Human Traits and their Social Significance Part 19

There are, in general, three kinds of changes that take place in a language. "Phonetic" changes, that is, changes in the articulation of words, regardless of the meaning they bear.

This is ill.u.s.trated simply by the word "name" which, in the eighteenth century was p.r.o.nounced ne'm. " a.n.a.logic"

changes, that is, changes in the articulation of words under the influence of words somewhat similar in meaning. The word "flash," for example, became what it is because of the sound of words a.s.sociated in meaning, "crash," "dash,"

"smash." The third process of change in language alters not only the articulate forms of words, not only their sound, but their sense. All these changes, as will be presently pointed out, can easily be explained by the laws of habit early discussed in this book, these laws being applicable to the habit of language as well as to any other.

In the case of phonetic change, it is only to be expected that the sounds of a language will not remain eternally changeless.

A language is spoken by a large number of individuals, no two of whom are gifted with precisely the same vocal apparatus.

In consequence no two of them will utter words in precisely the same way. Before writing and printing were general, these slight variations in articulation were bound to have an effect on the language. People more or less unconsciously imitate the sounds they hear, especially if they are not checked up by the written forms of words. Even to-day changes are going on, and writing is at best a poor representation of phonetics. The Georgian, the Londoner, the Welshman and the Middle Westerner can understand the same printed language, precisely because it does not at all represent their peculiarities of dialect. Variant sounds uttered by one individual may be caught up in the language, especially if the variant articulation is simpler or shorter. Thus the shortening of a word from several syllables to one, though it starts accidentally, is easily made habitual among a large number of speakers because it does facilitate speech. In the cla.s.sic example, pre-English, "habeda" and "habedun" became in Old English, "haefde" and" haefdon," and are in present English (I, we) "had."[1] In the same way variations that reduce the unstressed syllables of a word readily insinuate themselves into the articulatory habits of a people. In the production of stressed syllables, the vocal chords are under high tension and the breath is shut in. It is easier, consequently, to produce the unstressed syllables "with shortened, weakened articulations... lessening as much as possible all interference with the breath stream."[2] Thus "contemporaneous prohibition"

becomes "kntempe'rejnjes prhe'bifn." Sound changes thus take place, in general, as lessenings of the labor of articulation, by means of adaptation to prevailing rest positions of the vocal organs. They take place further in more or less accidental adaptations to the particular speech habits of a people. That is, those sounds become discarded that do not fit in with the general articulatory tendencies of a language. Of this the weakening of unstressed syllables in English and palatalization in Slavic are examples.[1*]

[Footnote 1: Bloomfield: _loc. cit._, p. 211.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 212.]

[Footnote 1*: _Ibid._, p. 218.]

These changes of sound in language so far discussed are made independently of the meaning of words. Other changes in articulation occur, as already noted, by a.n.a.logy of sound or meaning. That is, words that have a.s.sociated meanings come to be similarly articulated. This is simply ill.u.s.trated in the case of the child who thinks it perfectly natural to a.s.similate by a.n.a.logy "came" to "come." Thus the young child will frequently say, until he is corrected, he "comed," he "bringed," he "fighted." In communities where printing and writing and reading are scarce, such a.s.similation by a.n.a.logy has an important effect in modifying the forms of words.

CHANGES IN MEANING. The changes in language most important for the student of human behavior are changes in meaning. Language, it must again be stressed, is an instrument for the communication of ideas. The manner in which the store of meanings in a language becomes increased and modified (the etymology of a language) is, in a sense, the history of the mental progress of the people which use it. For changes in meaning are primarily brought about when the words in a language do not suffice for the larger and larger store of experiences which individuals within the group desire to communicate to one another. The meanings of old words are stretched, as it were, to cover new experiences; old words are transferred bodily to new experiences; they are slightly modified in form to apply to new experiences a.n.a.logous to the old; new words are formed after a.n.a.logy with ones already in use.

A simple ill.u.s.tration of the application of a word already current to a wider situation is the application of the word "head" as a purely objective name, to a new experience, which has certain a.n.a.logies with the old; as when we speak of a "head" of cabbage, the" head" of an army, the "head"

of the cla.s.s, or the "headmaster." In many such cases the transferred meaning persists alongside of the old. Thus the word "capital" used as the name for the chief city in a country, persists alongside of its use in "capital" punishment, "capital" story, etc. But sometimes the transferred meaning of the word becomes dominant and exclusive. Thus "disease" (dis-ease) once meant discomfort of any kind.

