Chapter 17

The desire to hold on to a pattern, the tendency to "correct" a disturbance by an elaborate chain of supplementary changes, often spread over centuries or even millennia--these psychic undercurrents of language are exceedingly difficult to understand in terms of individual psychology, though there can be no denial of their historical reality. What is the primary cause of the unsettling of a phonetic pattern and what is the cumulative force that selects these or those particular variations of the individual on which to float the pattern readjustments we hardly know. Many linguistic students have made the fatal error of thinking of sound change as a quasi-physiological instead of as a strictly psychological phenomenon, or they have tried to dispose of the problem by bandying such catchwords as "the tendency to increased ease of articulation" or "the cumulative result of faulty perception" (on the part of children, say, in learning to speak). These easy explanations will not do. "Ease of articulation" may enter in as a factor, but it is a rather subjective concept at best. Indians find hopelessly difficult sounds and sound combinations that are simple to us; one language encourages a phonetic drift that another does everything to fight. "Faulty perception" does not explain that impressive drift in speech sounds which I have insisted upon. It is much better to admit that we do not yet understand the primary cause or causes of the slow drift in phonetics, though we can frequently point to contributing factors. It is likely that we shall not advance seriously until we study the intuitional bases of speech. How can we understand the nature of the drift that frays and reforms phonetic patterns when we have never thought of studying sound patterning as such and the "weights" and psychic relations of the single elements (the individual sounds) in these patterns?

Every linguist knows that phonetic change is frequently followed by morphological rearrangements, but he is apt to assume that morphology exercises little or no influence on the course of phonetic history. I am inclined to believe that our present tendency to isolate phonetics and grammar as mutually irrelevant linguistic provinces is unfortunate. There are likely to be fundamental relations between them and their respective histories that we do not yet fully grasp. After all, if speech sounds exist merely because they are the symbolic carriers of significant concepts and groupings of concepts, why may not a strong drift or a permanent feature in the conceptual sphere exercise a furthering or retarding influence on the phonetic drift? I believe that such influences may be demonstrated and that they deserve far more careful study than they have received.

This brings us back to our unanswered question: How is it that both English and German developed the curious alternation of unmodified vowel in the singular (_foot_, _Fuss_) and modified vowel in the plural (_feet_, _Füsse_)? Was the pre-Anglo-Saxon alternation of _fot_ and _föti_ an absolutely mechanical matter, without other than incidental morphological interest? It is always so represented, and, indeed, all the external facts support such a view. The change from _o_ to _ö_, later _e_, is by no means peculiar to the plural. It is found also in the dative singular (_fet_), for it too goes back to an older _foti_. Moreover, _fet_ of the plural applies only to the nominative and accusative; the genitive has _fota_, the dative _fotum_. Only centuries later was the alternation of _o_ and _e_ reinterpreted as a means of distinguishing number; _o_ was generalized for the singular, _e_ for the plural. Only when this reassortment of forms took place[161] was the modern symbolic value of the _foot_: _feet_ alternation clearly established. Again, we must not forget that _o_ was modified to _ö (e)_ in all manner of other grammatical and derivative formations. Thus, a pre-Anglo-Saxon _hohan_ (later _hon_) "to hang" corresponded to a _höhith_, _hehith_ (later _hehth_) "hangs"; to _dom_ "doom," _blod_ "blood," and _fod_ "food" corresponded the verbal derivatives _dömian_ (later _deman_) "to deem," _blödian_ (later _bledan_) "to bleed," and _födian_ (later _fedan_) "to feed." All this seems to point to the purely mechanical nature of the modification of _o_ to _ö_ to _e_. So many unrelated functions were ultimately served by the vocalic change that we cannot believe that it was motivated by any one of them.

[Footnote 161: A type of adjustment generally referred to as "analogical leveling."]

