Chapter IV: Phonology and Sematology (4)

Lastly, we have to consider the lengthening of vowels, either by way of compensation or before certain consonants. By compensation is meant the additional force with which a vowel is pronounced after the loss of a consonant which followed or preceded it. Thus in Greek the loss of the digamma in βασιλεϝ-ος produced the Ionic βασιλῆος on the one side and the Attic βασίλεως on the other, just as the loss of the _yod_ in πολιy-ος similarly produced πολῆος and πόλεως. So, too, πάνς became πᾶς, δαιμονς δαίμων, ἐφαν-σα ἔφηνα, _rĕs-mus_ _rémus_, _pĕds_ _pês_, _exăgmen_ _exâmen_, _măgior_ _mâjor_. In certain cases the vowel was raised into a diphthong, as in φέρουσι for φεροντι, τιθείς for τιθενς, ἔστειλα for έστελσα. But a vowel may also be lengthened before liquids, nasals, and spirants when combined with another consonant. If the grave or the circumflex accent fall upon the preceding vowel, the tendency is to lengthen the vowel at the expense of the sonant or spirant following. Hence it is, that whereas in our English _tint_, or _hilt_, where the vowel has the acute, the nasal and liquid are long; in _kind_ and _mild_, on the other hand, where the vowel is circumflexed, it is the vowel (or rather the diphthong) that is long. The vowel, again, may be lengthened to compensate for the loss of a double letter. Thus in Latin we find _vīlicus_ by the side of _villicus_, from _villa_, and whereas the grammarians lay down that when _ll_ is followed by _i_, single _l_ must be written, we find _millia_ in the famous inscription of Ancyra. So, too, the inscriptions vary between _Amulius_ and _Amullius_, _Polio_ and _Pollio_, and good MSS. have _loquella_, _medella_, instead of _loquēla_, _medēla_.

There is another fact to be remembered when we are looking for the application of Grimm’s law—a fact which the law itself ought to bring to our minds. Different languages have different phonetic tendencies; the same sound is not equally affected by phonetic decay in two different dialects or modified in the same way; each language has phonetic laws and phænomena peculiar to itself. Thus, in Greek, σ between two vowels is lost, in Latin it becomes _r_; in Greek a nasal preserves, or perhaps introduces, the vowel _a_, in Latin it prefers the vowel _e_. Because τ between vowels becomes σ in Greek, or _sr_ in Latin is changed into _br_ (as in _cerebrum_ for _ceresrum_, κέρας, _śiras_), we are not justified in expecting similar changes in other tongues. In fact we have only to look at the table of sound-changes, known as Grimm’s law, to see that it is just because two languages do not follow the same course of phonetic modification that a scientific philology is possible.

To speak of Grimm’s law being “suspended,” of “exceptions to Grimm’s law,” and the like, is only to show an ignorance of the principles of comparative philology. Grimm’s law is simply the statement of certain observed phonetic facts, which happen invariably, _so far as we know_, unless interfered with by other facts which, under given conditions, equally happen invariably. The accidental has little place in phonology, at all events in an illiterate and uncultivated age. Literature and education are no doubt disturbing forces: a writer may borrow a word without modifying its sound according to rule; and the word may be adopted into the common speech through the agency of the schoolmaster; but such words are mere aliens and strangers, never truly naturalized in their new home, and the philologist must treat them as such. Native words, as well as words which, though borrowed from abroad, have been borrowed by the people and so given a native stamp, undergo, and must undergo, all those changes and shiftings of sound which meet us in Grimm’s law, in the phonetic laws peculiar to individual languages, or in any other of the generalizations under which we sum up the phænomena of spoken utterance. False analogy, it is true, may divert a word from the path it would naturally have taken; one word may be assimilated to another regardless of its real etymology, or words whose real origin has been forgotten may be modified so as to convey a new meaning to the speaker. But, in such cases, the worst that could happen would be the loss of the true etymology; Grimm’s law would still hold good, and the originals of the existing sounds would be those demanded by the regular _Lautverschiebung_. So far as the present form of a word like _Shotover_ (for _château vert_) is concerned, it is to the mere phonologist, as to the ordinary speaker, a compound of _shot_ and _over_, and in comparing these two words with allied words in other languages the prescribed letter-change holds good. It is only the comparative philologist, who has to deal with the psychological as well as with the phonetic side of language, that needs to know more, and to determine that _Shotover_ is not what it professes to be, but the product of a more or less conscious imagination. In most cases of analogy we have to do with mental as opposed to phonetic assimilation, and they fall, therefore, under sematology, the science of meanings, rather than under phonology, the science of sounds. No doubt we find instances of analogy, like the Greek accusative βεβαῶτα, modelled after the nominative βεβαώς,[209] or the Latin genitives _diei_, _dierum_, modelled after the accusative _diem_ for _diam_, but such instances fall under the laws and conditions of that phonetic assimilation which has been already described. Let us hold fast to the fact that the generalizations, the chief of which are summed up in the formula known as Grimm’s law, are at once uniform and unvarying. If an etymology is suggested, which violates these generalizations, that etymology must be rejected, however plausible or attractive. It is upon the fixed character of these generalizations that the whole fabric of scientific philology rests.

