Читать книгу Introduction to the study of the history of language - Benjamin Ide Wheeler - Страница 7

We must now once more emphasise the fact that the memory-picture of the sound, and the (unconscious) memory-picture of the movement and position, and these two alone, connect the various utterances of any sound or sound-group, and decide its character, and the appreciation of speaker and hearer to its correctness.

These memory-pictures and their nature and growth are therefore of the highest importance. They are the results of all preceding cases of utterance, of which, however, the last always has the greatest influence. Every variation in pronunciation entails a variation in the memory-picture; and this, small as may be the change, is cumulative and permanent, unless the different deviations happen to balance one another exactly. Now, in the main this will be the case when the speaker finds himself amid his usual surroundings, and where no external causes co-operate to impel his deviations into one direction rather than into another: but let us suppose him transferred to another community, and brought in contact with a certain pronunciation habitual there and novel to him. His memory-picture of the SOUND is made up of his own pronunciation and of what he hears from others. At first the new pronunciation strikes him as new, and two pictures stand side by side in his mind. If, however, the difference be not too great, these soon blend, and, the former one fading while the other constantly gains in force, his pronunciation becomes influenced without his own knowledge; he pronounces more and more like the surrounding speakers, and every time he does so his memory-picture of POSITION gets slightly altered (always in the same direction) until nothing but conscious effort of memory or renewed intercourse with former surroundings can recall the one thus lost.

The same thing happens essentially and effectually, though the change is slower and less violent, where external causes favour deviation in any special direction amongst an entire community. As far as the nature of the effect goes, it can make no difference whether we consider the case of a man entering a new community to find there a pronunciation which differs from his own, or that of an entire community which alters its existing pronunciation. But the process will go on much more slowly in the latter case, since it has to operate in a number of individuals, and the steps by which each of them proceeds are in ordinary cases imperceptibly small.

Of all causes which may tend to alter our pronunciation in any special direction, facility of utterance is the most conspicuous and the most easily understood. There are, in all probability indeed, several others: climate, habits of diet, etc., all seem to have some effect, but no one has as yet been able to explain how they operate. Even ease of pronunciation is not yet thoroughly understood in all its bearings. We must not forget that ease is something essentially subjective, and that the memory-pictures of movement and sound and the attempt at correct reproduction of the usual movement and sound are the main factors, while the striving after facility of utterance is a very subordinate one.

Yet there is no doubt whatever that in a number of instances the new pronunciation is easier than its predecessor: we now say last instead of latst, examples of which earlier form may be found in the Ormulum, for instance. Similarly, best is easier than betst, impossible than inpossible; and we may refer also to the numerous words still written with a gh which is no longer pronounced. In the word knight, the k was formerly sounded before the n, and the gh represents a sound which may still be heard in the German word knecht; and, in fact, all spellings like know, gnat, night, though, etc., with their numerous mute letters, represent older and undoubtedly more laborious pronunciations. That all these sounds have been dropped has unquestionably facilitated the utterance of the words, and there is a similar gain of ease in all the well-known instances of complete or partial assimilation in all languages. So in Italian otto for Latin octo, Latin accendo for adcendo, etc. When, however, we come to estimate the comparative facility of separate single sounds, or even many combinations, we find ourselves as yet without any certainty of result or fixed standard. Much that has been advanced is individual and subjective: all depends on practice; and this practice we acquire at an age when we are as yet wholly unable to form or pronounce an opinion on any question. In fact, most of our facility of speech comes to us in infancy.

But whatever the cause, we now understand that the memory-picture of movement and position is shifting and unstable in its very nature. Unless the majority of pronunciations around us all alter in the same direction, the sound-picture does not alter, and it exerts a retarding control upon the rapidity with which our position-picture, and therewith our own pronunciation, might otherwise do so. Here, however, we must draw attention to the fact that we spoke of the majority of pronunciations around us and not of speakers. For our sound-picture the number of persons from whom we hear a word is immaterial; it is the number of times we hear it pronounced that is alone of importance.