The German facts are entirely analogous. Only later in the history of the language was the vocalic alternation made significant for number. And yet consider the following facts. The change of _foti_ to _föti_ antedated that of _föti_ to _föte_, _föt_. This may be looked upon as a "lucky accident," for if _foti_ had become _fote_, _fot_ before the _-i_ had had the chance to exert a retroactive influence on the _o_, there would have been no difference between the singular and the plural. This would have been anomalous in Anglo-Saxon for a masculine noun. But was the sequence of phonetic changes an "accident"? Consider two further facts. All the Germanic languages were familiar with vocalic change as possessed of functional significance. Alternations like _sing_, _sang_, _sung_ (Anglo-Saxon _singan_, _sang_, _sungen_) were ingrained in the linguistic consciousness. Further, the tendency toward the weakening of final syllables was very strong even then and had been manifesting itself in one way and another for centuries. I believe that these further facts help us to understand the actual sequence of phonetic changes. We may go so far as to say that the _o_ (and _u_) could afford to stay the change to _ö_ (and _ü_) until the destructive drift had advanced to the point where failure to modify the vowel would soon result in morphological embarrassment. At a certain moment the _-i_ ending of the plural (and analogous endings with _i_ in other formations) was felt to be too weak to quite bear its functional burden. The unconscious Anglo-Saxon mind, if I may be allowed a somewhat summary way of putting the complex facts, was glad of the opportunity afforded by certain individual variations, until then automatically canceled out, to have some share of the burden thrown on them. These particular variations won through because they so beautifully allowed the general phonetic drift to take its course without unsettling the morphological contours of the language. And the presence of symbolic variation (_sing_, _sang_, _sung_) acted as an attracting force on the rise of a new variation of similar character. All these factors were equally true of the German vocalic shift. Owing to the fact that the destructive phonetic drift was proceeding at a slower rate in German than in English, the preservative change of _uo_ to _üe_ (_u_ to _ü_) did not need to set in until 300 years or more after the analogous English change. Nor did it. And this is to my mind a highly significant fact. Phonetic changes may sometimes be unconsciously encouraged in order to keep intact the psychological spaces between words and word forms. The general drift seizes upon those individual sound variations that help to preserve the morphological balance or to lead to the new balance that the language is striving for.

I would suggest, then, that phonetic change is compacted of at least three basic strands: (1) A general drift in one direction, concerning the nature of which we know almost nothing but which may be suspected to be of prevailingly dynamic character (tendencies, e.g., to greater or less stress, greater or less voicing of elements); (2) A readjusting tendency which aims to preserve or restore the fundamental phonetic pattern of the language; (3) A preservative tendency which sets in when a too serious morphological unsettlement is threatened by the main drift. I do not imagine for a moment that it is always possible to separate these strands or that this purely schematic statement does justice to the complex forces that guide the phonetic drift. The phonetic pattern of a language is not invariable, but it changes far less readily than the sounds that compose it. Every phonetic element that it possesses may change radically and yet the pattern remain unaffected. It would be absurd to claim that our present English pattern is identical with the old Indo-European one, yet it is impressive to note that even at this late day the English series of initial consonants:

_p_ _t_ _k_ _b_ _d_ _g_ _f_ _th_ _h_

corresponds point for point to the Sanskrit series:

_b_ _d_ _g_ _bh_ _dh_ _gh_ _p_ _t_ _k_

The relation between phonetic pattern and individual sound is roughly parallel to that which obtains between the morphologic type of a language and one of its specific morphological features. Both phonetic pattern and fundamental type are exceedingly conservative, all superficial appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. Which is more so we cannot say. I suspect that they hang together in a way that we cannot at present quite understand.

If all the phonetic changes brought about by the phonetic drift were allowed to stand, it is probable that most languages would present such irregularities of morphological contour as to lose touch with their formal ground-plan. Sound changes work mechanically. Hence they are likely to affect a whole morphological group here--this does not matter--, only part of a morphological group there--and this may be disturbing. Thus, the old Anglo-Saxon paradigm:

Sing. Plur. N. Ac. _fot_ _fet_ (older _foti_) G. _fotes_ _fota_ D. _fet_ (older _foti_) _fotum_

could not long stand unmodified. The _o_--_e_ alternation was welcome in so far as it roughly distinguished the singular from the plural. The dative singular _fet_, however, though justified historically, was soon felt to be an intrusive feature. The analogy of simpler and more numerously represented paradigms created the form _fote_ (compare, e.g., _fisc_ "fish," dative singular _fisce_). _Fet_ as a dative becomes obsolete. The singular now had _o_ throughout. But this very fact made the genitive and dative _o_-forms of the plural seem out of place. The nominative and accusative _fet_ was naturally far more frequently in use than were the corresponding forms of the genitive and dative. These, in the end, could not but follow the analogy of _fet_. At the very beginning of the Middle English period, therefore, we find that the old paradigm has yielded to a more regular one:

Sing. Plur. N. Ac. *_fot_ *_fet_ G. *_fotes_ _fete_ D. _fote_ _feten_

The starred forms are the old nucleus around which the new paradigm is built. The unstarred forms are not genealogical kin of their formal prototypes. They are analogical replacements.