Necessarily similar generalizations may be made in the case of other languages which, like the Aryan, can be grouped into single families of speech; nay, they must be made before we are justified in grouping them together, or in comparing and explaining their grammar and vocabulary. It is not always, however, that the changes of sound are so marked and violent as in the Indo-European. A group of allied languages may be as closely related to one another as the modern Romanic dialects of Europe, and various causes may have combined to give a stability and fixity to their phonology which has made it change but slightly in the course of centuries. This is the case with the Semitic dialects, whose laws of sound-change are extremely simple. Practically the sound shiftings are confined to the sibilants, where the equivalence of sounds is as follows:—

Assyrian. Hebrew. Ethiopic. Arabic. Aramaic.
_s_ (_sh_) _s_ (_sh_) _s_, _´s_ _sh_, _s_, _th_ _´s_, _s_, _th_
_´s_ _´s_ _s_, _´s_ _s_, _sh_ _´s_
_ts_ _ts_ _ts_ _ts_, _ds_, _dhs_ _ts_, _dh_, _’e_
_z_ _z_ _z_ _z_, _dh_ _z_, _d_[210]

One or two other general laws of phonetic change may be laid down for special members of the Semitic group; thus, in Assyrian, _s_ before a dental becomes _l_, and _kh_ is dropped when it answers to the Arabic and Ethiopic weak _kh_. In the Babylonian dialect, again, _k_ took the place of _g_, and the _n_ of the other dialects is sometimes replaced by _r_ in Aramaic.

But the Semitic idioms are dialects rather than languages, so intimate is the connection between them, so slight the differences by which they are separated. It is quite otherwise if we turn to a group like the Malayo-Polynesian, where the word _oran_, “man,” may be represented in the different dialects by _rang_, _olan_, _lan_, _ala_, _la_, _na_, _da_, and _ra_.[211] But here, too, the law of equivalence is fixed and determinate: the Samoan _s_ is changed into _h_ in Tongan and Maori, while the Maori _k_ is dropped in Samoan.

Equally extensive is the series of changes undergone by sounds in the Ugro-Finnic tongues, and when the law of sound-shifting has been determined not only for the Ugro-Finnic division of the Turanian family, but for the whole Turanian family, comprising Turkish, Mongol, and Mandshu, we may expect it to include a far larger number of changes of sound than that summed up in Grimm’s law. So far as the Ugro-Finnic dialects are concerned, M. de Ujfálvy, in continuance of the investigations of Riedl,[212] has been able to lay down the following rules for the phonetic permutations observable in these idioms: (1) The Finnish and Bulgar _k_ becomes _kh_ in Ostiak, Vogul, and Old Magyár, and _h_ in modern Magyár; (2) _k_ = _ts_; (3) _k_ or _g_ = _s_, _z_, _ṣ_, _j_, _ts_, &c.; (4) Finnish _ks_ = Votiak _hs_ (earlier _ht_); (5) Finnish _kl_, _pl_ = Lapp _vl_; (6) Medial Finnish _k_ and _h_ = Bulgar and Ugrian _v_ and _f_; (7) Initial Finnish _h_ disappears in Livonian and Lapp (in Lapp also becomes _v_ before a dental); (8) Finnish _h_ = _s_, _ṣ_, _ts_, _sy_, _ts_ (_c_), _ẓ_, _tsy_, &c.; (9) Finnish and Bulgar _k_, _g_, _h_ = Lapp and Ostiak _ng_, _n_ = Magyar _g_; (10) Medial Finnish _nk_ = Lapp _gg_; (11) Finnish _nt_ = Lapp _dd_; (12) _gy_, _ny_ = _y_, _v_; (13) _t_ = _s_ (Finnish _t_ = _s_, _ṣ_, _sy_, _ts_, _z_, _ẓ_, &c.); (14) Finnish _s_, _h_ = Ostiak and Vogul _t_; (15) Finnish _p_ = Votiak _b_ = Magyar _b_, _f_; (16) Finnish _t_ = Magyar _s_, _z_, _ts_; (17) Finnish _m_ = Lapp _bm_; (18) Lapp _dn_ = Finnish _nn_ or _n_; (19) Finnish _mb_ = Lapp _bb_; (20) Finnish _kk_, _tt_, _pp_ = Vêpse and Livonian _k_, _t_, _p_; (21) Finnish _k_, _t_, _p_ = Vêpse and Livonian _g_, _d_, _b_. This list of phonetic equivalents will make it clear that the original phonology of the Ugro-Finnic group is generally best represented by Suomi or Finnish; in some cases, however, Vêpse (or Tchude) is more archaic than Finnish, and in one case, that of the change of _t_ into _s_, Ostiak and Vogul are more primitive than Suomi. Vêpse, again, shows that the long vowels of Suomi are due to contraction. Within Suomi itself _kk_, _tt_, and _pp_, after a liquid are softened into simple _k_, _t_, and _p_. The diphthongal consonants of Magyár (_ly_, _my_, _ty_, &c.), are the result of a contraction of a consonant and a vowel or diphthong following. The changes undergone by sounds within the Ugro-Finnic group may be summed up as a whole in the two formulæ: (1) The Finnish hard explosives are represented by soft explosives in the other languages of the group; (2) spirants, and the sounds derived from them, answer in the allied dialects to the explosives of Finnish. As for the Samoied idioms, similar phonetic permutations may be discovered in them also. In the Yurak dialect _h_ = _s_, _ng_ = _nr_, and _k_ = _ts_; in Tavghi _k_ and _t_ tend to become _g_ and _d_; in Yenissei _dd_ = _md_ (_nt_, _nd_, _ntt_, _ltt_), _gg_ = _rk_ (_rg_) or _nk_, and _tt_ = _bt_, while in Ostiak-Samoied and Kamassinche the hard explosives pass into the soft _g_, _d_, _b_.[213]

Quite as regular as the permutations of sounds in the Finnic group is the law of sound-change discovered by Bleek to exist in the Bâ-ntu or Kafir family. The following table gives it for the principal members of the group:—

Kafir. Setshuana. Herero. Ki-suahili. Ki-nika. Mpongwe. Bunda.

