CHAPTER XV

CAUSES OF CHANGE--_continued_

§ 1. Emotional Exaggerations. § 2. Euphony. § 3. Organic Influences. § 4. Lapses and Blendings. § 5. Latitude of Correctness. § 6. Equidistant and Convergent Changes. § 7. Homophones. § 8. Significative Sounds preserved. § 9. Divergent Changes and Analogy. § 10. Extension of Sound Laws. § 11. Spreading of Sound Change. § 12. Reaction. § 13. Sound Laws and Etymological Science. § 14. Conclusion.

XV.--§ 1. Emotional Exaggerations.

In the preceding chapter we have dwelt at great length on those changes which tend to render articulations easier and more convenient. But, important as they are, these are not the only changes that speech sounds undergo: there are other moods than that of ordinary listless everyday conversation, and they may lead to modifications of pronunciation which are different from and may even be in direct opposition to those mentioned or hinted at above. Thus, anger or other violent emotions may cause emphatic utterance, in which, e.g., stops may be much more strongly aspirated than they are in usual quiet parlance; even French, which has normally unaspirated (‘sharp’) [t] and [k], under such circumstances may aspirate them strongly--‘_Mais taisez-vous donc!_’ Military commands are characterized by peculiar emphasizings, even in some cases distortions of sounds and words. Pomposity and consequential airs are manifested in the treatment of speech sounds as well as in other gestures. Irony, scoffing, banter, amiable chaffing--each different mood or temper leaves its traces on enunciation. Actors and orators will often use stronger articulations than are strictly necessary to avoid those misunderstandings or that unintelligibility which may ensue from slipshod or indistinct pronunciation.[65] In short, anyone who will take careful note of the way in which people do really talk will find in the most everyday conversation as well as on more solemn occasions the greatest variety of such modifications and deviations from what might be termed ‘normal’ pronunciation; these, however, pass unnoticed under ordinary circumstances, when the attention is directed exclusively to the contents and general purport of the spoken words. A vowel or a consonant will be made a trifle shorter or longer than usual, the lips will open a little too much, an [e] will approach [æ] or [i], the off-glide after a final [t] will sound nearly as [s], the closure of a [d] will be made so loosely that a little air will escape and the sound therefore will be approximately a [ð] or a weak fricative point [r], etc. Most of these modifications are so small that they cannot be represented by letters, even by those of a very exact phonetic alphabet, but they exist all the same, and are by no means insignificant to those who want to understand the real essence of speech and of linguistic change, for life is built up of such minutiæ. The great majority of such alterations are of course made quite unconsciously, but by the side of these we must recognize that there are some individuals who more or less consciously affect a certain mode of enunciation, either from artistic motives, because they think it beautiful, or simply to ‘show off’--and sometimes such pronunciations may set the fashion and be widely imitated (cf. below, p. 292).

Tender emotions may lead to certain lengthenings of sounds. The intensifying effect of lengthening was noticed by A. Gill, Milton’s teacher, in 1621, see Jiriczek’s reprint, p. 48: “Atque vt Hebræi, ad ampliorem vocis alicuius significationem, syllabas adaugent [cf. here below, Ch. XX § 9]; sic nos syllabarum tempora: vt, _grët_ [the diæresis denotes vowel-length] magnus, _grëet_ ingens; _monstrus_ prodigiosum, _mönstrus_ valde prodigiosum, _möönstrus_ prodigiosum adeo vt hominem stupidet.” Cf. also the lengthening in the exclamation _God!_, by novelists sometimes written _Gawd_ or _Gord_. But it is curious that the same emotional lengthening will sometimes affect a consonant (or first part of a diphthong) in a position in which otherwise we always have a short quantity; thus, Danish clergymen, when speaking with unction, will lengthen the [l] of _glæde_ ‘joy,’ which is ridiculed by comic writers through the unphonetic spelling _ge-læde_; and in the same way I find in Kipling (_Stalky_ 119): “We’ll make it a _be-autiful_ house,” and in O. Henry (_Roads of Destiny_ 133): “A regular Paradise Lost for elegance of scenery and _be-yooty_ of geography.” I suppose that the spellings _ber-luddy_ and _bee-luddy_, which I find in recent novels, are meant to indicate the pronunciation [bl·-ʌdi], thus the exact counterpart of the Danish example. An unstressed vowel before the stressed syllable is similarly lengthened in “Dee-lightful couple!” (Shaw, _Doctor’s Dilemma_ 41); American girl students will often say ['di·liʃ] for _delicious_.

XV.--§ 2. Euphony.

It was not uncommon in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to ascribe phonetic changes to a desire for euphony, a view which is represented in Bopp’s earliest works. But as early as 1821 Bredsdorff says that “people will always find that euphonious which they are accustomed to hear: considerations of euphony consequently will not cause changes in a language, but rather make for keeping it unchanged. Those changes which are generally supposed to be based on euphony are due chiefly to convenience, in some instances to care of distinctness.” This is quite true, but scarcely the whole truth. Euphony depends not only on custom, but even more on ease of articulation and on ease of perception: what requires intricate or difficult movements of the organs of speech will always be felt as cacophonous, and so will anything that is indistinct or blurred. But nations, as well as individuals, have an artistic feeling for these things in different degrees, and that may influence the phonetic character of a language, though perhaps chiefly in its broad features, while it may be difficult to point out any particular details in phonological history which have been thus worked upon. There can be no doubt that the artistic feeling is much more developed in the French than in the English nation, and we find in French fewer obscure vowels and more clearly articulated consonants than in English (cf. also my remarks on French accent, GS § 28).

XV.--§ 3. Organic Influences.

Some modifications of speech sounds are due to the fact that the organs of speech are used for other purposes than that of speaking. We all know the effect of someone trying to speak with his mouth full of food, or with a cigar or a pipe hanging between his lips and to some extent impeding their action. Various emotions are expressed by facial movements which may interfere with the production of ordinary speech sounds. A child that is crying speaks differently from one that is smiling or laughing. A smile requires a retraction of the corners of the mouth and a partial opening of the lips, and thus impedes the formation of that lip-closure which is an essential part of the ordinary [m]; hence most people when smiling will substitute the labiodental _m_, which to the ear greatly resembles the bilabial [m]. A smile will also often modify the front-round vowel [y] so as to make it approach [i]. Sweet may be right in supposing that “the habit of speaking with a constant smile or grin” is the reason for the Cockney unrounding of the vowel in [nau] for _no_. Schuchardt (_Zs. f. rom. Phil._ 5. 314) says that in Andalusian _quia!_ instead of _ca!_ the lips, under the influence of a certain emotion, are drawn scoffingly aside. Inversely, the rounding in _Josu!_ instead of _Jesu!_ is due to wonder (ib.); and exactly in the same way we have the surprised or pitying exclamation _jøses!_ from _Jesus_ in Danish. Compare also the rounding in Dan. and G. [nø·] for [ne·, nɛ·] (_nej_, _nein_). Lundell mentions that in Swedish a caressing _lilla vän_ often becomes _lylla vön_, and I have often observed the same rounding in Dan. _min lille ven_. Schuchardt also mentions an Italian [ʃ] instead of [s] under the influence of pain or anger (_mi duole la teʃta_; _ti do uno ʃchiaffo_); a Danish parallel is the frequent [ʃluð’ər] for _sludder_ ‘nonsense.’ We are here verging on the subject of the symbolic value of speech sounds, which will occupy us in a later chapter (XX).

Observe, too, how people will pronounce under the influence of alcohol: the tongue is not under control and is incapable of accurately forming the closure necessary for [t], which therefore becomes [r], and the thin rill necessary for [s], which therefore comes to resemble [ʃ]; there is also a general tendency to run sounds and syllables together.[66]

XV.--§ 4. Lapses and Blendings.

