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. § 6. Assimilations, etc. § 7. Stump-words.

IX.--§ 1. Conflicting Views.

We all know that in historical times languages have been constantly 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 children 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 perfection that it cannot be held responsible for the changes recorded in the history 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 no such languages as French and Italian. The changes in languages are simply 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 _Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte_ 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 übertragung 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[32]--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 views, 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, who carry things forward in the field of 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 says: “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_ (_diakósioi_, etc.), while elsewhere (in Doric and Bœotian) they appear as _-kátioi_. How does the _o_ arise in _-kósioi_? It is generally said that it comes from _o_ 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 personal 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 first 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 something, 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, 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 directly 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 pronounced [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.

1st generation { young A1 S1 { old A1 S2

2nd generation { young A2 S2 { old A2 S3

3rd generation { young A3 S3 { old A3 S4, etc.[33]

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 ff., 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 surroundings: 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 through 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 easily 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 chief 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 by the history of language. The long _a_ in English in one period was rounded and raised into _o_, as in OE. _stan_, _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 _å_, as in _ål_, _gås_, while a later stratum tends rather towards [æ], 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. _âme_, _pas_): in one sister language we thus witness a repetition of the old shifting, in the other a tendency in the opposite direction. And it is the same with all those languages which we can pursue 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.

We 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 we aim at, but it is nothing very fixed, and the only measure at our disposal 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 your pardon?’

Everyone thinks that he talks to-day just as he did yesterday, and, of course, he does so in nearly every point. But no one knows if he pronounces his mother-tongue in every respect 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, many must co-operate: the social nature and social aim of language 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 influence of his fellows, and involuntarily fashions his pronunciation according to the impression he is constantly receiving of other people’s sounds. But as regards those little gradual shiftings of sounds which take place in spite of all this control and its conservative 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 [þ] as in E. _thick_ becomes [f] and [ð] 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 very 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 _with_, _mother_, are frequent in the mouths of children long before they begin to make their appearance 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 _muef_ from _modu_, _nif_ from _nidu_, _fief_ from _feodu_, _seif_, now _soif_, from _site_, _estrif_ (E. _strife_) from _stridh_, _glaive_ from _gladiu_, _parvis_ from _paradis_, and possibly _avoutre_ from _adulteru_, _poveir_, now _pouvoir_, from _potere_. In Old Gothonic we have the transition from _þ_ to _f_ before _l_, as in Goth. _þlaqus_ = MHG. _vlach_, Goth. _þlaihan_ = OHG. _flêhan_, _þliuhan_ = OHG. _fliohan_; cf. also E. _file_, G. _feile_ = ON. _þēl_, OE. _þengel_ and _fengel_ ‘prince,’ and probably G. _finster_, cf. OHG. _dinstar_ (with _d_ from _þ_), OE. _þeostre_. In Latin we have the same transition, e.g. in _fumus_, corresponding to Sansk. _dhumás_, Gr. _thumós_.[34]

The change from the back-open consonant [x]--the sound in G. _buch_ and Scotch _loch_--to _f_, 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 _kw_ to _p_, which is found in some languages, for instance, Gr. _hippos_, corresponding to Lat. _equus_, Gr. _hepomai_ = Lat. _sequor_, _hêpar_ = Lat. _jecur_; Rumanian _apa_ from Lat. _aqua_, Welsh _map_, ‘son’ = Gaelic _mac_, _pedwar_ = Ir. _cathir_, ‘four,’ etc. In France 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 transposition (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 found 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 grown-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 [ŋk] instead of the original [ndk], the change is not to be charged against children or grown-up people exclusively, but against both parties together: and so when _t_ is lost in _waistcoat_ [weskət], or _postman_ or _castle_, or _k_ in _asked_. There 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 [ŋ], or because it fails altogether to hear the middle consonant in _waistcoat_, _postman_, _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.[35]

