CH. VIII. The aspirates when initial pass into breaths, when medial into soft letters. Explanation of the appearance of the soft letters. hospes may not improbably be the "protector of strangers, ghas-pati from PA: gospoda is a "host" in Polish1), and many others. His even found at the end of a root in /veh and trah: I have already said that the h here must have been strongly guttural, or it could not have changed to c in uec-tum, trac-si. These, with the irregular initial ƒ, are the substitutes of GH. From these facts we see that the aspirates, when medial, are regularly represented by the corresponding unaspirated softs in Latin (though not in common Italian); when initial they are represented by a sound which was originally no doubt a weak aspirate, but was probably at an early time no more than a spirant or breathing: nay more, the one single sound ƒ can stand for all the original aspirates, probably, as I have suggested, from this being pronounced with a strong breath, which neutralised the distinction of class. This variation has nothing in it contrary to the usual character of phonetic change. 4 Corssen suggests that it may have been caused by an "irrational" u springing up after the letter, so that gh and dh should become respectively ghủ and dhů, then both turn to fu and so to f. This is very possible: and is supported, at least for gh, by the forms anguis (originally aghi-s) and breuis, i.e. breghu-is; also by the analogous springing up of u after g, as ting-u-o, ning-u-o. But how are we to account for the appearance of g, d, and b? These are stronger forms than gh, dh, bh: and yet there is no apparent reason for any strengthening. I suggest the following explanation. We have seen that the Graeco-Italians brought with them into Europe the aspirates gh, dh, bh: sounds which have been explained as soft letters followed by a breath. Such pronunciation is still retained in India. But it does not seem to have 1 Benfey, Gr. Wurz. Lexicon, II. 210. 2 The gutturals are preserved in A. S. wegan, to carry, "weigh" anchor; and English "drag." 3 p. 122. suited any European nation. Among the Graeco-Italians the breath appears to me to have changed into the spiritus asper; whatever the difference in sound between the original breath and the spiritus asper was originally, it must have been very slight, consequently the change could not be difficult. Such a change seems to me to explain the subsequent history of the aspirates in Greek and Latin. The aspirate had become really a double sound: and the two component parts acted upon each other. In Greek (as we shall see) the second part assimilated the first. In Latin one part drove the other out and so caused loss: at the beginning of a word the first part fell away (conformably to the regular Latin usage, as we shall see hereafter), wholly in gh, perhaps with some slight remnant of sound in bh, both when original, and when it represented dh: when the aspirate was not initial, Italian usage differed; the Latins preferred to retain the first part, though even among them f is sometimes found: the rest of Italy kept the f here also. I may add that the difference in the Greek and the Italian methods is quite in accordance with the usual treatment of compound sounds in the two languages. Corssen' regards the Latin b as produced from the Italian f: of g he gives, I think, no other explanation than that it is "aus gh verschoben." No doubt we might have expected to find ƒ universal throughout Italy; but we do not so find it, unless we agree with Corssen that Latin b comes through the middle step f: and, apparently to explain the strengthening, he suggests that this b is here a weaker sound, more like the Greek B3. But where is there any proof of this? He has himself shewn elsewhere that Latin b is the "ordinary labial media." Surely it is at least equally permissible to regard the Latin b as a dialectical variation, dating from the earliest times. Indeed I am entirely unable to enter into Corssen's view of CH. VIII. CH. VIII. But, according to my Secondly, he says that the origin of the f. He believes' that the Italians did Thus then the forms under which the aspirates in the middle of a word are represented in Latin, result partly from Loss, if my view be correct, or from irregular Substitution, according to Corssen: the initial forms are probably produced by indistinct articulation. But, as I said above, since the reason for the changes cannot be certainly assigned, I have preferred to consider them under the most general head. II. Loss. 1. Loss of Aspiration in Greek. This subject may be taken first under the head of Loss since the result is the same as that which we have been 1 I. 140. 2 In the same page, where Corssen denies the existence of bh in Italy, he makes the strange statement that the Zend alone of all the IndoGermanic languages has preserved the bh. He here most unaccountably overlooks the Sanskrit; and the Zend (at least according to Schleicher's Compendium) has not preserved the bh, which it represents by b and w. discussing in the last section—the loss of the breathing which is the second component of the aspirates. But this result is much less frequent in Greek than in Latin. Loss of the h is not the common end of the Greek aspirates; it occurs in few certain cases, which are very CH. VIII. This loss only sporadic in Greek though re thoroughly examined by Curtius'. But the principle gular in seems to me the same as that which operates regularly Latin. in Latin in the middle of a word; though its action in the Greek is only irregular. Loss of the breathing is generally assumed in yévus, ἐγώ, and μέγας : the corresponding consonant in Sanskrit in all these is h for gh: so that GH would seem to be the original letter, did not the Gothic shew us kinnus, ik, and mikils (Scotch "mickle"): and the k here points to g as the original, and to gh as being a Sanskrit weakening. Cases in which BH has turned to B under the influence of a preceding nasal are rather the results of assimilation : e. g. θάμβος (if this be from ταφ), ὄμβρος (Sanskrit abhra); they are few in all. It seems to me that the undoubted cases of pure loss are confined to the hard aspirates which, as we have already seen, are peculiarly Greek developments, where the second part, the spiritus asper was likely enough to drop off and be lost. Thus we have the roots opux and pup, &c. (as seen in ὀρύσσω, κρύφα), but ὀρυγή and κρύπτω: we have γαλθ but ἀλδαίνω ; ἐλυθ but ἐπήλυδ-; βρέμειν by the side of fremere, and not impossibly φόρμιγξ: λαμβάνειν but λαφυρον and ἀμφιλαφής ; here also the Sanskrit has labh. Why this tendency to drop the rough breathing should act just on these few words and not on others we cannot explain all sporadic change is capricious; we can do no more than assign a plausible cause for it; perhaps here the rolling sound of p and λ (one of which occurs in all the words) may have been strong enough to cause the rough breathing to be felt not necessary though optional; CH. VIII. just as we saw that h was dropped from an original aspirate followed by r in gramen, &c. in Latin. Curtius remarks' that this change in Greek was not likely to be frequent; the tendency in Greek lies the other way, as we shall hereafter see. To this opposite tendency are due the forms δέχομαι, τεύχω, &c. by the side of δέκομαι, τύκτος; αὖθις from the Homeric αύτις, &c.; in all these cases the Ionic has kept the original form, not weakened a stronger one. But there is certainly weakening in cases like the Ionic an' où: not of course in the preposition but in the pronoun, which loses its rough breathing in pronunciation to suit the Ionic love of soft sounds, though the symbol was retained in writing, to avoid confusion. Possible origin of these groups. 2. Loss of one or more out of a group of Consonants. This is, perhaps, the most natural form of loss. Heavy masses of consonants become unendurable in all languages, though all do not deal with them in the same way. It is true that they often seem to be radical; and therefore it might be argued that what our fathers could endure might have been endured by their children. But in reply to this I may say, that in roots which contain groups of consonants, e.g. STA or SRU, it is very probable we have not reached to the ultimate simplest form. Ultimate it is to our analysis however, and will probably remain so. I know that some philologists contend that all roots originally consisted of a single consonant and vowel, or even of a single vowel. This is very possible, but if we attempt to cut down the roots into simpler forms to suit this theory, we are simply engaging in a task for which we have no sufficient data, no guide but the analogy of actually occurring simple forms to which we endeavour to make our more complete roots correspond. On the 1 Gr. Et. 476. |