Book III, we shall now deal in detail with those linguistic changes

which are not due to transference to new individuals. The chapter on woman’s language has served as a kind of bridge between the two main divisions, in so far as the first sections treated of those women’s dialects which were, or were supposed to be, due to the influence of foreigners.

Many theories have been advanced to explain the indubitable fact that languages change in course of time. Some scholars have thought that there ought to be one fundamental cause working in all instances, while others, more sensibly, have maintained that a variety of causes have been and are at work, and that it is not easy to determine which of them has been decisive in each observed case of change. The greatest attention has been given to phonetic change, and in reading some theorists one might almost fancy that sounds were the only thing changeable, or at any rate that phonetic changes were the only ones in language which had to be accounted for. Let us now examine some of the theories advanced.

Sometimes it is asserted that sound changes must have their cause in changes in the anatomical structure of the articulating organs. This theory, however, need not detain us long (see the able discussion in Oertel, p. 194 ff.), for no facts have been alleged to support it, and one does not see why small anatomical variations should cause changes so long as any teacher of languages on the phonetic method is able to teach his pupils practically every speech sound, even those that their own native language has been without for centuries. Besides, many phonetic changes do not at all lead to new sounds being developed or old ones lost, but simply to the old sounds being used in new places or disused in some of the places where they were formerly found. Some tribes have a custom of mutilating their lips or teeth, and that of course must have caused changes in their pronunciation, which are said to have persisted even after the custom was given up. Thus, according to Meinhof (MSA 60) the Yao women insert a big wooden disk within the upper lip, which makes it impossible for them to pronounce [f], and as it is the women that teach their children to speak, the sound of [f] has disappeared from the language, though now it is beginning to reappear in loan-words. It is clear, however, that such customs can have exercised only the very slightest influence on language in general.

XIV.--§ 2. Geography.

Some scholars have believed in an influence exercised by climatic or geographical conditions on the character of the sound system, instancing as evidence the harsh consonants found in the languages of the Caucasus as contrasted with the pleasanter sounds heard in regions more favoured by nature. But this influence cannot be established as a general rule. “The aboriginal inhabitants of the north-west coast of America found subsistence relatively easy in a country abounding in many forms of edible marine life; nor can they be said to have been subjected to rigorous climatic conditions; yet in phonetic harshness their languages rival those of the Caucasus. On the other hand, perhaps no people has ever been subjected to a more forbidding physical environment than the Eskimos, yet the Eskimo language not only impresses one as possessed of a relatively agreeable phonetic system when compared with the languages of the north-west coast, but may even be thought to compare favourably with American Indian languages generally” (Sapir, _American Anthropologist_, XIV (1912), 234). It would also on this theory be difficult to account for the very considerable linguistic changes which have taken place in historical times in many countries whose climate, etc., cannot during the same period have changed correspondingly.

A geographical theory of sound-shifting was advanced by Heinrich Meyer-Benfey in _Zeitschr. f. deutsches Altert._ 45 (1901), and has recently been taken up by H. Collitz in _Amer. Journal of Philol._ 39 (1918), p. 413. Consonant shifting is chiefly found in mountain regions; this is most obvious in the High German shift, which started from the Alpine district of Southern Germany. After leaving the region of the high mountains it gradually decreases in strength; yet it keeps on extending, with steadily diminishing energy, over part of the area of the Franconian dialects. But having reached the plains of Northern Germany, the movement stops. The same theory applies to languages in which a similar shifting is found, e.g. Old and Modern Armenian, the Soho language in South Africa, etc. “However strange it may appear at the first glance,” says Collitz, “that certain consonant changes should depend on geographical surroundings, the connexion is easily understood. The change of media to tenuis and that of tenuis to affricate or aspirate are linked together by a common feature, viz. an increase in the intensity of expiration. As the common cause of both these shiftings we may therefore regard a change in the manner in which breath is used for pronunciation. The habitual use of a larger volume of breath means an increased activity of the lungs. Here we have reached the point where the connexion with geographical or climatic conditions is clear, because nobody will deny that residence in the mountains, especially in the high mountains, stimulates the lungs.”

When this theory was first brought to my notice, I wrote a short footnote on it (PhG 176), in which I treated it with perhaps too little respect, merely mentioning the fact that my countrymen, the Danes, in their flat country were developing exactly the same shift as the High Germans (making _p_, _t_, _k_ into strongly aspirated or affricated sounds and unvoicing _b_, _d_, _g_); I then asked ironically whether that might be a consequence of the indubitable fact that an increasing number of Danes every summer go to Switzerland and Norway for their holidays. And even now, after the theory has been endorsed by so able an advocate as Collitz, I fail to see how it can hold water. The induction seems faulty on both sides, for the shift is found among peoples living in plains, and on the other hand it is not shared by all mountain peoples--for example, not by the Italian and Ladin speaking neighbours of the High Germans in the Alps. Besides, the physiological explanation is not impeccable, for walking in the mountains affects the way in which we breathe, that is, it primarily affects the lungs, but the change in the consonants is primarily one not in the lungs, but in the glottis; as the connexion between these two things is not necessary, the whole reasoning is far from being cogent. At any rate, the theory can only with great difficulty be applied to the first Gothonic shift, for how do we know that that started in mountainous regions? and who knows whether the sounds actually found as _f_, _þ_ and _h_ for original _p_, _t_, _k_, had first been aspirated and affricated stops? It seems much more probable that the transition was a direct one, through slackening and opening of the stoppage, but in that case it has nothing to do with the lungs or way of breathing.

XIV.--§ 3. National Psychology.

