XIV.—§ 4. Speed of Utterance.
Wundt gives a different though somewhat related explanation of the Germanic shift as due to a “revolution in culture, as the subjugation of a native population through warlike immigrants, with resulting new organization of the State” (S 1. 424): this increased the speed of utterance, and he tries in detail to show that increased speed leads naturally to just those changes in consonants which are found in the Gothonic shift (1. 420 ff.). But even if we admit that the average speed of talking (tempo der rede) is now probably greater than formerly, the whole theory is built up on so many doubtful or even manifestly incorrect details both in linguistic history and in general phonetic theory that it cannot be accepted. It does not account for the actual facts of the consonant shifts; moreover, it is difficult to see why such phenomena as this shift, if they were dependent on the speed of utterance, should occur only at these particular historical times and within comparatively narrow geographical limits, for there is much to be said for the view that in all periods the speech of the Western nations has been constantly gaining in rapidity as life in general has become accelerated, and in no period probably more than during the last century, which has witnessed no radical consonant shift in any of the leading civilized nations.
XIV.—§ 5. Periods of Rapid Change.
All these theories, different though they are in detail, have this in common, that they endeavour to explain one particular change, or set of changes, from one particular psychological trait supposed to be prevalent at the time when the change took place, but they fail because we are not able scientifically to demonstrate any intimate connexion between the pronunciation of particular sounds and a certain state of mind, and also because our knowledge of the fluctuations of collective psychology is still so very imperfect. But it is interesting to contrast these theories with the explanation of the very same sound shifts mentioned in a previous chapter ([XI]), and there shown to be equally unsatisfactory, the explanation, namely, that the fundamental cause of the consonant shift is to be found in the peculiar pronunciation of an aboriginal population. In both cases the Gothonic shifts are singled out, because since the time of Grimm the attention of scholars has been focused on these changes more than on any others—they are looked upon as changes sui generis, and therefore requiring a special explanation, such as is not thought necessary in the case of the innumerable minor changes that fill most of the pages of the phonological section of any historical grammar. But the sober truth seems to be that these shifts are not different in kind from those that have made, say, Fr. sève, frère, chien, ciel, faire, changer out of Lat. sapa, fratrem, canem, kælum, fakere, cambiare, etc., or those that have changed the English vowels in fate, feet, fight, foot, out from what they were when the letters which denote them still had their ‘continental’ values. Our main endeavour, therefore, must be to find out general reasons why sounds should not always remain unchanged. This seems more important, at any rate as a preliminary investigation, than attempting offhand to assign particular reasons why in such and such a century this or that sound was changed in some particular way.
If, however, we find a particular period especially fertile in linguistic changes (phonetic, morphological, semantic, or all at once), it is quite natural that we should turn our attention to the social state of the community at that time in order, if possible, to discover some specially favouring circumstances. I am thinking especially of two kinds of condition which may operate. In the first place, the influence of parents, and grown-up people generally, may be less than usual, because an unusual number of parents may be away from home, as in great wars of long duration, or may have been killed off, as in the great plagues; cf. also what was said above of children left to shift for themselves in certain favoured regions of North America (Ch. X § [7]). Secondly, there may be periods in which the ordinary restraints on linguistic change make themselves less felt than usual, because the whole community is animated by a strong feeling of independence and wants to break loose from social ties of many kinds, including those of a powerful school organization or literary tradition. This probably was the case with North America in the latter half of the eighteenth century, when the new nation wished to manifest its independence of old England and therefore, among other things, was inclined to throw overboard that respect for linguistic authority which under normal conditions makes for conservatism. If the divergence between American and British English is not greater than it actually is, this is probably due partly to the continual influx of immigrants from the old country, and partly to that increased facility of communication between the two countries in recent times which has made mutual linguistic influence possible to an extent formerly undreamt-of. But in the case of the Romanic languages both of the conditions mentioned were operating: during the centuries in which they were framed and underwent the strongest differentiation, wars with the intruding ‘barbarians’ and a series of destructive plagues kept away or killed a great many grown-up people, and at the same time each country released itself from the centralizing influence of Rome, which in the first centuries of the Christian era had been very powerful in keeping up a fairly uniform and conservative pronunciation and phraseology throughout the whole Empire.[56] There were thus at that time various forces at work which, taken together, are quite sufficient to explain the wide divergence in linguistic structure that separated French, Provençal, Spanish, etc., from classical Latin (cf. above, XI § 8, p. [206]).
In the history of English, one of the periods most fertile in change is the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: the wars with France, the Black Death (which is said to have killed off about one-third of the population) and similar pestilences, insurrections like those of Wat Tyler and Jack Cade, civil wars like those of the Roses, decimated the men and made home-life difficult and unsettled. In the Scandinavian languages the Viking age is probably the period that witnessed the greatest linguistic changes—if I am right, not, as has sometimes been said, on account of the heroic character of the period and the violent rise in self-respect or self-assertion, but for the more prosaic reason that the men were absent and the women had other things to attend to than their children’s linguistic education. I am also inclined to think that the unparalleled rapidity with which, during the last hundred years, the vulgar speech of English cities has been differentiated from the language of the educated classes (nearly all long vowels being shifted, etc.) finds its natural explanation in the unexampled misery of child-life among industrial workers in the first half of the last century—one of the most disgraceful blots on our overpraised civilization.
XIV.—§ 6. The Ease Theory.
If we now turn to the actuating principles that determine the general changeability of human speech habits, we shall find that the moving power everywhere is an impetus starting from the individual, and that there is a curbing power in the mere fact that language exists not for the individual alone, but for the whole community. The whole history of language is, as it were, a tug-of-war between these two principles, each of which gains victories in turn.
First of all we must make up our minds with regard to the disputed question whether the changes of language go in the direction of greater ease, in other words, whether they manifest a tendency towards economy of effort. The prevalent opinion among the older school was that the chief tendency was, in Whitney’s words, “to make things easy to our organs of speech, to economize time and effort in the work of expression” (L 28). Curtius very emphatically states that “Bequemlichkeit ist und bleibt der hauptanlass des lautwandels unter allen umständen” (Griech. etym. 23; cf. C 7). But Leskien, Sievers, and since them other recent writers, hold the opposite view (see quotations and summaries in Oertel 204 f., Wechssler L 88 f.), and their view has prevailed to the extent that Sütterlin (WW 33) characterizes the old view as “empty talk,” “a wrong scent,” and “worthless subterfuges now rejected by our science.”
Such strong words may, however, be out of place, for is it so very foolish to think that men in this, as in all other respects, tend to follow ‘the line of least resistance’ and to get off with as little exertion as possible? The question is only whether this universal tendency can be shown to prevail in those phonetic changes which are dealt with in linguistic history.