Language by Edward Sapir

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Meanwhile observe that the old alignment of case forms is being invaded
by two new categories--a positional category (pre-verbal, post-verbal)
and a classificatory category (animate, inanimate). The facts that in
the possessive animate nouns and pronouns are destined to be more and
more sharply distinguished from inanimate nouns and pronouns (_the
man's_, but _of the house_; _his_, but _of it_) and that, on the whole,
it is only animate pronouns that distinguish pre-verbal and post-verbal
forms[143] are of the greatest theoretical interest. They show that,
however the language strive for a more and more analytic form, it is by
no means manifesting a drift toward the expression of "pure" relational
concepts in the Indo-Chinese manner.[144] The insistence on the
concreteness of the relational concepts is clearly stronger than the
destructive power of the most sweeping and persistent drifts that we
know of in the history and prehistory of our language.

[Footnote 143: _They_: _them_ as an inanimate group may be looked upon
as a kind of borrowing from the animate, to which, in feeling, it more
properly belongs.]

[Footnote 144: See page 155.]

[Transcriber's note: Footnote 144 refers to the paragraph beginning on
line 4795.]

The drift toward the abolition of most case distinctions and the
correlative drift toward position as an all-important grammatical method
are accompanied, in a sense dominated, by the last of the three major
drifts that I have referred to. This is the drift toward the invariable
word. In analyzing the "whom" sentence I pointed out that the rhetorical
emphasis natural to an interrogative pronoun lost something by its form
variability (_who_, _whose_, _whom_). This striving for a simple,
unnuanced correspondence between idea and word, as invariable as may be,
is very strong in English. It accounts for a number of tendencies which
at first sight seem unconnected. Certain well-established forms, like
the present third person singular _-s_ of _works_ or the plural _-s_ of
_books_, have resisted the drift to invariable words, possibly because
they symbolize certain stronger form cravings that we do not yet fully
understand. It is interesting to note that derivations that get away
sufficiently from the concrete notion of the radical word to exist as
independent conceptual centers are not affected by this elusive drift.
As soon as the derivation runs danger of being felt as a mere nuancing
of, a finicky play on, the primary concept, it tends to be absorbed by
the radical word, to disappear as such. English words crave spaces
between them, they do not like to huddle in clusters of slightly
divergent centers of meaning, each edging a little away from the rest.
_Goodness_, a noun of quality, almost a noun of relation, that takes its
cue from the concrete idea of "good" without necessarily predicating
that quality (e.g., _I do not think much of his goodness_) is
sufficiently spaced from _good_ itself not to need fear absorption.
Similarly, _unable_ can hold its own against _able_ because it destroys
the latter's sphere of influence; _unable_ is psychologically as
distinct from _able_ as is _blundering_ or _stupid_. It is different
with adverbs in _-ly_. These lean too heavily on their adjectives to
have the kind of vitality that English demands of its words. _Do it
quickly!_ drags psychologically. The nuance expressed by _quickly_ is
too close to that of _quick_, their circles of concreteness are too
nearly the same, for the two words to feel comfortable together. The
adverbs in _-ly_ are likely to go to the wall in the not too distant
future for this very reason and in face of their obvious usefulness.
Another instance of the sacrifice of highly useful forms to this
impatience of nuancing is the group _whence_, _whither_, _hence_,
_hither_, _thence_, _thither_. They could not persist in live usage
because they impinged too solidly upon the circles of meaning
represented by the words _where_, _here_ and _there_. In saying
_whither_ we feel too keenly that we repeat all of _where_. That we add
to _where_ an important nuance of direction irritates rather than
satisfies. We prefer to merge the static and the directive (_Where do
you live?_ like _Where are you going?_) or, if need be, to overdo a
little the concept of direction (_Where are you running to?_).