We are much more likely to ‘burn,’ as the children say, when, instead of looking for the cause in such outward circumstances, we try to find it in the psychology of those who initiate the change. But this does not amount to endorsing all the explanations of this kind which have found favour with linguists. Thus, since the times of Grimm it has been usual to ascribe the well-known consonant shift to psychological traits believed to be characteristic of the Germans. Grimm says that the sound shift is a consequence of the progressive tendency and desire of liberty found in the Germans (GDS 292); it is due to their courage and pride in the period of the great migration of tribes (ib. 306): “When quiet and morality returned, the sounds remained, and it may be reckoned as evidence of the superior gentleness and moderation of the Gothic, Saxon and Scandinavian tribes that they contented themselves with the first shift, while the wilder force of the High Germans was impelled to the second shift.” (Thus also Westphal.) Curtius finds energy and juvenile vigour in the Germanic sound shift (KZ 2. 331, 1852). Müllenhof saw in the transition from _p_, _t_, _k_ to _f_, _þ_, _h_ a sign of weakening, the Germans having apparently lost the power of pronouncing the hard stops; while further, the giving up of the aspirated _ph_, _th_, _kh_, _bh_, _dh_, _gh_ was due to enervation or indolence. But the succeeding transition from the old _b_, _d_, _g_ to _p_, _t_, _k_ showed that they had afterwards pulled themselves together to new exertions, and the regularity with which all these changes were carried through evidenced a great steadiness and persevering force (_Deutsche Altertumsk._ 2. 197). His disciple Wilhelm Scherer saw in the whole history of the German language alternating periods of rise and decline in popular taste; he looked upon sound changes from the æsthetic point of view and ascribed the (second) consonant shift to a feminine period in which consonants were neglected because the nation took pleasure in vocalic sounds.

XIV.--§ 4. Speed of Utterance.

Wundt gives a different though somewhat related explanation of the Germanic shift as due to a “revolution in culture, as the subjugation of a native population through warlike immigrants, with resulting new organization of the State” (S 1. 424): this increased the speed of utterance, and he tries in detail to show that increased speed leads naturally to just those changes in consonants which are found in the Gothonic shift (1. 420 ff.). But even if we admit that the average speed of talking (tempo der rede) is now probably greater than formerly, the whole theory is built up on so many doubtful or even manifestly incorrect details both in linguistic history and in general phonetic theory that it cannot be accepted. It does not account for the actual facts of the consonant shifts; moreover, it is difficult to see why such phenomena as this shift, if they were dependent on the speed of utterance, should occur only at these particular historical times and within comparatively narrow geographical limits, for there is much to be said for the view that in all periods the speech of the Western nations has been constantly gaining in rapidity as life in general has become accelerated, and in no period probably more than during the last century, which has witnessed no radical consonant shift in any of the leading civilized nations.

XIV.--§ 5. Periods of Rapid Change.

All these theories, different though they are in detail, have this in common, that they endeavour to explain one particular change, or set of changes, from one particular psychological trait supposed to be prevalent at the time when the change took place, but they fail because we are not able scientifically to demonstrate any intimate connexion between the pronunciation of particular sounds and a certain state of mind, and also because our knowledge of the fluctuations of collective psychology is still so very imperfect. But it is interesting to contrast these theories with the explanation of the very same sound shifts mentioned in a previous chapter (XI), and there shown to be equally unsatisfactory, the explanation, namely, that the fundamental cause of the consonant shift is to be found in the peculiar pronunciation of an aboriginal population. In both cases the Gothonic shifts are singled out, because since the time of Grimm the attention of scholars has been focused on these changes more than on any others--they are looked upon as changes _sui generis_, and therefore requiring a special explanation, such as is not thought necessary in the case of the innumerable minor changes that fill most of the pages of the phonological section of any historical grammar. But the sober truth seems to be that these shifts are not different in kind from those that have made, say, Fr. _sève_, _frère_, _chien_, _ciel_, _faire_, _changer_ out of Lat. _sapa_, _fratrem_, _canem_, _kælum_, _fakere_, _cambiare_, etc., or those that have changed the English vowels in _fate_, _feet_, _fight_, _foot_, _out_ from what they were when the letters which denote them still had their ‘continental’ values. Our main endeavour, therefore, must be to find out general reasons why sounds should not always remain unchanged. This seems more important, at any rate as a preliminary investigation, than attempting offhand to assign particular reasons why in such and such a century this or that sound was changed in some particular way.

If, however, we find a particular period especially fertile in linguistic changes (phonetic, morphological, semantic, or all at once), it is quite natural that we should turn our attention to the social state of the community at that time in order, if possible, to discover some specially favouring circumstances. I am thinking especially of two kinds of condition which may operate. In the first place, the influence of parents, and grown-up people generally, may be less than usual, because an unusual number of parents may be away from home, as in great wars of long duration, or may have been killed off, as in the great plagues; cf. also what was said above of children left to shift for themselves in certain favoured regions of North America (Ch. X § 7). Secondly, there may be periods in which the ordinary restraints on linguistic change make themselves less felt than usual, because the whole community is animated by a strong feeling of independence and wants to break loose from social ties of many kinds, including those of a powerful school organization or literary tradition. This probably was the case with North America in the latter half of the eighteenth century, when the new nation wished to manifest its independence of old England and therefore, among other things, was inclined to throw overboard that respect for linguistic authority which under normal conditions makes for conservatism. If the divergence between American and British English is not greater than it actually is, this is probably due partly to the continual influx of immigrants from the old country, and partly to that increased facility of communication between the two countries in recent times which has made mutual linguistic influence possible to an extent formerly undreamt-of. But in the case of the Romanic languages both of the conditions mentioned were operating: during the centuries in which they were framed and underwent the strongest differentiation, wars with the intruding ‘barbarians’ and a series of destructive plagues kept away or killed a great many grown-up people, and at the same time each country released itself from the centralizing influence of Rome, which in the first centuries of the Christian era had been very powerful in keeping up a fairly uniform and conservative pronunciation and phraseology throughout the whole Empire.[56] There were thus at that time various forces at work which, taken together, are quite sufficient to explain the wide divergence in linguistic structure that separated French, Provençal, Spanish, etc., from classical Latin (cf. above, XI § 8, p. 206).

