XV.—§ 3. Organic Influences.
Some modifications of speech sounds are due to the fact that the organs of speech are used for other purposes than that of speaking. We all know the effect of someone trying to speak with his mouth full of food, or with a cigar or a pipe hanging between his lips and to some extent impeding their action. Various emotions are expressed by facial movements which may interfere with the production of ordinary speech sounds. A child that is crying speaks differently from one that is smiling or laughing. A smile requires a retraction of the corners of the mouth and a partial opening of the lips, and thus impedes the formation of that lip-closure which is an essential part of the ordinary [m]; hence most people when smiling will substitute the labiodental m, which to the ear greatly resembles the bilabial [m]. A smile will also often modify the front-round vowel [y] so as to make it approach . Sweet may be right in supposing that “the habit of speaking with a constant smile or grin” is the reason for the Cockney unrounding of the vowel in [nau] for no. Schuchardt (Zs. f. rom. Phil. 5. 314) says that in Andalusian quia! instead of ca! the lips, under the influence of a certain emotion, are drawn scoffingly aside. Inversely, the rounding in Josu! instead of Jesu! is due to wonder (ib.); and exactly in the same way we have the surprised or pitying exclamation jøses! from Jesus in Danish. Compare also the rounding in Dan. and G. [nø·] for [ne·, nɛ·] (nej, nein). Lundell mentions that in Swedish a caressing lilla vän often becomes lylla vön, and I have often observed the same rounding in Dan. min lille ven. Schuchardt also mentions an Italian [ʃ] instead of under the influence of pain or anger (mi duole la teʃta; ti do uno ʃchiaffo); a Danish parallel is the frequent [ʃluð’ər] for sludder ‘nonsense.’ We are here verging on the subject of the symbolic value of speech sounds, which will occupy us in a later chapter ([XX]).
Observe, too, how people will pronounce under the influence of alcohol: the tongue is not under control and is incapable of accurately forming the closure necessary for [t], which therefore becomes [r], and the thin rill necessary for , which therefore comes to resemble [ʃ]; there is also a general tendency to run sounds and syllables together.[66]
XV.—§ 4. Lapses and Blendings.
All these deviations are due to influences from what is outside the sphere of language as such. But we now come to something of the greatest importance in the life of language, the fact, namely, that deviations from the usual or normal pronunciation are very often due to causes inside the language itself, either by lingering reminiscences of what has just been spoken or by anticipation of something that the speaker is just on the point of pronouncing. The process of speech is a very complicated one, and while one thing is being said, the mind is continually active in preparing what has to be said next, arranging the ideas and fashioning the linguistic expression in all its details. Each word is a succession of sounds, and for each of these a complicated set of orders has to be issued from the brain to the various speech organs. Sometimes these get mixed up, and a command is sent down to one organ a moment too early or too late. The inclination to make mistakes naturally increases with the number of identical or similar sounds in close proximity. This is well known from those ‘jaw-breaking’ tongue-tests with which people amuse themselves in all countries and of which I need give only one typical specimen:
She sells seashells on the seashore,
The shells she sells are seashells, I’m sure,
For if she sells seashells on the seashore,
Then I’m sure she sells seashore shells.
If the mind is occupied with one sound while another is being pronounced, and thus either runs in advance of or lags behind what should be its immediate business, the linguistic result may be of various kinds. The simplest case of influencing is assimilation of two contiguous sounds, which we have already considered from a different point of view. Next we have assimilative influence on a sound at a distance, as when we lapse into she shells instead of sea shells or she sells; such is Fr. chercher for older sercher (whence E. search) from Lat. circare, Dan. and G. vulgar ʃerʃant for sergeant; a curious mixed case is the pronunciation of transition as [træn'siʒən]: the normal development is [træn'ziʃən], but the voice-articulation of the two hissing sounds is reversed (possibly under accessory influence from the numerous words in which we have [træns] with , and from words ending in [iʒən], such as vision, division). Further examples of such assimilation at a distance or consonant-harmonization (malmsey from malvesie, etc.) may be found in my LPh 11. 7, where there are also examples of the corresponding harmonizings of vowels: Fr. camarade, It. uguale, Braganza, from camerade, eguale, Brigantia, etc. In Ugro-Finnic and Turkish this harmony of vowels has been raised to a principle pervading the whole structure of the language, as seen, e.g., most clearly in the varying plural endings in Yakut agalar, äsälär, ogolor, dörölör, ‘fathers, bears, children, muzzles.’