Part 19 (1/2)
There are, in general, three kinds of changes that take place in a language. ”Phonetic” changes, that is, changes in the articulation of words, regardless of the meaning they bear.
This is ill.u.s.trated simply by the word ”name” which, in the eighteenth century was p.r.o.nounced ne'm. ” a.n.a.logic”
changes, that is, changes in the articulation of words under the influence of words somewhat similar in meaning. The word ”flash,” for example, became what it is because of the sound of words a.s.sociated in meaning, ”crash,” ”dash,”
”smash.” The third process of change in language alters not only the articulate forms of words, not only their sound, but their sense. All these changes, as will be presently pointed out, can easily be explained by the laws of habit early discussed in this book, these laws being applicable to the habit of language as well as to any other.
In the case of phonetic change, it is only to be expected that the sounds of a language will not remain eternally changeless.
A language is spoken by a large number of individuals, no two of whom are gifted with precisely the same vocal apparatus.
In consequence no two of them will utter words in precisely the same way. Before writing and printing were general, these slight variations in articulation were bound to have an effect on the language. People more or less unconsciously imitate the sounds they hear, especially if they are not checked up by the written forms of words. Even to-day changes are going on, and writing is at best a poor representation of phonetics. The Georgian, the Londoner, the Welshman and the Middle Westerner can understand the same printed language, precisely because it does not at all represent their peculiarities of dialect. Variant sounds uttered by one individual may be caught up in the language, especially if the variant articulation is simpler or shorter. Thus the shortening of a word from several syllables to one, though it starts accidentally, is easily made habitual among a large number of speakers because it does facilitate speech. In the cla.s.sic example, pre-English, ”habeda” and ”habedun” became in Old English, ”haefde” and” haefdon,” and are in present English (I, we) ”had.”[1] In the same way variations that reduce the unstressed syllables of a word readily insinuate themselves into the articulatory habits of a people. In the production of stressed syllables, the vocal chords are under high tension and the breath is shut in. It is easier, consequently, to produce the unstressed syllables ”with shortened, weakened articulations... lessening as much as possible all interference with the breath stream.”[2] Thus ”contemporaneous prohibition”
becomes ”kntempe'rejnjes prhe'bifn.” Sound changes thus take place, in general, as lessenings of the labor of articulation, by means of adaptation to prevailing rest positions of the vocal organs. They take place further in more or less accidental adaptations to the particular speech habits of a people. That is, those sounds become discarded that do not fit in with the general articulatory tendencies of a language. Of this the weakening of unstressed syllables in English and palatalization in Slavic are examples.[1*]
[Footnote 1: Bloomfield: _loc. cit._, p. 211.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 212.]
[Footnote 1*: _Ibid._, p. 218.]
These changes of sound in language so far discussed are made independently of the meaning of words. Other changes in articulation occur, as already noted, by a.n.a.logy of sound or meaning. That is, words that have a.s.sociated meanings come to be similarly articulated. This is simply ill.u.s.trated in the case of the child who thinks it perfectly natural to a.s.similate by a.n.a.logy ”came” to ”come.” Thus the young child will frequently say, until he is corrected, he ”comed,” he ”bringed,” he ”fighted.” In communities where printing and writing and reading are scarce, such a.s.similation by a.n.a.logy has an important effect in modifying the forms of words.
CHANGES IN MEANING. The changes in language most important for the student of human behavior are changes in meaning. Language, it must again be stressed, is an instrument for the communication of ideas. The manner in which the store of meanings in a language becomes increased and modified (the etymology of a language) is, in a sense, the history of the mental progress of the people which use it. For changes in meaning are primarily brought about when the words in a language do not suffice for the larger and larger store of experiences which individuals within the group desire to communicate to one another. The meanings of old words are stretched, as it were, to cover new experiences; old words are transferred bodily to new experiences; they are slightly modified in form to apply to new experiences a.n.a.logous to the old; new words are formed after a.n.a.logy with ones already in use.