All these deviations are due to influences from what is outside the sphere of language as such. But we now come to something of the greatest importance in the life of language, the fact, namely, that deviations from the usual or normal pronunciation are very often due to causes inside the language itself, either by lingering reminiscences of what has just been spoken or by anticipation of something that the speaker is just on the point of pronouncing. The process of speech is a very complicated one, and while one thing is being said, the mind is continually active in preparing what has to be said next, arranging the ideas and fashioning the linguistic expression in all its details. Each word is a succession of sounds, and for each of these a complicated set of orders has to be issued from the brain to the various speech organs. Sometimes these get mixed up, and a command is sent down to one organ a moment too early or too late. The inclination to make mistakes naturally increases with the number of identical or similar sounds in close proximity. This is well known from those ‘jaw-breaking’ tongue-tests with which people amuse themselves in all countries and of which I need give only one typical specimen:

She sells seashells on the seashore, The shells she sells are seashells, I’m sure, For if she sells seashells on the seashore, Then I’m sure she sells seashore shells.

If the mind is occupied with one sound while another is being pronounced, and thus either runs in advance of or lags behind what should be its immediate business, the linguistic result may be of various kinds. The simplest case of influencing is assimilation of two contiguous sounds, which we have already considered from a different point of view. Next we have assimilative influence on a sound at a distance, as when we lapse into _she shells_ instead of _sea shells_ or _she sells_; such is Fr. _chercher_ for older _sercher_ (whence E. _search_) from Lat. _circare_, Dan. and G. vulgar _ʃerʃant_ for _sergeant_; a curious mixed case is the pronunciation of _transition_ as [træn'siʒən]: the normal development is [træn'ziʃən], but the voice-articulation of the two hissing sounds is reversed (possibly under accessory influence from the numerous words in which we have [træns] with [s], and from words ending in [iʒən], such as _vision_, _division_). Further examples of such assimilation at a distance or consonant-harmonization (_malmsey_ from _malvesie_, etc.) may be found in my LPh 11. 7, where there are also examples of the corresponding harmonizings of vowels: Fr. _camarade_, It. _uguale_, _Braganza_, from _camerade_, _eguale_, _Brigantia_, etc. In Ugro-Finnic and Turkish this harmony of vowels has been raised to a principle pervading the whole structure of the language, as seen, e.g., most clearly in the varying plural endings in Yakut _agalar_, _äsälär_, _ogolor_, _dörölör_, ‘fathers, bears, children, muzzles.’

What escapes at the wrong place and causes confusion may be a part of the same word or of a following word; as examples of the latter case may be given a few of the lapses recorded in Meringer and Mayer’s _Versprechen und Verlesen_ (Stuttgart, 1895): instead of saying _Lateinisches lehnwort_ Meringer said _Latenisches ..._ and then corrected himself; _paster noster_ instead of _pater noster_; _wenn das wesser ... wetter wieder besser ist_. This phenomenon is termed in Danish _at bakke snagvendt_ (for _snakke bagvendt_) and in English _Spoonerism_, from an Oxford don, W. A. Spooner, about whom many comic lapses are related (“Don’t you ever feel a half-warmed fish” instead of “half-formed wish”).

The simplest and most frequently occurring cases in which the order for a sound is issued too early or too late are those transpositions of two sounds which the linguists term ‘metatheses.’ They occur most frequently with _s_ in connexion with a stop (_wasp_, _waps_; _ask_, _ax_) and with _r_ (chiefly, perhaps exclusively, the trilled form of the sound) and a vowel (_third_, OE. _þridda_). A more complicated instance is seen in Fr. _trésor_ for _tésor_, _thesaurum_. If the mind does not realize how far the vocal organs have got, the result may be the skipping of some sound or sounds; this is particularly likely to happen when the same sound has to be repeated at some little distance, and we then have the phenomenon termed ‘haplology,’ as in _eighteen_, OE. _eahtatiene_, and in the frequent pronunciation _probly_ for _probably_, Fr. _contrôle_, _idolatrie_ for _contrerôle_, _idololatrie_, Lat. _stipendium_ for _stipipendium_, and numerous similar instances in every language (LPh 11. 9). Sometimes a sound may be skipped because the mind is confused through the fact that the same sound has to be pronounced a little later; thus the old Gothonic word for ‘bird’ (G. _vogel_, OE. _fugol_; E. _fowl_ with a modified meaning) is derived from the verb _fly_, OE. _fleogan_, and originally had some form like *_fluglo_ (OE. had an adj. _flugol_); in recent times _flugelman_ (G. flügelmann) has become _fugleman_. It. has _Federigo_ for _Frederigo_--thus the exactly opposite result of what has been brought about in _trésor_ from the same kind of mental confusion.

When words are often repeated in succession, sounds from one of them will often creep into another, as is seen very often in numerals: the nasal which was found in the old forms for 7, 9 and 10 and is still seen in E. _seven_, _nine_, _ten_, has no place in the word for 8, and accordingly we have in the ordinal ON. _sjaundi_, _átti_, _níundi_, _tíundi_, but already in ON. we find _áttandi_ by the side of _átti_, and in Dan. the present-day forms are _syvende_, _ottende_, _niende_, _tiende_; in the same way OFr. had _sedme_, _uidme_, _noefme_, _disme_ (which have all now disappeared with the exception of _dîme_ as a substantive). In the names of the months we had the same formation of a series in OFr.: _septembre_, _octembre_, _novembre_, _decembre_, but learned influence has reinstated _octobre_. G. _elf_ for older _eilf_ owes its vowel to the following _zwelf_; and as now the latter has given way to _zwölf_ (the vowel being rounded in consequence of the _w_) many dialects count _zehn_, _ölf_, _zwölf_. Similarly, it seems to be due to their frequent occurrence in close contact with the verbal forms in _-no_ that the Italian plural pronouns _egli_, _elle_ are extended with that ending: _eglino amano_, _elleno dicono_. Diez compares the curious Bavarian _wo-st bist_, _dem-st gehörst_, etc., in which the personal ending of the verb is transferred to some other word with which it has nothing to do (on this phenomenon see Herzog, _Streitfragen d. roman. phil._ 48, Buergel Goodwin, _Umgangsspr. in Südbayern_ 99).

In speaking, the mind is occupied not only with the words one is already pronouncing or knows that one is going to pronounce, but also with the ideas which one has to express but for which one has not yet chosen the linguistic form. In many cases two synonyms will rise to the consciousness at the same time, and the hesitation between them will often result in a compromise which contains the head of one and the tail of another word. It is evident that this process of blending is intimately related to those we have just been considering; see the detailed treatment in Ch. XVI § 6.

Syntactical blends are very frequent. Hesitation between _different from_ and _other than_ will result in _different than_ or _another from_, and similarly we occasionally find _another to_, _different to_, _contrary than_, _contrary from_, _opposite from_, _anywhere than_. After a clause introduced by _hardly_ or _scarcely_ the normal conjunction is _when_, but sometimes we find _than_, because that is regular after the synonymous _no sooner_.

XV.--§ 5. Latitude of Correctness.

