[98] Bleek is here thinking of classes like those of the Bantu languages, which have nothing to do with sex.
[99] For bibliography and criticism see Wheeler in Journ. of Germ. Philol. 2. 528 ff., and especially Josselin de Jong in Tijdschr. v. Ned. Taal- en Letterk. 29. 21 ff., and the same writer’s thesis De Waardeeringsonderscheiding van levend en levenloos in het Indogermaansch vergel. m. hetzelfde verschijnsel in Algonkin-talen (Leiden, 1913). Cf. also Hirt GDS 45 ff.
[100] “Inner and essential connexion between idea and word ... there is none, in any language upon earth,” says Whitney L 32.
[101] I have learnt very little from the discussion which followed Wundt’s remarks on the subject (S 1. 312-347); see Delbrück Grfr 78 ff., Sütterlin WSG 29 ff., Hilmer Sch 10 ff.
[102] Schuchardt, KS 5. 12, Zs. f. rom. Phil. 33. 458, Churchill B 53, Sandfeld-Jensen, Nationalfølelsen 14, Lentzner, Col. 87, Simonyi US 157, The Outlook, January 1910, New Quarterly Mag., July 1879.
[103] F, for instance, in fop, foozy, fogy, fogram (old), all of them more or less variants of fool.
[104] The preceding paragraphs on the symbolic value of i are an abstract of a paper which will be printed in Philologica, vol. i.
[105] Benfey Gesch 791, Misteli 539, Wundt S 1. 331 (but his examples from out-of-the-way languages must be used with caution, and curiously enough he thinks that the phenomenon is limited to primitive languages and is not found in Semitic or Aryan languages), GRM 1. 638, Simonyi US 255, Meinhof, Ham 20.
[106] I must confess that I find nothing symbolical in glas and very little in fouet (though the verb fouetter has something of the force of E. whip). On the whole, much of what people ‘hear’ in a word appears to me fanciful and apt to discredit reasonable attempts at gaining an insight into the essence of sound symbolism; thus E. Lerch’s ridiculous remark on G. loch in GRM 7. 101: “loch malt die bewegung, die der anblick eines solchen im beschauer auslöst, durch eine entsprechende bewegung der sprachwerkzeuge, beginnend mit der liquida zur bezeichnung der rundung und endend mit dem gutturalen ch tief hinten in der gurgel.”
[107] It may not be superfluous expressly to point out that there is no contradiction between what is said here on the disappearance of tones and the remarks made above (Ch. XIX § [4]) on Chinese tones. There the change wrought in the meaning of a word by a mere change of tone was explained on the principle that the difference of meaning was at an earlier stage expressed by affixes, the tone that is now concentrated on one syllable belonging formerly to two syllables or perhaps more. But this evidently presupposes that each syllable had already some tone of its own—and that is what in this chapter is taken to be the primitive state. Word-tones were originally frequent, but meaningless; afterwards they were dropped in some languages, while in others they were utilized for sense-distinguishing purposes.