A simple ill.u.s.tration of the application of a word already current to a wider situation is the application of the word ”head” as a purely objective name, to a new experience, which has certain a.n.a.logies with the old; as when we speak of a ”head” of cabbage, the” head” of an army, the ”head”
of the cla.s.s, or the ”headmaster.” In many such cases the transferred meaning persists alongside of the old. Thus the word ”capital” used as the name for the chief city in a country, persists alongside of its use in ”capital” punishment, ”capital” story, etc. But sometimes the transferred meaning of the word becomes dominant and exclusive. Thus ”disease” (dis-ease) once meant discomfort of any kind.
Now it means specifically some physical ailment. The older use has been completely discarded. To ”spill” once meant, in the most general sense, to destroy. Now all the other uses, save that of pouring out, have lapsed. ”Meat” which once meant any kind of nourishment has now come to refer almost exclusively (we still make exceptions as in the case of sweetmeat) to edible flesh. Whenever the special or novel application of the word becomes dominant, then we say the meaning of the word has changed.
Mental progress is largely dependent on the transfer of words to newer and larger spheres of experience, the modification of old words or the formation of new ones to express the increasing complexity of relations men discover to exist between things. In the instances already cited some of the transferred words lost their more general meaning and became specialized, as in the case of ”meat,” ”spill,” etc. Other words, like ”head,” though they may keep their specific objective meaning, may come to be used in a generalized intellectual sense. One of the chief ways by which a language remains adequate to the demands of increasing knowledge and experience of the group is through the transfer of words having originally a purely objective sense to emotional and intellectual situations. These words, like ”bitter,” ”sour,”
”sharp,” referring originally only to immediate physical experiences, to objects perceived through the senses, come to have intellectual and emotional significance, as when we speak of a ”sour” face, a ”bitter” disappointment, a ”sharp”
struggle. Most of our words that now have abstract emotional or intellectual connotations were once words referring exclusively to purely sensible (sense perceptual) experiences.
”Anxiety” once meant literally a ”narrow place,” just as when we speak of some one having ”a close shave.” To ”refute” once meant literally ”to knock out” an argument.
To ”understand” meant ”to stand in the midst of.” To ”confer” meant ”to bring together.” Sensation words themselves were once still more concrete in their meaning.
”Violet” and ”orange” are obviously taken as color names from the specific objects to which they still refer. Language has well been described as ”a book of faded metaphors.” The history of language has been to a large extent the a.s.similation and habitual mechanical use of words that were, when first used, strikingly figurative.
The novel use of a word that is now a quite regular part of the language may in many cases first be ascribed to a distinguished writer. Shakespeare is full of expressions which have since, and because of his use of them, become literally household words. Many words that have now a general application arose out of a peculiar local situation, myth, or name. ”Boycott” which has become a reasonably intelligible and universal word, only less than fifty years ago referred particularly and exclusively to Boycott, a certain unpopular Irish landowner who was subjected to the kind of discrimination for which the word has come to stand. ”Burke”
used as a verb has its origin in the name of a notorious Edinburgh murderer. Characters in fiction or drama, history or legend come to be standard words. Everyone knows what we mean when we speak of a Quixotic action, a Don Juan, a Galahad, a Chesterfield. To tantalize arises from the mythical perpetual frustration of Tantalus in the Greek story. Expressions that had a special meaning in the works of a philosopher or litterateur come to be generally used, as ”Platonic love.”[1] Again words that arise as mere popular witticisms or vulgarisms may be brought into the language as permanent acquisitions. ”Mob,” now a quite legitimate word, was originally a shortening of _mobile vulgum_, and was, only a hundred years ago, suspect in polite discourse.
[Footnote 1: Though this is very loosely and inaccurately used.]
Outside the deliberate invention by scientists of terms for the new relations they have discovered, more or less spontaneous variation in the use of words and their unconscious a.s.similation by large numbers with whose other language habits they chance to fit, is the chief source of language growth. One might almost say words are wrenched from their original local setting, and given such a generalized application that they are made available for an infinite complexity of scientific and philosophical thought.