It is a natural consequence of the essence of human speech and the way in which it is transmitted from generation to generation that we have everywhere to recognize a certain latitude of correctness, alike in the significations in which the words may be used, in syntax and in pronunciation. The nearer a speaker keeps to the centre of what is established or usual, the easier will it be to understand him. If he is ‘eccentric’ on one point or another, the result may not always be that he conveys no idea at all, or that he is misunderstood, but often merely that he is understood with some little difficulty, or that his hearers have a momentary feeling of something odd in his choice of words, or expressions or pronunciation. In many cases, when someone has overstepped the boundaries of what is established, his hearers do not at once catch his meaning and have to gather it from the whole context of what follows: not unfrequently the meaning of something you have heard as an incomprehensible string of syllables will suddenly flash upon you without your knowing how it has happened. Misunderstandings are, of course, most liable to occur if words of different meaning, which in themselves would give sense in the same collocation, are similar in sound: in that case a trifling alteration of one sound, which in other words would create no difficulty at all, may prove pernicious. Now, what is the bearing of these considerations on the question of sound changes?

The latitude of correctness is very far from being the same in different languages. Some sounds in each language move within narrow boundaries, while others have a much larger field assigned to them; each language is punctilious in some, but not in all points. Deviations which in one language would be considered trifling, in another would be intolerable perversions. In German, for instance, a wide margin is allowed for the (local and individual) pronunciation of the diphthong written _eu_ or _äu_ (in _eule_, _träume_): it may begin with [ɔ] or [œ] or even [æ, a], and it may end in [i], or the corresponding rounded vowel [y], or one of the mid front vowels, rounded or not, it does not matter much; the diphthong is recognized or acknowledged in many shapes, while the similar diphthong in English, as in _toy_, _voice_, allows a far less range of variation (for other examples see LPh 16. 22).

Now, it is very important to keep in mind that there is an intimate connexion between phonetic latitude and the significations of words. If there are in a language a great many pairs of words which are identical in sound except for, say, the difference between [e·] and [i·] (or between long and short [i], or between voiced [b] and voiceless [p], or between a high and a low tone, etc.), then the speakers of that language necessarily will make that distinction with great precision, as otherwise too many misunderstandings would result. If, on the other hand, no mistakes worth speaking of would ensue, there is not the same inducement to be careful. In English, and to a somewhat lesser degree in French, it is easy to make up long lists of pairs of words where the sole difference is between voice and voicelessness in the final consonant (_cab_ _cap_, _bad_ _bat_, _frog_ _frock_, etc.); hence final [b] and [p], [d] and [t], [g] and [k] are kept apart conscientiously, while German possesses very few such pairs of words; in German, consequently, the natural tendency to make final consonants voiceless has not been checked, and all final stopped consonants have now become voiceless. In initial and medial position, too, there are very few examples in German of the same distinction (see the lists, LPh 6. 78), and this circumstance makes us understand why Germans are so apt to efface the difference between [b, d, g] and [p, t, k]. On the other hand, the distinction between a long and a short vowel is kept much more effectively in German than in French, because in German ten or twenty times as many words would be liable to confusion through pronouncing a long instead of a short vowel or vice versa. In French no two words are kept apart by means of stress, as in English or German; so the rule laid down in grammars that the stress falls on the final syllable of the word is very frequently broken through for rhythmic and other reasons. Other similar instances might easily be advanced.

XV.--§ 6. Equidistant and Convergent Changes.

Phonetic shifts are of two kinds: the shifted sound may be identical with one already found in the language, or it may be a new sound. In the former, but not in the latter kind, fresh possibilities of confusions and misunderstandings may arise. Now, in some cases one sound (or series of sounds) marches into a position which has just been abandoned by another sound (or series of sounds), which has in its turn shifted into some other place. A notable instance is the old Gothonic consonant shift: Aryan _b_, _d_, _g_ cannot have become Gothonic _p_, _t_, _k_ till after primitive _p_, _t_, _k_ had already become fricatives [f, þ, x (h)], for had the shift taken place before, intolerable confusion would have reigned in all parts of the vocabulary. Another instructive example is seen in the history of English long vowels. Not till OE. long _a_ had been rounded into something like [ɔ·] (OE. _stan_, ME. _stoon_, _stone_) could a new long _a_ develop, chiefly through lengthening of an old short _a_ in certain positions. Somewhat later we witness the great vowel-raising through which the phonetic value of the long vowels (written all the time in essentially the same way) has been constantly on the move and yet the distance between them has been kept, so that no confusions worth speaking of have ever occurred. If we here leave out of account the rounded back vowels and speak only of front vowels, the shift may be thus represented through typical examples (the first and the last columns show the spelling, the others the sounds):

Middle English. Elizabethan. Present English. (1) _bite_ bi·tə beit bait _bite_ (2) _bete_ be·tə bi·t bi·t _beet_ (3) _bete_ bɛ·tə be·t bi·t _beat_ (4) _abate_ a'ba·tə ə'bæ·t ə'beit _abate_

When the sound of (2) was raised into [i·], the sound of (1) had already left that position and had been diphthongized, and when the sound of (3) was raised from an open into a close _e_, (2) had already become [i·]; (4) could not become [æ·] or [ɛ·] till (3) had become a comparatively close _e_ sound. The four vowels, as it were, climbed the ladder without ever reaching each other--a climbing which took centuries and in each case implied intermediate steps not indicated in our survey. No clashings could occur so long as each category kept its distance from the sounds above and below, and thus we find that the Elizabethans as scrupulously as Chaucer kept the four classes of words apart in their rimes. But in the seventeenth century class (3) was raised, and as no corresponding change had taken place with (2), the two classes have now fallen together with the single sound [i·]. This entails a certain number of homophones such as had not been created through the preceding equidistant changes.

XV.--§ 7. Homophones.

The reader here will naturally object that the fact of new homophones arising through this vowel change goes against the theory that the necessity of certain distinctions can keep in check the tendency to phonetic changes. But homophones do not always imply frequent misunderstandings: some homophones are more harmless than others. Now, if we look at the list of the homophones created by this raising of the close _e_ (MEG i. 11. 74), we shall soon discover that very few mistakes of any consequence could arise through the obliteration of the distinction between this vowel and the previously existing [i·]. For substantives and verbal forms (like _bean_ and _been_, _beet_ _beat_, _flea_ _flee_, _heel_ _heal_, _leek_ _leak_, _meat_ _meet_, _reed_ _read_, _sea_ _see_, _seam_ _seem_, _steel_ _steal_), or substantives and adjectives (like _deer_ _dear_, _leaf_ _lief_, _shear_ _sheer_, _week_ _weak_) will generally be easily distinguished by their position in the sentence; nor will a plural such as _feet_ be often mistaken for the singular _feat_. Actual misunderstandings of any importance are only imaginable when the two words belong to the same ‘part of speech,’ but of such pairs we meet only few: _beach_ _beech_, _breach_ _breech_, _mead_ _meed_, _peace_ _piece_, _peal_ _peel_, _quean_ _queen_, _seal_ _ceil_, _wean_ _ween_, _wheal_ _wheel_. I think the judicious reader will agree with me that confusions due to these words being pronounced in the same way will be few and far between, and one understands that they cannot have been powerful enough to prevent hundreds of other words from having their sound changed. An effective prevention can only be expected when the falling together in sound would seriously impair the understanding of many sentences.

It is, moreover, interesting to note how many of the words which were made identical with others through this change were already rare at the time or have at any rate become obsolete since: this is true of _breech_, _lief_, _meed_, _mete_ (adj.), _quean_, _weal_, _wheal_, _ween_ and perhaps a few others. Now, obsolescence of some words is always found in connexion with such convergent sound changes. In some cases the word had already become rare before the change in sound took place, and then it is obvious that it cannot have offered serious resistance to the change that was setting in. In other cases the dying out of a word must be looked upon as a consequence of the sound change which had actually taken place. Many scholars are now inclined to see in phonetic coalescence one of the chief reasons why words fall into disuse, see, e.g., Liebisch (PBB XXIII, 228, many German examples in O. Weise, _Unsere Mutterspr._, 3d ed., 206) and Gilliéron, _La faillite de l’étymologie phonétique_ (Neuveville, 1919--a book whose sensational title is hardly justified by its contents).