_k_ _kh_, _h_ _k_ _k_, _g_ _k_, _g_ _k_, _g_ _k_

_ng_ _k_ _ng_ _ng_ _ng_ _ng_ _ng_

_t_ _r_, _s_ _t_ _t_ _h_ _r_, _ty_ _t_

_d_ _l_, _r_ _t_ _nd_ _nd_ _nd_, _l_ _nd_, _r_

_p_ _p_, _f_, _p_ _p_ _v_, _h_ _v_ _b_
_h_

_b_ _b_, _p_ _v_ _b_, _w_ _b_, ’ _v_ —

_s_ _ts_, _s_ _t_, _ty_ _s_, _k_ _s_, _dz_ _z_, _s_, _k_
_k_, ’

_z_ _ts_, _l_, _z_, _h_ _z_, _dz_ _z_, _ts_ _dz_, _g_, _sh_, _g_
_r_ _s_

_f_ _f_, _h_, _s_ _f_ _f_ _w_ _f_
_s_

_v_ _b_, _r_ _s_ _f_ _f_ — _f_

_l_ _l_, _r_ _r_ _l’_ _r_, _l_ _l_, _nl_ _l_

_n_ _n_ _n_ _n_ _n_ _n_ _n_

_m_ _m_ _m_ _m_ _m_ _m_ _m_

The Bâ-ntu law of sound-shifting has the advantage over its Aryan analogue, that it deals with actually existing sounds which can still be heard and noted by the scientifically trained ear, whereas many of the Aryan languages and sounds recorded in Grimm’s law are now extinct. The Aryan philologist, accordingly, has to assume that the spelling of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Gothic words is a fair approximation to their pronunciation. It is upon this assumption that the whole fabric of historical grammar is built; nay, comparative philology itself, which began with the comparison of allied forms and words in the classical languages of India and Europe, is also based upon it. The assumption offers little difficulty to the Italian, whose spelling accurately represents his pronunciation, or to the German, who writes pretty much as he speaks; but it need not be pointed out how strange and unnatural it seems to the Englishman. English spelling, under the guidance of the printers, has become a mere system of marks and symbols, arranged upon no principle, selected with no rational purpose, each of which by a separate effort of the memory is associated with some sound or word.

For the scientific philologist, no less than for the practical teacher, a return to the phonetic spelling of our English language is of the highest importance. What the philologist wishes to know is not how words are spelt, but how they are pronounced, and this end can be obtained only by means of an alphabet in which all the chief sounds of the language are represented, and each character represents but one sound. No doubt the practical man does not want the alphabet required by the phonologist, who must denote every shade of sound and have separate symbols for the sounds heard not in English only, but in other languages as well, but the alphabet of the practical man should be based on that of the phonologist. The reformed alphabet should be one which would enable the child or the foreigner to recognize at once the sound of the word he is reading, and the philologist to determine the pronunciation of the writer.

Thanks to Messrs. Ellis, Pitman, and others, the question of reforming our English spelling has not only been brought before the public, but the conditions under which it is practicable have been discussed and ascertained, and the merits of rival schemes put to the test. The sounds of the English language have been analyzed, and the great work of Mr. A. J. Ellis on the “History of English Pronunciation” has shown how our absurd and anomalous spelling grew up. At the present time we have in the field the phonology of Mr. Pitman—an alphabet of thirty-eight letters—a large proportion of which have new forms; the palæotype and glossic of Mr. Ellis, the former retaining the type now used by the printers, but enlarging the alphabet by turning the letters, and similar devices, the latter by its likeness to the present spelling intended to bridge over the passage from the present or “Nomic” mode of spelling to the reformed one; the narrow and the broad Romic of Mr. Sweet, the second an adaptation of the first to practical use; the ingenious system of Mr. E. Jones, which by the employment of optional letters for the same sound contrives to introduce little _apparent_ difference in the spelling of English words; and several other English and American systems that have been proposed, more especially the reformed alphabet of the American Philological Association, together with the transitional alphabet intended to lead on to it. Some of these are true phonetic alphabets, words spelt in them varying according to the pronunciation of the writer, others are merely attempts to reform the present spelling of English words by making it more consistent, and bringing it more into harmony with their actual pronunciation. Such attempts would only substitute a less objectionable mode of spelling for the existing one, a mode of spelling, too, that would in course of time become as stereotyped and far removed from the pronunciation of the day as is the present system. With such attempts, therefore, the scientific philologist can have but little sympathy; his efforts must rather be directed towards the establishment of a phonetic alphabet, based on a thorough analysis of English sounds and conformed to practical requirements.