UNIFORMITIES IN LANGUAGE. Thus far we have discussed changes in language from the psychological viewpoint, that is, we have considered the human tendencies and habits which bring about changes in the articulation and meaning, in the sound and the sense, of words. It is evident from these considerations that there can be no absolute uniformity in spoken languages, not even in the languages of two persons thrown much together. Within a country where the same language is ostensibly spoken, there are nevertheless differences in the language as spoken by different social strata, by different localities. There are infinite subtle variations between the articulation and the word uses of different individuals. There are languages within languages, the dialects of localities, the jargon of professional and trade groups, the special p.r.o.nunciations and special and overlapping vocabularies of different social cla.s.ses.
But while there are these many causes, both of individual difference and of differing social environments, why languages do not remain uniform, there are similar causes making for a certain degree of uniformity within a language. There is one very good reason why, to a certain extent, languages do attain uniformity; they are socially acquired. The individual learns to speak a language from those about him, and individuals brought up within the same group will consequently learn to speak, within limits, the same tongue; they will learn to articulate through imitation, and, while no individual ever precisely duplicates the sounds of others, he duplicates them as far as possible. He learns, moreover, as has already been pointed out, to attach given meanings to given words, not for any reason of their peculiar appositeness or individual caprice, but because he learns that others about him habitually attach certain meanings to certain sounds. And since one is stimulated to expression primarily by the desire and necessity of communication of ideas a premium is put upon uniformity.
It is of no use to use a language if it conceals one's thoughts.
In consequence, within a group individual variations, unless for reasons already discussed they happen to lend themselves to ready a.s.similation by the group, will be mere slips of the tongue. They will be discarded and forgotten, or, if the individual cannot rid himself of them, will like stammering or stuttering or lisping be set down as imperfections and social handicaps. The uniformity of language within groups whose individual members have much communication with each other is thus to a certain extent guaranteed. A man who is utterly individualistic in his language might just as well have no language at all, unless for the satisfaction of expressing to himself his own emotions.[1] Language is learned from the group among whom one moves, and those sounds and senses of words are, on the whole, retained, which are intelligible to the group. Those sounds and meanings will best be understood which are already in use. No better ill.u.s.tration could be found of how custom and social groups preserve and enforce standards of individual action.
[Footnote 1: There have been a few poets, like Emily d.i.c.kinson, or mystics like Blake, some of whose work exhibits almost complete unintelligibility to most readers, though doubtless it had a very specific meaning and vividness to the writers concerned.]
The obverse of the fact that intercommunication promotes uniformity in language is that lack of communication brings about language differentiation. The less the intercommunication between groups, the more will the languages of the groups differ, however uniform they may be within the groups themselves. The most important factor in differentiation of language is local differentiation. In some European countries every village speaks its own dialect. In pa.s.sing from one village to another the dialects may be mutually intelligible, but by the time one has pa.s.sed from the first village in the chain to the last, one may find that the dialect of the first and last are utterly unintelligible to each other. A real break in language, as opposed to dialect variations, occurs where there is a considerable barrier between groups, such as a mountain range, a river, a tribal or political boundary. The more impenetrable the barriers between two groups the more will the languages differ, and the less mutually intelligible will they be.
Looking back over the history of language the student of linguistics infers that those languages which bear striking or significant similarities are related. Thus Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Roumanian are traceable directly back to the Latin. This does not mean that all over the areas occupied by the speakers of these languages Latin was originally spoken. But the Romans in their conquests, both military and cultural, were able to make their own language predominant. The variations which make French and Roumanian, say, mutually unintelligible, are due to the fact that Latin was for the natives in these conquered territories a.s.similated to their own languages. So that, in the familiar example, the Latin ”h.o.m.o” becomes ”uomo” in Italian, ”homme” in French, ”hombre” in Spanish, and ”om” in Roumanian. Similarly related but mutually unintelligible languages among the American Indians have been traced to three great source-languages.
The history of European languages offers an interesting example of differentiation. English and German, for example, are both traceable back to West-Germanic; from that in turn to a hypothecated primitive West-Germanic. All the European languages are traceable back to a hypothecated Primitive Indo-European.[1] The theory held by most students of this subject is that the groups possessing this single uniform language spread over a wider and wider area, gradually became separated from each other by geographical barriers and tribal affiliations, and gradually (and on the part of individual speakers unconsciously) modified their speech so that slight differences acc.u.mulated, and resulted finally in widely different and mutually unintelligible languages.