Now it is highly symptomatic of the nature of the drift away from word
clusters that we do not object to nuances as such, we object to having
the nuances formally earmarked for us. As a matter of fact our
vocabulary is rich in near-synonyms and in groups of words that are
psychologically near relatives, but these near-synonyms and these groups
do not hang together by reason of etymology. We are satisfied with
_believe_ and _credible_ just because they keep aloof from each other.
_Good_ and _well_ go better together than _quick_ and _quickly_. The
English vocabulary is a rich medley because each English word wants its
own castle. Has English long been peculiarly receptive to foreign words
because it craves the staking out of as many word areas as possible, or,
conversely, has the mechanical imposition of a flood of French and Latin
loan-words, unrooted in our earlier tradition, so dulled our feeling for
the possibilities of our native resources that we are allowing these to
shrink by default? I suspect that both propositions are true. Each feeds
on the other. I do not think it likely, however, that the borrowings in
English have been as mechanical and external a process as they are
generally represented to have been. There was something about the
English drift as early as the period following the Norman Conquest that
welcomed the new words. They were a compensation for something that was
weakening within.

VIII

LANGUAGE AS A HISTORICAL PRODUCT: PHONETIC LAW

I have preferred to take up in some detail the analysis of our
hesitation in using a locution like "Whom did you see?" and to point to
some of the English drifts, particular and general, that are implied by
this hesitation than to discuss linguistic change in the abstract. What
is true of the particular idiom that we started with is true of
everything else in language. Nothing is perfectly static. Every word,
every grammatical element, every locution, every sound and accent is a
slowly changing configuration, molded by the invisible and impersonal
drift that is the life of language. The evidence is overwhelming that
this drift has a certain consistent direction. Its speed varies
enormously according to circumstances that it is not always easy to
define. We have already seen that Lithuanian is to-day nearer its
Indo-European prototype than was the hypothetical Germanic mother-tongue
five hundred or a thousand years before Christ. German has moved more
slowly than English; in some respects it stands roughly midway between
English and Anglo-Saxon, in others it has of course diverged from the
Anglo-Saxon line. When I pointed out in the preceding chapter that
dialects formed because a language broken up into local segments could
not move along the same drift in all of these segments, I meant of
course that it could not move along identically the same drift. The
general drift of a language has its depths. At the surface the current
is relatively fast. In certain features dialects drift apart rapidly. By
that very fact these features betray themselves as less fundamental to
the genius of the language than the more slowly modifiable features in
which the dialects keep together long after they have grown to be
mutually alien forms of speech. But this is not all. The momentum of the
more fundamental, the pre-dialectic, drift is often such that languages
long disconnected will pass through the same or strikingly similar
phases. In many such cases it is perfectly clear that there could have
been no dialectic interinfluencing.

These parallelisms in drift may operate in the phonetic as well as in
the morphological sphere, or they may affect both at the same time. Here
is an interesting example. The English type of plural represented by
_foot_: _feet_, _mouse_: _mice_ is strictly parallel to the German
_Fuss_: _Fuesse_, _Maus_: _Maeuse_. One would be inclined to surmise that
these dialectic forms go back to old Germanic or West-Germanic
alternations of the same type. But the documentary evidence shows
conclusively that there could have been no plurals of this type in
primitive Germanic. There is no trace of such vocalic mutation
("umlaut") in Gothic, our most archaic Germanic language. More
significant still is the fact that it does not appear in our oldest Old
High German texts and begins to develop only at the very end of the Old
High German period (circa 1000 A.D.). In the Middle High German period
the mutation was carried through in all dialects. The typical Old High
German forms are singular _fuoss_, plural _fuossi_;[145] singular _mus_,
plural _musi_. The corresponding Middle High German forms are _fuoss_,
_fueesse_; _mus_, _muese_. Modern German _Fuss_: _Fuesse_, _Maus_: _Maeuse_
are the regular developments of these medieval forms. Turning to
Anglo-Saxon, we find that our modern English forms correspond to _fot_,
_fet_; _mus_, _mys_.[146] These forms are already in use in the earliest
English monuments that we possess, dating from the eighth century, and
thus antedate the Middle High German forms by three hundred years or
more. In other words, on this particular point it took German at least
three hundred years to catch up with a phonetic-morphological drift[147]
that had long been under way in English. The mere fact that the affected
vowels of related words (Old High German _uo_, Anglo-Saxon _o_) are not
always the same shows that the affection took place at different periods
in German and English.[148] There was evidently some general tendency or
group of tendencies at work in early Germanic, long before English and
German had developed as such, that eventually drove both of these
dialects along closely parallel paths.