The history of the English language teems with such levelings or extensions. _Elder_ and _eldest_ were at one time the only possible comparative and superlative forms of _old_ (compare German _alt_, _älter_, _der älteste_; the vowel following the _old-_, _alt-_ was originally an _i_, which modified the quality of the stem vowel). The general analogy of the vast majority of English adjectives, however, has caused the replacement of the forms _elder_ and _eldest_ by the forms with unmodified vowel, _older_ and _oldest_. _Elder_ and _eldest_ survive only as somewhat archaic terms for the older and oldest brother or sister. This illustrates the tendency for words that are psychologically disconnected from their etymological or formal group to preserve traces of phonetic laws that have otherwise left no recognizable trace or to preserve a vestige of a morphological process that has long lost its vitality. A careful study of these survivals or atrophied forms is not without value for the reconstruction of the earlier history of a language or for suggestive hints as to its remoter affiliations.

Analogy may not only refashion forms within the confines of a related cluster of forms (a "paradigm") but may extend its influence far beyond. Of a number of functionally equivalent elements, for instance, only one may survive, the rest yielding to its constantly widening influence. This is what happened with the English _-s_ plural. Originally confined to a particular class of masculines, though an important class, the _-s_ plural was gradually generalized for all nouns but a mere handful that still illustrate plural types now all but extinct (_foot_: feet, _goose_: _geese_, _tooth_: _teeth_, _mouse_: _mice_, _louse_: _lice_; _ox_: _oxen_; _child_: _children_; _sheep_: _sheep_, _deer_: _deer_). Thus analogy not only regularizes irregularities that have come in the wake of phonetic processes but introduces disturbances, generally in favor of greater simplicity or regularity, in a long established system of forms. These analogical adjustments are practically always symptoms of the general morphological drift of the language.

A morphological feature that appears as the incidental consequence of a phonetic process, like the English plural with modified vowel, may spread by analogy no less readily than old features that owe their origin to other than phonetic causes. Once the _e_-vowel of Middle English _fet_ had become confined to the plural, there was no theoretical reason why alternations of the type _fot_: _fet_ and _mus_: _mis_ might not have become established as a productive type of number distinction in the noun. As a matter of fact, it did not so become established. The _fot_: _fet_ type of plural secured but a momentary foothold. It was swept into being by one of the surface drifts of the language, to be swept aside in the Middle English period by the more powerful drift toward the use of simple distinctive forms. It was too late in the day for our language to be seriously interested in such pretty symbolisms as _foot_: _feet_. What examples of the type arose legitimately, in other words _via_ purely phonetic processes, were tolerated for a time, but the type as such never had a serious future.

It was different in German. The whole series of phonetic changes comprised under the term "umlaut," of which _u_: _ü_ and _au_: _oi_ (written _äu_) are but specific examples, struck the German language at a time when the general drift to morphological simplification was not so strong but that the resulting formal types (e.g., _Fuss_: _Füsse_; _fallen_ "to fall": _fällen_ "to fell"; _Horn_ "horn": _Gehörne_ "group of horns"; _Haus_ "house": _Häuslein_ "little house") could keep themselves intact and even extend to forms that did not legitimately come within their sphere of influence. "Umlaut" is still a very live symbolic process in German, possibly more alive to-day than in medieval times. Such analogical plurals as _Baum_ "tree": _Bäume_ (contrast Middle High German _boum_: _boume_) and derivatives as _lachen_ "to laugh": _Gelächter_ "laughter" (contrast Middle High German _gelach_) show that vocalic mutation has won through to the status of a productive morphologic process. Some of the dialects have even gone further than standard German, at least in certain respects. In Yiddish,[162] for instance, "umlaut" plurals have been formed where there are no Middle High German prototypes or modern literary parallels, e.g., _tog_ "day": _teg_ "days" (but German _Tag_: _Tage_) on the analogy of _gast_ "guest": _gest_ "guests" (German _Gast_: _Gäste_), _shuch_[163] "shoe": _shich_ "shoes" (but German _Schuh_: _Schuhe_) on the analogy of _fus_ "foot": _fis_ "feet." It is possible that "umlaut" will run its course and cease to operate as a live functional process in German, but that time is still distant. Meanwhile all consciousness of the merely phonetic nature of "umlaut" vanished centuries ago. It is now a strictly morphological process, not in the least a mechanical phonetic adjustment. We have in it a splendid example of how a simple phonetic law, meaningless in itself, may eventually color or transform large reaches of the morphology of a language.