Now it means specifically some physical ailment. The older use has been completely discarded. To "spill" once meant, in the most general sense, to destroy. Now all the other uses, save that of pouring out, have lapsed. "Meat" which once meant any kind of nourishment has now come to refer almost exclusively (we still make exceptions as in the case of sweetmeat) to edible flesh. Whenever the special or novel application of the word becomes dominant, then we say the meaning of the word has changed.

Mental progress is largely dependent on the transfer of words to newer and larger spheres of experience, the modification of old words or the formation of new ones to express the increasing complexity of relations men discover to exist between things. In the instances already cited some of the transferred words lost their more general meaning and became specialized, as in the case of "meat," "spill," etc. Other words, like "head," though they may keep their specific objective meaning, may come to be used in a generalized intellectual sense. One of the chief ways by which a language remains adequate to the demands of increasing knowledge and experience of the group is through the transfer of words having originally a purely objective sense to emotional and intellectual situations. These words, like "bitter," "sour,"

"sharp," referring originally only to immediate physical experiences, to objects perceived through the senses, come to have intellectual and emotional significance, as when we speak of a "sour" face, a "bitter" disappointment, a "sharp"

struggle. Most of our words that now have abstract emotional or intellectual connotations were once words referring exclusively to purely sensible (sense perceptual) experiences.

"Anxiety" once meant literally a "narrow place," just as when we speak of some one having "a close shave." To "refute" once meant literally "to knock out" an argument.

To "understand" meant "to stand in the midst of." To "confer" meant "to bring together." Sensation words themselves were once still more concrete in their meaning.

"Violet" and "orange" are obviously taken as color names from the specific objects to which they still refer. Language has well been described as "a book of faded metaphors." The history of language has been to a large extent the a.s.similation and habitual mechanical use of words that were, when first used, strikingly figurative.

The novel use of a word that is now a quite regular part of the language may in many cases first be ascribed to a distinguished writer. Shakespeare is full of expressions which have since, and because of his use of them, become literally household words. Many words that have now a general application arose out of a peculiar local situation, myth, or name. "Boycott" which has become a reasonably intelligible and universal word, only less than fifty years ago referred particularly and exclusively to Boycott, a certain unpopular Irish landowner who was subjected to the kind of discrimination for which the word has come to stand. "Burke"

used as a verb has its origin in the name of a notorious Edinburgh murderer. Characters in fiction or drama, history or legend come to be standard words. Everyone knows what we mean when we speak of a Quixotic action, a Don Juan, a Galahad, a Chesterfield. To tantalize arises from the mythical perpetual frustration of Tantalus in the Greek story. Expressions that had a special meaning in the works of a philosopher or litterateur come to be generally used, as "Platonic love."[1] Again words that arise as mere popular witticisms or vulgarisms may be brought into the language as permanent acquisitions. "Mob," now a quite legitimate word, was originally a shortening of _mobile vulgum_, and was, only a hundred years ago, suspect in polite discourse.

[Footnote 1: Though this is very loosely and inaccurately used.]

Outside the deliberate invention by scientists of terms for the new relations they have discovered, more or less spontaneous variation in the use of words and their unconscious a.s.similation by large numbers with whose other language habits they chance to fit, is the chief source of language growth. One might almost say words are wrenched from their original local setting, and given such a generalized application that they are made available for an infinite complexity of scientific and philosophical thought.

UNIFORMITIES IN LANGUAGE. Thus far we have discussed changes in language from the psychological viewpoint, that is, we have considered the human tendencies and habits which bring about changes in the articulation and meaning, in the sound and the sense, of words. It is evident from these considerations that there can be no absolute uniformity in spoken languages, not even in the languages of two persons thrown much together. Within a country where the same language is ostensibly spoken, there are nevertheless differences in the language as spoken by different social strata, by different localities. There are infinite subtle variations between the articulation and the word uses of different individuals. There are languages within languages, the dialects of localities, the jargon of professional and trade groups, the special p.r.o.nunciations and special and overlapping vocabularies of different social cla.s.ses.

But while there are these many causes, both of individual difference and of differing social environments, why languages do not remain uniform, there are similar causes making for a certain degree of uniformity within a language. There is one very good reason why, to a certain extent, languages do attain uniformity; they are socially acquired. The individual learns to speak a language from those about him, and individuals brought up within the same group will consequently learn to speak, within limits, the same tongue; they will learn to articulate through imitation, and, while no individual ever precisely duplicates the sounds of others, he duplicates them as far as possible. He learns, moreover, as has already been pointed out, to attach given meanings to given words, not for any reason of their peculiar appositeness or individual caprice, but because he learns that others about him habitually attach certain meanings to certain sounds. And since one is stimulated to expression primarily by the desire and necessity of communication of ideas a premium is put upon uniformity.

