THE STUDY OF FRENCH IX FOREIGN UNIVERSITIES. 367 



skill that often verges on over-refinement, but which never fails 

 in making the suppleness of the idiom stand out in bold relief ; 

 they strive after novel originality in the choice and the linking 

 together of words, and by so doing inaugurate a new future of 

 vitality, expansion and transformation on behalf of their admir- 

 able mother tongue, which never yet lost a whit of its pristine 

 buoyancy. 



All this has to be related in full detail, proceeding step by 

 step, from sound to word, from word to grammatical sentence, 

 from sentence to literary phrase. In the historv of words, the 

 various alterations in form and meaning will have to be con- 

 sidered ; in the history of the sentence the order of words and 

 the linking together of clauses will have to be discussed. From 

 what goes before it becomes clear that the professor's modus 

 operandi must of necessity be guided by the subdivisions estab- 

 lished by Romance philology. 



The basis to start from is the history of sound, i.e., phone- 

 tics. The vocalism and consonantism of Latin will be the starting 

 point, the up-to-date Paris pronunciation along with the pronun- 

 ciation of the patois is to be our final goal. The transition from 

 one phase to the other has to be studied and explained, and due 

 attention must be given to the successive intermediate stages. 

 Diez has proved, and his successors have borne him out, that the 

 phonetic changes in the Romance languages, as well as every- 

 where else, are accomplished conformably to certain natural laws, 

 which are quite as reliable, unalterable and philosophical as the 

 laws of physics and of chemistry. These laws prevail during a 

 given period and within a special area ; but then and there they 

 prevail in an absolute manner. A few simple examples will 

 make this clear. When c hard (palatal, i.e., c = k) of Latin, 

 standing before a or an changes in French into the sound 

 represented by the group ch, all the words of the time that are in 

 the same conditions follow suit. Thus we find that catus becomes 

 chat, caro becomes chair, color becomes chaleur, caballum becomes 

 cheval, cantare becomes chanter, cansam becomes chose, caulcm 

 becomes chou. Such words as have not undergone this change 

 are borrowed from the Picard or Norman dialects or from 

 another Romance language. At the time when the tonic e of 

 vulgar Latin is diphthongized into ci, all the sounds of this nature, 

 in this condition, undergo the same change, e.g., habere becomes 

 aveir, regem becomes ret, plenum becomes plein, frenum becomes 

 frein. When afterwards, in certain parts of France, this diph- 

 thong changes into oi, except in cases when it is followed by a 

 nasal, aveir becomes avoir, rei becomes roi, but plein and frein 

 remain in statu quo ante. When, again, we find that, for instance, 

 fenum becomes join and avenam becomes avoine, the reason for 

 this anomaly is, that these words were probably borrowed from 

 the Eastern dialects ( Wallon. Lorrain. Bourguignon. Cham- 

 penois), in which ei always became oi, even before 

 a nasal. It must be kept in mind that these laws 