[Footnote 145: I have changed the Old and Middle High German orthography
slightly in order to bring it into accord with modern usage. These
purely orthographical changes are immaterial. The _u_ of _mus_ is a long
vowel, very nearly like the _oo_ of English _moose_.]

[Footnote 146: The vowels of these four words are long; _o_ as in
_rode_, _e_ like _a_ of _fade_, _u_ like _oo_ of _brood_, _y_ like
German _ue_.]

[Footnote 147: Or rather stage in a drift.]

[Footnote 148: Anglo-Saxon _fet_ is "unrounded" from an older _foet_,
which is phonetically related to _fot_ precisely as is _mys_ (i.e.,
_mues_) to _mus_. Middle High German _ue_ (Modern German _u_) did not
develop from an "umlauted" prototype of Old High German _uo_ and
Anglo-Saxon _o_, but was based directly on the dialectic _uo_. The
unaffected prototype was long _o_. Had this been affected in the
earliest Germanic or West-Germanic period, we should have had a
pre-German alternation _fot_: _foeti_; this older _oe_ could not well have
resulted in _ue_. Fortunately we do not need inferential evidence in
this case, yet inferential comparative methods, if handled with care,
may be exceedingly useful. They are indeed indispensable to the
historian of language.]

How did such strikingly individual alternations as _fot_: _fet_,
_fuoss_: _fueesse_ develop? We have now reached what is probably the
most central problem in linguistic history, gradual phonetic change.
"Phonetic laws" make up a large and fundamental share of the
subject-matter of linguistics. Their influence reaches far beyond the
proper sphere of phonetics and invades that of morphology, as we shall
see. A drift that begins as a slight phonetic readjustment or
unsettlement may in the course of millennia bring about the most
profound structural changes. The mere fact, for instance, that there is
a growing tendency to throw the stress automatically on the first
syllable of a word may eventually change the fundamental type of the
language, reducing its final syllables to zero and driving it to the use
of more and more analytical or symbolic[149] methods. The English
phonetic laws involved in the rise of the words _foot_, _feet_, _mouse_
and _mice_ from their early West-Germanic prototypes _fot_, _foti_,
_mus_, _musi_[150] may be briefly summarized as follows:

[Footnote 149: See page 133.]

[Transcriber's note: Footnote 149 refers to the paragraph beginning on
line 4081.]

[Footnote 150: Primitive Germanic _fot(s)_, _fotiz_, _mus_, _musiz_;
Indo-European _pods_, _podes_, _mus_, _muses_. The vowels of the first
syllables are all long.]

1. In _foti_ "feet" the long _o_ was colored by the following _i_ to
long _oe_, that is, _o_ kept its lip-rounded quality and its middle
height of tongue position but anticipated the front tongue position of
the _i_; _oe_ is the resulting compromise. This assimilatory change was
regular, i.e., every accented long _o_ followed by an _i_ in the
following syllable automatically developed to long _oe_; hence _tothi_
"teeth" became _toethi_, _fodian_ "to feed" became _foedian_. At first
there is no doubt the alternation between _o_ and _oe_ was not felt as
intrinsically significant. It could only have been an unconscious
mechanical adjustment such as may be observed in the speech of many
to-day who modify the "oo" sound of words like _you_ and _few_ in the
direction of German _ue_ without, however, actually departing far enough
from the "oo" vowel to prevent their acceptance of _who_ and _you_ as
satisfactory rhyming words. Later on the quality of the _oe_ vowel must
have departed widely enough from that of _o_ to enable _oe_ to rise in
consciousness[151] as a neatly distinct vowel. As soon as this happened,
the expression of plurality in _foeti_, _toethi_, and analogous words
became symbolic and fusional, not merely fusional.

