Volume 1 — CHAPTER IV. PHONOLOGY AND SEMATOLOGY. (continued 3)

In the sixth place, we must always keep steadily in view the relativity of ideas and of the words which denote them. The same word may be applied in a variety of senses, the particular sense which it bears being determined by the context. The manifold shades of meaning of which each word is capable, the different associations of ideas which it may excite, give rise to varieties of signification which in course of time develop into distinct species. Hence come the idioms that form the characteristic feature of a dialect or language, and make exact translation into another language so impossible. Hence, too, that diversification of synonyms which causes words like womanly and feminine gradually to assume different meanings, and prevent us from saying “I am very obliged,” or “I am much tired.”

Seventhly and lastly, change of signification may follow in the wake of change of pronunciation or the introduction of new words. Phonetic decay may cause the old form of a word to be forgotten, and so allow it to assume the new meaning which has gradually been evolved out of its earlier one. This is the history of most of those inflections which can be traced back to independent words, such as the sign of the past tense in English, once the reduplicated perfect of do. The signification of jeopardy has travelled far from that of jeu parti, but preparation had first been made by the change of pronunciation. There are many myths and mythological beings which owe their existence to the same cause. It was not till Promêtheus had lost all resemblance in outward name to the pramanthas or “fire-machine” of India that he borrowed his attributes from προμήδομαι, and became the wise benefactor of mankind, the gifted seer of the future, whose brother was Epimêtheus, or “Afterthought.” It is the same with the legends that group themselves round the distorted name of a locality. The nose of brass or gilt which adorns Brasenose College at Oxford could never have come into existence until the old Brasinghouse or “Brewery” had been transformed, and the phœnix that stands in the centre of the Phœnix Park at Dublin, would have been impossible without the assistance of Saxon lips, which turned the Irish fion uisg or “fine water” into phœnix. But change of pronunciation is especially serviceable in increasing the wealth of a language by producing two co-ordinate forms out of a single original one. In course of time the two forms assume different meanings, due to the different contexts in which they may be used, and when once all memory of the original identity has perished, the distinction of meaning becomes fixed and permanent, and tends to grow continually sharper. In the second century B.C. a Latin writer could still use prior as a neuter, prios or prius as a masculine; but a time soon came when prior was classed exclusively with other masculine nouns in -or or -tor, prius with neuter nouns like genus. So, again, the Latin infinitive active amare and the infinitive passive amari were at the outset one and the same—the dative singular of a verbal noun in -s (amas-), and one verb, fio, the Greek φυ(ι)ω, continued to the last to preserve a recollection of the fact by the length of the final syllable in fieri or fiesei, “to become.” But the shortening of final syllables which characterizes Latin was early at work, and out of the dative amasei soon originated the two co-existing forms amase (amare) and amasi (amari). For a while they were used indifferently, but when the distinction that exists between the German waren zu haben and the English “were to be had” came to make itself felt, one form remained the property of the active, while the other was appropriated to the passive. But a consciousness of the origin of amari seems to have long survived in the language, since there was a tendency to associate it more closely with the other forms of the passive voice by affixing to it the characteristic of the passive, r (amarier). What is here effected by the diversification of the same word, may also be effected by the diversification of two synonyms, one of which has come from abroad. Sometimes both may come from abroad, but at different times, the result being that whereas one of them has been naturalized in the language, the other is but the nurseling of a learned age. Priest and presbyter, for instance, have both descended from the same source, and were once identical in meaning. But not only may the old words of a dialect be thus affected by new comers, the foreign words may even succeed in destroying the native ones altogether. The same natural selection which has wellnigh extirpated many of the native plants of Central America in the presence of the imported cardoon, is also at work in language. Our Old English sicker has had to give way before sure, the Old French sëur, Provençal segur, Latin securus, and the Latin equus has been replaced in the Romanic dialects by caballus, “a nag.” Caballus is at once an example of the way in which the meaning of a word may be widened, and of the operation of natural selection in the field of speech.

The etymologist must keep before him the laws both of phonology and of sematology before he can venture to group words together and refer them to a common root. For the etymologist is not merely a historian, or student of historical grammar; above and beyond the words which can be traced back, step by step, to their early forms, by the help of contemporaneous records, there are many more, the derivation of which has to be constructed much in the same way that a palæontologist reconstructs a fossil animal by the help of a single bone. The task is often a difficult and a delicate one, and the best trained scholars may sometimes fail. The result of false analogy may be regarded as an organic form, or a foreign word, conformed possibly to the genius of the language which has borrowed it, may be mistaken for a native. The præ-Aryan populations of Greece or of Britain must have left some remains of their languages in the vocabulary of Greek and Keltic, and Greek and Keltic words which have been counted as Aryan may, after all, be but aliens. Apart from these dangers, there is further the double one of assuming a connection between ideas which have nothing to do with one another, and of separating ideas which start from a common source. On the one hand, we are apt to judge of primitive man by ourselves, and to fancy that the ideas which we associate together were equally associated together by him. On the other hand, we have only to turn to the Ugrian idioms, with their greater transparency and openness to analysis to see the passage of one signification in a root into another of a wholly different kind, accompanied by a modification of the vowel. Thus karyan is “to ring,” and “to lighten;” kar-yun and kir-yun, “to cry,” but kir-on, “to curse;” kah-isen, koh-isen, kuh-isen, “to hit,” “stamp;” käh-isen, köh-isen, “to roar;” keh-isen, kih-isen, “to boil.”[221] We have here the same symbolization of a change of meaning by a change of vowel as in the Greek perfect δέδωκα by the side of the present δίδωμι.

