Accent has considerable influence upon quantity. On the one side short vowels may be lengthened and pure vowels converted into diphthongs by the accent falling upon them. This is partly the origin of the Sanskrit guṇa and vṛiddhi, according to which a simple ă is raised to â, an ĭ to ê (ai) and ai (âi), and an u to o (au) and au (âu).[178] The lengthening of short vowels in Hebrew in a “pause,” that is at the end of a sentence, is another example. In the German dialects monosyllables which end in a consonant frequently have their vowel changed into a diphthong by the accent, the original vowel appearing again as soon as an additional syllable is added. In our own English the short vowel of a monosyllable which ends in a sonant frequently becomes half-long when accented (compare fog with fóggy, god with góddess). On the other side, the absence of the accent may bring with it a diminution of quantity. Thus a diphthong may be shortened by being pronounced in the same period of time as is required for the pronunciation of a short vowel, or may even be reduced to the short vowel which lies midway between the two elements of which the diphthong consists. A short vowel, again, may be reduced to a vocalic consonant like the Slavonic r. Since much movement of the lips in speaking implies an energetic enunciation, shortened syllables are naturally pronounced with passive lips. To this fact we must ascribe the numerous short syllables of modern cultivated English.
There is but little difference between a long or “strong” consonant and a doubled one. In the first case, the position of the vocal organs for pronouncing the consonant is retained with gradually decreasing force, until it is suddenly shifted to the position needed for the following vowel; in the second case it is shifted back again, when the force required to produce it is half spent. Strictly speaking, therefore, the consonant cannot be said to be doubled; there is simply a break or pause in the utterance of it, the force necessary to produce it being renewed before it has been fully exhausted. In English, French, German, or Slavonic the double consonants have become long ones; to find them still pronounced we must turn to Italian, Swedish, Finnic, or Magyàr. Analogous to a double consonant is the combination of a sonant with a surd, when assimilation does not take place, as in has to do or has seen. In Sanskrit and Greek aspirated letters could not be doubled, Sanskrit permitting only kkh, tth, and pph, and Greek only κχ, τθ, and πφ; hence it seems plain that there was either no glide or a glide practically inaudible.
It is obvious that the combination of a consonant and a vowel admits of an almost infinite series of variations according as the formation of the one or other sound is made prominent in pronunciation. The consonant may, as it were, swallow up the vowel; on the other hand, the vocal organs may be shifted to form the vowel while they are still in the act of forming the consonant. Hence arise mouillé and labialized letters. If the front part of the tongue be raised and the lips opened while a consonant is being uttered, a palatalized or mouillé letter is the result, of which the Italian gl and gn, the Spanish ll and ñ, or the Portuguese lh and nh, may be regarded as examples. Still better examples, according to Sievers, are combinations of consonants with an original i in many Slavonic languages (e.g. Russian nikto). Certain consonants are incapable of being mouillé; gutturals, for instance, in whose formation the back part of the tongue plays so prominent a part can only be so by becoming palatals. Labialized sounds are those in which the lips are rounded while the pronunciation of a consonant is in process. Labials and gutturals show the same fondness for this labialization or “rounding,” that the palatals and dentals do for mouillation; and a comparison of the derived languages proves that the primitive Aryan speech must have possessed a row of labialized or “velar” gutturals—kw, gw, ghw—of which the Latin qu and our own cw, qu are descendants. There is nothing to show that these velar gutturals were ever developed out of the simple gutturals; so far back as we can go in the history of Indo-European speech the two classes of guttural exist side by side, and the groups of words containing them remain unallied and unmixed. Γυνή and queen (quean) must be separated from γένος, genitrix, kinder, and other derivations of the root which we have in the Sanskrit janâmi, the Greek γίγνομαι, γείνομαι, and the Latin gigno; and the labialized quies can have nothing to do with the Greek κεῖμαι and κώμη (κύμη), our own home and ham-let.[179] Both rounding and mouillation may be combined, as in the Danish kyst, pynte, and when occurring at the end of a word may frequently be explained from the analogy of cases in which the word is followed by a syllable beginning with u and i. Such an explanation, however, is more likely to be true of mouillation than of rounding; indeed, an i or y sound is very apt to develop itself after consonants in affected pronunciation, as in the English kyind, duke (for dook), or the Greek ζορκάς (δyορκας) for δορκάς and the Magyàr ágy, “bed.” Conversely a palatal i or y may develop a dental sonant before it: thus the Italian diacere comes from the Latin jacere, the Low Latin madius from majus,[180] and the Greek ζειά (δyειά) and ζυγόν (δyυγόν) from yava and jugum (Sansk. yugam). In these instances we may trace the influence of emphasis; the parasitic letter is due to the attempt to speak with greater distinctness and solemnity.