The drawbacks of homophones[67] are counteracted in various ways. Very often a synonym steps forward, as when _lad_ or _boy_ is used in nearly all English dialects to supplant _son_, which has become identical in sound with _sun_ (cf. above p. 120, a childish instance). Very often it becomes usual to avoid misunderstandings through some addition, as when we say _the sole of her foot_, because _her sole_ might be taken to mean _her soul_, or when the French say _un dé à coudre_ or _un dé à jouer_ (cf. E. _minister of religion_ and _cabinet minister_, the _right-hand_ corner, the _subject-matter_, where the same expedient is used to obviate ambiguities arisen from other causes). Chinese, of course, is the classical example of a language abounding in homophones caused by convergent sound changes, and it is highly interesting to study the various ways in which that language has remedied the resulting drawbacks, see, e.g., B. Karlgren, _Ordet och pennan i Mittens rike_ (Stockholm, 1918), p. 49 ff. But on the whole we must say that the ways in which these phonetic inconveniences are counteracted are the same as those in which speakers react against misunderstandings arising from semantic or syntactic causes: as soon as they perceive that their meaning is not apprehended they turn their phrases in a different way, choosing some other expression for their thought, and by this means language is gradually freed from ambiguity.

XV.--§ 8. Significative Sounds preserved.

My contention that the significative side of language has in so far exercised an influence on phonetic development that the possibility of many misunderstandings may effectually check the coalescence of two hitherto distinct sounds should not be identified with one of the tenets of the older school (Curtius included) against which the ‘young grammarians’ raised an emphatic protest, namely, that a tendency to preserve significative sounds and syllables might produce exceptions to the normal course of phonetic change. Delbrück and his friends may be right in much of what they said against Curtius--for instance, when he explained the retention of _i_ in some Greek optative forms through a consciousness of the _original_ meaning of this suffix; but their denial was in its way just as exaggerated as his affirmation. It cannot justly be urged against the influence of signification that a preservation of a sound on that account would only be imaginable on the supposition that the speaker was conscious of a threatened sound change and wanted to avoid it. One need not suppose a speaker to be on his guard against a ‘sound law’: the only thing required is that he should feel, or be made to feel, that he is not understood when he speaks indistinctly; if on that account he has to repeat his words he will naturally be careful to pronounce the sound he has skipped or slurred, and may even be tempted to exaggerate it a little.

There do not seem to be many quite unimpeachable examples of words which have received exceptional phonetic treatment to obviate misunderstandings arising from homophony; other explanations (analogy from other forms of the same word, etc.) can generally be alleged more or less plausibly. But this does seem to be the easiest explanation of the fact that the E. preposition _on_ has always the full vowel [ɔ], though in nine cases out of ten it is weakly stressed and though all the other analogous prepositions (_to_, _for_, _of_, _at_) in the corresponding weak positions in sentences are generally pronounced with the ‘neutral’ vowel [ə]. But if _on_ were similarly pronounced, ambiguity would very often result from its phonetic identity with the weak forms of the extremely frequent little words _an_ (the indefinite article) and _and_ (possibly also _in_), not to mention the great number of [ən]s in words like _drunken_, _shaken_, _deepen_, etc., where the forms without _-en_ also exist. With the preposition _upon_ the same considerations do not hold good, hence the frequency of the pronunciation [əpən] in weak position. Considerations of clearness have also led to the disuse of the formerly frequent form _o_ (_o’_) which was the ‘natural’ development of each of the two prepositions _on_ and _of_. The form written _a_ survives only in some fossilized combinations like _ashore_; in several others it has now disappeared (_set the clock going_, formerly _a-going_, etc.).

Sometimes, when all ordinary words are affected by a certain sound change, some words prove refractory because in their case the old sound is found to be more expressive than the new one. When the long E. [i·] was diphthongized into [ai], the words _pipe_ and _whine_ ceased to be good echoisms, but some dialects have _peep_ ‘complain,’ which keeps the old sound of the former, and the Irish say _wheen_ (Joyce, _English as we speak it in Ireland_, 103). In _squeeze_ the [i·] sound has been retained as more expressive--the earlier form was _squize_; and the same is the case with some words meaning ‘to look narrowly’: _peer_, _peek_, _keek_, earlier _pire_, _pike_, _kike_ (cf. Dan. _pippe_, _kikke_, _kige_, G. _kieken_).[68] In the same way, when the old [a·] was changed into [ɛ·, ei], the word _gape_ ceased to be expressive (as it is still in Dan. _gabe_), but in popular speech the tendency to raise the vowel was resisted, and the old sound [ga·p] persisted, spelt _garp_ as a London form in 1817 (Ellis, EEP v. 228) and still common in many dialects (see _gaup_, _garp_ in EDD); Professor Hempl told me that [ga·p] was also a common pronunciation in America. In the chapter on Sound Symbolism (XX) we shall see some other instances of exceptional phonetic treatment of symbolic words (especially _tiny_, _teeny_, _little_, _cuckoo_).

XV.--§ 9. Divergent Changes and Analogy.

Besides equidistant and convergent sound changes we have divergent changes, through which sounds at one time identical have separated themselves later. This is a mere consequence of the fact that it is rare for a sound to be changed equally in all positions in which it occurs. On the contrary, one must admit that the vast majority of sound changes are conditioned by some such circumstance as influence of neighbouring sounds, position as initial, medial or final (often with subdivisions, as position between vowels, etc.), place in a strongly or weakly stressed syllable, and so forth. One may take as examples some familiar instances from French: Latin _c_ (pronounced [k]), is variously treated before _o_ (_corpus_ > _corps_), _a_ (_canem_ > _chien_), and _e_ (_centum_ > _cent_); in _amicum_ > _ami_ it has totally disappeared. Lat. _a_ becomes _e_ in a stressed open syllable (_natum_ > _né_), except before a nasal (_amat_ > _aime_); but after _c_ we have a different treatment (_canem_ > _chien_), and in a close syllable it is kept (_arborem_ > _arbre_); in weak syllables it is kept initially (_amorem_ > _amour_), but becomes [ə] (spelt _e_) finally (_bona_ > _bonne_). This enumeration of the chief rules will serve to show the far-reaching differentiation which in this way may take place among words closely related as parts of the same paradigm or family of words; thus, for Lat. _amo_, _amas_, _amat_, _amamus_, _amatis_, _amant_ we get OFr. _aim_, _aimes_, _aime_, _amons_, _amez_, _aiment_, until the discrepancy is removed through analogy, and we get the regular modern forms _aime_, _aimes_, _aime_, _aimons_, _aimez_, _aiment_. The levelling tendency, however, is not strong enough to affect the initial _a_ in _amour_ and _amant_, which are felt as less closely connected with the verbal forms. What were at first only small differences may in course of time become greater through subsequent changes, as when the difference between _feel_ and _felt_, _keep_ and _kept_, etc., which was originally one of length only, became one of vowel quality as well, through the raising of long [e·] to [i·], while short [e] was not raised. And thus in many other cases. Different nations differ greatly in the degree in which they permit differentiation of cognate words; most nations resent any differentiation in initial sounds, while the Kelts have no objection to ‘the same word’ having as many as four different beginnings (for instance _t-_, _d-_, _n-_, _nh-_) according to circumstances. In Icelandic the word for ‘other, second’ has for centuries in different cases assumed such different forms as _annarr_, _önnur_, _öðrum_, _aðrir_, forms which in the other Scandinavian languages have been levelled down.