[Footnote 151: Or in that unconscious sound patterning which is ever on
the point of becoming conscious. See page 57.]

[Transcriber's note: Footnote 151 refers to the paragraph beginning on
line 1797.]

2. In _musi_ "mice" the long _u_ was colored by the following _i_ to
long _ue_. This change also was regular; _lusi_ "lice" became _luesi_,
_kui_ "cows" became _kuei_ (later simplified to _kue_; still preserved as
_ki-_ in _kine_), _fulian_ "to make foul" became _fuelian_ (still
preserved as _-file_ in _defile_). The psychology of this phonetic law
is entirely analogous to that of 1.

3. The old drift toward reducing final syllables, a rhythmic consequence
of the strong Germanic stress on the first syllable, now manifested
itself. The final _-i_, originally an important functional element, had
long lost a great share of its value, transferred as that was to the
symbolic vowel change (_o_: _oe_). It had little power of resistance,
therefore, to the drift. It became dulled to a colorless _-e_; _foeti_
became _foete_.

4. The weak _-e_ finally disappeared. Probably the forms _foete_ and
_foet_ long coexisted as prosodic variants according to the rhythmic
requirements of the sentence, very much as _Fuesse_ and _Fuess'_ now
coexist in German.

5. The _oe_ of _foet_ became "unrounded" to long _e_ (our present _a_ of
_fade_). The alternation of _fot_: _foti_, transitionally _fot_: _foeti_,
_foete_, _foet_, now appears as _fot_: _fet_. Analogously, _toeth_ appears
as _teth_, _foedian_ as _fedian_, later _fedan_. The new long _e_-vowel
"fell together" with the older _e_-vowel already existent (e.g., _her_
"here," _he_ "he"). Henceforward the two are merged and their later
history is in common. Thus our present _he_ has the same vowel as
_feet_, _teeth_, and _feed_. In other words, the old sound pattern _o_,
_e_, after an interim of _o_, _oe_, _e_, reappeared as _o_, _e_, except
that now the _e_ had greater "weight" than before.

6. _Fot_: _fet_, _mus_: _mues_ (written _mys_) are the typical forms of
Anglo-Saxon literature. At the very end of the Anglo-Saxon period, say
about 1050 to 1100 A.D., the _ue_, whether long or short, became
unrounded to _i_. _Mys_ was then pronounced _mis_ with long _i_ (rhyming
with present _niece_). The change is analogous to 5, but takes place
several centuries later.

7. In Chaucer's day (circa 1350-1400 A.D.) the forms were still
_fot_: _fet_ (written _foot_, _feet_) and _mus_: _mis_ (written very
variably, but _mous_, _myse_ are typical). About 1500 all the long
_i_-vowels, whether original (as in _write_, _ride_, _wine_) or
unrounded from Anglo-Saxon _ue_ (as in _hide_, _bride_, _mice_,
_defile_), became diphthongized to _ei_ (i.e., _e_ of _met_ + short
_i_). Shakespeare pronounced _mice_ as _meis_ (almost the same as the
present Cockney pronunciation of _mace_).

8. About the same time the long _u_-vowels were diphthongized to _ou_
(i.e., _o_ of present Scotch _not_ + _u_ of _full_). The Chaucerian
_mus_: _mis_ now appears as the Shakespearean _mous_: _meis_. This
change may have manifested itself somewhat later than 7; all English
dialects have diphthongized old Germanic long _i_,[152] but the long
undiphthongized _u_ is still preserved in Lowland Scotch, in which
_house_ and _mouse_ rhyme with our _loose_. 7 and 8 are analogous
developments, as were 5 and 6; 8 apparently lags behind 7 as 6,
centuries earlier, lagged behind 7.

[Footnote 152: As have most Dutch and German dialects.]