[Footnote 162: Isolated from other German dialects in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It is therefore a good test for gauging the strength of the tendency to "umlaut," particularly as it has developed a strong drift towards analytic methods.]

[Footnote 163: _Ch_ as in German _Buch_.]

IX

HOW LANGUAGES INFLUENCE EACH OTHER

Languages, like cultures, are rarely sufficient unto themselves. The necessities of intercourse bring the speakers of one language into direct or indirect contact with those of neighboring or culturally dominant languages. The intercourse may be friendly or hostile. It may move on the humdrum plane of business and trade relations or it may consist of a borrowing or interchange of spiritual goods--art, science, religion. It would be difficult to point to a completely isolated language or dialect, least of all among the primitive peoples. The tribe is often so small that intermarriages with alien tribes that speak other dialects or even totally unrelated languages are not uncommon. It may even be doubted whether intermarriage, intertribal trade, and general cultural interchanges are not of greater relative significance on primitive levels than on our own. Whatever the degree or nature of contact between neighboring peoples, it is generally sufficient to lead to some kind of linguistic interinfluencing. Frequently the influence runs heavily in one direction. The language of a people that is looked upon as a center of culture is naturally far more likely to exert an appreciable influence on other languages spoken in its vicinity than to be influenced by them. Chinese has flooded the vocabularies of Corean, Japanese, and Annamite for centuries, but has received nothing in return. In the western Europe of medieval and modern times French has exercised a similar, though probably a less overwhelming, influence. English borrowed an immense number of words from the French of the Norman invaders, later also from the court French of Isle de France, appropriated a certain number of affixed elements of derivational value (e.g., _-ess_ of _princess_, _-ard_ of _drunkard_, _-ty_ of _royalty_), may have been somewhat stimulated in its general analytic drift by contact with French,[164] and even allowed French to modify its phonetic pattern slightly (e.g., initial _v_ and _j_ in words like _veal_ and _judge_; in words of Anglo-Saxon origin _v_ and _j_ can only occur after vowels, e.g., _over_, _hedge_). But English has exerted practically no influence on French.

[Footnote 164: The earlier students of English, however, grossly exaggerated the general "disintegrating" effect of French on middle English. English was moving fast toward a more analytic structure long before the French influence set in.]

The simplest kind of influence that one language may exert on another is the "borrowing" of words. When there is cultural borrowing there is always the likelihood that the associated words may be borrowed too. When the early Germanic peoples of northern Europe first learned of wine-culture and of paved streets from their commercial or warlike contact with the Romans, it was only natural that they should adopt the Latin words for the strange beverage (_vinum_, English _wine_, German _Wein_) and the unfamiliar type of road (_strata [via]_, English _street_, German _Strasse_). Later, when Christianity was introduced into England, a number of associated words, such as _bishop_ and _angel_, found their way into English. And so the process has continued uninterruptedly down to the present day, each cultural wave bringing to the language a new deposit of loan-words. The careful study of such loan-words constitutes an interesting commentary on the history of culture. One can almost estimate the rôle which various peoples have played in the development and spread of cultural ideas by taking note of the extent to which their vocabularies have filtered into those of other peoples. When we realize that an educated Japanese can hardly frame a single literary sentence without the use of Chinese resources, that to this day Siamese and Burmese and Cambodgian bear the unmistakable imprint of the Sanskrit and Pali that came in with Hindu Buddhism centuries ago, or that whether we argue for or against the teaching of Latin and Greek our argument is sure to be studded with words that have come to us from Rome and Athens, we get some inkling of what early Chinese culture and Buddhism and classical Mediterranean civilization have meant in the world's history. There are just five languages that have had an overwhelming significance as carriers of culture. They are classical Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, Greek, and Latin. In comparison with these even such culturally important languages as Hebrew and French sink into a secondary position. It is a little disappointing to learn that the general cultural influence of English has so far been all but negligible. The English language itself is spreading because the English have colonized immense territories. But there is nothing to show that it is anywhere entering into the lexical heart of other languages as French has colored the English complexion or as Arabic has permeated Persian and Turkish. This fact alone is significant of the power of nationalism, cultural as well as political, during the last century. There are now psychological resistances to borrowing, or rather to new sources of borrowing,[165] that were not greatly alive in the Middle Ages or during the Renaissance.

[Footnote 165: For we still name our new scientific instruments and patent medicines from Greek and Latin.]