PRESENT PROBLEMS OF ROMANCE PHILOLOGY 261 



ml 



Spanish probably the only plausible instance is the partial disap- 

 pearance of the labials, as in humo < fumus, hembra < femina. 



Quite another question than this of the traces of the pre-Latin influ- 

 ences in Romance speech is that of the very obvious infiltration into 

 the Romance languages of stocks of words chiefly from Celtic, 

 Germanic, and Greek sources, in regard to individual examples of 

 which more or less uncertainty prevails. For the somewhat numerous 

 Greek examples the list drawn up by Diez in the first volume of his 

 grammar has long since been subjected to revision and excision. For 

 the identification of the astonishingly few Celtic words that survive 

 in Romance speech the problem consists in determining, if possible, 

 the presumable forms which would theoretically correspond, for the 

 period of their adoption, with the Romance forms deducible for 

 the same period; while for the immense stock of Germanic words 

 naturalized on Romance soil, the task of the present, as admirably 

 begun by Th. Braune in a series of elaborate articles in the Zeit- 

 schrift fur romanische Philologie, and by W. Bruckner, in his Charak- 

 teristik der germanische Elements im Italienischen, is to assign these 

 each to its proper Germanic dialect and to the period of its introduc- 

 tion into Romance speech. 



Of still more pressing urgency for the student of Romance philology 

 is the question of the origin, delimitation, and influence of the Ro- 

 mance dialects and patois. Here it is essential to start from the 

 fundamental notion that the patois is not a side degeneration from 

 a central norm, not a corruption of a form of speech more perfect 

 than itself because spoken by compatriots more favorably situated 

 and hence linguistically more fortunate. On the contrary, it is 

 precisely because each patois is for the most part the natural and 

 undistorted evolution of its own local antecedents, that the patois 

 assumes, at least theoretically, to the philologist the place of primary 

 importance in the scale of speech-development. Not till a compre- 

 hension of the natural processes of evolution as exhibited in the 

 local patois has enabled the philologist to form a just opinion of 

 the groundwork of the language he would study is he in a position 

 to estimate correctly the effects of the interplay of social and polit- 

 ical forces which result in lifting a patois to the literary plane 

 of a dialect, and the dialect, in turn, through a gradual, pro- 

 longed, and infinitely complex process of development, to the con- 

 sciously exalted status of a highly cultured and national language 

 of civilization. 



If such, expressed in the most general terms, be the process up- 

 ward of patois and dialect, what are the distinctive problems con- 

 fronting the Romance scholar as to the discrimination and delimita- 

 tion of patois ? Within the broad domain of a national speech it must 

 be accepted as true that no indigenous inhabitant is unable to com- 