All that we have hitherto said has had reference to changes of pronunciation in the same speaker, and in this case alone can we speak of alteration or change in the strict sense of the word. But when we say that ‘a language has altered,’ we use the term in a wider sense, and include the case when one generation is found to use a new pronunciation in place of one current at a former time; when, in fact, it would be strictly correct to say that an old pronunciation has died out, and that the new one—created instead—differs more or less from that which was its model.

A child, in learning to speak, attempts to imitate the sound it hears; and, as long as the resulting imitation sounds sufficiently correct, any small peculiarity of pronunciation is generally overlooked. In such a case, therefore, the child acquires a movement or position-picture which at once materially differs from that of the former generation. We all know by experience that sounds are difficult to ‘catch,’ and we must remember that the vocal organs may undergo certain variations in position without producing a correspondingly large difference in acoustic effect;4 and further, that any sound produced by a particular position of the vocal organs has a tendency to change in a different direction and at a different rate from the course which would seem natural to the same sound if it had been produced by a different position of the vocal organs.

If, then, we speak a word to a child, and if the child utters it (a) with a slightly altered pronunciation, and (b) with an articulation which differs from that which WE should naturally employ to produce the pronunciation which the child gives to the word, then two comparatively important steps upon the path of change have already been taken. And thus it is clear that, though changes in language are constantly and imperceptibly occurring throughout the whole life of the individual speaker, yet their rise is most likely and their progress is most rapid at the time when language is transferred from one generation to another.

The above, however, will not explain all the changes which words have undergone. There are some which have hitherto resisted any other explanation than this: they appear as the results of repeated errors of utterance, which errors, owing to particular circumstances attending each case, must have been committed by several or by most of the speakers of the same linguistic community. Such are—(1) Metathesis, i.e. where two sounds in the same word reciprocally change their positions, whether they are (a) contiguous or (b) separated by other sounds. Of the first kind we have instances in the Anglo-Saxon forms ascian and axian, both of which occur in extant documents, and also survive in the verb ask and the provincial equivalent aks. Cf. also the form brid, found in Chaucer, for bird (e.g. ‘Ne sey I neuer er now no brid ne best.’—Squire’s Tale, 460), and, vice versâ, birde for bride (e.g. Piers Plowman, 3, 14: ‘ðe Justices somme Busked hem to ðe boure ðere ðe birde dwelled’). Again, we may compare the English bourn, Scotch burn, with Dutch bron, German brunnen; A.S. irnan and rinnan, both meaning to run, and irn, as pronounced by a west-countryman, with run.5

Of the second kind of Metathesis (b) we find traces in O.H.G. erila, by the side of elira = N.H.G. erle and eller; A.S. weleras, the lips, as against Gothic wairilos; O.H.G. ezzih, which must have had the sound of etik before the sound-shifting process began, = Lat. acetum; the Italian word, as dialectically pronounced, grolioso = glorioso; and, again, crompare = comprare; M.H.G. kokodrille = Lat. crocodilus. We may also refer to such cases of mispronunciation as indefakitable for indefatigable. These are evanescent, because they meet with speedy correction.

Besides Metathesis, we must class here (2) the assimilation of two sounds not standing contiguous in the word (as Lat. quinque from *pinque; original German finfi (five) = *finhwi, etc.), and (3) dissimilations, as in O.H.G. turtiltûba, from the Lat. turtur; Eng. marble, from Fr. marbre, Lat. marmor; M.H.G. martel with marter, from martyrium; prîol with prîor; and conversely, M.H.G. pheller with phellel, from Lat. palliolum; O.H.G. fluobra, ‘consolation,’ as against O.S. frôfra and A.S. frôfor; M.H.G. kaladrius with karadrius; Middle Lat. pelegrinus, from peregrinus.

