CH. IV. General rules of vowel strength. Regular passage from A down each line. duce it is the smallest possible for any vowel'. If therefore a vowel had once sunk to this sound, there was no further for it to go: it is therefore possible that the close i may have been reached even before our era, and so, except by some reversion of the natural order of phonetic change, it must have remained unchanged ever since: and it is in accordance with the early weakness of the Latin system that the vowel should soon sink as far as possible. The analogy however of the Italian e and o tends in the opposite direction. In Italian, open e and o represent short Latin e and o, with tolerable regularity: and close e and o represent Latin ē and ō. It seems to me therefore not possible to speak with certainty on the sound of GraecoItalian and u: but the sounds of and are fairly certain. The results of this description of the vowels, so far as they shew us the changes which we may à priori expect to find in any given language, may be very briefly stated. We cannot expect to find nearly so much accordance as we found in the general principles of consonantal change. The tendencies of phonetic and dynamic change (or of change, originally phonetic, but dynamically applied) cross each other: the creative power of language is still manifested in the vowels, long after anything but decay can be looked for in the consonants. It is therefore not possible to lay down even a general scale of vowel strength: the scale of the Graeco-Italian is very different from that of the Teutonic languages, and there are considerable differences between the Greek and Italian. All languages agree in deriving other sounds from the full a sound: but the order of the derivatives greatly varies. It is clear that a is the most likely vowel to be corrupted. The 1 It will be remembered that there is no difference between an open and a close vowel as far as the position of the tongue or lips is concerned; but the soft palate is lower for the close than for the open sound, and therefore the hollow of the mouth behind the tongue in which the air sounds-commonly called the resonance-cavity-is diminished for the close sounds, check is applied to the voice, at the earliest point, after leaving the larynx. For other vowels, the check is applied at different points along the palate. Now, as the current of air loses more of its strength the farther it goes, we should expect the sounds to become weaker along the different lines to i and u. In other words, a would naturally pass into ĕ, and then into : and the long vowels would be found in the same order, though with more probability of variation, from the very time required to produce them. If the sounds between a and u were simple sounds like those from a to i, the same rule would be expected to hold; a would become o, and o become u. But these are complex sounds; the lips, as well as the tongue, are concerned in their production: the small saving of muscular effort for u, at the back of the mouth, may be neutralised by the greater action of the lips, and therefore it is uncertain whether o should pass into u, or u into o: it will depend upon each nation, which portion of the vocal organs shall be more exerted. But what we may call the natural scale of strength-that which is followed in the above account-was preserved by the Graeco-Italian race, very exactly by the Greeks, less perfectly by the Italians. the Teutonic languages, the tendency is on the whole rather to change i to e, and u to o. These changes may be due to the fact, that the Northern nations allowed a to sink at once to i and u, instead of e and o, like the Southerns: when the necessity for distinctions of sound arose, they would be compelled to move backwards on each line. This is in harmony with the known changes of their consonantal system. For us, however, in our consideration of Greek and Latin etymologies, the natural scale is of importance. In Few useful rules can be laid down to regulate the passage of a sound, from one line into the other line. For this we must depend on the observed facts of each language. Those languages, in which the vowel system is strongest, avoid such changes: they are exceedingly rare in Greek in Latin, where the vocalism was weak, they CH. IV. No useful rules for passage from one line to another. CH. IV. are frequent. The change from u to i is decidedly the most common in all languages, and is in accordance with the nature of the sounds, the first being complex and also partly produced farther back in the mouth. The change from e to u is rare. I know no language in which i passes into u. CHAPTER V. THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. I NOW proceed to give examples of Indo-European roots and words, which have been deduced from the various forms in which they are found in the different languages according to their special phonetic laws. These words will prove the existence of the consonants already attributed to this language: and will convey a firmer impression of the actual existence of such a speech than a mere enumeration of letters or roots could do. It will be seen at once that in some languages (especially in the Sanskrit) some of the consonants have been so much corrupted that the identification of e.g. a common Greek and Sanskrit root, may not be obvious without some knowledge of the phonetic laws of Sanskrit, which would account for the variation. This difficulty is unavoidable and cannot be met here, because it does not come under my plan to give in detail the phonetic laws of any language except of the Greek and of the Latin. The different changes of the Teutonic languages will be shewn by the variations of the words given: a full account of Grimm's Law is given in the second series of Max Müller's lectures, and in Ferrar's Comparative Grammar: but for the sake of those who have not got those works, a simple list of the changes is given at the end of the chapter. The Gothic forms are valuable to us because Gothic is a Low German dialect, like our own: and the same consonants are commonly found in each. Several AngloSaxon forms have been given in order to facilitate the CH. V. The IndoEuropean Alphabet in roots exhibited and words. CH. V. I. Momentary sounds: 1. Hard sounds. comparison of English words'. It must be remembered that the modern High German sometimes varies much from the older form. Lithuanian has been taken as the most important (for comparison) of the great Sclavonic branch of the North European family: but sometimes Sclavonic forms are given instead. I shall give the regular substitutes for each letter in each of these languages. The irregular merely sporadic variations of the Greek and Latin will come under our notice afterwards: those of the other nations do not concern us. I begin with the momentary sounds, and among them with the hard sounds2. = K. (Ind.-Eur. K=Sk. k, kh, ch, ç=Gk. = Lat. c, qu. Goth. h, g=0. H. G. h, g = Lith. k, sz.) Thus the Ind.-Eur. root AK, expressing "sharpness," must be assumed as the root-form of the Greek aк-Ovт, άк-wк-й and aкрos, of the Lat. ac-us, acu-o and ac-ies; the natural transition to the idea of quickness is found in Sk. āç-u, Gk. άê-ν, Lat. ōci-us. The root has been prolific in all the branches of the family: but in the North European there is some difficulty in distinguishing its derivatives from those of AGH. But we may attribute to it the A.-S. egg-ian, to incite, "egg" on: and eher, afterwards eár, our "ear" of corn: perhaps also eglian, to feel ill, or “ail." Prof. Curtius seems to be right in combining the O. H. G. hamar our "hammer"-with the Lith. ak-men, and the Sk. aç-man; each of which means a "stone," and the latter 3 1 For these I am indebted to the Rev. W. W. Skeat, the well-known editor of Piers the Plowman, &c. 2 Most of the following examples are taken from the second part of Curtius Griechische Etymologie, a most judicious and in every way admirable work, and from Fick's Vergleichendes Worterbuch der IndoGermanischen Sprachen, the second edition of which (as far as the end of the first part of the second book) has just appeared at Göttingen. It is needless to add that numbers more may be found where these were taken from. The object of the present selection is to direct the curious to these interesting collections, 3 Gr. Et. No. 3. |