284 GERMANIC LANGUAGES 



conditions, which beside the knowledge of neighboring idioms pre- 

 supposes also a conscious regard for the linguistic sense of foreign 

 individualities. Indeed, in some respects a positive departure from 

 the every-day speech of the home must be admitted especially in the 

 regulation of the vowels of unaccented syllables, upon the study of 

 which sufficient stress has not been laid in the past. At all events, 

 we are dealing not with a definitely established attempt at adjust- 

 ment, but rather with one that was actively at work in Middle 

 High German times and that has not ceased even in our day, although 

 for centuries, in conscious struggle against the constantly outcropping 

 dialects, unceasing efforts have been directed towards the real uni- 

 fication of the new artistic language, which we have come to call the 

 New High German literary language. 



My present task does not call for a more detailed description of 

 this infinitely complicated process. I must content myself with 

 having indicated, by the aid of an example selected at random, how 

 philology and linguistics have had to learn, one from the other, in 

 order to clear up the historical development of a considerable pro- 

 vince of the German language, namely, the subsidiary forms employed 

 in literature. On the whole, the philological viewpoint has unques- 

 tionably vindicated itself, as is readily understood if we recollect that 

 we are dealing with the history of more or less artificially developed 

 idioms. But there are reasonable grounds for doubting whether 

 without the opposition of German linguistics which demanded a 

 new and thorough investigation of the entire problem German 

 philology would have succeeded in freeing itself so quickly and so 

 completely from the ban of the old inherited doctrines that were 

 accepted without the slightest attempt to establish their correctness. 

 In this regard German philology, therefore, owes a debt of gratitude 

 to German linguistics, just as the latter is indebted to the former 

 for the impulse given in the struggle to correct its conceptions about 

 language-development in general. 



We may admit that the service which linguistics has rendered 

 philology in the solution of the problem of the literary language has 

 been in part rather indirect or negative in character. Nevertheless, 

 positive assistance has been rendered at this point just as it has in 

 the influence of linguistics in other places, which I cannot discuss 

 here, and we may anticipate a continuation of this attitude in the 

 future. Indeed, unless I am greatly mistaken, linguistics will be called 

 upon to place at the disposal of philology in one of its most special 

 fields of activity, that of critical separation, new aids of fairly sweep- 

 ing importance. 



The assimilation of the ideas which Karl Verner's pioneer investi- 

 gations of Germanic word-accent had brought to linguistics, has 

 claimed the attention of students of language for a considerable 