We must now conclude this chapter with a few words on the question, Are the laws of sound-change, like physical laws, absolute and unchanging? do they admit of no exceptions? In thus stating the question, we challenge a comparison between physical laws and the laws of sound-change, but we must never forget the essential difference existing between them. Physical laws lay down what must invariably and always happen under certain given conditions; the laws of sound-change state the regularity observed in any particular group of historic phenomena.

We must, in dealing with this question, further distinguish between two closely allied but not identical kinds of phenomena, i.e. between those which come under the law of sound-change in the strict sense of the word, and those which are rather to be considered as instances of sound-correspondence or sound-interchange. When, for instance, some sound happened to be, at any particular stage of some language, identical in the various forms of the same word; and if this sound, owing to difference in its position, or of its accent, or from some other cause, has changed into a different sound in some forms of the word, while in other forms of the same word it has remained unchanged; and if many similar cases are remarked in the same language,—we summarise them in our grammars in a form which, though convenient, is not strictly correct. There are in French, for instance, many adjectives which form their masculine termination in f and their feminine in ve. It is scarcely necessary to point out that in these words the feminine form, derived as it is from the Latin feminine, cannot correctly be described as derived from the masculine in its contemporaneous form: nor yet does the individual speaker, in using the two genders, derive the one from the other; he reproduces both from memory, or, possibly by a process to be discussed in Chapter V., he produces one by analogy with other similar forms.

We nevertheless lay it down in our grammars, that adjectives in f form their feminine by ‘changing’ f into ve. The correspondence of sounds which we thus register, though it is a consequence of phonetic development, does not, strictly speaking, express a law of sound-change; we might call it ‘a law of sound-correspondence’ or ‘sound-interchange.’ The ‘law of sound-interchange’ states in a convenient form the aggregate results of events which have occurred in accordance with some ‘law of sound-change.’ Our question, then, refers to the ‘laws of sound-change’ proper, and not to those of ‘sound-interchange;’ and if we say that a law of sound-change admits of no exceptions, we can only mean that, within the limits of some definite language or dialect, all cases which fulfil the same phonetic conditions have had the same fate: i.e. the same sound must there have changed into the same other sound throughout the language, or, where various sounds are seen to replace one and the same other sound of the older language, the cause for this difference must be sought in the difference of phonetic conditions, such as accent, contact with or proximity to other sounds, etc.

It must be clear, after all that has been said in this chapter, that laws of sound-change, in the correct meaning of this term, must be consistent and absolutely regular. As regards the case of the individual speaker, we have seen that the utterance of each sound depends on the memory-picture of motion and position, and that these pictures exert their influence without the speaker being conscious of it. It will then naturally follow that if these pictures alter gradually in the case of any one sound in any one word, they will do so for the same sound in all other cases where it occurs under like conditions.

It is indeed often stated that the sense of etymological connection of a particular word with others which retain a certain sound unaltered may prevent that sound from taking the same course in that word as it does in other words not so influenced; but the existence and efficacy of some counteracting influence does not disprove the existence of the force against which it operates, and which it overcomes or neutralizes. Nor, again, could the inter-communication between the individual speakers cause occasional suspension of the law of sound-change.

We have seen that the association which arises between memory-pictures of the sound, and of the motion of our vocal organs, etc., for its utterance, is—though but external—nevertheless very close, and that it soon becomes indissoluble. The slight and gradual changes in the utterance of the surrounding speakers alter the memory-pictures of the sound, and the corresponding memory-picture of motion and position follows in the same way. It is, then, only in case of mixture of dialect, i.e. when a considerable group of speakers of one dialect becomes mixed and scattered among speakers of another, that the following generation may adopt one sound from the one dialect and another from the second; thus apparently exhibiting the differentiation of the same sound, under the same phonetic circumstances, into two, of which the one appears as the rule, the other as the exception. But then, again, such a case—though when it has happened we may not always be aware of it, and consequently may not always be able to assign the phenomenon to its true cause—does not prove that the law of sound-change admitted of exception. We merely have the results of two such laws mixed and confused.