In the history of English, one of the periods most fertile in change is the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: the wars with France, the Black Death (which is said to have killed off about one-third of the population) and similar pestilences, insurrections like those of Wat Tyler and Jack Cade, civil wars like those of the Roses, decimated the men and made home-life difficult and unsettled. In the Scandinavian languages the Viking age is probably the period that witnessed the greatest linguistic changes--if I am right, not, as has sometimes been said, on account of the heroic character of the period and the violent rise in self-respect or self-assertion, but for the more prosaic reason that the men were absent and the women had other things to attend to than their children’s linguistic education. I am also inclined to think that the unparalleled rapidity with which, during the last hundred years, the vulgar speech of English cities has been differentiated from the language of the educated classes (nearly all long vowels being shifted, etc.) finds its natural explanation in the unexampled misery of child-life among industrial workers in the first half of the last century--one of the most disgraceful blots on our overpraised civilization.

XIV.--§ 6. The Ease Theory.

If we now turn to the actuating principles that determine the general changeability of human speech habits, we shall find that the moving power everywhere is an impetus starting from the individual, and that there is a curbing power in the mere fact that language exists not for the individual alone, but for the whole community. The whole history of language is, as it were, a tug-of-war between these two principles, each of which gains victories in turn.

First of all we must make up our minds with regard to the disputed question whether the changes of language go in the direction of greater ease, in other words, whether they manifest a tendency towards economy of effort. The prevalent opinion among the older school was that the chief tendency was, in Whitney’s words, “to make things easy to our organs of speech, to economize time and effort in the work of expression” (L 28). Curtius very emphatically states that “Bequemlichkeit ist und bleibt der hauptanlass des lautwandels unter allen umständen” (_Griech. etym._ 23; cf. C 7). But Leskien, Sievers, and since them other recent writers, hold the opposite view (see quotations and summaries in Oertel 204 f., Wechssler L 88 f.), and their view has prevailed to the extent that Sütterlin (WW 33) characterizes the old view as “empty talk,” “a wrong scent,” and “worthless subterfuges now rejected by our science.”

Such strong words may, however, be out of place, for is it so very foolish to think that men in this, as in all other respects, tend to follow ‘the line of least resistance’ and to get off with as little exertion as possible? The question is only whether this universal tendency can be shown to prevail in those phonetic changes which are dealt with in linguistic history.

Sütterlin thinks it enough to mention some sound changes in which the new sound is more difficult than the old; these being admitted, he concludes (and others have said the same thing) that those other instances in which the new sound is evidently easier than the old one cannot be explained by the principle of ease. But it seems clear that this conclusion is not valid: the correct inference can only be that the tendency towards ease may be at work in some cases, though not in all, because there are other forces which may at times neutralize it or prove stronger than it. We shall meet a similar all-or-nothing fallacy in the chapter on Sound Symbolism.

Now, it is sometimes said that natives do not feel any difficulty in the sounds of their own language, however difficult these may be to foreigners. This is quite true if we speak of a _conscious_ perception of this or that sound being difficult to produce; but it is no less true that the act of speaking always requires some exertion, muscular as well as psychical, on the part of the speaker, and that he is therefore apt on many occasions to speak with as little effort as possible, often with the result that his voice is not loud enough, or that his words become indistinct if he does not move his tongue, lips, etc., with the required precision or force. You may as well say that when once one has learnt the art of writing, it is no longer any effort to form one’s letters properly; and yet how many written communications do we not receive in which many of the letters are formed so badly that we can do little but guess from the context what each form is meant for! There can be no doubt that the main direction of change in the development of our written alphabet has been towards forms requiring less and less exertion--and similar causes have led to analogous results in the development of spoken sounds.

It is not always easy to decide which of two articulations is the easier one, and opinions may in some instances differ--we may also find in two neighbouring nations opposite phonetic developments, each of which may perhaps be asserted by speakers of the language to be in the direction of greater ease. “To judge of the difficulty of muscular activity, the muscular quantity at play cannot serve as an absolute measure. Is [d] absolutely more awkward to produce than [ð]? When a man is running full tilt, it is under certain circumstances easier for him to rush against the wall than to stop suddenly at some distance from it: when the tongue is in motion, it may be easier for it to thrust itself against the roof of the mouth or the teeth, i.e. to form a stop (a plosive), than to halt at a millimetre’s distance, i.e. to form a fricative” (Verner 78). In the same sense I wrote in 1904: “Many an articulation which obviously requires greater muscular movements is yet easier of execution than another in which the movement is less, but has to be carried out with greater precision: it requires less effort to chip wood than to operate for cataract” (PhG 181).

In other cases, however, no such doubt is possible: [s], [f] or [x] require more muscular exertion than [h], and a replacement of one of them by [h] therefore necessarily means a lessening of effort. Now, I am firmly convinced that whenever a phonologist finds one of these oral fricatives standing regularly in one language against [h] in another, he will at once take the former sound to be the original and [h] to be the derived sound: an indisputable indication that the instinctive feeling of all linguists is still in favour of the view that a movement towards the easier sound is the rule, and not the exception.