It is of no use to use a language if it conceals one's thoughts.

In consequence, within a group individual variations, unless for reasons already discussed they happen to lend themselves to ready a.s.similation by the group, will be mere slips of the tongue. They will be discarded and forgotten, or, if the individual cannot rid himself of them, will like stammering or stuttering or lisping be set down as imperfections and social handicaps. The uniformity of language within groups whose individual members have much communication with each other is thus to a certain extent guaranteed. A man who is utterly individualistic in his language might just as well have no language at all, unless for the satisfaction of expressing to himself his own emotions.[1] Language is learned from the group among whom one moves, and those sounds and senses of words are, on the whole, retained, which are intelligible to the group. Those sounds and meanings will best be understood which are already in use. No better ill.u.s.tration could be found of how custom and social groups preserve and enforce standards of individual action.

[Footnote 1: There have been a few poets, like Emily d.i.c.kinson, or mystics like Blake, some of whose work exhibits almost complete unintelligibility to most readers, though doubtless it had a very specific meaning and vividness to the writers concerned.]

The obverse of the fact that intercommunication promotes uniformity in language is that lack of communication brings about language differentiation. The less the intercommunication between groups, the more will the languages of the groups differ, however uniform they may be within the groups themselves. The most important factor in differentiation of language is local differentiation. In some European countries every village speaks its own dialect. In pa.s.sing from one village to another the dialects may be mutually intelligible, but by the time one has pa.s.sed from the first village in the chain to the last, one may find that the dialect of the first and last are utterly unintelligible to each other. A real break in language, as opposed to dialect variations, occurs where there is a considerable barrier between groups, such as a mountain range, a river, a tribal or political boundary. The more impenetrable the barriers between two groups the more will the languages differ, and the less mutually intelligible will they be.

Looking back over the history of language the student of linguistics infers that those languages which bear striking or significant similarities are related. Thus Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Roumanian are traceable directly back to the Latin. This does not mean that all over the areas occupied by the speakers of these languages Latin was originally spoken. But the Romans in their conquests, both military and cultural, were able to make their own language predominant. The variations which make French and Roumanian, say, mutually unintelligible, are due to the fact that Latin was for the natives in these conquered territories a.s.similated to their own languages. So that, in the familiar example, the Latin "h.o.m.o" becomes "uomo" in Italian, "homme" in French, "hombre" in Spanish, and "om" in Roumanian. Similarly related but mutually unintelligible languages among the American Indians have been traced to three great source-languages.

The history of European languages offers an interesting example of differentiation. English and German, for example, are both traceable back to West-Germanic; from that in turn to a hypothecated primitive West-Germanic. All the European languages are traceable back to a hypothecated Primitive Indo-European.[1] The theory held by most students of this subject is that the groups possessing this single uniform language spread over a wider and wider area, gradually became separated from each other by geographical barriers and tribal affiliations, and gradually (and on the part of individual speakers unconsciously) modified their speech so that slight differences acc.u.mulated, and resulted finally in widely different and mutually unintelligible languages.

[Footnote 1: By the word "primitive" the linguistic experts mean a language the existence of which is inferred from common features of several related languages, of which written records are current, but of which no actual records exist. Thus, if there were no written records of Latin the approximate reconstruction of it by linguists would be called "Primitive Romance."]

The process of differentiation in the languages of different groups is very marked. We find, for example, in the early history of Greece and Rome, a number of widely different dialects. There seems every evidence that these were derived from some more primitive tongue. We find, likewise, on the American continent, several hundred different languages, which--to the untrained observer--bear not the slightest resemblance to each other. This welter and confusion can also be traced back to a few primitive and uniform languages.

Thus the history of civilization reveals this striking differentiation in the language of different groups, a counter-tendency making for a wider uniformity of particular languages. One "favored dialect" becomes standard, predominant and exclusive. Thus out of all the French dialects, the one that survives is the speech of Paris; Castilian becomes standard Spanish, and in ancient Greece the language of Athens supersedes all the other dialects. The reasons for the survival of one out of a great welter of dialects may be various.

Not infrequently the language of a conquering people has, in more or less pure form, succeeded the language of the conquered.