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 definitely 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 dropped, 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, which can then be used by grown-up people as pet-names. Examples are _Bert_ for Herbert or Albert, _Bella_ for Arabella, _Sander_ for Alexander, _Lottie_ for Charlotte, _Trix_ for Beatrix, and with childlike sound-substitution _Bess_ (and _Bet_, _Betty_) for Elizabeth. Similarly in other languages, from Danish I may mention _Bine_ for Jakobine, _Line_ for Karoline, _Stine_ 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, _Lanky_; Murphy, _Mur_; Sheridan, _Sherry_; and Goldsmith, _Goldy_, which Goldsmith resented” (Boswell, _Life_, ed. P. Fitzgerald, 1900, i. 486). Thackeray constantly says _Pen_ for Arthur Pendennis, _Cos_ for Costigan, _Fo_ for Foker, _Pop_ for Popjoy, _old Col_ for Colchicum. In the beginning of the last century Napoleon Bonaparte was generally called _Nap_ or _Boney_; later we have such shortened names of public 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 _photo_ for photograph, _pub_ for public-house, _caps_ for capital letters, _spec_ for speculation, _sov_ for sovereign, _zep_ 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_(nastics), _undergrad_(uate), _trig_(onometry), _lab_(oratory), _matric_(ulation), _prep_(aration), _the Guv_ 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 _aristo_(crate), _réac_(tionnaire), college terms like _desse_ for descriptive (géométrie d.), _philo_ for philosophie, _preu_ for premier, _seu_ for second; Danish numerals like _tres_ for tresindstyve (60), _halvfjerds_(indstyve), _firs_(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 previously 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 _Zeuxis_ for Zeuxippos, Old High German _Wolfo_ for Wolfbrand, Wolfgang, etc., Icelandic _Sigga_ for Sigríðr, _Siggi_ for Sigurðr, etc.

I see a corroboration of my theory in the fact that there are hardly any _family_ names shortened by throwing away the beginning: children as a rule have no use for family names.[36] 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 in France 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 London (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 different 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 _I s’pose_), and the initial voiceless stop has then become inaudible; Dickens similarly writes _’tickerlerly_ as a vulgar pronunciation of particularly.[37]

FOOTNOTES:

[32] 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 ff., Ph 53, cf. 3). Wechssler (L p. 86) quotes passages from Bremer, Passy, Rousselot and Wallensköld, in which the chief cause of sound changes is attributed to the child; to these might be added Storm (_Phonetische Studien_, 5. 200) and A. Thomson (IF 24, 1909, p. 9), probably also Grammont (_Mél. 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 pronunciation of some child and in the historical evolution of languages.

[33] See E. Herzog, _Streitfragen der roman. philologie_, i. (1904), p. 57--I modify his symbols a little.

[34] In Russian _Marfa_, _Fyodor_, etc., we also have _f_ corresponding to original _þ_, 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.

[35] Reduplications and assimilations at a distance, as in Fr. _tante_ from the older _ante_ (whence E. _aunt_, from Lat. _amita_) and _porpentine_ (frequent in this and analogous forms in Elizabethan writers) for _porcupine_ (_porkepine_, _porkespine_) are different from the ordinary assimilations of neighbouring sounds in occurring much less frequently in the speech of adults than in children; cf., however, below, Ch. XV 4.

[36] Karl Sundén, in his diligent and painstaking book on _Elliptical Words in Modern English_ (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.

[37] It is often said that stress is decisive of what part is left out in word-clippings, 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 syllables with weak stress are preserved, e.g. in _Mac_(donald), _Pen_(dennis), the _Cri_, _Vic_, _Nap_, _Nat_ for Nathaniel (orig. pronounced with [t], not [þ]), _Val_ for Percival, _Trix_, etc. The middle is never kept as such with omission of the beginning and the ending; _Liz_ (whence _Lizzy_) has not arisen at one stroke from Elizabeth, but mediately through _Eliz_. Some 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.