In thus taking up the cudgels for the ease theory I am not afraid of hearing the objection that I ascribe too great power to human laziness, indolence, inertia, shirking, easygoingness, sloth, sluggishness, lack of energy, or whatever other beautiful synonyms have been invented for ‘economy of effort’ or ‘following the line of least resistance.’ The fact remains that there _is_ such a ‘tendency’ in all human beings, and by taking it into account in explaining changes of sound we are doing nothing else than applying here the same principle that attributes many simplifications of form to ‘analogy’: we see the same psychological force at work in the two different domains of phonetics and morphology.

It is, of course, no serious objection to this view that if this had been always the direction of change, speaking must have been uncommonly troublesome to our earliest ancestors[57]--who says it wasn’t?--or that “if certain combinations were really irksome in themselves, why should they have been attempted at all; why should they often have been maintained so long?” (Oertel 204)--as if people at a remote age had been able to compare consciously two articulations and to choose the easier one! Neither in language nor in any other activity has mankind at once hit upon the best or easiest expedients.

XIV.--§ 7. Sounds in Connected Speech.

In the great majority of linguistic changes we have to consider the ease or difficulty, not of the isolated sound, but of the sound in that particular conjunction with other sounds in which it occurs in words.[58] Thus in the numerous phenomena comprised under the name of assimilation. There is an interesting account in the _Proceedings of the Philological Society_ (December 17, 1886) of a discussion of these problems, in which Sweet, while maintaining that “cases of saving of effort were very rare or non-existent” and that “all the ordinary sounds of language were about on a par as to difficulty of production,” said that assimilation “sprang from the desire to save space in articulation and secure ease of transition. Thus _pn_ became _pm_, or else _mn_.” But in both these changes there is saving of effort, for in the former the movement of the tip of the tongue required for [n], and in the latter the movement of the soft palate required for [p], is done away with[59]: the term “saving of space” can have no other meaning than economy of muscular energy. And the same is true of what Sweet terms “saving of time,” which he finds effected by dropping superfluous sounds, especially at the end of words, e.g. [g] after [ŋ] in E. _sing_. Here, of course, one articulation (of the velum) is saved and this need not even be accompanied by the saving of any time, for in such cases the remaining sound is often lengthened so as to make up for the loss.[60]

If, then, all assimilations are to be counted as instances of saving of effort, it is worth noting that a great many phonetic changes which are not always given under the heading of assimilation should really be looked upon as such. If Lat. _saponem_ yields Fr. _savon_, this is the result of a whole series of assimilations: first [p] becomes [b], because the vocal vibrations continue from the vowel before to the vowel after the consonant, the opening of the glottis being thus saved; then the transition of [b] to [v] between vowels may be considered a partial assimilation to the open lip position of the vowels; the vowel [o] is nasalized in consequence of an assimilation to the nasal [n] (anticipation of the low position of the velum), and the subsequent dropping of the consonant [n] is a clear case of a different kind of assimilation (saving of a tip movement); at an early stage the two final sounds of _saponem_ had disappeared, first [m] and later the indistinct vowel resulting from _e_: whether we reckon these disappearances as assimilations or not, at any rate they constitute a saving of effort. All droppings of sounds, whether consonants (as _t_ in E. _castle_, _postman_, etc.) or vowels (as in E. _p’rhaps_, _bus’ness_, etc.), are to be viewed in the same light, and thus by their enormous number in the history of all languages form a strong argument in favour of the ease theory.

There is one more thing to be considered which is generally overlooked. In such assimilations as It. _otto_, _sette_, from _octo_, _septem_, a greater ease is effected not only by the assimilation as such, by which one of the consonants is dropped--for that would have been obtained just as well if the result had been _occo_, _seppe_--but also by the fact that it is the tip action which has been retained in both cases, for the tip of the tongue is much more flexible and more easily moved than either the lips or the back of the tongue. On the whole, many sound changes show how the tip is favoured at the cost of other organs, thus in the frequent transition of final _-m_ to _-n_, found, for instance, in old Gothonic, in Middle English, in ancient Greek, in Balto-Slavic, in Finnish and in Chinese.

In the discussion referred to above Sweet was seconded by Lecky, who said that “assimilations vastly multiplied the number of elementary sounds in a language, and therefore could not be described as facilitating pronunciation.” This is a great exaggeration, for in the vast majority of instances assimilation introduces no new sounds at all (see, for instance, the lists in my LPh ch. xi.). Lecky was probably thinking of such instances as when [k, g] before front vowels become [tʃ, dʒ] or similar combinations, or when mutation caused by [i] changes [u, o] into [y, ø], which sounds were not previously found in the language. Here we might perhaps say that those individuals who for the sake of their own ease introduced new sounds made things more difficult for coming generations (though even that is not quite certain), and the case would then be analogous to that of a man who has learnt a foreign expression for a new idea and then introduces it into his own language, thus burdening his countrymen with a new word instead of thinking how the same idea might have been rendered by means of native speech-material--in both cases a momentary alleviation is obtained at the cost of a permanent disadvantage, but neither case can be alleged against the view that the prevalent tendency among human beings is to prefer the easiest and shortest cut.

XIV.--§ 8. Extreme Weakenings.