But whether it be emphasis or the other two causes of change described in an earlier chapter, the pronunciation of sounds, like the meaning they convey, is in a constant state of flux. Nowhere is the dogma of Herakleitus, πάντα ῥεῖ, truer than in the history of speech. No two people pronounce exactly alike, nor does the same person always pronounce the same word or group of words in exactly the same way. Apart from the changes undergone by the pronunciation of words according to the sounds of the other words with which they may be associated, it is difficult to pronounce the same word when uttered singly twice in precisely the same way. The very effort to do so produces modification of the sound. Such shades of difference in utterance, however, are imperceptible to any but an unusually sensitive ear; it is only when the difference becomes considerable that it attracts notice. It then constitutes what we may term a variety, and such varieties we may hear sometimes from the lips of a single individual, sometimes from the members of a family, sometimes from those who live in daily contact and under the same conditions of life. The faculty of imitation is strong within us, and a particular pronunciation once started soon spreads, as it were instinctively, amongst those who are much together. It has often been observed how like the members of a family are to each other, not only in general appearance and manner, but still more in the use of similar expressions and idioms and the pronunciation of sounds. It is the same with schools, and to a less degree with universities to which the students come with their habits of phonetic utterance more or less formed: it has been said that the handwriting betrays the school at which the man has been educated; it may be said with equal justice that the mode of speaking does so too. In a savage state of existence, where tribe-life and village-life are on the one hand strict and intense, and the husband on the other hand sees but little of his wife and children, the conditions favourable to the growth of varieties in pronunciation are more numerous than among civilized men. The language of the nursery becomes in time the language of the tribe.
This phonetic variety may be broadly stated as mainly due to differences in the structure of the vocal organs. Putting aside imitation and analogy, putting aside, too, all wilful and conscious changes of pronunciation such as those enumerated on page 205, a particular sound or a particular way of pronouncing a sound may be easier to one speaker than to another. Very slight differences in the physical formation of the organs of speech may produce the most important consequences. And when a habit of pronunciation has once been fixed, it is difficult to alter it. The child who is learning to speak will as readily learn Chinese as English, the Japanese r as the Northumberland burr; it is quite another matter when the attempt to catch the sounds of a new language has to be made in adult years.
Climate and food have, doubtless, an important effect in producing changes in the formation of the vocal organs; but at present we have no means of knowing the nature and extent of their influence. Professor March remarks of the change of i to g in Anglo-Saxon,[181] that “the movement (of consonants to vowels) is sometimes reversed, as when a nation moves northward, or northern peoples mix with a vowel-speaking race.” The Rev. W. Webster has drawn attention to the nasal twang which distinguishes not only American English, but American Spanish, Portuguese, and French as well; and which seems to be due to the dryness and the extremes of the American climate, while he further suggests climatic influences for the origin of the loss of the aspirate in Spanish words like hijo, pronounced ijo, the Latin filius, which in the fourteenth century still had f, and for the intensification of the aspirate in the corresponding Gascon words. We are all well acquainted with the hoarseness and roughness that exposure to the atmosphere lends to the voice, and the exercise and strength that a mountainous region gives to the lungs produce their effect in the vigour with which sounds are uttered. In cold countries the respiration is accelerated, while the air being denser contains a larger volume of oxygen.[182] The prognathism of the lower and older races of men, again, must have considerably modified their powers of utterance. “The lower jaw,” says Dr. Rolleston, “which in every well-marked variety of the human species contributes very importantly towards the making up of its distinctive character, was in the brachycephalous Briton usually a very different bone from the lower jaw of his Silurian predecessor.”[183] The strange fashions, too, which lead the savage to mutilate and deform his person, have frequently a very direct bearing upon phonology. Thus the loss and confusion of the labials and the excessive nasalization in the languages of the natives of the Pacific coast of America must be traced to the rings that are worn through the nostrils and lips of the people.[184] The Otyi-herero of South Africa is lisping in consequence of the custom of knocking out the four lower teeth, and partly filing off the upper front ones, to which also Professor Max Müller suggests the occurrence of the English, th and dh in the language may be due, and the Dinkas, who, like all the negroes of the White River, extract the front teeth of the lower jaw, have no sibilants.[185]
Whatever may be the causes which bring about varieties in pronunciation, certain it is that they are as continually making their appearance as varieties in the realm of natural history. Where they are unrestrained by the conservative tendencies of literature and education, they soon spread from the individual and the household and become species or dialects. The dialect itself may in course of time assume so marked a character of its own, and be so widely spoken as to be accounted a separate language; and will stand to the varieties and species destined to grow out of it in the relation of a genus to its species. But with this further development phonology has little to do.
It is otherwise with the changes which result in the rise of a new dialect. Comparative philology is based on the recognition that the same word will be represented by different combinations of sounds in a group of allied dialects or languages, and that each combination will be governed by a fixed phonetic law. An English h, for example, will answer to a Greek and Latin k, an English t to a German z and a Sanskrit d. When once a sound is given in a language, we may know the sounds which must correspond to it in the cognate languages. Now and then, of course, subordinate laws will interfere with the working of the general law; but unless such an interference can be proved, we must never disregard the general law for the sake of an etymological comparison, however tempting. To compare the Greek θεός with the Latin deus and the Sanskrit devas, rests upon almost as unstable a foundation as the old derivation of whole from ὅλος, and call from καλέω.[186] We must never forget that the laws of phonology are as undeviating in their action as the laws of physical science, and where the spelling does not mislead us will display themselves in every word of genuine growth. Even the vowels cannot be changed and shifted arbitrarily; they, too, follow definite laws of development, and though it is not yet possible to state their equivalence in the several languages of a single family with the same precision as in the case of the consonants, we may feel quite sure that this is the fault of our ignorance and not of the facts themselves.
It was the great Grimm who, following in the wake of Rask, first formulated the empiric law of that regular Lautverschiebung, or shifting of sounds, in our Indo-European family of speech which has since gone under his name. Since his time the law has been the subject of much discussion and examination;[187] his statements have been amended and amplified, and an endeavour made to apply the same law to the vowels that has been applied to the consonants. The following table[188] exhibits the equivalence of sounds in the Aryan family of speech:—