The question of spelling reform is nothing new. Mr. Ellis has brought to light a MS. written in 1551 by John Hart of Chester, and entitled “The Opening of the unreasonable writing of our inglish toung: wherin is shewed what necessarili is to be left, and what folowed for the perfect writing therof.” This the author followed up by a published work in 1569, called “An Orthographie, conteyning the due order and reason, howe to write or painte thimage of mannes voice, most like to the life or nature.”[214] The object of this, he says, “is to vse as many letters in our writing, as we doe voyces or breathes in our speaking, and no more; and neuer to abuse one for another, and to write as we speake.” Hart, however, it would seem, tried to amend the pronunciation as well as the spelling of English. The year before (1568) Sir Thomas Smith, Secretary of State in 1548, and successor of Burleigh, had published at the famous press of Robert Stephens in Paris, a work, “De recta et emendata linguæ anglicæ scriptione, dialogus.” In this he had suggested a reformed alphabet of thirty-four characters, _c_ being used for _ch_, ð for _th_ (in _then_), and θ for _th_ (in _think_), long vowels being indicated by a diæresis. In 1580 came another book in black letter on the same subject, by William Bullokar. His alphabet consisted of thirty-seven letters, most of which have duplicate forms, and in which _c’_, _g’_, and _v’_, represent _s_, _j_, and _v_. He composed a primer and a short pamphlet in the orthography he advocated. In 1619, Dr. Gill, head-master of St. Paul’s School, published his “Logonomia Anglica,” which was quickly followed by a second edition in 1621. His alphabet contained forty characters, and, as might be expected from his position, his attempt to reform English spelling was a more scholarly one than those of his predecessors. He found a rival in the Rev. Charles Butler, an M.A. of Magdalen College, Oxford, who brought out at Oxford, in 1633, “The English Grammar, or the Institution of Letters, Syllables, and Words in the English Tongue.” He printed this phonetically, according to his own system, as well as another book, “The Feminine Monarchy or History of the Bees” (Oxford, 1634). “These,” says Mr. Ellis, “are the first English books entirely printed phonetically, as only half of Hart’s was so presented. But Meigret’s works were long anterior in French.” Butler represents the final _e_ mute by ’. In 1668 Bishop Wilkins published his great work, the “Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language.” In this he has a good treatise on phonetics, in which he probably made use of an important work on the physiological nature of sounds, brought out by John Wallis, Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, in 1653;[215] and he has transcribed the Lord’s Prayer and Creed in his phonetic alphabet of thirty-seven letters. After Bishop Wilkins the matter rested for a while; but in 1711 the question of reforming English spelling was once more raised, this time, however, in a practical direction. Dean Swift appealed to the Prime Minister to appoint a commission for “the Ascertaining, Correcting, and Improving of the English Tongue.”[216] His appeal, however, was without effect; and the next to apply himself to the subject was Benjamin Franklin, who, in 1768, put forth “A Scheme for a New Alphabet and reformed mode of Spelling, with Remarks and Examples concerning the same, and an Enquiry into its Uses.” Franklin embodied his views in a letter to Miss Stephenson (dated September 20th, 1768), written in his phonetic alphabet, and intended to meet objections to the proposed reform. It is curious to find the wholly mistaken objection already put forward that “all our etymologies would be lost” by a reform of spelling.

But spelling reformers have not been confined to England. Ninety years ago a reform of Dutch spelling was successfully carried out, though the result was unsatisfactory, as might have been expected from the ignorance of phonology that existed at the time. Spanish spelling has recently undergone revision on the part of the Academy; and even German, which seems to the Englishman so far advanced on the road towards perfection, is in process of reformation. The work was begun by Schleicher, who not only struck out the aphonic _h_ and other useless letters, but even emulated the Emperor Claudius by inventing a new character. A committee was lately appointed by the Minister of Education to decide upon such changes of spelling as seemed to them desirable, and a thorough-going system of reform, with a new alphabet, like that of Mr. Pitman, has been inaugurated through the exertions of Dr. Frikke and others.[217]

Of scientific alphabets, also, the phonologist has now his choice. Putting aside Melville Bell’s “Visible Speech,” in which each character symbolizes by lines the action of the vocal organs in forming the sound it represents, the best are the well-known “Standard” and “Missionary Alphabets” of Lepsius and Max Müller, the alphabets of Ellis and Prince L-L. Bonaparte, and the alphabet of Sweet. Max Müller’s alphabet is founded on that of Sir W. Jones, and he brings with justice the charge against Lepsius’s “Standard Alphabet” that its physiological analysis is sometimes wrong, and that many of its characters have been found too complicated for use. Sweet’s alphabet has the advantage of avoiding new type, of having special signs for voice and whisper, for quantity and stress, force, pitch, and glide, and of indicating by a full stop the place of a “force-impulse.” Prince L-L. Bonaparte’s alphabet, however, as edited by Ellis, is the most complete; indeed, out of his 385 characters, there occur a few which have not been detected in any known language. The two last alphabets will be found in the Appendix to the present chapter.

It is possible that the phonograph may hereafter assist us in constructing a more perfect alphabet than is now possible. Just as Melville Bell’s letters have a physiological origin, so the letters of the alphabet of the future may be derived from the forms assumed by sounds on the sensitive plate of the phonograph. The phonautograph had already informed us that every sound we utter has a distinct shape and pattern; it only remained to apply this fact practically by the invention of the phonograph.