The four facts to be remembered in etymology are thus summarized by Professor Max Müller.[222] (1.) The same word takes different forms in different languages. Each language or dialect has its peculiar phonetic laws and tendencies; because a particular interchange of sounds takes place in one language it does not follow that it does so in another. In Greek, for instance, s between two vowels is lost, in Latin it becomes r. Our English two is the same word, so far as origin is concerned, as the German zwei, the Latin and Greek duo, the Sanskrit dwi; the English silly is the German selig, “blessed.” As words are carried down the stream of time, they change in both outward form and inward meaning, and this change is in harmony with the physiological and psychological peculiarities of the particular people that uses them. (2.) The same word, again, takes different forms in one and the same language. Brisk, frisky, and fresh all come from the same fountain-head, and bank and bench are the differentiated forms of which banquet is the Romanized equivalent. So, too, in French noël and natal are but forms of the same word of different ages, like naïf and native, chétif and captif. Then (3) different words take the same form in different languages. The Greek καλέω and the English call have as little connection as the Latin sanguis and the Mongol sengui, “blood,” or the modern Greek mati for ὀμμάτιον, and the Polynesian mata, “an eye.” To compare words of different languages together because they agree in sound is to contravene all the principles of scientific philology; agreement of sound is the best possible proof of their want of connection, since each language has its own phonology and consequently modifies the forms of words in a different fashion. The comparison even of roots is a dangerous process, not to be indulged in unless the grammar of the languages to which they belong has been shown to be of common origin. What we call roots are only the hypothetical types to which we can reduce the words of a certain group of tongues; they are, therefore, merely the expression of the phonetic laws common to all the members of the group. But it does not follow that the selected phonetic laws which all the members of a certain group of tongues have in common are the same as the phonetic laws of another language or another group. Roots, moreover, owing to their shortness, their vagueness, and their consequent simplicity, are necessarily limited in number, while the ideas they convey are so wide and general as to cover an almost infinite series of derived meanings; to say nothing of the probability that many of them are to be traced to imitations of natural sounds. (4.) Different words, in the fourth place, may take the same form in one and the same language. The French feu, “fire,” is the Latin focus; feu, “late,” the Low Latin fuitus (from fui). So too the English page, in the sense of a servant, comes ultimately from the Greek παίδιον, page, in the sense of a leaf of a book, from the Latin pagina. An arbitrary and antiquated spelling may often keep up a distinction between such words in writing when in speaking all distinction has long since disappeared. The French sang, cent, sans, sent, s’en, the English sow, sew, so, are respectively pronounced in the same way. That no inconvenience would be caused by writing them in the same way is shown not only by the fact that many words of similar sound but varying sense, such as sound, box, or lie, are not distinguished in writing, but also by the ease with which we can distinguish between them in conversation, although in conversation we are unable to dwell upon a word or view it by the light of the completed sentence, as is the case in reading. The scientific etymologist would welcome the accurate representation of sounds by symbols, his object is to know what sounds pass into others in the course of centuries, and this he can only ascertain when the spelling represents the pronunciation; the amateur etymologist had better leave the subject alone. Etymology is not a plaything for the amusement of the ignorant and untrained; it is a serious and difficult study, not to be attempted without much preparation and previous research. The etymologist must be thoroughly trained in the principles of scientific philology, he must have mastered both phonology and sematology, and he must be well acquainted with more than one of the languages with which he deals. Then and then only can his labours be fruitful; then, and then only will his work be a gain and not a hindrance. False etymologies stand in the way of true ones, and the charlatans who have brought the name of etymology into contempt have discredited the labours of better men. There is much in etymology which must always defy analysis, there is much which will have to be corrected hereafter, but this will matter little if we have once learnt the lesson that change of sound and meaning can only take place in accordance with fixed and invariable law. Etymology is but a means to an end, and that end is partly the history of the development of thought and civilization as reflected in the fossil records of speech, partly the discovery and illustration of the laws which govern the shifting and decay of sounds and the modifications of sense.