It is a natural consequence of the manner in which phonology is usually investigated and represented in manuals of historical grammar--which start with some old stage and follow the various changes of each sound in later stages--that these divergent changes have attracted nearly the sole attention of scholars; this has led to the prevalent idea that sound laws and analogy are the two opposed principles in the life of languages, the former tending always to destroy regularity and harmony, and the latter reconstructing what would without it be chaos and confusion.[69]

This view, however, is too rigorous and does not take into account the manysidedness of linguistic life. It is not every irregularity that is due to the operation of phonetic laws, as we have in all languages many survivals of the confused manner in which ideas were arranged and expressed in the mind of primitive man. On the other hand, there are many phonetic changes which do not increase the number of existing irregularities, but make for regularity and a simpler system through abolishing phonetic distinctions which had no semantic or functional value; such are, for instance, those convergent changes of unstressed vowels which have simplified the English flexional system (Ch. XIV § 10 above). And if we were in the habit of looking at linguistic change from the other end, tracing present sounds back to former sounds instead of beginning with antiquity, we should see that convergent changes are just as frequent as divergent ones. Indeed, many changes may be counted under both heads; an _a_, which is dissociated from other _a_’s through becoming _e_, is identified with and from henceforth shares the destiny of other _e_’s, etc.

XV.--§ 10. Extension of Sound Laws.

If a phonetic change has given to some words two forms without any difference in signification, the same alternation may be extended to other cases in which the sound in question has a different origin (‘phonetic analogy’). An undoubted instance is the unhistoric _r_ in recent English. When the consonantal [r] was dropped finally and before a consonant while it was retained before a vowel, and words like _better_, _here_ thus came to have two forms [betə, hiə] and [betər (ɔf), hiər (ən ðɛ·ə)] _better off_, _here and there_, the same alternation was transferred to words like _idea_, _drama_ [ai'diə, dra·mə], so that the sound [r] is now very frequently inserted before a word beginning with a vowel: _I’d no idea_-r-_of this_, _a drama_-r-_of Ibsen_ (many references MEG i. 13. 42). In French final _t_ and _s_ have become mute, but are retained before a vowel: _il est_ [ɛ] _venu_, _il est_ [ɛt] _arrivé_; _les_ [le] _femmes_, _les_ [lez] _hommes_; and now vulgar speakers will insert [t] or [z] in the wrong place between vowels: _pa-t assez_, _j’allai-t écrire_, _avant-z-hier_, _moi-z-aussi_; this is called ‘cuir’ or ‘velours.’

In course of time a ‘phonetic law’ may undergo a kind of metamorphosis, being extended to a greater and greater number of combinations. As regards recent times we are sometimes able to trace such a gradual development. A case in point is the dropping of [j] in [ju·] after certain consonants in English (see MEG i. 13, 7). It began with _r_ as in _true_, _rude_; next came _l_ when preceded by a consonant, as in _blue_, _clue_; in these cases [j] is never heard. But after _l_ not preceded by another consonant there is a good deal of vacillation, thus in _Lucy_, _absolute_; after [s, z] as in _Susan_, _resume_ there is a strong tendency to suppress [j], though this pronunciation has not yet prevailed,[70] and after [t, d, n], as in _tune_, _due_, _new_, the suppression is in Britain only found in vulgar speakers, while in some parts of the United States it is heard from educated speakers as well. In the speech of these the sound law may be said to attack any [ju·] after any point consonant, while it will have to be formulated in various less comprehensive terms for British speakers belonging to older or younger generations. It is extremely difficult, not to say impossible, to reconcile such occurrences with the orthodox ‘young grammarian’ theory of sound changes being due to a shifting of the organic feeling or motor sensation (verschiebung des bewegungsgefühls) which is supposed to have necessarily taken place wherever the same sound was under the same phonetic conditions. For what are here the same phonetic conditions? The position after _r_, after _l_ combinations, after _l_ even when standing alone, after all point consonants? Each generation of English speakers will give a different answer to this question. Now, it is highly probable that many of the comprehensive prehistoric sound changes, of which we see only the final result, while possible intermediate stages evade our inquiry, have begun in the same modest way as the transition from [ju·] to [u·] in English: with regard to them we are in exactly the same position as a man who had heard only such speakers as say consistently [tru·, ru·d, blu·, lu·si, su·zn, ri'zu·m, tu·n, du·, nu·] and who would then naturally suppose that [j] in the combination [ju·] had been dropped all at once after any point consonant.

XV.--§ 11. Spreading of Sound Change.

Sound laws (to retain provisionally that firmly established term) have by some linguists, who rightly reject the comparison with natural laws (e.g. Meringer), been compared rather with the ‘laws’ of fashion in dress. But I think it is important to make a distinction here: the comparison with fashions throws no light whatever on the question how sound changes _originate_--it can tell us nothing about the first impulse to drop [j] in certain positions before [u·]; but the comparison is valid when we come to consider the question how such a change when first begun in one individual _spreads to other individuals_. While the former question has been dealt with at some length in the preceding investigation, it now remains for us to say something about the latter. The spreading of phonetic change, as of any other linguistic change, is due to imitation, conscious and unconscious, of the speech habits of other people. We have already met with imitation in the chapters dealing with the child and with the influence exerted by foreign languages. But man is apt to imitate throughout the whole of his life, and this statement applies to his language as much as to his other habits. What he imitates, in this as in other fields, is not always the best; a real valuation of what would be linguistically good or preferable does not of course enter the head of the ‘man in the street.’ But he may imitate what he thinks pretty, or funny, and especially what he thinks characteristic of those people whom for some reason or other he looks up to. Imitation is essentially a social phenomenon, and if people do not always imitate the best (the best thing, the best pronunciation), they will generally imitate ‘their betters,’ i.e. those that are superior to them--in rank, in social position, in wealth, in everything that is thought enviable. What constitutes this superiority cannot be stated once for all; it varies according to surroundings, age, etc. A schoolboy may feel tempted to imitate a rough, swaggering boy a year or two older than himself rather than his teachers or parents, and in later life he may find other people worthy of imitation, according to his occupation or profession or individual taste. But when he does imitate he is apt to imitate everything, even sometimes things that are not worth imitating. In this way Percy, in _Henry IV, Second Part_, II. 3. 24--

was indeed the glasse Wherein the noble youth did dresse themselues. He had no legges, that practic’d not his gate, And _speaking thicke[71] (which Nature made his blemish) Became the accents of the valiant. For those that could speake low and tardily, Would turne their owne perfection to abusee, To seeme like him. So that in speech_, in gate ... He was the marke, and glasse, coppy, and booke, That fashion’d others.

The spreading of a new pronunciation through imitation must necessarily take some time, though the process may in some instances be fairly rapid. In some historical instances we are able to see how a new sound, taking its rise in some particular part of a country, spreads gradually like a wave, until finally it has pervaded the whole of a linguistic area. It cannot become universal all at once; but it is evident that the more natural a new mode of pronunciation seems to members of a particular speech community, the more readily will it be accepted and the more rapid will be its diffusion. Very often, both when the new pronunciation is easier and when there are special psychological inducements operating in one definite direction, the new form may originate independently in different individuals, and that of course will facilitate its acceptation by others. But as a rule a new pronunciation does not become general except after many attempts: it may have arisen many times and have died out again, until finally it finds a fertile soil in which to take firm root. It may not be superfluous to utter a warning against a fallacy which is found now and then in linguistic works: when some Danish or English document, say, of the fifteenth century contains a spelling indicative of a pronunciation which we should call ‘modern,’ it is hastily concluded that people in those days spoke in that respect exactly as they do now, whatever the usual spelling and the testimony of much later grammarians may indicate to the contrary. But this is far from certain. The more isolated such a spelling is, the greater is the probability that it shows nothing but an individual or even momentary deviation from what was then the common pronunciation--the first swallow ‘who found with horror that he’d not brought spring.’

XV.--§ 12. Reaction.

Even those who have no linguistic training will have some apperception of sounds as such, and will notice regular correspondences, and even occasionally exaggerate them, thereby producing those ‘hypercorrect’ forms which are of specially frequent occurrence when dialect speakers try to use the ‘received standard’ of their country. The psychology of this process is well brought out by B. I. Wheeler, who relates (_Transact. Am. Philol. Ass._ 32. 14, 1901; I change his symbols into my own phonetic notation): “In my own native dialect I pronounced _new_ as [nu·]. I have found myself in later years inclined to say [nju·], especially when speaking carefully and particularly in public; so also [tju·zdi] _Tuesday_. There has developed itself in connexion with these and other words a dual sound-image [u·:ju·] of such validity that whenever [u·] is to be formed after a dental [alveolar] explosive or nasal, the alternative [ju·] is likely to present itself and create the effect of momentary uncertainty. Less frequently than in _new_, _Tuesday_, the [j] intrudes itself in _tune_, _duty_, _due_, _dew_, _tumour_, _tube_, _tutor_, etc.; but under special provocation I am liable to use it in any of these, and have even caught myself, when in a mood of uttermost precision, passing beyond the bounds of the imitative adoption of the new sound into self-annexed territory, and creating [dju·] _do_ and [tju·] _two_.” One more instance from America may be given: “In the dialect of Missouri and the neighbouring States, final _a_ in such words as _America_, _Arizona_, _Nevada_ becomes _y_--_Americy_, _Arizony_, _Nevady_. All educated people in that region carefully correct this vulgarism out of their speech; and many of them carry the correction too far and say _Missoura_, _praira_, etc.” (Sturtevant, LCH 79). Similarly, many Irish people, noticing that refined English has [i·] in many cases where they have [e·] (_tea_, _sea_, _please_, etc.) adopt [i·] in these words, and transfer it erroneously to words like _great_, _pear_, _bear_, etc. (MEG i. 11. 73); they may also, when correcting their own _ar_ into _er_, in such words as _learn_, go too far and speak of _derning_ a stocking (Joyce, _English as we speak it in Ireland_, 93). Cf. from England such forms as _ruing_, _certing_, for _ruin_, _certain_.

From Germany I may mention that Low German speakers desiring to talk High German are apt to say _zeller_ instead of _teller_, because High German in many words has _z_ for their _t_ (_zahl_, _zahm_, etc.), and that those who in their native speech have _j_ for _g_ (Berlin, etc., _eine jute jebratene jans ist eine jute jabe jottes_) will sometimes, when trying to talk correctly, say _getzt_, _gahr_ for _jetzt_, _jahr_.[72]

It will be easily seen that such hypercorrect forms are closely related to those ‘spelling pronunciations’ which become frequent when there is much reading of a language whose spelling is not accurately phonetic; the nineteenth century saw a great number of them, and their number is likely to increase in this century--especially among social upstarts, who are always fond of showing off their new-gained superiority in this and similar ways. But they need not detain us here, as being really foreign to our subject, the natural development of speech sounds. I only wish to point out that many forms which are apparently due to influence from spelling may not have their origin _exclusively_ from that source, but may be genuine archaic forms that have been preserved through purely oral tradition by the side of more worn-down forms of the same word. For it must be admitted that two or three forms of the same word may coexist and be used according to the more or less solemn style of utterance employed. Even among savages, who are unacquainted with the art of writing, we are told that archaic forms of speech are often kept up and remembered as parts of old songs only, or as belonging to solemn rites, cults, etc.

XV.--§ 13. Sound Laws and Etymological Science.

In this and the preceding chapter I have tried to pass in review the various circumstances which make for changes in the phonetic structure of languages. My treatment is far from exhaustive and may have other defects; but I want to point out the fact that nowhere have I found any reason to accept the theory that sound changes always take place according to rigorous or ‘blind’ laws admitting no exceptions. On the contrary, I have found many indications that complete consistency is no more to be expected from human beings in pronunciation than in any other sphere.

It is very often said that if sound laws admitted of exceptions there would be no possibility of a science of etymology. Thus Curtius wrote as early as 1858 (as quoted by Oertel 259): “If the history of language really showed such sporadic aberrations, such pathological, wholly irrational phonetic malformations, we should have to give up all etymologizing. For only that which is governed by law and reducible to a coherent system can form the object of scientific investigation; whatever is due to chance may at best be guessed at, but will never yield to scientific inference.” In his practice, however, Curtius was not so strict as his followers. Leskien, one of the recognized leaders of the ‘young grammarians,’ says (_Deklination_, xxvii): “If exceptions are admitted at will (abweichungen), it amounts to declaring that the object of examination, language, is inaccessible to scientific comprehension.” Since then, it has been repeated over and over again that without strict adherence to phonetic laws etymological science is a sheer impossibility, and sometimes those who have doubted the existence of strict laws in phonology have been looked upon as obscurantists adverse to a scientific treatment of language in general, although, of course, they did not believe that everything is left to chance or that they were free to put forward purely arbitrary exceptions.

There are, however, many instances in which it is hardly possible to deny etymological connexion, though ‘the phonetic laws are not observed.’ Is not Gothic _azgo_ with its voiced consonants evidently ‘the same word’ as E. _ash_, G. _asche_, Dan. _aske_, with their voiceless consonants? G. _neffe_ with short vowel must nevertheless be identical with MHG. _neve_, OHG. _nevo_; E. _pebble_ with OE. _papol_; _rescue_ with ME. _rescowe_; _flagon_ with Fr. _flacon_, though each of these words contains deviations from what we find in other cases. It is hard to keep apart two similar forms for ‘heart,’ one with initial _gh_ in Skt. _hrd_ and Av. _zered-_, and another with initial _k_ in Gr. _kardía_, _kēr_, Lat. _cor_, Goth. _haírto_, etc. The Greek ordinals _hébdomos_, _ógdoos_ have voiced consonants over against the voiceless combinations in _heptá_, _oktṓ_, and yet cannot be separated from them. All this goes to show (and many more cases might be instanced) that there are in every language words so similar in sound and signification that they cannot be separated, though they break the ‘sound laws’: in such cases, where etymologies are too palpable, even the strictest scholars momentarily forget their strictness, maybe with great reluctance and in the secret hope that some day the reason for the deviation may be discovered and the principle thus be maintained.

Instead of exacting strict adherence to sound laws everywhere as the basis of any etymologizing, it seems therefore to be in better agreement with common sense to say: whenever an etymology is not palpably evident, whenever there is some difficulty because the compared words are either too remote in sound or in sense or belong to distant periods of the same language or to remotely related languages, your etymology cannot be reckoned as _proved_ unless you have shown by other strictly parallel cases that the sound in question has been treated in exactly the same way in the same language. This, of course, applies more to old than to modern periods, and we thus see that while in living languages accessible to direct observation we do not find sound laws observed without exceptions, and though we must suppose that, on account of the essential similarity of human psychology, conditions have been the same at all periods, it is not unreasonable, in giving etymologies for words from old periods, to act as if sound changes followed strict laws admitting no exceptions; this is simply a matter of proof, and really amounts to this: where the matter is doubtful, we must require a great degree of probability in that field which allows of the simplest and most easily controllable formulas, namely the phonetic field. For here we have comparatively definite phenomena and are consequently able with relative ease to compute the possibilities of change, while this is infinitely more difficult in the field of significations. The possibilities of semantic change are so manifold that the only thing generally required when the change is not obvious is to show some kind of parallel change, which need not even have taken place in the same language or group of languages, while with regard to sounds the corresponding changes must have occurred in the same language and at the same period in order for the evidence to be sufficient to establish the etymology in question.