When this lazy tendency is indulged to the full, the result is an indistinct protracted vocal murmur, with here and there possibly one or other sound (most often an _s_) rising to the surface: think, for instance, of the way in which we often hear grace said, prayers mumbled and other similar formulas muttered inarticulately, with half-closed lips and the least possible movement of the rest of the vocal organs. This is tolerated more or less in cases in which the utterance is hardly meant as a communication to any human being; otherwise it will generally be met with a request to repeat what has been said, the social curb being thus applied to the easygoing tendencies of the individual. Now, as a matter of fact, there are in every language a certain number of word-forms that can only be explained by this very laziness in pronouncing, which in extreme cases leads to complete unintelligibility.

Russian _sudar’_ (_gosudar’_), ‘sir,’ is colloquially shortened into a mere _s_, which may in subservient speech be added to almost any word as a meaningless enclitic. And curiously enough the same sound is used in exactly the same way in conversational Spanish, as _buenos_ for _bueno_ ‘good,’ only here it is a weakening of _señor_ (Hanssen, _Span. gramm._ 60): thus two entirely different words, from identical psychological motives, yield the same result in two distant countries. Fr. _monsieur_, instead of [mɔ̃sjœ·r], as might be expected, sounds [mɔsjø] and extremely frequently [msjø] and even [psjø], with a transition not otherwise found in French. _Madame_ before a name is very often shortened into [mam]; in English the same word becomes a single sound in _yes’m_. The weakening of _mistress_ into _miss_ and the old-fashioned _mas_ for _master_ also belong here, as do It. forms for _signore_, _signora_: _gnor si_, _gnor no_, _gnora si_, _sor Luigi_, _la sora sposa_, and Sp. _usted_ ‘you’ for _vuestra merced_. Formulas of greeting and of politeness are liable to similar truncations, e.g. E. _how d(e) do_, Dan. [gda’] or even [da’] for _goddag_, G. [gmɔ̃in, gmɔ̃] for _guten morgen_, [na·mt] for _guten abend_; Fr. _s’il vous plaît_ often becomes [siuplɛ, splɛ], and the synonymous Dan. _vær så god_ is shortened into _værsgo_, of which often only [sgo’] remains. In Russian popular speech some small words are frequently inserted as a vague indication that the utterance or idea belongs to some one else: _griu_, _grit_, _grim_, _gril_, various mutilated forms of the verb _govorit’_ ‘say,’ _mol_ from _molvit’_ ‘speak,’ _de_ from _dejati_ (Boyer et Speranski, _Manuel_ 293 ff.); cp. the obsolete E. _co_, _quo_, for _quoth_. In all the Balkan languages a particle _vre_ is extensively used, which Hatzidakis has explained from the vocative of OGr. _mōrós_. Modern Gr. _thà_ is now a particle of futurity, but originates in _thená_, from _thélei_, ‘he will’ + _nà_ from _hína_, ‘that.’ These examples must suffice to show that we have here to do with a universal tendency in all languages.

XIV.--§ 9. The Principle of Value.

To explain such deviations from normal phonetic development some scholars have assumed that a word or form in frequent use is liable to suffer exceptional treatment. Thus Vilhelm Thomsen, in his brilliant paper (1879) on the Romanic verb _andare_, _andar_, _anar_, _aller_, which he explains convincingly from Lat. _ambulare_, says that this verb “belongs to a group of words which in all languages stand as it were without the pale of the laws, that is, words which from their frequent employment are exposed to far more violent changes than other words, and therefore to some extent follow paths of their own.”[61] Schuchardt (_Ueber die lautgesetze_, 1885) turned upon the ‘young grammarians,’ Paul among the rest, who did not recognize this principle, and said that one word (or one sound) may need 10,000 repetitions in order to be changed into another one, and that consequently another word, which in the same time is used only 8,000 times, must be behindhand in its phonetic development. Quite apart from the fact that this number is evidently too small (for a moderately loquacious woman will easily pronounce such a word as _he_ half a dozen times as often as these figures every year), it is obvious that the reasoning must be wrong, for were frequency the only decisive factor, G. _morgen_ would have been treated in every other connexion exactly as it is in _guten morgen_, and that is just what has not happened. Frequency of repetition would in itself tend to render the habitude firmly rooted, thus really capable of resisting change, rather than the opposite; and instead of the purely mechanical explanation from the number of times a word is repeated, we must look for a more psychological explanation. This naturally must be found in the ease with which a word is understood in the given connexion or situation, and especially in its worthlessness for the purpose of communication. Worthlessness, however, is not the moving power, but merely the reason why less restraint than usual is imposed on the ever-present inclination of speakers to minimize effort. A parallel from another, though cognate, sphere of human activity may perhaps bring out my point of view more clearly. The taking off of one’s hat, combined with a low bow, served from the first to mark a more or less servile submissiveness to a prince or conqueror; then the gesture was gradually weakened, and a slight raising of the hat came to be a polite greeting even between equals; this is reduced to a mere touching of the hat or cap, and among friends the slightest movement of the hand in the direction of the hat is thought a sufficient greeting. When, however, it is important to indicate deference, the full ceremonial gesture is still used (though not to the same extent by all nations); otherwise no value is attached to it, and the inclination to spare oneself all unnecessary exertion has caused it to dwindle down to the slightest muscular action possible.

The above instances of the truncation of everyday formulas, etc., illustrate the length to which the ease principle can be carried when a word has little significatory value and the intention of the speaker can therefore be vaguely, but sufficiently, understood if the proper sound is merely suggested or hinted at. But in most words, and even in the words mentioned above, when they are to bear their full meaning, the pronunciation cannot be slurred to the same extent, if the speaker is to make himself understood. It is consequently his interest to pronounce more carefully, and this means greater conservatism and slower phonetic development on the whole.

There are naturally many degrees of relative value or worthlessness, and words may vary accordingly. An illustration may be taken from my own mother-tongue: the two words _rigtig nok_, literally ‘correct enough,’ are pronounced ['recti 'nɔk] or ['regdi 'nɔk] when keeping their full signification, but when they are reduced to an adverb with the same import as the weakened English _certainly_ or _(it is) true (that)_, there are various shortened pronunciations in frequent use: ['rectnɔg, 'regdnɔg, 'regnɔg, 'renɔg, 'renəg]. The worthlessness may affect a whole phrase, a word, or merely one syllable or sound.

XIV.--§ 10. Application to Case System, etc.

Our principle is important in many domains of linguistic history. If it is asked why the elaborate Old English system of cases and genders has gradually disappeared, an answer that will meet with the approval of most linguists of the ordinary school is (in the words of J. A. H. Murray): “The total loss of grammatical gender in English, and the almost complete disappearance of cases, are purely phonetic phenomena”--supplemented, of course, by the recognition of the action of analogy, to which is due, for instance, the levelling of the nom. and dative plural OE. _stanas_ and _stanum_ under the single form _stones_. The main explanation thus is the following: a phonetic law, operating without regard to the signification, caused the OE. unstressed vowels _-a_, _-e_, _-u_ to become merged in an obscure _-e_ in Middle English; as these endings were very often distinctive of cases, the Old English cases were consequently lost. Another phonetic law was operating similarly by causing the loss of final _-n_, which also played an important rôle in the old case system. And in this way phonetic laws and analogy have between them made a clean sweep of it, and we need look nowhere else for an explanation of the decay of the old declensions.

Here I beg to differ: a ‘phonetic law’ is not an explanation, but something to be explained; it is nothing else but a mere statement of facts, a formula of correspondence, which says nothing about the cause of change, and we are therefore justified if we try to dig deeper and penetrate to the real psychology of speech. Now, let us for a moment suppose that each of the terminations _-a_, _-e_, _-u_ bore in Old English its own distinctive and sharply defined meaning, which was necessary to the right understanding of the sentences in which the terminations occurred (something like the endings found in artificial languages like Ido). Would there in that case be any probability that a phonetic law tending to their levelling could ever have succeeded in establishing itself? Most certainly not; the all-important regard for intelligibility would have been sure to counteract any inclination towards a slurred pronunciation of the endings. Nor would there have been any occasion for new formations by analogy, as the formations were already sufficiently analogous. But such a regularity was very far from prevailing in Old English, as will be particularly clear from the tabulation of the declensions as printed in my _Chapters on English_, p. 10 ff.: it makes the whole question of causality appear in a much clearer light than would be possible by any other arrangement of the grammatical facts: the cause of the decay of the Old English apparatus of declensions lay in its manifold incongruities. The same termination did not always denote the same thing: _-u_ might be the nom. sg. masc. (_sunu_) or fem. (_duru_), or the acc. or the dat., or the nom. or acc. pl. neuter (_hofu_); _-a_ might be the nom. sg. masc. (_guma_), or the dat. sg. masc. (_suna_), or the gen. sg. fem. (_dura_), or the nom. pl. masc. or fem., or finally the gen. pl.; _-an_ might be the acc. or dat. or gen. sg. or the nom. or acc. pl., etc. If we look at it from the point of view of function, we get the same picture; the nom. pl., for instance, might be denoted by the endings _-as_, _-an_, _-a_, _-e_, _-u_, or by mutation without ending, or by the unchanged kernel; the dat. sg. by _-e_, _-an_, _-re_, _-um_, by mutation, or the unchanged kernel. The whole is one jumble of inconsistency, for many relations plainly distinguished from each other in one class of words were but imperfectly, if at all, distinguishable in another class. Add to this that the names used above, dative, accusative, etc., have no clear and definite meaning in the case of Old English, any more than in the case of kindred tongues; sometimes it did not matter which of two or more cases the speaker chose to employ: some verbs took indifferently now one, now another case, and the same is to some extent true with regard to prepositions. No wonder, therefore, that speakers would often hesitate which of two vowels to use in the ending, and would tend to indulge in the universal inclination to pronounce weak syllables indistinctly and thus confuse the formerly distinct vowels _a_, _i_, _e_, _u_ into the one neutral vowel [ə], which might even be left out without detriment to the clear understanding of each sentence.[62] The only endings that were capable of withstanding this general rout were the two in _s_, _-as_ for the plural and _-es_ for the gen. sg.; here the consonant was in itself more solid, as it were, than the other consonants used in case endings (_n_, _m_), and, which is more decisive, each of these terminations was confined to a more sharply limited sphere of use than the other endings, and the functions for which they served, that of the plural and that of the genitive, are among the most indispensable ones for clearness of thought. Hence we see that these endings from the earliest period of the English language tend to be applied to other classes of nouns than those to which they were at first confined (_-as_ to masc. _o_ stems ...), so as to be at last used with practically all nouns.

If explanations like Murray’s of the simplification of the English case system are widely accepted, while views like those attempted here will strike most readers of linguistic works as unfamiliar, the reason may, partly at any rate, be the usual arrangement of historical and other grammars. Here we first have chapters on phonology, in which the facts are tabulated, each vowel being dealt with separately, no matter what its function is in the flexional system; then, after all the sounds have been treated in this way, we come to morphology (accidence, formenlehre), in which it is natural to take the phonological facts as granted or already known: these therefore come to be looked upon as primary and morphology as secondary, and no attention is paid to the _value_ of the sounds for the purposes of mutual understanding.

But everyday observations show that sounds have not always the same value. In ordinary conversation one may frequently notice how a proper name or technical term, when first introduced, is pronounced with particular care, while no such pains is taken when it recurs afterwards: the stress becomes weaker, the unstressed vowels more indistinct, and this or that consonant may be dropped. The same principle is shown in all the abbreviations of proper names and of long words in general which have been treated above (Ch IX § 7): here the speaker has felt assured that his hearer has understood what or who he is talking about, as soon as he has pronounced the initial syllable or syllables, and therefore does not take the trouble to pronounce the rest of the word. It has often been pointed out (see, e.g., Curtius K 72) that stem or root syllables are generally better preserved than the rest of the word: the reason can only be that they have greater importance for the understanding of the idea as a whole than other syllables.[63] But it is especially when we come to examine stress phenomena that we discover the full extent of this principle of value.

XIV.--§ 11. Stress Phenomena.

Stress is generally believed to be dependent exclusively on the force with which the air-current is expelled from the lungs, hence the name of ‘expiratory accent’; but various observations and considerations have led me to give another definition (LPh 7. 32, 1913): stress is energy, intensive muscular activity not of one organ, but of _all the speech organs at once_. To pronounce a ‘stressed’ syllable all organs are exerted to the utmost. The muscles of the lungs are strongly innervated; the movements of the vocal chords are stronger, leading on the one hand in voiced sounds to a greater approximation of the vocal chords, with less air escaping, but greater amplitude of vibrations and also greater risings or fallings of the tone. In voiceless sounds, on the other hand, the vocal chords are kept at greater distance (than in unstressed syllables) and accordingly allow more air to escape. In the upper organs stress is characterized by marked articulations of the velum palati, of the tongue and of the lips. As a result of all this, stressed syllables are loud, i.e. can be heard at great distance, and distinct, i.e. easy to perceive in all their components. Unstressed syllables, on the contrary, are produced with less exertion in every way: in voiced sounds the distance between the vocal chords is greater, which leads to the peculiar ‘voice of murmur’; but in voiceless sounds the glottis is not opened very wide. In the upper organs we see corresponding slack movements; thus the velum does not shut off the nasal cavity very closely, and the tongue tends towards a neutral position, in which it moves very little either up and down or backwards and forwards. The lips also are moved with less energy, and the final result is dull and indistinct sounds. Now, all this is of the greatest importance in the history of languages.

The psychological importance of various elements is the chief, though not the only, factor that determines sentence stress (see, for instance, the chapters on stress in my LPh xiv. and MEG v.). Now, it is well known that sentence stress plays a most important rôle in the historical development of any language; it has determined not only the difference in vowel between [wɔz] and [wəz], both written _was_, or between the demonstrative [ðæt] and the relative [ðət], both written _that_, but also that between _one_ and _an_ or _a_, originally the same word, and between Fr. _moi_ and _me_, _toi_ and _te_--one might give innumerable other instances. Value also plays a not unimportant rôle in determining which syllable among several in long words is stressed most, and in some languages it has revolutionized the whole stress system. This happened with old Gothonic, whence in modern German, Scandinavian, and in the native elements of English we have the prevalent stressing of the root syllable, i.e. of that syllable which has the greatest psychological value, as in _'wishes_, _be'speak_, etc.

Now, it is generally said that if double forms arise like _one_ and _an_, _moi_ and _me_, the reason is that the sounds were found under ‘different phonetic conditions’ and therefore developed differently, exactly as the difference between _an_ and _a_ or between Fr. _fol_ and _fou_ is due to the same word being placed in one instance before a word beginning with a vowel and in the other before a consonant, that is to say, in different external conditions. But it won’t do to identify the two things: in the latter case we really have something external or mechanical, and here we may rightly use the expression ‘phonetic condition,’ but the difference between a strongly and a weakly stressed form of the same word depends on something internal, on the very soul of the word. Stress is not what the usual way of marking it in writing and printing might lead us to think--something that hangs outside or above the word--but is at least as important an element of the word as the ‘speech sounds’ which go to make it up. Stress alternation in a sentence cannot consequently be reckoned a ‘phonetic condition’ of the same order as the initial sound of the next word. If we say that the different treatment of the vowel seen in _one_ and _an_ or _moi_ and _me_ is occasioned by varying degrees of stress, we have ‘explained’ the secondary sound change only, but not the primary change, which is that of stress itself, and that change is due to the different significance of the word under varying circumstances, i.e. to its varying value for the purposes of the exchange of ideas. Over and above mechanical principles we have here and elsewhere psychological principles, which no one can disregard with impunity.

XIV.--§ 12. Non-phonetic Changes.

Considerations of ease play an important part in all departments of language development. It is impossible to draw a sharp line between phonetic and syntactic phenomena. We have what might be termed prosiopesis when the speaker begins, or thinks he begins, to articulate, but produces no audible sound till one or two syllables after the beginning of what he intended to say. This phonetically is ‘aphesis,’ but in many cases leads to the omission of whole words; this may become a regular speech habit, more particularly in the case of certain set phrases, e.g. (Good) _morning_ / (Do you) _see_? / (Will) _that do?_ / (I shall) _see you again this afternoon_; Fr. (na)_turellement_ / (Je ne me) _rappelle plus_, etc.

On the other hand, we have aposiopesis if the speaker does not finish his sentence, either because he hesitates which word to employ or because he notices that the hearer has already caught his meaning. Hence such syntactic shortenings as _at Brown’s_ (house, or shop, or whatever it may be), which may then be extended to other places in the sentence; the _grocer’s_ was closed / _St. Paul’s_ is very grand, etc. Similar abbreviations due to the natural disinclination to use more circumstantial expressions than are necessary to convey one’s meaning are seen when, instead of _my straw hat_, one says simply _my straw_, if it is clear to one’s hearers that one is talking of a hat; thus _clay_ comes to be used for _clay pipe_, _return_ for _return ticket_ (‘We’d better take returns’) _the Haymarket_ for _the Haymarket Theatre_, etc. Sometimes these shortenings become so common as to be scarcely any longer felt as such, e.g. _rifle_, _landau_, _bugle_, for _rifle gun_, _landau carriage_, _bugle horn_ (further examples MEG ii. 8. 9). In Maupassant (_Bel Ami_ 81) I find the following scrap of conversation which illustrates the same principle in another domain: “Voilà six mois que je suis _employé aux bureaux du chemin de fer du Nord_.” “Mais comment diable n’as-tu pas trouvé mieux qu’une place _d’employé au Nord_?”[64]

The tendency to economize effort also manifests itself when the general ending _-er_ is used instead of a more specific expression: _sleeper_ for _sleeping-car_; _bedder_ at college for _bedmaker_; _speecher_, _footer_, _brekker_ (Harrow) for _speech-day_, _football_, _breakfast_, etc. Thus also when some noun or verb of a vague or general meaning is used because one will not take the trouble to think of the exact expression required, very often _thing_ (sometimes extended _thingumbob_, cf. Dan. _tingest_, G. _dingsda_), Fr. _chose_, _machin_ (even in place of a personal name); further, the verb _do_ or _fix_ (this especially in America). In some cases this tendency may permanently affect the meaning of a common noun which has to serve so often instead of a specific name that at last it acquires a special signification; thus, _corn_ in England = ‘wheat,’ in Ireland = ‘oats,’ in America = ‘maize,’ _deer_, orig. ‘animal,’ Fr. _herbe_, now ‘grass,’ etc. As many people, either from ignorance or from carelessness, are far from being precise in thought and expression--they “Mean not, but blunder round about a meaning”--words come to be applied in senses unknown to former generations, and some of these senses may gradually become fixed and established. In some cases the final result of such want of precision may even be beneficial; thus English at first had no means of expressing futurity in verbs. Then it became more and more customary to say ‘he will come,’ which at first meant ‘he has the will to come,’ to express his future coming apart from his volition--thus, also, ‘it will rain,’ etc. Similarly ‘I shall go,’ which originally meant ‘I am obliged to go,’ was used in a less accurate way, where no obligation was thought of, and thus the language acquired something which is at any rate a makeshift for a future tense of the verb. But considerations of space prevent me from diving too deeply into questions of semantic change.

FOOTNOTES:

[56] The uniformity in the speech of the whole Roman Empire during the first centuries of our Christian era was kept up, among other things, through the habit of removing soldiers and officials from one country to the other. This ceased later, each district being left to shift more or less for itself.

[57] “Dass unsere ältesten vorfahren sich das sprechen erstaunlich unbequem gemacht haben,” Delbrück, E 155.

[58] Sometimes appearances may be deceptive: when [nr, mr] become [ndr, mbr], it looks on the paper as if something had been added and as if the transition therefore militated against the principle of ease: in reality, the old and the new combinations require exactly the same amount of muscular activity, and the change simply consists in want of precision in the movement of the velum palati, which comes a fraction of a second too soon. If anything, the new group is a trifle easier than the old. See LPh 5. 6 for explanation and examples (E. _thunder_ from _þunor_ sb., _þunrian_ vb.; _timber_, cf. Goth. _timrian_, G. _zimmer_, etc.).

[59] This is rendered most clear by my ‘analphabetic’ notation (α means lips, β tip of tongue, δ soft palate, velum palati, and ε glottis; 0 stands for closed position, 1 for approximation, 3 for open position); the three sound combinations are thus analysed (cf. my _Lehrbuch der Phonetik_):

p | n p | m m | n α 0 | 3 0 | 0 0 | 3 β 3 | 0 3 | 3 3 | 0 δ 0 | 3 0 | 3 3 | 3 ε 3 | 1 3 | 1 1 | 1

[60] The only clear cases of saving of time are those in which long sounds are shortened, and even they must be looked upon as a saving of effort.

[61] In the reprint in _Samlede Afhandlinger_, ii. 417 (1920), a few lines are added in which Thomsen fully accepts the explanation which I gave as far back as 1886.

[62] The above remarks are condensed from the argument in ChE 38 ff. Note also what is said below (Ch. XIX § 13) on the loss of Lat. final _-s_ in the Romanic languages after it had ceased to be necessary for the grammatical understanding of sentences.

[63] Against this it has been urged that Fr. _oncle_ has not preserved the stem syllable of Lat. _avunculus_ particularly well. But this objection is a little misleading. It is quite true that at the time when the word was first framed the syllable _av-_ contained the main idea and _-unculus_ was only added to impart an endearing modification to that idea (‘dear little uncle’); but after some time the semantic relation was altered; _avus_ itself passed out of use, while _avunculus_ was handed down from generation to generation as a ready-made whole, in which the ordinary speaker was totally unable to suspect that _av-_ was the really significative stem. He consequently treated it exactly as any other polysyllable of the same structure, and _avun-_ (phonetically [awuŋ, auuŋ]) was naturally made into one syllable. Nothing, of course, can be protected by a sense of its significance unless it is still felt as significant. That hardly needs saying.

[64] Compare also the results of the same principle seen in writing. In a letter a proper name or technical term when first introduced is probably written in full and very distinctly, while afterwards it is either written carelessly or indicated by a mere initial. Any shorthand-writer knows how to utilize this principle systematically.