THE LATIN VERB JUBERE. 347 



end with a vowel. Thus I account for the abundance of soft 

 sounds in the languages of Polynesia. On the other hand, where 

 a nation or tribe came fresh from the common stock, and the 

 current of events had made it follow a warlike and isolated mode 

 of life among rugged mountains, its language is likely to retain 

 the harsh features of its origin and surroundings, and thus I 

 account for the peculiarities of the Keltic and some other 

 languages. Of course, the principle of phonetic decay loses much 

 of its force as soon as any language begins to possess a literature, 

 for that tends to fix its sounds and words. 



IV. To illustrate the changes which our root gab, "to say, to 

 speak," may undergo, I cite the following words : — (1) from I.-K., 

 gab, gob the " mouth," that with which we " speak," gabach, 

 "garrulous," E. gab, "to talk much," gabble, "to chatter," 

 gibberish, " unmeaning words," jabber, "to talk indistinctly," 

 gibe, "to deride, scoff at," A. -S. Scotch, haver, "to talk foolishly," 

 habble, "to stutter, to wrangle," yabble, "to gabble, to scold," 

 yabbock, "a talkative person," Fr. gober, E. gobble, "to 

 swallow hastily " ; (2) by changing g into its corresponding sharp 

 guttural &, gab gives the provincial Ger. kab-beln, "to quarrel," 

 E. squabble ; cf. Sc. habble ; (3) then, by putting b for g, the 

 root gab gives E. babble, "to talk much, to talk idly," Gr. 

 babax, "chatterer," bazo, "I speak, I say," Fr. babiller, "to 

 prattle," and, by the insertion of a liquid, E. blab, " to talk much, 

 to speak thoughtlessly " ; (4) then, by putting d for g, we have 

 the H. dabhar, " to speak "; (5) by softening this d into its 

 liquid I, we have the I.-K. labhair, "to speak, utter, talk," labh, 

 "a lip," the external organ of speech, L. labium, labrum, "the 

 lip," — a word which belongs to " speech " and not to the " licking" 

 of the tongue, as some Latin etymologists assert. 



From these experimental examples we gather the following 

 facts : — (a) g becomes b, as, gab, babble; (b) g becomes d, as, 

 gab, dabh-ar ; (c) g becomes d, and then 1, as, gab, labh-air ; (d) 

 d becomes 1, as, Gr. dakriima, L. lacrima, L. delicare for 

 dedicare ; (e) g become j, as, gab, jabber, gibe; (/) g becomes 

 k, as, gab, kab-beln; (g) g, gh, becomes h ory, as, gab, hab-ble, 

 yabble; the same changes are seen in Ger. g ell en "to shriek," 

 E. yell, howl; E. garden, Fr. jardin, E. yard; (h) the sibilant 

 s maybe prefixed to harden the meaning, as, kabbeln, squabble; 

 this change probably arises from the substitution of a palatal c 

 for the guttural g, for in Sanskrit and in European languages this 

 9 becomes sk ; (i) 1, as an affix, gives a frequentative force to a 

 verb, as, gab, gabble ; gob, gobble ; (k) the liquid 1 may be 

 introduced into a word, as, gab, bab, blab. Several other 

 principles of change will present themselves, but we shall notice 

 them as they occur. 