9. Some time before 1550 the long _e_ of _fet_ (written _feet_) took the
position that had been vacated by the old long _i_, now diphthongized
(see 7), i.e., _e_ took the higher tongue position of _i_. Our (and
Shakespeare's) "long _e_" is, then, phonetically the same as the old
long _i_. _Feet_ now rhymed with the old _write_ and the present _beat_.

10. About the same time the long _o_ of _fot_ (written _foot_) took the
position that had been vacated by the old long _u_, now diphthongized
(see 8), i.e., _o_ took the higher tongue position of _u_. Our (and
Shakespeare's) "long _oo_" is phonetically the same as the old long _u_.
_Foot_ now rhymed with the old _out_ and the present _boot_. To
summarize 7 to 10, Shakespeare pronounced _meis_, _mous_, _fit_, _fut_,
of which _meis_ and _mous_ would affect our ears as a rather "mincing"
rendering of our present _mice_ and _mouse_, _fit_ would sound
practically identical with (but probably a bit more "drawled" than) our
present _feet_, while _foot_, rhyming with _boot_, would now be set down
as "broad Scotch."

11. Gradually the first vowel of the diphthong in _mice_ (see 7) was
retracted and lowered in position. The resulting diphthong now varies in
different English dialects, but _ai_ (i.e., _a_ of _father_, but
shorter, + short _i_) may be taken as a fairly accurate rendering of its
average quality.[153] What we now call the "long _i_" (of words like
_ride, bite, mice_) is, of course, an _ai_-diphthong. _Mice_ is now
pronounced _mais_.

[Footnote 153: At least in America.]

12. Analogously to 11, the first vowel of the diphthong in _mouse_ (see
8) was unrounded and lowered in position. The resulting diphthong may be
phonetically rendered _au_, though it too varies considerably according
to dialect. _Mouse_, then, is now pronounced _maus_.

13. The vowel of _foot_ (see 10) became "open" in quality and shorter in
quantity, i.e., it fell together with the old short _u_-vowel of words
like _full_, _wolf_, _wool_. This change has taken place in a number of
words with an originally long _u_ (Chaucerian long close _o_), such as
_forsook_, _hook_, _book_, _look_, _rook_, _shook_, all of which
formerly had the vowel of _boot_. The older vowel, however, is still
preserved in most words of this class, such as _fool_, _moon_, _spool_,
_stoop_. It is highly significant of the nature of the slow spread of a
"phonetic law" that there is local vacillation at present in several
words. One hears _roof_, _soot_, and _hoop_, for instance, both with the
"long" vowel of _boot_ and the "short" of _foot_. It is impossible now,
in other words, to state in a definitive manner what is the "phonetic
law" that regulated the change of the older _foot_ (rhyming with _boot_)
to the present _foot_. We know that there is a strong drift towards the
short, open vowel of _foot_, but whether or not all the old "long _oo_"
words will eventually be affected we cannot presume to say. If they all,
or practically all, are taken by the drift, phonetic law 13 will be as
"regular," as sweeping, as most of the twelve that have preceded it. If
not, it may eventually be possible, if past experience is a safe guide,
to show that the modified words form a natural phonetic group, that is,
that the "law" will have operated under certain definable limiting
conditions, e.g., that all words ending in a voiceless consonant (such
as _p_, _t_, _k_, _f_) were affected (e.g., _hoof_, _foot_, _look_,
_roof_), but that all words ending in the _oo_-vowel or in a voiced
consonant remained unaffected (e.g., _do_, _food_, _move_, _fool_).
Whatever the upshot, we may be reasonably certain that when the
"phonetic law" has run its course, the distribution of "long" and
"short" vowels in the old _oo_-words will not seem quite as erratic as
at the present transitional moment.[154] We learn, incidentally, the
fundamental fact that phonetic laws do not work with spontaneous
automatism, that they are simply a formula for a consummated drift that
sets in at a psychologically exposed point and gradually worms its way
through a gamut of phonetically analogous forms.

[Footnote 154: It is possible that other than purely phonetic factors
are also at work in the history of these vowels.]

