all know by experience that sounds are difficult to ‘catch,’ and we must remember that the vocal organs may undergo certain variations in position without producing a correspondingly large difference in acoustic effect;[4] and further, that any sound produced by a particular position of the vocal organs has a tendency to change in a different direction and at a different rate from the course which would seem natural to the same sound if it had been produced by a different position of the vocal organs.

If, then, we speak a word to a child, and if the child utters it (_a_) with a slightly altered pronunciation, and (_b_) with an articulation which differs from that which WE should naturally employ to produce the pronunciation which the child gives to the word, then two comparatively important steps upon the path of change have already been taken. And thus it is clear that, though changes in language are constantly and imperceptibly occurring throughout the whole life of the individual speaker, yet their rise is most likely and their progress is most rapid at the time when language is transferred from one generation to another.

The above, however, will not explain all the changes which words have undergone. There are some which have hitherto resisted any other explanation than this: they appear as the results of repeated errors of utterance, which errors, owing to particular circumstances attending each case, must have been committed by several or by most of the speakers of the same linguistic community. Such are--(1) Metathesis, _i.e._ where two sounds in the same word reciprocally change their positions, whether they are (_a_) contiguous or (_b_) separated by other sounds. Of the first kind we have instances in the Anglo-Saxon forms _ascian_ and _axian_, both of which occur in extant documents, and also survive in the verb _ask_ and the provincial equivalent _aks_. Cf. also the form _brid_, found in Chaucer, for _bird_ (_e.g._ ‘Ne sey I neuer er now no _brid_ ne best.’--Squire’s Tale, 460), and, vice versâ, _birde_ for _bride_ (_e.g._ Piers Plowman, 3, 14: ‘ðe Justices somme Busked hem to ðe boure ðere ðe _birde_ dwelled’). Again, we may compare the English _bourn_, Scotch _burn_, with Dutch _bron_, German _brunnen_; A.S. _irnan_ and _rinnan_, both meaning to _run_, and _irn_, as pronounced by a west-countryman, with _run_.[5]

Of the second kind of Metathesis (_b_) we find traces in O.H.G. _erila_, by the side of _elira_ = N.H.G. _erle_ and _eller_; A.S. _weleras_, the lips, as against Gothic _wairilos_; O.H.G. _ezzih_, which must have had the sound of _etik_ before the sound-shifting process began, = Lat. _acetum_; the Italian word, as dialectically pronounced, _grolioso_ = _glorioso_; and, again, _crompare_ = _comprare_; M.H.G. _kokodrille_ = Lat. _crocodilus_. We may also refer to such cases of mispronunciation as _indefakitable_ for _indefatigable_. These are evanescent, because they meet with speedy correction.

Besides Metathesis, we must class here (2) the assimilation of two sounds not standing contiguous in the word (as Lat. _quinque_ from *_pinque_; original German _finfi_ (five) = *_finhwi_, etc.), and (3) dissimilations, as in O.H.G. _turtiltûba_, from the Lat. _turtur_; Eng. _marble_, from Fr. _marbre_, Lat. _marmor_; M.H.G. _martel_ with _marter_, from _martyrium_; _prîol_ with _prîor_; and conversely, M.H.G. _pheller_ with _phellel_, from Lat. _palliolum_; O.H.G. _fluobra_, ‘consolation,’ as against O.S. _frôfra_ and A.S. _frôfor_; M.H.G. _kaladrius_ with _karadrius_; Middle Lat. _pelegrinus_, from _peregrinus_.

We must now conclude this chapter with a few words on the question, Are the laws of sound-change, like physical laws, absolute and unchanging? do they admit of no exceptions? In thus stating the question, we challenge a comparison between physical laws and the laws of sound-change, but we must never forget the essential difference existing between them. Physical laws lay down what must invariably and always happen under certain given conditions; the laws of sound-change state the regularity observed in any particular group of historic phenomena.

We must, in dealing with this question, further distinguish between two closely allied but not identical kinds of phenomena, _i.e._ between those which come under the law of sound-change in the strict sense of the word, and those which are rather to be considered as instances of sound-correspondence or sound-interchange. When, for instance, some sound happened to be, at any particular stage of some language, identical in the various forms of the same word; and if this sound, owing to difference in its position, or of its accent, or from some other cause, has changed into a different sound in some forms of the word, while in other forms of the same word it has remained unchanged; and if many similar cases are remarked in the same language,--we summarise them in our grammars in a form which, though convenient, is not strictly correct. There are in French, for instance, many adjectives which form their masculine termination in _f_ and their feminine in _ve_. It is scarcely necessary to point out that in these words the feminine form, derived as it is from the Latin feminine, cannot correctly be described as _derived_ from the masculine in its contemporaneous form: nor yet does the individual speaker, in using the two genders, derive the one from the other; he reproduces both from memory, or, possibly by a process to be discussed in Chapter V., he produces one by analogy with other similar forms.

We nevertheless lay it down in our grammars, that adjectives in _f_ form their feminine by ‘changing’ _f_ into _ve_. The correspondence of sounds which we thus register, though it is a consequence of phonetic development, does not, strictly speaking, express a law of sound-change; we might call it ‘a law of sound-correspondence’ or ‘sound-interchange.’ The ‘law of sound-interchange’ states in a convenient form the aggregate results of events which have occurred in accordance with some ‘law of sound-change.’ Our question, then, refers to the ‘laws of sound-change’ proper, and not to those of ‘sound-interchange;’ and if we say that a law of sound-change admits of no exceptions, we can only mean that, within the limits of some definite language or dialect, all cases which fulfil the same phonetic conditions have had the same fate: _i.e._ the same sound must there have changed into the same other sound throughout the language, or, where various sounds are seen to replace one and the same other sound of the older language, the cause for this difference must be sought in the difference of phonetic conditions, such as accent, contact with or proximity to other sounds, etc.

It must be clear, after all that has been said in this chapter, that laws of sound-change, in the correct meaning of this term, must be consistent and absolutely regular. As regards the case of the individual speaker, we have seen that the utterance of each sound depends on the memory-picture of motion and position, and that these pictures exert their influence without the speaker being conscious of it. It will then naturally follow that if these pictures alter gradually in the case of any one sound in any one word, they will do so for the same sound in all other cases where it occurs under like conditions.

It is indeed often stated that the sense of etymological connection of a particular word with others which retain a certain sound unaltered may prevent that sound from taking the same course in that word as it does in other words not so influenced; but the existence and efficacy of some counteracting influence does not disprove the existence of the force against which it operates, and which it overcomes or neutralizes. Nor, again, could the inter-communication between the individual speakers cause occasional suspension of the law of sound-change.

We have seen that the association which arises between memory-pictures of the sound, and of the motion of our vocal organs, etc., for its utterance, is--though but external--nevertheless very close, and that it soon becomes indissoluble. The slight and gradual changes in the utterance of the surrounding speakers alter the memory-pictures of the sound, and the corresponding memory-picture of motion and position follows in the same way. It is, then, only in case of mixture of dialect, _i.e._ when a considerable group of speakers of one dialect becomes mixed and scattered among speakers of another, that the following generation _may_ adopt one sound from the one dialect and another from the second; thus apparently exhibiting the differentiation of the same sound, under the same phonetic circumstances, into two, of which the one appears as the rule, the other as the exception. But then, again, such a case--though when it has happened we may not always be aware of it, and consequently may not always be able to assign the phenomenon to its true cause--does not prove that the law of sound-change admitted of exception. We merely have the results of two such laws mixed and confused.