The phonautograph as constructed by Barlow, Léon Scott, and König, is made to record the sounds of the human voice by the help either of a pencil or of a gas-flame. The pencil is set in motion by a thin membrane, against which sounds and words are spoken, and draws on a cylinder covered with sand the curves which delineate the sounds uttered. When a gas-flame is employed, the forms assumed by it take the place of those drawn on the sand. In Edison’s phonograph the fact that the form of every sound can thus be imprinted on a tangible substance has been utilized for the reproduction of speech. A plate of tin-foil is folded round a revolving cylinder indented from one end to the other with a spiral groove. As the cylinder revolves the groove is kept constantly beneath a needle, which is attached to a membrane or sounding-board, against which the voice is impinged through a conical aperture: with each sound that is uttered the needle presses the tin-foil into the furrow below, imprinting upon it at the same time the form of the sound. By reversing the process the needle is made to travel once more over the indented tin-foil, and the sounding-board being thus set in motion reproduces the sounds originally spoken. Before the tin-foil is thus reduced to its original smoothness, a cast of it may be taken, and at any subsequent period another piece of tin-foil may receive the impression of the cast, and so reproduce the words which first caused the indentations. It is needless to point out the assistance which the phonograph is likely to render to phonology. It is still, of course, new and faulty, and unable, for instance, to reproduce sibilants; but it cannot fail to be improved and become almost as perfect a speaking-machine as the human throat itself. Already it has contributed some facts of importance to phonetic science. Thus we find that all sounds may be reproduced backwards by simply beginning with the last forms indented on the tin-foil, _sociability_, for example, becoming _ytilibaishos_. Diphthongs and double consonants may be reversed with equal clearness and precision, so that _bite_, which the phonograph pronounces _bâ-eet_, becomes _tee-âb_ In this way we have learnt that the _ch_ of _cheque_ is really a double letter, the reversed pronunciation of the word being _kesht_.

The problem of reproducing human speech has thus been approached more successfully from the physical and acoustic side than from the physiological side, where it was attacked by Faber, Kempelen, and others. They attempted to construct instruments in which the vocal organs could be represented with the greatest exactness attainable, the lungs being replaced by a pair of bellows, the trachea by a hollow tube, and so on. But though these instruments spoke, it was not in human speech, or anything like it. The utmost they could do was to imitate the first utterances of a child, or the imperfect and laboured syllables of one who is learning a foreign tongue.

Nevertheless, it is not in the organs of the human voice any more than in the mechanism of a lifeless instrument that we have to discover the source and creator of speech. All that the vocal organs can do is to supply the skeleton into which the mind breathes the breath of life. Unmeaning sounds do not constitute language: until a signification has been put into them, the sounds that have been described and analyzed are no better than the singing of the birds, the stirring of the trees, or even the dead utterances of a machine. Phonology, like anatomy, deals only with the dry bones which have yet to be clothed upon with living flesh.

But by its very nature a science of meanings, sematology, as it has been named, can never have the same certitude, the same exactness, as a science of sounds. The laws of sematology are far less distinct and invariable; significant change cannot be reduced to the same set of fixed rules as phonetic change. The phenomena with which sematology deals are too complicated, too dependent on psychological conditions; the element of chance or conscious exertion of will seems to enter into them, and it is often left to the arbitrary choice of an individual to determine the change of meaning to be undergone by a word. Still this meaning must be accepted by the community before it can become part of language; unless it is so accepted it will remain a mere literary curiosity in the pages of a technical dictionary. And since its acceptance by the community is due to general causes, influencing many minds alike, it is possible to analyze and formulate these causes, in fact, to refer significant change to certain definite principles, to bring it under certain definite generalizations. Moreover, it must be remembered that the ideas suggested by most words are what Locke calls “mixed modes.” A word like _just_ or _beauty_ is but a shorthand note suggesting a number of ideas more or less associated with one another. But the ideas associated with it in one mind cannot be exactly those associated with it in another; to one man it suggests what it does not to another. So long as we move in a society subjected to the same social influences and education as ourselves we do not readily perceive the fact, since the leading ideas called up by the word will be alike for all; but it is quite otherwise when we come to deal with those whose education has been imperfect as compared with our own. A young speaker often imagines that he makes himself intelligible to an uneducated audience by using short and homely words; unless he also suits his ideas to theirs, he will be no better understood than if he spoke in the purest Johnsonese. If we are suddenly brought into contact with experts in a subject we have not studied, or dip into a book on an unfamiliar branch of knowledge, we seem to be listening to the meaningless sounds of a foreign tongue. The words used may not be technical words; but familiar words and expressions will bear senses and suggest ideas to those who use them which they will not bear to us. It is impossible to convey in a translation all that is meant by the original writer. We may say that the French _juste_ answers to the English _just_, and so it does in a rough way; but the train of thoughts associated with _juste_ is not that associated with _just_, and the true meaning of a passage may often depend more on the associated thoughts than on the leading idea itself. Nearly every word, in fact, may be described as a complex of ideas which is not the same in the minds of any two individuals, its general meaning lying in the common ideas attached to it by all the members of a particular society. The significations, therefore, with which the comparative philologist has to concern himself, are those unconsciously agreed upon by a body of men, or rather the common group of ideas suggested by a word to all of them alike. Here, again, some general causes must be at work which may yet be revealed by a careful analysis. The comparative philologist has not to trouble himself, like the classical philologist, with discovering the exact ideas connected with a word by some individual author; it is the meaning of words as they are used in current speech, not as they illustrate the idiosyncrasies of a writer, which it is his province to investigate.

“The genealogies of words,” says Pott,[218] “are the genealogies of concepts.” As in phonology we have the growth or decay of sounds, so in sematology we have the growth or decay of ideas. The three principles of linguistic change, imitation, emphasis and laziness, are incessantly at work on the meanings as well as upon the sounds of words. Analogy is ever lending them new senses, and the metaphorical senses may come to be used to the utter forgetfulness of the original one. The Latin who spoke of his “mind” or “soul” as _animus_ had altogether forgotten that at the outset _animus_ was merely the “wind” or “breath.” Here analogy or imitation is helped by laziness, which makes us forget a little-used meaning. _Impertinent_ has almost lost its prior and proper signification, and our children will have to seek it in the records of an obsolescent literature. But a dead meaning may again rise to life; the early meaning of a word, whether recovered from books or from the fresh spring of a local dialect, may once more impress itself upon a community anxious to emphasize and mark out an idea by an unfamiliar term.

Professor Whitney[219] has summed up significant change under the two heads of specialization of general terms and generalization of special terms, but a more thorough-going attempt to determine its laws and distinguish its causes has been made by Pott.[220] First of all, he points out, words may be more accurately defined either by widening or by narrowing their signification. While in the Neo-Latin languages _caballus_, “a nag,” has taken the wider meaning of “horse” in general, under the form of _cavallo_ or _cheval_, the modern Greek ἄλογον is no longer the “irrational beast,” but is narrowed into the specific sense of “horse.” Like our _deer_, which once meant “wild animals” generally (German _thier_), so _emere_ has narrowed its primary signification of “taking” into the special one of “buying.” But, on the other hand, when we speak of “going to town,” it is not “town” in general or any town whatsoever that is meant, but London alone.

Then, secondly, there is metaphor, with its ceaseless play upon speech. Language is the treasure-house of worn-out similes, a living testimony to the instinct of man to find likeness and resemblance in all he sees. The Tasmanians, who had no general terms, had yet the power of seeing resemblances between things: though they could not form the concept “round,” they said “like the moon” or some other round object. All the words which have a spiritual or moral meaning go back to a purely sensuous origin: _Divus_, _Deus_, _Dieu_ was once “the bright sky;” _soul_ was nothing but the “heaving” sea. It is only by likening such ideas to the objects of sense that we can imagine them at all, or convey a hint of our meaning to others. The vocabulary of a language on its significant side grows by metaphor and analogy. We have only to take a word like _post_, once the Latin _positum_, “what is fixed” or “placed,” and trace it through its many derived meanings of “stake,” “position,” “office,” “station,” “public medium of correspondence,” and “receptacle for letters,” to see how endless are the shades of colour which a single word may catch from those with which it is associated. To know the idioms of a language and the conditions under which its speakers live, is often to know the history of the changes in signification undergone by its vocabulary. The mere expression “send to the post” gave to the word _post_ its last meaning of a building in which letters are deposited and sorted, and the conditions of schoolboy life are a clue to many of the metaphorical uses of words which bear quite another meaning in school life from what they do in ordinary language. Where else but in a country of examinations could “pass” signify to go through an examination with success? Each craft, each industry has its own store of technical words, many of which are merely words in common use employed in particular senses intelligible only to those who belong to it.

Words, thirdly, will vary in meaning according to their application to persons or things, to what is good or bad, great or small. What a difference there is, for instance, between a “beautiful woman” and a “beautiful picture,” “a fine day” and “a fine fellow.” _Silly_, again, is simply the German _selig_, “blessed,” and such is still its meaning in Spenser’s “silly sheep;” but in modern English it has long lost its favourable sense, and is used only in an unfavourable one. Diminutives, originally the symbols of affection, have in many cases become the symbols of contempt, while “childishness” is as much a compliment when applied to a child as it is the reverse when applied to a man.

In the fourth place, words change their signification according to their use as active or passive, as subjects or as objects. “The sight of a thing” has a very different meaning from “the enjoyment of a sight,” as different, in fact, as is the meaning of _venerandus_ when applied to the object of veneration or to his admirer. The passive has been evolved from the middle τύπτομαι, “I beat myself” passing gradually into “I am beaten.” In English we may say indifferently “a matter is reflected,” or “a matter reflects itself,” after the usage of French. Similarly a neuter verb may be regarded as an active followed by the reflective pronoun; our “to be silent,” or “to walk,” for example, are the French “se taire,” “se promener.”

Fifthly, an idea may be expressed either by a compound or periphrasis, or by a single word. The Latin _nepos_ is the French _petit fils_, our “ninety” the French _quatre-vingt-dix_. The Taic languages of Further India preserve the primitive habit of denoting a new idea by comparing it with some other to which it stands in the relation of species to genus. Thus in Siamese “a heifer” is _lúk nghoa_, “child (of a) bull;” “a lamb” is _lúk-ké_, “child (of a) sheep,” much as in English _inkstand_ is “a stand for ink.” It is only by comparison that an object can be known, its limits marked and determined; it is equally only by comparison that an idea can be defined and made intelligible. But when this has once been done, there is no longer any need of setting genus and species side by side in speech and thought; to do so is but a survival of the early machinery of language. The fact that the derivatives of the Aryan speaker are replaced by compounds, or rather antithetic words, in Taic, shows not only the mental superiority of the former, but also the fundamental contrast that exists between the two modes of thought. Collectives imply no small power of abstraction, and the collectives formed by antithesis in Taic are as much a proof of it as the existence of our “contentment” by the side of the Siamese _arói chái_, literally “pleasant heart.”

