The simplest of such general effects of syntactical grouping is that the final consonant of a syllable is transferred in pronunciation to the next syllable. Thus, for instance, an apple is pronounced a-napple, without any pause; here + on is pronounced he + ron, etc. If, then, as in French, this final consonant disappears from pronunciation, save when thus made an initial, i.e. save before a word beginning with a vowel, we may expect its presence to have an isolating effect, and consequently to be sufficient to stamp the group as a compound. This, however, is only the case if such a preservation is not sufficiently frequent to be realised as a rule of pronunciation for all similar cases. In French, il peut = ‘he can,’ is pronounced without the t; in peut-être = ‘may be,’ ‘perhaps,’ the t is heard. Yet this has not isolated the form peut with t from the usual third person singular present indicative without t, because this t is preserved not in peut-être alone, or in a few such groups, but in all cases where the following word begins with a vowel; e.g., il peut avoir = ‘he can (may) have,’ pronounced with the t likewise. If we suppose the French language to discard at some time this liaison, as it is called, and always to pronounce peut without t even before vowels, then, and not till then, would the pronunciation peut-être with t stamp the combination as a compound.
So, again, the well-known process of avoiding hiatus by contraction or elision, in the case of a word ending in a vowel preceding one that begins with a vowel, has been sufficient to fuse two elements into one compound in many cases (e.g., about = a + be + ut (an); Lat. magnopere = magno + opere; Gothic sah, ‘this’ = sa + uh), but has no such effect in the case of the French article, or of the French preposition de, because the elision of the unaccented e and a is there an almost invariable and still ‘living’ rule.
A third general effect of close syntactical combination is the assimilation of a final and initial consonant. This, in present European languages, is scarcely, if at all, noticed or expressed in writing. It is, however, an exceedingly common occurrence in the spoken language, a fact of which every one can and ought to convince himself by a little attention to his own and other’s NATURAL pronunciation. It is only in cases where further reasons, in addition to this assimilation, such as, e.g., isolation by development of meaning or other phonetic development, have welded the group into a compound, or at least have advanced it a considerable distance on the road towards complete fusion, that the written language sometimes takes cognisance of the change, and, by the very spelling, indicates the compound nature of the group. We say ‘sometimes’ takes cognisance; for while spelling in no living language follows all the variations in pronunciation, no European tongue is further from accurately representing the spoken—that is, the real—language in its writing than English. Hence the instances even of acknowledged compounds, in which the assimilation in sound is indicated by the spelling, are comparatively rare. Such are gossib, for god + sib = ‘sib, or related, in God;’ leoman, for leof + man = ‘dear man;’ quagmire = quakemire, i.e. ‘quaking mire.’ Instances where the assimilation exists in pronunciation, but is not represented in writing, are plentiful: cupboard, pronounced cub-board (or cubberd); blackguard, pronounced blagguard, etc. In all these we must, on the one hand, admit with respect to the recognition of the group as compound, that, even if it has not promoted assimilation, it has at least checked the tendency to restore the theoretically correct pronunciation of the final consonant of the former member in each group. On the other hand, however, it is as certain that the very facility thus afforded to the working of the assimilating tendency has aided the phonetic isolation of the group and promoted the fusion.
The most effective cause of phonetic isolation, however, lies of course in the influence of accent. This has been sufficiently illustrated in the course of the foregoing discussions.
In all these discussions we have mainly regarded the transition of a syntactical group into a compound. Several of our examples, however, well illustrate the fact that, just as the fusion between the two members of some group may be insufficient to stamp the combination as a compound, so, also, such a compound loses its character as such for the consciousness of all but the student of language, when the fusion proceeds too far. The compound then becomes, to all intents and purposes, a simple word; it serves no more as model for analogical compounds with the same members, and at the very most gives the impression of having been ‘derived’ from its first member by a suffix. To instance this, we need only recall a few of our examples to the reader’s mind—bandog, auger, furlong, etc., or (with the suffixes) bishopric, kingdom, etc.
A careful study of these and similar examples will show that in the first-class of compounds, no longer recognised as such, sometimes both members have become obsolete, and in both classes almost always one.
We have now reached a point whence we can observe the conditions necessary to give birth to a suffix, or, if the phrase be preferred, necessary to degrade an independent word into a suffix.
We have seen a suffix originate in a noun which either (as in a case of ‘-ric’) became obsolete as an independent word, or whose connection with the etymologically identical independent form ceased to be felt in the linguistic consciousness of the community.
But such a fate may and does often befall a word without converting it into an acknowledged suffix. It has befallen the noun ðyrl (‘a hole’), in nostril (= nose-thirl), or the word búr (‘a dweller’) in neighbour (‘a near-dweller’), and yet neither -tril nor -bour have become recognised as suffixes in the English language.
What more, then, is required?