[CHAPTER XI]
THE FOREIGNER
§ 1. The Substratum Theory. § 2. French u and Spanish h. § 3. Gothonic and Keltic. § 4. Etruscan and Indian Consonants. § 5. Gothonic Sound-shift. § 6. Natural and Specific Changes. § 7. Power of Substratum. § 8. Types of Race-mixture. § 9. Summary. § 10. General Theory of Loan-words. § 11. Classes of Loan-words. § 12. Influence on Grammar. § 13. Translation-loans.
XI.—§ 1. The Substratum Theory.
It seems evident that if we wish to find out the causes of linguistic change, a fundamental division must be into—
(1) Changes that are due to the transference of the language to new individuals, and
(2) Changes that are independent of such transference.
It may not be easy in practice to distinguish the two classes, as the very essence of the linguistic life of each individual is a continual give-and-take between him and those around him; still, the division is in the main clear, and will consequently be followed in the present work.
The first class falls again naturally into two heads, according as the new individual does not, or does already, possess a language. With the former, i.e. with the native child learning his ‘mother-tongue,’ we have dealt at length in Book II, and we now proceed to an examination of the influence exercised on a language through its transference to individuals who are already in possession of another language—let us, for the sake of shortness, call them foreigners.
While some earlier scholars denied categorically the existence of mixed languages, recent investigators have attached a very great importance to mixtures of languages, and have studied actually occurring mixtures of various degrees and characters with the greatest accuracy: I mention here only one name, that of Hugo Schuchardt, who combines profundity and width of knowledge with a truly philosophical spirit, though the form of his numerous scattered writings makes it difficult to gather a just idea of his views on many questions.
Many scholars have recently attached great importance to the subtler and more hidden influence exerted by one language on another in those cases in which a population abandons its original language and adopts that of another race, generally in consequence of military conquest. In these cases the theory is that people keep many of their speech-habits, especially with regard to articulation and accent, even while using the vocabulary, etc., of the new language, which thus to a large extent is tinged by the old language. There is thus created what is now generally termed a substratum underlying the new language. As the original substratum modifying a language which gradually spreads over a large area varies according to the character of the tribes subjugated in different districts, this would account for many of those splittings-up of languages which we witness everywhere.