PHILOLOGY 



125 



to confirm the belief in tlie ' reign of law ' in lan- 

 guage. But that belief was certainly strengthened 

 when in 1875 Karl Verner wrote a paper (published 

 in Kuhn's Zvitsrhrift, vol. xxiii. ) in which he showed 

 t hat some apparent exceptions to Grimm's Law were 

 really due to the operation of another and wider 

 law (commonly called by his name) dating from 

 variation of accent preserved by the old Teutonic 

 from the parent-speech ; in consequence of which 

 at the present day a west Cumberland dalesman 

 says ' farfrfer ' and ' imi'Mer, ' but ' brorVter,' l>ecause 

 in the parent-language (as attested by Sanskrit 

 and Greek ) the stress was laid on the last syllable 

 in 'pater,' 'mater,' but on the first syllable in 

 ' bhrater ; ' anil every Englishman says ' lanrf,' 

 but ' e;ir//< ' (in the oldest Teutonic hliid.-i ' and 

 'ertha,' with the final vowel still surviving), be- 

 cause the suffix (Ind. -Ger. -to) which was common 

 to both was accented in the first word, but not in 

 the last; so also 'miro/,' Imt 'grov/tfi' (suffix -<), 

 ' floorf,' but 'dea//i ' (suffix tu). Here the regular- 

 ity seems little less than miraculous ; and it was 

 discoveries such as tins which led about this time 

 to the rise of what is sometimes called the ' new 

 school' of philology, men who in reality only press 

 to their furthest limit the principles of their prede- 



e nrs. For example, Curtius and Schleicher held 

 that the o|>eration of unvarying law in certain cases 

 did not exclude the possibility of ' sporadic changes ' 



i.e. of changes found in some words only, not in 

 every word in which the sound so affected occurred : 

 thus, ' lacrima ' in Latin shows an / instead of the 

 <l of the original word, as proved by Greek Saicpv 

 and our ' tear ; ' but they did not therefore think it 

 necessary that every tl should pass into / in Latin. 



The ' new school ' Leskien, Brugmann, Osthoff, 

 Paul (to mention a few only of the most conspicu- 

 ous members) hold that sound-change so far as it 

 is ilue to physical cause* i* alwolntely uniform in 

 any one language or dialect at the same time ; and 

 that the new form produced by such change in 

 every case drives out the old one. Briefly put, 

 phonetic law is invariable ; there is no such thing 

 a* sporadic change change attacking a few words, 

 ami "paring others : throughout the whole speech- 

 area all word* in which a particular sound occurs 

 are alike affected. This doctrine has commanded 

 very general assent : it is tempting to the scientific 

 mind : and its strength lies in the number of 

 apparent exceptions which have been satisfactorily 

 explained. Yet the it priori arguments against it 

 are strong, and it is certain that it is incapable of 

 absolute proof : you cannot prove a negative. But 

 the good done by its supporters in every branch 

 of idiilology has been immense. They protested, 

 and rightly, against the habit, seen in the later 

 writings of Curtins and other lesser men in other 

 languages, of allowing obvious exceptions to 

 ascertained phonetic law on the ground of identity 

 of function. Be the principle of the new men 

 right or wrong, its olwervance in practice is 

 excellent. But this protest is only one of the 

 services of the new school. They (especially Paul) 

 have called attention to the inner side of language ; 

 the older writers had spent themselves on the outer 

 >idi'. For language is both a physical and a psychical 

 product. The sounds which make language are 



Ine to the physical apparatus of speech. As such 

 their nature can l>e exactly ascertained, and they are 

 subject to changes which can be known and regis- 

 tered like the sequences of any physical science 

 lee I'IIOXKTICS), and may be called the outer 

 -id" of language. The inner development is due 

 to the mind of man ; and this, like all the other 

 works of man, belongs to historical and not to 

 physical science. Here the ruling principle is 

 imitation. Every child learns every word it utters 

 through imitation, and imitation of words heard 



from others or previously uttered by ourselves is 

 the parent of the language of every grown-up man. 

 That we are wholly unconscious of the process does 

 not make the fact any less certain. One form of 

 imitation especially active in speech is what gram- 

 marians call 'form-association.' Different forms 

 of speech e.g. preterite tenses of many verbs, or 

 a particular case of many nouns are alike each in 

 their grammatical function, and tend to be thought 

 of, and to be used, together. But these forms are 

 nevertheless often very unlike ; though their use 

 may be the same they may have different origins 

 e.g. ' I swam,' ' I stood,' in English owe their 

 distinctive form to a vowel-variation, but ' I heard ' 

 to the adding of a suffix. Now, the mind is con- 

 stantly acting under the influence of analogy to 

 reduce such variations, to do away with unnecessary 

 differences, to reduce old forms to one level, or to 

 make new forms on the analogy of old ones. Thus 

 (see under article GRAMMAR), we now say ' we ran,' 

 not ' we run ' as our forefathers did, because the 

 reason for the different vocalism of singular and 

 plural is no longer discernible, and the unmeaning 

 difference is ' levelled.' Again, we say ' I climbed,' 

 not ' I clomb ' any more, Because the preterite in 

 -ed is the simplest and commonest form of the 

 tense, capable of being applied without difficulty 

 when a new verb becomes necessary e.g. 'we 

 boycotted him.' This principle of 'analogy' (as 

 for brevity it is often called ) acts widely in every 

 language ; it conditions every new word we make, 

 and it must have acted much more upon vernaculars 

 which had no literature ( a good example may be 

 seen in the reconstruction of the old Latin verb 

 in modem Italian), and still more upon wholly 

 unwritten languages. 



There are then two chief factors which act on 

 language : one, the vis inertia, which is the prime 

 cause of phonetic change, and is in the main de- 

 structive, doing away with sounds or combinations of 

 sounds which, owing localises varying with nations 

 and even with individuals, are inconvenient to pro- 

 duce ; the other, the imitative habit of mind, 

 which may destroy old forms, but is in the main 

 reparative, giving new forms for those which 

 through phonetic change had become obscure, and 

 constantly producing new forms on the analogy of 

 old ones to supply each want caused by the progress 

 of the human mind. For except in very rare cases 

 man turns old speech-materials to new uses. He 

 does not invent absolutely new names for new 

 things as they become known to him or are pro- 

 duced by him. A hippopotamus was called a 

 'river-horse;' the trees and beasts of Australia 

 are known by the names of quite different species 

 in Europe. A new invention is called by some 

 descriptive name, as a 'photograph,' which has 

 superseded the older but equally descriptive Talbo- 

 type and Daguerreotype : when Talbot and 

 Daguerre were forgotten their names were less 

 suggestive than terms with a meaning. Mesmer- 

 ism in like manner will be superseded by hypnol 

 ism, there being a sufficient number of people able 

 to understand the new name, and so to familiarise 

 it to those to whom it means nothing. Similarly, 

 old names may take a new value, becoming there- 

 by really new words if the connection with the 

 old thing is quite broken off. Thus, a ' bead ' to 

 us is a round object made of different materials, 

 absolutely unconnected with the same word in Old 

 English which meant a prayer : the link counting 

 prayers by means of a string of beads being no 

 longer a matter of common observation. Some- 

 times both the old and the new meaning co exist : 

 a man may be called a 'lion,' but a lion is a lion 

 still. Lastly, new words expressing action verbs 

 and verbal nouns constantly spring up, being 

 commonly either more picturesque or giving some 



