Sometimes, on the other hand, new connexions of thought arise, as when we associate the word bound with bind in the phrase ‘he is bound for America.’ Our ancestors meant ‘he is ready to go’ (ON. búinn, ‘ready’), not ‘he is under an obligation to go.’ The establishment of new associations of this kind seems naturally to take place at the moment when the young mind makes acquaintance with the word: the phenomenon is, of course, closely related to “popular etymology” (see Ch. VI § [6]).
X.—§ 4. Differentiations.
Linguistic ‘splittings’ or differentiations, whereby one word becomes two, may also be largely due to the transmission of the language to a new generation. The child may hear two pronunciations of the same word from different people, and then associate these with different ideas. Thus Paul Passy learnt the word meule in the sense of ‘grindstone’ from his father, and in the sense of ‘haycock’ from his mother; now the former in both senses pronounced [mœl], and the latter in both [mø·l], and the child thus came to distinguish [mœl] ‘grindstone’ and [mø·l] ‘haycock’ (Ch 23).
Or the child may have learnt the word at two different periods of its life, associated with different spheres. This, I take it, may be the reason why some speakers make a distinction between two pronunciations of the word medicine, in two and in three syllables: they take [medsin], but study [medisin].
Finally, the child can itself split words. A friend writes: “I remember that when a schoolboy said that it was a good thing that the new Headmaster was Dr. Wood, because he would then know when boys were ‘shamming,’ a schoolfellow remarked, ‘Wasn’t it funny? He did not know the difference between Doctor and Docter.’” In Danish the Japanese are indiscriminately called either Japanerne or Japaneserne; now, I once overheard my boy (6.10) lecturing his playfellows: “Japaneserne, that is the soldiers of Japan, but Japanerne, that is students and children and such-like.” It is, of course, possible that he may have heard one form originally when shown some pictures of Japanese soldiers, and the other on another occasion, and that this may have been the reason for his distinction. However this may be, I do not doubt that a number of differentiations of words are to be ascribed to the transmission of the language to a new generation. Others may have arisen in the speech of adults, such as the distinction between off and of (at first the stressed and unstressed form of the same preposition), or between thorough and through (the former is still used as a preposition in Shakespeare: “thorough bush, thorough brier”). But complete differentiation is not established till some individuals from the very first conceive the forms as two independent words.
X.—§ 5. Summary.
Instead of saying, as previous writers on these questions have done, either that children have no influence or that they have the chief influence on the development of language, it will be seen that I have divided the question into many, going through various fields of linguistic change and asking in each what may have been the influence of the child. The result of this investigation has been that there are certain fields in which it is both impossible and really also irrelevant to separate the share of the child and of the adult, because both will be apt to introduce changes of that kind; such are assimilations of neighbouring sounds and droppings of consonants in groups. Also, with regard to those very gradual shiftings either of sound or of meaning in which it is natural to assume many intermediate stages through which the sound or signification must have passed before arriving at the final result, children and adults must share the responsibility for the change. Clippings of words occur in the speech of both classes, but as a rule adults will keep the beginning of a word, while very small children will perceive or remember only the end of a word and use that for the whole. But finally there are some kinds of changes which must wholly or chiefly be charged to the account of children: such are those leaps in sound or signification in which intermediate stages are out of the question, as well as confusions of similar words and misdivisions of words, and the most violent differentiations of words.
I wish, however, here to insist on one point which has, I think, become more and more clear in the course of our disquisition, namely, that we ought not really to put the question like this: Are linguistic changes due to children or to grown-up people? The important distinction is not really one of age, which is evidently one of degree only, but that between the first learners of the sound or word in question and those who use it after having once learnt it. In the latter case we have mainly to do with infinitesimal glidings, the results of which, when summed up in the course of long periods of time, may be very considerable indeed, but in which it will always be possible to detect intermediate links connecting the extreme points. In contrast to these changes occurring after the correct (or original) form has been acquired by the individual, we have changes occurring simultaneously with the first acquisition of the word or form in question, and thus due to the fact of its transmission to a new generation, or, to speak more generally, and, indeed, more correctly, to new individuals. The exact age of the learner here is of little avail, as will be seen if we take some examples of metanalysis. It is highly probable that the first users of forms like a pea or a cherry, instead of a pease and a cherries, were little children; but a Chinee and a Portuguee are not necessarily, or not pre-eminently, children’s words: on the other hand, it is to me indubitable that these forms do not spring into existence in the mind of someone who has previously used the forms Chinese and Portuguese in the singular number, but must be due to the fact that the forms the Chinese and the Portuguese (used as plurals) have been at once apprehended as made up of Chinee, Portuguee + the plural ending -s by a person hearing them for the first time; similarly in all the other cases. We shall see in a later chapter that the adoption (on the part of children and adults alike) of sounds and words from a foreign tongue presents certain interesting points of resemblance with these instances of change: in both cases the innovation begins when some individual is first made acquainted with linguistic elements that are new to him.