HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE 215 



Conquest. But as I have shown elsewhere l it is probable that the 

 Scandinavian immigration exercised a much stronger influence on 

 English grammar than the French. Both the mutual relations of the 

 two languages, Scandinavian and English, and the greater rapidity 

 of the structural change in the North, where Scandinavians settled in 

 the greatest number, point decidedly in that direction, if we are to 

 think of foreign influence at all. On the other hand, the chronology 

 of some changes, for instance the early confusion of the old system 

 of genders in some Northern monuments, as well as the gradual 

 manner in which the leveling took place on many points, where we 

 seem able to account phonologically and morphologically for each 

 little step in a development which it took centuries to accomplish 

 all this makes it not unwarrantable to speak of the whole process as 

 one which would have taken place in the same, or nearly the same 

 manner, even had no foreign mixture entered into play. 



As we are thus left unable to answer the question decidedly one 

 way or the other from what we know about English itself, the idea 

 naturally presents itself that an examination of parallel processes 

 in other languages might perhaps assist us materially. For if we 

 find everywhere else in other languages the two things, mixture of 

 speech or of race and simplification of grammatical structure, going 

 together, and if, on the other hand, pure languages are always con- 

 servative in their structure, the conclusion apparently is a safe one 

 that the two phenomena are interdependent. The limited time at 

 my disposal, and still more my limited knowledge, prevent me from 

 doing here more than throwing out a few hints. 



Among the Germanic languages, Danish is one of the simplest, as 

 far as Sectional structure is concerned, and Danish ha& undergone 

 a very strong foreign influence, a considerable part of its vocabulary 

 being made up of Low German words. If we compare the different 

 Danish dialects with one another, we see some differences in regard 

 to the degree in which the simplification has been carried out, the 

 dialect of West Jutland going farthest in that respect. There, for 

 instance, the three grammatical genders have been merged together, 

 final -e has disappeared, the definite article is one invariable prefixed 

 (e, while in other dialects it is postfixed and varies according to num- 

 ber and according to the two or, in other places, three genders still 

 distinguished. Now, there does not seem to be a scrap of evidence 

 to show that this part of the country has witnessed any stronger 

 race-mixture than the others. It is worth noting that in the district 

 nearest to German-speaking communities two genders are preserved. 

 It is my impression that the most simplified dialect has no greater 

 admixture of loan-words than the more conservative ones, and this 

 impression has been endorsed by the greatest authority on Jutland 



1 Otto Jespersen, Progress in Language, p. 173. London, 1894. 