It would perhaps be best if linguists entirely gave up the habit of speaking about phonetic ‘laws,’ and instead used some such expression as phonetic formulas or rules. But if we are to keep the word ‘law,’ we may with some justice think of the use of that word in juridical parlance. When we read such phrases as: this assumption is against phonetic laws, or, phonetic laws do not allow us this or that etymology, or, the writer of some book under review is guilty of many transgressions of established phonetic laws, etc., such expressions cannot help suggesting the idea that phonetic laws resemble paragraphs of some criminal law. We may formulate the principle in something like the following way: If in the etymologies you propose you do not observe these rules, if, for instance, you venture to make Gr. _kaléo_ = E. _call_ in spite of the fact that Gr. _k_ in other words corresponds to E. _h_, then you incur the severest punishment of science, your etymology is rejected, and you yourself are put outside the pale of serious students.

In another respect phonetic laws may be compared with what we might call a Darwinian law in zoology, such as this: the fore-limbs of the common ancestor of mammals have developed into flippers in whales and into hands in apes and men. The similarity between both kinds of laws is not inconsiderable. A microscopic examination of whales, even an exact investigation by means of the eye alone, will reveal innumerable little deviations: no two flippers are exactly alike. And in the same way no two persons speak in exactly the same way. But the fact that we cannot in detail account for each of these _nuances_ should not make us doubt that they are developed in a perfectly natural way, in accordance with the great law of causality, nor should we despair of the possibility of scientific treatment, even if some of the flippers and some of the sounds are not exactly what we should expect. A law of fore-limb development can only be deduced through such observation of many flippers as will single out what is typical of whales’ flippers, and then a comparison with the typical fore-limbs of their ancestors or of their congeners among existing mammals. And in the same way we do not find laws of phonetic development until, after leaving what can be examined as it were microscopically, we go on telescopically to examine languages which are far removed from each other in space or time: then small differences disappear, and we discover nothing but the great lines of a regular evolution which is the outcome of an infinite number of small movements in many different directions.

XV.--§ 14. Conclusion.

It has been one of the leading thoughts in the two chapters devoted to the causes of linguistic change that phonetic changes, to be fully understood, should not be isolated from other changes, for in actual linguistic life we witness a constant interplay of sound and sense. Not only should each sound change be always as far as possible seen in connexion with other sound changes going on in the same period in the same language (as in the great vowel-raising in English), but the effects on the speech material as a whole should in each case be investigated, so as to show what homophones (if any) were produced, and what danger they entailed to the understanding of natural sentences. Sounds should never be isolated from the words in which they occur, nor words from sentences. No hard-and-fast boundary can be drawn between phonetic and non-phonetic changes. The psychological motives for both kinds of changes are the same in many cases, and the way in which both kinds spread through imitation is absolutely identical: what was said on this subject above (§ 11) applies without the least qualification to any linguistic change, whether in sounds, in grammatical forms, in syntax, in the signification of words, or in the adoption of new words and dropping of old ones.

We shall here finally very briefly consider something which plays a certain part in the development of language, but which has not been adequately dealt with in what precedes, namely, the desire to play with language. We have already met with the effects of playfulness in one of the chapters devoted to children (p. 148): here we shall see that the same tendency is also powerful in the language of grown-up people, though most among young people. There is a certain exuberance which will not rest contented with traditional expressions, but finds amusement in the creation and propagation of new words and in attaching new meanings to old words: this is the exact opposite of that linguistic poverty which we found was at the bottom of such minimum languages as Pidgin-English. We find it in the wealth of pet-names which lovers have for each other and mothers for their children, in the nicknames of schoolboys and of ‘pals’ of later life, as well as in the perversions of ordinary words which at times become the fashion among small sets of people who are constantly thrown together and have plenty of spare time; cf. also the ‘little language’ of Swift and Stella. Most of these forms of speech have a narrow range and have only an ephemeral existence, but in the world of _slang_ the same tendencies are constantly at work.

Slang words are often confused with vulgarisms, though the two things are really different. The vulgar tongue is a class dialect, and a vulgarism is an element of the normal speech of low-class people, just as ordinary dialect words are elements of the natural speech of peasants in one particular district; slang words, on the other hand, are words used in conscious contrast to the natural or normal speech: they can be found in all classes of society in certain moods, and on certain occasions when a speaker wants to avoid the natural or normal word because he thinks it too flat or uninteresting and wants to achieve a different effect by breaking loose from the ordinary expression. A vulgarism is what will present itself at once to the mind of a person belonging to one particular class; a slang word is something that is wilfully substituted for the first word that will present itself. The distinction will perhaps appear most clearly in the case of grammar: if a man says _them boys_ instead of _those boys_, or _knowed_ instead of _knew_, these are the normal forms of his language, and he knows no better, but the educated man looks down upon these forms as vulgar. Inversely, an educated man may amuse himself now and then by using forms which he perfectly well knows are not the received forms, thus _wunk_ from _wink_, _collode_ from _collide_, _praught_ from _preach_ (on the analogy of _taught_); “We handshook and _candlestuck_, as somebody said, and went to bed” (H. James). But, of course, slang is more productive in the lexical than in the grammatical portion of language. And there is something that makes it difficult in practice always to keep slang and vulgar speech apart, namely, that when a person wants to leave the beaten path of normal language he is not always particular as to the source whence he takes his unusual words, and he may therefore sometimes take a vulgar word and raise it to the dignity of a slang word.

A slang word is at first individual, but may through imitation become fashionable in certain sets; after some time it may either be accepted by everybody as part of the normal language, or else, more frequently, be so hackneyed that no one finds pleasure in using it any longer.

Slang words may first be words from the ordinary language used in a different sense, generally metaphorically. Sometimes we meet with the same figurative expression in the slang of various countries, as when the ‘head’ is termed _the upper story_ (_upper loft_, _upper works_) in English, _øverste etage_ in Danish, and _oberstübchen_ in German; more often different images are chosen in different languages, as when for the same idea we have _nut_ or _chump_ in English and _pære_ (‘pear’) in Danish, _coco_ or _ciboule_ (or _boule_) in French. Slang words of this character may in some instances give rise to expressions the origin of which is totally forgotten. In old slang there is an expression for the tongue, _the red rag_; this is shortened into _the rag_, and I suspect that the verb _to rag_, ‘to scold, rate, talk severely to’ (“of obscure origin,” NED), is simply from this substantive (cf. _to jaw_).

Secondly, slang words may be words of the normal language used in their ordinary signification, but more or less modified in regard to form. Thus we have many shortened forms, _exam_, _quad_, _pub_, for _examination_, _quadrangle_, _public-house_, etc. Not unfrequently the shortening process is combined with an extension, some ending being more or less arbitrarily substituted for the latter part of the word, as when _football_ becomes _footer_, and _Rugby football_ and _Association football_ become _Rugger_ and _Socker_, or when at Cambridge a freshman is called a _fresher_ and a bedmaker a _bedder_.