It will be instructive to set down a table of form sequences, a kind of
gross history of the words _foot_, _feet_, _mouse_, _mice_ for the last
1500 years:[155]

[Footnote 155: The orthography is roughly phonetic. Pronounce all
accented vowels long except where otherwise indicated, unaccented vowels
short; give continental values to vowels, not present English ones.]

I. _fot_: _foti_; _mus_: _musi_ (West Germanic)
II. _fot_: _foeti_; _mus_: _muesi_
III. _fot_: _foete_; _mus_: _muese_
IV. _fot_: _foet_; _mus_: _mues_
V. _fot_: _fet_; _mus_: _mues_ (Anglo-Saxon)
VI. _fot_: _fet_; _mus_: _mis_(Chaucer)
VII. _fot_: _fet_; _mous_: _meis_
VIII. _fut_ (rhymes with _boot_): _fit_; _mous_: _meis_ (Shakespeare)
IX. _fut_: _fit_; _maus_: _mais_
X. _fut_ (rhymes with _put_): _fit_; _maus_: _mais_ (English of 1900)

It will not be necessary to list the phonetic laws that
gradually differentiated the modern German equivalents
of the original West Germanic forms from their
English cognates. The following table gives a rough
idea of the form sequences in German:[156]

[Footnote 156: After I. the numbers are not meant to correspond
chronologically to those of the English table. The orthography is again
roughly phonetic.]

I. _fot_: _foti_; _mus_: _musi_ (West Germanic)
II. _foss_:[157] _fossi_; _mus_: _musi_
III. _fuoss_: _fuossi_; _mus_: _musi_ (Old High German)
IV. _fuoss_: _fueessi_; _mus_: _muesi_
V. _fuoss_: _fueesse_; _mus_: _muese_ (Middle High German)
VI. _fuoss_: _fueesse_; _mus_: _mueze_[158]
VII. _fuos_: _fueese_; _mus_: _mueze_
VIII. _fuos_: _fueese_; _mous_: _moeueze_
IX. _fus_: _fuese_; _mous_: _moeueze_ (Luther)
X. _fus_: _fuese_; _maus_: _moize_ (German of 1900)

[Footnote 157: I use _ss_ to indicate a peculiar long, voiceless
_s_-sound that was etymologically and phonetically distinct from the old
Germanic _s_. It always goes back to an old _t_. In the old sources it
is generally written as a variant of _z_, though it is not to be
confused with the modern German _z_ (= _ts_). It was probably a dental
(lisped) _s_.]

[Footnote 158: _Z_ is to be understood as French or English _z_, not in
its German use. Strictly speaking, this "z" (intervocalic _-s-_) was not
voiced but was a soft voiceless sound, a sibilant intermediate between
our _s_ and _z_. In modern North German it has become voiced to _z_. It
is important not to confound this _s_--_z_ with the voiceless
intervocalic _s_ that soon arose from the older lisped _ss_. In Modern
German (aside from certain dialects), old _s_ and _ss_ are not now
differentiated when final (_Maus_ and _Fuss_ have identical sibilants),
but can still be distinguished as voiced and voiceless _s_ between
vowels (_Maeuse_ and _Fuesse_).]

We cannot even begin to ferret out and discuss all the psychological
problems that are concealed behind these bland tables. Their general
parallelism is obvious. Indeed we might say that to-day the English and
German forms resemble each other more than does either set the West
Germanic prototypes from which each is independently derived. Each table
illustrates the tendency to reduction of unaccented syllables, the
vocalic modification of the radical element under the influence of the
following vowel, the rise in tongue position of the long middle vowels
(English _o_ to _u_, _e_ to _i_; German _o_ to _uo_ to _u_, _uee_ to
_ue_), the diphthongizing of the old high vowels (English _i_ to _ei_ to
_ai_; English and German _u_ to _ou_ to _au_; German _ue_ to _oeue_ to
_oi_). These dialectic parallels cannot be accidental. They are rooted
in a common, pre-dialectic drift.

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