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.