In schoolboys’ slang (Harrow) there is an ending _-agger_ which may be added instead of the latter part of any word; about 1885 Prince Albert Victor when at Cambridge was nicknamed _the Pragger_; an Agnostic was called a _Nogger_, etc. I strongly suspect that the word _swagger_ is formed in the same way from _swashbuckler_. Another schoolboys’ ending is _-g_: _fog_, _seg_, _lag_, for ‘first, second, last,’ _gag_ at Winchester for ‘gathering’ (a special kind of Latin exercise). Charles Lamb mentions from Christ’s Hospital _crug_ for ‘a quarter of a loaf,’ evidently from _crust_; _sog_ = sovereign, _snag_ = snail (old), _swig_ = swill; words like _fag_, _peg away_, and others are perhaps to be explained from the same tendency. Arnold Bennett in one of his books says of a schoolboy that his vocabulary comprised an extraordinary number of words ending in _gs_: _foggs_, _seggs_, for first, second, etc. It is interesting to note that in French argot there are similar endings added to more or less mutilated words: _-aque_, _-èque_, _-oque_ (Sainéan, _L’Argot ancien_, 1907, 50 and especially 57).

There is also a peculiar class of roundabout expressions in which the speaker avoids the regular word, but hints at it in a covert way by using some other word, generally a proper name, which bears a resemblance to it or is derived from it, really or seemingly. Instead of saying ‘I want to go to bed,’ he will say, ‘I am for Bedfordshire,’ or in German ‘Ich gehe nach Bethlehem’ or ‘nach Bettingen,’ in Danish ‘gå til Slumstrup, Sovstrup, Hvilsted.’ Thus also ‘send a person to Birching-lane,’ i.e. to whip him, ‘he has been at Hammersmith,’ i.e. has been beaten, thrashed; ‘you are on the highway to Needham,’ i.e. on the high-road to poverty, etc. (Cf. my paper on “Punning or Allusive Phrases” in _Nord. Tidsskr. f. Fil._ 3 r. 9. 66.)

The language of poetry is closely related to slang, in so far as both strive to avoid commonplace and everyday expressions. The difference is that where slang looks only for the striking or unexpected expression, and therefore often is merely eccentric or funny (sometimes only would-be comic), poetry looks higher and craves abiding beauty--beauty in thought as well as beauty in form, the latter obtained, among other things, by rhythm, alliteration, rime, and harmonious variety of vowel sounds.

In some countries these forms tend to become stereotyped, and then may to some extent kill the poetic spirit, poetry becoming artificiality instead of art; the later Skaldic poetry may serve as an illustration. Where there is a strong literary tradition--and that may be found even where there is no written literature--veneration for the old literature handed down from one’s ancestors will often lead to a certain fossilization of the literary language, which becomes a shrine of archaic expressions that no one uses naturally or can master without great labour. If this state of things persists for centuries, it results in a cleavage between the spoken and the written language which cannot but have the most disastrous effects on all higher education: the conditions prevailing nowadays in Greece and in Southern India may serve as a warning. Space forbids me more than a bare mention of this topic, which would deserve a much fuller treatment; for details I may refer to K. Krumbacher, _Das Problem der neugriechischen Schriftsprache_, Munich, 1902 (for the other side of the case see G. N. Hatzidakis, _Die Sprachfrage in Griechenland_, Athens, 1905) and G. V. Ramamurti, _A Memorandum on Modern Telugu_, Madras, 1913.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] “His pronunciation of some words is so distinct that an idea crossed me once that he might be an actor” (Shaw, _Cashel Byron’s Profession_, 66).

[66] Dickens, _D. Cop._ 2. 149 neverbe_rr_er, 150 I’mafraid you’reno_r_well (ib. also _r_ for _n_: Amigoa_r_awaysoo, Goo_r_i = Good night). | _Our Mut. Fr._ 602 le_rr_ers. | Thackeray, _Newc._ 163 _Whas_ that? | Anstey, _Vice V._ 328 _sh_upper, I _sh_pose, wha_rr_iplease, say tha_rr_again. | Meredith, _R. Feverel_ 272 No_r_ a bi_r_ of it. | Walpole, _Duch. of Wrex._ 323-4 non_sh_en_sh_, Wa_sh_ the matter? | Galsworthy, _In Chanc._ 17 cur_sh_, un_sh_tood’m. Cf. also Fijn van Draat, ESt 34. 363 ff.

[67] The inconveniences arising from having many homophones in a language are eloquently set forth by Robert Bridges, _On English Homophones_ (S.P.E., Oxford, 1919)--but I would not subscribe to all the Laureate’s views, least of all to his practical suggestions and to his unjustifiable attacks on some very meritorious English phoneticians. He seems also to exaggerate the dangers, e.g. of the two words _know_ and _no_ having the same sound, when he says (p. 22) that unless a vowel like that in _law_ be restored to the negative _no_, “I should judge that the verb _to know_ is doomed. The third person singular of its present tense is _nose_, and its past tense is _new_, and the whole inconvenience is too radical and perpetual to be received all over the world.” But surely the rôle of these words in connected speech is so different, and is nearly always made so clear by the context, that it is very difficult to imagine real sentences in which there would be any serious change of mistaking _know_ for _no_, or _knows_ for _nose_, or _knew_ for _new_. I repeat: it is not homophony as such--the phenomenon shown in the long lists lexicographers can draw up of words of the same sound--that is decisive, but the chances of mistakes in connected speech. It has been disputed whether the loss of Gr. _humeîs_, ‘ye,’ was due to its identity in sound with _hemeîs_, ‘we’; Hatzidakis says that the new formation _eseîs_ is earlier than the falling together of _e_ and _u_ [y] in the sound [i]. But according to Dieterich and C. D. Buck (_Classical Philology_, 9. 90, 1914) the confusion of _u_ and _i_ or _e_ dates back to the second century. Anyhow, all confusion is now obviated, for both the first and the second persons pl. have new forms which are unambiguous: _emeîs_ and _eseîs_ or _seîs_.

[68] The NED has not arrived at this explanation; it says: “_Peer_ is not a phonetic development of _pire_, and cannot, so far as is at present known, be formally identified with that word”; “the verbs _keek_, _peek_, and _peep_ are app. closely allied to each other. _Kike_ and _pike_, as earlier forms of _keek_ and _peek_, occur in Chaucer; _pepe_, _peep_ is of later appearance.... The phonetic relations between the forms _pike_, _peek_, _peak_, are as yet unexplained.”

[69] See, for instance, the following strong expressions: “Une langue est sans cesse rongée et menacée de ruine par l’action des lois phonétiques, qui, livrées à elles-mêmes, opéreraient avec une régularité fatale et désagrégeraient le système grammatical.... Heureusement l’analogie (c’est ainsi qu’on désigne la tendance inconsciente à conserver ou recréer ce que les lois phonétiques menacent ou détruisent) a peu à peu effacé ces différences ... il s’agit d’une perpétuelle dégradation due aux changements phonétiques aveugles, et qui est toujours ou prévenue ou réparée par une réorganisation parallèle du système” (Bally, LV 44 f.).

[70] Some speakers will say [su·] in _Susan_, _supreme_, _superstition_, but will take care to pronounce [sju·] in _suit_, _sue_. Others are more consistent one way or the other.

[71] I.e. “With confused and indistinct articulation; also, with a husky or hoarse voice”--NED.

[72] Even in speaking a foreign language one may unconsciously apply phonetic correspondences; a countryman of mine thus told me that he once, in his anger at being charged an exorbitant price for something, exclaimed: “Das sind doch _unblaue_ preise!”--coining in the hurry the word _unblaue_ for the Danish _ublu_ (shameless), because the negative prefix _un-_ corresponds to Dan. _u-_, and _au_ very often stands in German where Dan. has _u_ (_haus_ = _hus_, etc.). On hearing his own words, however, he immediately saw his mistake and burst out laughing.

_BOOK IV_

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE