Meillet (MSL 19. 172) also says that there are certain speech sounds which are, as it were, natural and are found in nearly all languages, thus p, t, k, n, m, and among the vowels a, i, u, while other sounds are found only in some languages, such as the two English th sounds or, among the vowels, Fr. u and Russian y. But when he infers that sounds of the former class are stable and remain unchanged for many centuries, whereas those of the latter are apt to change and disappear, the conclusion is not borne out by actual facts. The consonants p, t, k, n, m are said to have remained unchanged in many Aryan languages from the oldest times till the present day—that is, only initially before vowels, which is a very important reservation and really amounts to an admission that in the vast majority of cases these sounds are just as unstable as most other things on this planet, especially if we remember that nothing could well be more unstable than k before front vowels, as seen in It. [tʃ] and Sp. [þ] in cielo, Fr. in ciel, and [ʃ] in chien, Eng. and Swedish [tʃ] in chin, kind, Norwegian [c] in kind, Russian [tʃ] in četyre ‘four’ and in sto ‘hundred,’ etc. As an example of a typically unstable sound Meillet gives bilabial f, and it is true that this sound is so rare that it is difficult to find it represented in any language; the reason is simply that the upper teeth normally protrude above the lower jaw, and that consequently the lower lip articulates easily against the upper teeth, with the natural result that where we should theoretically expect the bilabial f the labiodental f takes its place. And s, which is found almost universally, and should therefore on Meillet’s theory be very stable, is often seen to change into h or [x] or to disappear. On the whole, then, we see that it is not the ‘naturalness’ or universality of a consonant so much as its position in the syllable and word that decides the question ‘change or no change.’ The relation between stability and naturalness is seen, perhaps, most clearly in such an instance as long [a·]: this sound is so natural that English, from the oldest Aryan to present-day speech, has never been without it; yet at no time has it been stable, but as soon as one class of words with long [a·] is changed, a new class steps into its shoes: (1) Aryan māter, now mother; (2) lengthening of a short a before n: gās, brāhta, now goose, brought; (3) levelling of ai: stān, now stone; (4) lengthening of short a: cāld, now cold; (5) later lengthening of a in open syllable: nāme, now [neim]; (6) mod. carve, calm, path and others from various sources; and (7) vulgar speech is now developing new levellings of diphthongs in [ma·l, pa·(ə)] for mile, power.
XI.—§ 7. Power of Substratum.
V. Bröndal has made the attempt to infuse new blood into the substratum theory through his book, Substrater og Laan i Romansk og Germansk (Copenhagen, 1917). The effect of a substratum, according to him, is the establishment of a ‘constant idiom,’ working “without regard to place and time” (p. 76) and changing, for instance, Latin into Old French, Old French into Classical French, and Classical French into Modern French. His task, then, is to find out certain tendencies operating at these various periods; these are ascribed to the Keltic substratum, and Bröndal then passes in review a great many languages spoken in districts where Kelts are known to have lived in former times, in order to find the same tendencies there. If he succeeds in this to his own satisfaction, it is only because the ‘tendencies’ established are partly so vague that they will fit into any language, partly so ill-defined phonetically that it becomes possible to press different, nay, in some cases even directly contrary movements into the same class. But considerations of space forbid me to enter on a detailed criticism here. I must content myself with taking exception to the principle that the effect of the ethnic substratum may show itself several generations after the speech substitution took place. If Keltic ever had ‘a finger in the pie,’ it must have been immediately on the taking over of the new language. An influence exerted in such a time of transition may have far-reaching after-effects, like anything else in history, but this is not the same thing as asserting that a similar modification of the language may take place after the lapse of some centuries as an effect of the same cause. Suppose we have a series of manuscripts, A, B, C, D, etc., of which B is copied from A, C from B, etc., and that B has an error which is repeated in all the following copies; now, if M suddenly agrees with A (which the copyist has never seen), we infer that this reading is independent of A. In the same way with a language: each individual learns it from his contemporaries, but has no opportunity of hearing those who have died before his own time. It is possible that the transition from a to æ, in Old English (as in fæder) is due to Keltic influence, but when we find, many centuries later, that a is changed into [æ] (the present sound) in words which had not æ in OE., e.g. crab, hallow, act, it is impossible to ascribe this, as Bröndal does, to a ‘constant Keltic idiom’ working through many generations who had never spoken or heard any Keltic. ‘Atavism,’ which skips over one or more generations, is unthinkable here, for words and sounds are nothing but habits acquired by imitation.
So far, then, our discussion of the substratum theory has brought us no very positive results. One of the reasons why the theories put forward of late years have been on the whole so unsatisfactory is that they deal with speech substitutions that have taken place so far back that absolutely nothing, or practically nothing, is known of those displaced languages which are supposed to have coloured languages now existing. What do we know beyond the mere name of Ligurians or Veneti or Iberians? Of the Pre-Germanic and Pre-Keltic peoples we know not even the names. As to the old Kelts who play such an eminent rôle in all these speculations, we know extremely little about their language at this distant date, and it is possible that in some cases, at any rate, the Kelts may have been only comparatively small armies conquering this or that country for a time, but leaving as few linguistic traces behind them as, say, the armies of Napoleon in Russia or the Cimbri and Teutoni in Italy. Linguists have turned from the ‘glottogonic’ speculations of Bopp and his disciples, only to indulge in dialectogonic speculations of exactly the same visionary type.
XI.—§ 8. Types of Race-mixture.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that the conditions, and consequently the linguistic results, are always the same, whenever two different races meet and assimilate. The chief classes of race-mixture have been thus described in a valuable paper by George Hempl (Transactions of the American Philological Association, XXIX, p. 31 ff., 1898).
(1) The conquerors are a comparatively small body, who become the ruling class, but are not numerous enough to impose their language on the country. They are forced to learn the language of their subjects, and their grandchildren may come to know that language better than they know the language of their ancestors. The language of the conquerors dies out, but bequeaths to the native language its terms pertaining to government, the army, and those other spheres of life that the conquerors had specially under their control. Historic examples are the cases of the Goths in Italy and Spain, the Franks in Gaul, the Normans in France and the Norman-French in England. Of course, the greater the number of the conquerors and the longer they had been close neighbours of the people they conquered, or maintained the bonds that united them to their mother-country, the greater was their influence. Thus the influence of the Franks on the language of France was greater than that of the Goths on the language of Spain, and the influence of the Norman-French in England was greater still. Yet in each case the minority ultimately succumbed.
(2a) The conquest is made by many bodies of invaders, who bring with them their whole households and are followed for a long period of time by similar hordes of their kinsmen. The conquerors constitute the upper and middle classes and a part of the lower classes of the new community. The natives recede before the conquerors or become their slaves: their speech is regarded as servile and is soon laid aside, except for a few terms pertaining to the humbler callings, the names of things peculiar to the country and place-names. Examples: Angles and Saxons in Britain and Europeans in America and Australia, though in the last case we can hardly speak of race-mixture between the natives and the immigrants.
(2b) A more powerful nation conquers the people and annexes its territory, which is made a province, to which not only governors and soldiers, but also merchants and even colonists are sent. These become the upper class and the influential part of the middle class. If centuries pass and the province is still subjected to the direct influence of the ruling country, it will more and more imitate the speech and the habits and customs of that country. Such was the history of Italy, Spain and Gaul under the Romans; similar, also, is the story of the Slavs of Eastern Germany and of the Dutch in New York State; such is the process going on to-day among the French in Louisiana and among the Germans in their original settlements in Pennsylvania.
(3) Immigrants come in scattered bands and at different times; they become servants or follow other humble callings. It is usually not to their advantage to associate with their fellow-countrymen, but rather to mingle with the native population. The better they learn to speak the native tongue, the faster they get on in the world. If their children in their dress or speech betray their foreign origin, they are ridiculed as ‘Dutch’ or Irish, or whatever it may be. They therefore take pains to rid themselves of all traces of their alien origin and avoid using the speech of their parents. In this way vast numbers of newcomers may be assimilated year by year till they constitute a large part of the new race, while their language makes practically no impression on the language of the country. This is the story of what is going on in all parts of the United States to-day.