This was the case in the history of the Romance languages, which owe their present forms to the spread of Roman arms and culture. There was, as is well known, a similar development in the case of the English language. The Norman Conquest introduced, under the auspices of a socially superior and victorious group, a language culturally superior to the Anglo-Saxon. The latter was, of course, not entirely replaced, but profoundly modified, especially in the enrichment and enlargement of its vocabulary. One has but to note such words as "place," "choir," "beef," etc., which came entirely to replace in the language the indigenous Anglo-Saxon names for those objects.

Colonization and commercial expansion may bring about the replacement of the native language of special localities by the language of the colonizers, at least in hybrid form. The spread of English through Australia, and through the larger part of North America, the spread of Spanish through South America, in each instance practically replacing the native tongues, are cases in point.[1]

[Footnote 1: Dialects and jargons are often the result of the partial a.s.similation by the speakers of one language of another language to which they are exposed. French-Canadian and Pennsylvania Dutch are examples of such a mixture.]

STANDARDIZATION OF LANGUAGE. At the present time, and for some time in the past, the differentiation of language has been greatly lessened by the stabilizing influence of print. The printed word continually recalls the standard p.r.o.nunciation and meaning, and the changes in language (save those deliberately introduced by the addition of scientific terms, or the official modifications of spelling, etc., as in some European countries[2]) are much less rapid, various, and significant than hitherto. It is true that differences in articulation and usage, especially the former, do still, to a degree, persist and develop.

Our Southern accent, with its drawling of words and slurring of consonants, our Middle-Western accent, with its stressed articulation of "r's" and its nasalizing tendencies, are instances of this persistence.

[Footnote 2: In France the Ministry of Education from time to time settles points of orthography definitely.]

But the printed language--English, for example--the official language, which is published in the newspapers, periodicals, and books, which is taught in the schools, and spoken from the pulpit, the platform, on the stage, in cultivated society, is more or less alike all over the United States and wherever English is spoken. It is, of course, only a standard, a norm, an ideal, which like the concept of the circle, never quite appears in practice. The language which is spoken, even in the conversation of the educated, by no means conforms to the ideal of "correct usage." But the important fact is that the standard language _is_ a standard, that it is, moreover, a widely recognized and effective standard. The dictionaries and the grammars become authoritative, and are referred to when people consciously set about discovering what _is_ the accepted or correct meaning or p.r.o.nunciation.

But a more effectual authority is exerted by the teaching they receive at school, and the continuous, though unnoticed, influence of the more or less standard language which they read in print.

Even phonetic changes, though they persist, are checked from spreading to the point of mutually unintelligible dialects by the standards enforced in print. The "accents" in various parts of the United States, for example, differ, but not to the point of becoming absolutely divergent languages. The Southerner and the Westerner may be conscious in each other's speech of a quaint and curious difference in p.r.o.nunciation, but they can, except in extreme cases, completely understand each other.[1]

[Footnote 1: Some of the isolated districts in the Kentucky mountains reveal dialects with some important differences in vocabulary and construction. These are shown most strikingly in some of the ballads of that region which have been collected by William Aspinwall Bradley, and by Howard Brockway. Rural schools and the breakdown of complete isolation will probably in time eliminate this divergence.]

The most important stabilizing influence of print, however, is its fixation of meanings. It makes possible their maintenance uncorrupted and unmodified over wide stretches in which there are phonetic variations. These variant articulations in different parts of a large country where the same language is spoken, would, if unchecked, eventually modify the sense of words. Print largely prevents this from happening.

One can read newspapers published in Maine, California, Virginia, and Iowa, without noticing any significant, or, in many cases, even slight differences in vocabulary or construction.

There are, of course, local idioms, but these persist in conversation, rather than in print, save where they are caught up and exploited for literary purposes by a Bret Harte, a Mark Twain, or an O. Henry.

COUNTER-TENDENCIES TOWARD DIFFERENTIATION. While the _standard_ language does become fixed and stable, there are, in the daily life of different social groups, varying actual languages. Every cla.s.s, or profession, every social group, whether of interest, or occupation, has its slight individuality in articulation or vocabulary. We still observe that members of a family talk alike; sometimes households have literally their own household words. And on different economic and social levels, in different sports, intellectual, professional, and business pursuits, we notice slightly different "actual"

languages. These partly overlap. The society lady, the business man, the musician, the professor of literature, the mechanic, have specializations of vocabulary and construction, but there is, for each of them, a great common linguistic area. Every individual's speech is a resultant of the various groups with whom he a.s.sociates. He is affected in his speech habits most predominantly, of course, by his most regular a.s.sociates, professional and social. In consequence we still mark out a man, as much as anything, by the kind of language he speaks. The mechanic and the man of letters are not likely to be mistaken for each other, if overheard in a street car. Many literary and dramatic characters are memorable for their speech habits. Such types are successful when they do hit upon really significant linguistic peculiarities.