In the sixth place, we must always keep steadily in view the relativity of ideas and of the words which denote them. The same word may be applied in a variety of senses, the particular sense which it bears being determined by the context. The manifold shades of meaning of which each word is capable, the different associations of ideas which it may excite, give rise to varieties of signification which in course of time develop into distinct species. Hence come the idioms that form the characteristic feature of a dialect or language, and make exact translation into another language so impossible. Hence, too, that diversification of synonyms which causes words like _womanly_ and _feminine_ gradually to assume different meanings, and prevent us from saying “I am very obliged,” or “I am much tired.”

Seventhly and lastly, change of signification may follow in the wake of change of pronunciation or the introduction of new words. Phonetic decay may cause the old form of a word to be forgotten, and so allow it to assume the new meaning which has gradually been evolved out of its earlier one. This is the history of most of those inflections which can be traced back to independent words, such as the sign of the past tense in English, once the reduplicated perfect of _do_. The signification of _jeopardy_ has travelled far from that of _jeu parti_, but preparation had first been made by the change of pronunciation. There are many myths and mythological beings which owe their existence to the same cause. It was not till Promêtheus had lost all resemblance in outward name to the _pramanthas_ or “fire-machine” of India that he borrowed his attributes from προμήδομαι, and became the wise benefactor of mankind, the gifted seer of the future, whose brother was Epimêtheus, or “Afterthought.” It is the same with the legends that group themselves round the distorted name of a locality. The nose of brass or gilt which adorns Brasenose College at Oxford could never have come into existence until the old _Brasinghouse_ or “Brewery” had been transformed, and the phœnix that stands in the centre of the Phœnix Park at Dublin, would have been impossible without the assistance of Saxon lips, which turned the Irish _fion uisg_ or “fine water” into _phœnix_. But change of pronunciation is especially serviceable in increasing the wealth of a language by producing two co-ordinate forms out of a single original one. In course of time the two forms assume different meanings, due to the different contexts in which they may be used, and when once all memory of the original identity has perished, the distinction of meaning becomes fixed and permanent, and tends to grow continually sharper. In the second century B.C. a Latin writer could still use _prior_ as a neuter, _prios_ or _prius_ as a masculine; but a time soon came when _prior_ was classed exclusively with other masculine nouns in -_or_ or -_tor_, _prius_ with neuter nouns like _genus_. So, again, the Latin infinitive active _amare_ and the infinitive passive _amari_ were at the outset one and the same—the dative singular of a verbal noun in -_s_ (_amas_-), and one verb, _fio_, the Greek φυ(ι)ω, continued to the last to preserve a recollection of the fact by the length of the final syllable in _fieri_ or _fiesei_, “to become.” But the shortening of final syllables which characterizes Latin was early at work, and out of the dative _amasei_ soon originated the two co-existing forms _amase_ (_amare_) and _amasi_ (_amari_). For a while they were used indifferently, but when the distinction that exists between the German _waren zu haben_ and the English “were to be had” came to make itself felt, one form remained the property of the active, while the other was appropriated to the passive. But a consciousness of the origin of _amari_ seems to have long survived in the language, since there was a tendency to associate it more closely with the other forms of the passive voice by affixing to it the characteristic of the passive, _r_ (_amarier_). What is here effected by the diversification of the same word, may also be effected by the diversification of two synonyms, one of which has come from abroad. Sometimes both may come from abroad, but at different times, the result being that whereas one of them has been naturalized in the language, the other is but the nurseling of a learned age. _Priest_ and _presbyter_, for instance, have both descended from the same source, and were once identical in meaning. But not only may the old words of a dialect be thus affected by new comers, the foreign words may even succeed in destroying the native ones altogether. The same natural selection which has wellnigh extirpated many of the native plants of Central America in the presence of the imported cardoon, is also at work in language. Our Old English _sicker_ has had to give way before _sure_, the Old French _sëur_, Provençal _segur_, Latin _securus_, and the Latin _equus_ has been replaced in the Romanic dialects by _caballus_, “a nag.” _Caballus_ is at once an example of the way in which the meaning of a word may be widened, and of the operation of natural selection in the field of speech.

The etymologist must keep before him the laws both of phonology and of sematology before he can venture to group words together and refer them to a common root. For the etymologist is not merely a historian, or student of historical grammar; above and beyond the words which can be traced back, step by step, to their early forms, by the help of contemporaneous records, there are many more, the derivation of which has to be constructed much in the same way that a palæontologist reconstructs a fossil animal by the help of a single bone. The task is often a difficult and a delicate one, and the best trained scholars may sometimes fail. The result of false analogy may be regarded as an organic form, or a foreign word, conformed possibly to the genius of the language which has borrowed it, may be mistaken for a native. The præ-Aryan populations of Greece or of Britain must have left some remains of their languages in the vocabulary of Greek and Keltic, and Greek and Keltic words which have been counted as Aryan may, after all, be but aliens. Apart from these dangers, there is further the double one of assuming a connection between ideas which have nothing to do with one another, and of separating ideas which start from a common source. On the one hand, we are apt to judge of primitive man by ourselves, and to fancy that the ideas which we associate together were equally associated together by him. On the other hand, we have only to turn to the Ugrian idioms, with their greater transparency and openness to analysis to see the passage of one signification in a root into another of a wholly different kind, accompanied by a modification of the vowel. Thus _karyan_ is “to ring,” and “to lighten;” _kar-yun_ and _kir-yun_, “to cry,” but _kir-on_, “to curse;” _kah-isen_, _koh-isen_, _kuh-isen_, “to hit,” “stamp;” _käh-isen_, _köh-isen_, “to roar;” _keh-isen_, _kih-isen_, “to boil.”[221] We have here the same symbolization of a change of meaning by a change of vowel as in the Greek perfect δέδωκα by the side of the present δίδωμι.

The four facts to be remembered in etymology are thus summarized by Professor Max Müller.[222] (1.) The same word takes different forms in different languages. Each language or dialect has its peculiar phonetic laws and tendencies; because a particular interchange of sounds takes place in one language it does not follow that it does so in another. In Greek, for instance, _s_ between two vowels is lost, in Latin it becomes _r_. Our English _two_ is the same word, so far as origin is concerned, as the German _zwei_, the Latin and Greek _duo_, the Sanskrit _dwi_; the English _silly_ is the German _selig_, “blessed.” As words are carried down the stream of time, they change in both outward form and inward meaning, and this change is in harmony with the physiological and psychological peculiarities of the particular people that uses them. (2.) The same word, again, takes different forms in one and the same language. _Brisk_, _frisky_, and _fresh_ all come from the same fountain-head, and _bank_ and _bench_ are the differentiated forms of which _banquet_ is the Romanized equivalent. So, too, in French _noël_ and _natal_ are but forms of the same word of different ages, like _naïf_ and _native_, _chétif_ and _captif_. Then (3) different words take the same form in different languages. The Greek καλέω and the English _call_ have as little connection as the Latin _sanguis_ and the Mongol _sengui_, “blood,” or the modern Greek _mati_ for ὀμμάτιον, and the Polynesian _mata_, “an eye.” To compare words of different languages together because they agree in sound is to contravene all the principles of scientific philology; agreement of sound is the best possible proof of their want of connection, since each language has its own phonology and consequently modifies the forms of words in a different fashion. The comparison even of roots is a dangerous process, not to be indulged in unless the grammar of the languages to which they belong has been shown to be of common origin. What we call roots are only the hypothetical types to which we can reduce the words of a certain group of tongues; they are, therefore, merely the expression of the phonetic laws common to all the members of the group. But it does not follow that the selected phonetic laws which all the members of a certain group of tongues have in common are the same as the phonetic laws of another language or another group. Roots, moreover, owing to their shortness, their vagueness, and their consequent simplicity, are necessarily limited in number, while the ideas they convey are so wide and general as to cover an almost infinite series of derived meanings; to say nothing of the probability that many of them are to be traced to imitations of natural sounds. (4.) Different words, in the fourth place, may take the same form in one and the same language. The French _feu_, “fire,” is the Latin _focus_; _feu_, “late,” the Low Latin _fuitus_ (from _fui_). So too the English _page_, in the sense of a servant, comes ultimately from the Greek παίδιον, _page_, in the sense of a leaf of a book, from the Latin _pagina_. An arbitrary and antiquated spelling may often keep up a distinction between such words in writing when in speaking all distinction has long since disappeared. The French _sang_, _cent_, _sans_, _sent_, _s’en_, the English _sow_, _sew_, _so_, are respectively pronounced in the same way. That no inconvenience would be caused by writing them in the same way is shown not only by the fact that many words of similar sound but varying sense, such as _sound_, _box_, or _lie_, are not distinguished in writing, but also by the ease with which we can distinguish between them in conversation, although in conversation we are unable to dwell upon a word or view it by the light of the completed sentence, as is the case in reading. The scientific etymologist would welcome the accurate representation of sounds by symbols, his object is to know what sounds pass into others in the course of centuries, and this he can only ascertain when the spelling represents the pronunciation; the amateur etymologist had better leave the subject alone. Etymology is not a plaything for the amusement of the ignorant and untrained; it is a serious and difficult study, not to be attempted without much preparation and previous research. The etymologist must be thoroughly trained in the principles of scientific philology, he must have mastered both phonology and sematology, and he must be well acquainted with more than one of the languages with which he deals. Then and then only can his labours be fruitful; then, and then only will his work be a gain and not a hindrance. False etymologies stand in the way of true ones, and the charlatans who have brought the name of etymology into contempt have discredited the labours of better men. There is much in etymology which must always defy analysis, there is much which will have to be corrected hereafter, but this will matter little if we have once learnt the lesson that change of sound and meaning can only take place in accordance with fixed and invariable law. Etymology is but a means to an end, and that end is partly the history of the development of thought and civilization as reflected in the fossil records of speech, partly the discovery and illustration of the laws which govern the shifting and decay of sounds and the modifications of sense.