Their frequent failures lie in making the language of a particular social type artificially stable. No one ever talks quite as the conventional stage policeman, stage professor, and stage Englishman talk.

These actual variations in the language, as it is used by various groups who are brought up under the same standard language, operate to prevent complete stabilization of language.

Such variations are remarkably influential, considering the conservative influences upon language of the repeated and continuous suggestion made by the printed page. The language is, in the first place, being continually enriched through increments of new words and modifications of old ones, from the special vocabularies of trades, professions, sciences, and sports. Through some accidental appositeness to some contemporaneous situation, these may become generally current. A recent and familiar example is the term "camouflage," which from its technical sense of protective coloration has become a universally understood name for moral and intellectual pretense. The vocabulary of baseball has by this time already given to the language words that show promise of attaining eventual legitimacy. An increasingly large source of enrichment of the native tongue comes from the "spontaneous generation" of slang, which, starting in the linguistic whimsicality of one individual, gets caught up in conversation, and finds its ultimate way into the language.

Important instruments, certainly in the United States, in spreading such neologisms are the humorous and sporting pages of the newspapers, in which places they not infrequently originate.[1] Whether a current slang expression will persist, or perish (as do thousands initiated every year), depends on accidents of contemporary circ.u.mstances. If the expression happens to set off aptly a contemporary situation, it may become very widespread until that situation, such as a political campaign, is over. But it may, like the metaphor of a poet, have some universal application. "Log-rolling,"

"graft," "bluff," have come into the language to stay.

Roosevelt's "p.u.s.s.y-foot," and "Ananias Club" are, perhaps, remembered, but show less promise of permanency. "Movies"

has already ceased to be a neologism, its ready adoption ill.u.s.trating a point already mentioned, namely, that a variation that facilitates speech (as "movies" does in comparison with "moving pictures," or "motion pictures ") has a high potentiality of acceptance.

[Footnote 1: H. L. Mencken in his suggestive book, _The American Language_, sees in this upshoot of phrases indigenous to the soil and the temper of the American people, and of grammatical constructions also, symptoms of the increasing divergence of the American from the English language. That there are a large number of special expressions exclusively used in the United States, and parts of the United States, that are not found in use in England, goes without saying. Everyone knows that the Englishman says "lift" where we say "elevator," "shop," where we are likely to say "store." There are significant differences to be found even in the casual expressions of American and English newspapers. But it is doubtful whether the divergence can go very far, in view of the constant intercommunication, the rapidity of travel between the two countries, and the promiscuous reading of English books in America, and American books in England.]

LANGUAGE AS EMOTIONAL AND LOGICAL. Since language is primarily useful as an instrument of communication, it should ideally be a direct and clean-cut representation of experience.

It should be as unambiguous, and immediate, as telegraphy, algebra, or shorthand. But language has two functions, which interfere with one another. Words not only represent logical relations; they provoke emotional responses. They not only explicitly tell; they implicitly suggest. They are not merely skeletons of thought; they are clothed with emotional values. They are not, in consequence, transitive vehicles of thought. Words should, from the standpoint of communication, be mere signals to action, which should attract attention only in so far as they are signals. They should be no more regarded as things in themselves than is the green lamp which signals a locomotive engineer to go ahead. They should be as immediate signals to action as, at a race, the "Ready, set, go"

of the starter is to the runner. Yet this rarely happens in the case of words. They frequently impede or mislead action by arousing emotions irrelevant to their intellectual significance, or provoke action on the basis of emotional a.s.sociations rather than on their merits, so to speak, as logical representations of ideas.

To take an example: England, as an intellectual symbol, may be said to be a name given to a small island bounded by certain lat.i.tudes and longitudes, having a certain distribution of raw materials and human beings, and a certain topography.

It might just as well be represented by X for all practical purposes. Thus in the secret code of the diplomatic corps if X were agreed on as the symbol for England, it would be just as adequate and would even save time. But England (that particular sound) for a large number of individuals who have been brought up there, has become the center of deep and far-reaching emotional a.s.sociations, so that its utterance in the presence of a particular listener may do much more than represent a given geographical fact. It may be a.s.sociated with all that he loves, and all that he remembers with affection; it may suggest landscapes that are dear to him, a familiar street and house, a particular set of friends, and a cherished historical tradition of heroic names and storied places. It may arouse such ardor and devotion as Henley expresses in his famous _England, my England_: