Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/818

782 PHILOLOGY [ARYAN isches Wurzellejcicon (.Berlin, 1839), a work equally remark able for copiousness of contents and power of combination, yet showing no advance on Bopp s standpoint in its con ception of phonetic changes. ileicher. A third period in the history of Indo-Germanic philology is marked by the name of August Schleicher, whose Com- petulium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indo-german- ischen Sprachen first appeared in 1861. In the period sub sequent to the appearance of Pott s Etymoloyische Forsch- utvjen, a number of distinguished scholars, too large to be recorded here individually, 1 had devoted their labours to the different branches of Aryan philology, especially assisted and promoted in their work by the rapidly progressing Vedic (and Avestic) studies that had been inaugurated by Rosen, Roth, Benfey, Westergaard, Miiller, Kulm, Aufrecht, and others. Moreover, new foundations had been laid for the study of the Slavonic languages by Miklosich and Schleicher, of Lithuanian by Kurschat and Schleicher, of Celtic by Zeuss. Of the classical languages Greek had found a most distinguished repre sentative in Curtius, while Corssen, Mommsen, Aufrecht, Kirchhoff, &c., had collected most valuable materials towards the elucidation of Latin and the cognate Italic idioms. In his Compendium Schleicher undertook and solved the difficult task of sifting down the countless details amassed since the days of Bopp and Grimm, and thus making the individual languages stand out clearly on their common background, while Bopp s attention had been especially occupied with what was common to all Indo-Germanic tongues. There are two prominent features which characterize this part of Schleicher s work, his assumption and partial reconstruction of a prehistoric parent -speech, from which the separate Indo-Germanic languages were supposed to have sprung, and the estab lishment of a long series of phonetic laws, regulating the changes by which that development of the individual idioms had taken place. On Schleicher s views of and contributions towards general comparative philology (which he erroneously proposed to consider as a branch of natural science) we need not enter here. For some time after Schleicher s premature death (in 1868) Indo-Germanic philology continued in paths indi cated by him and Curtius, with the exception, perhaps, of the school founded by Benfey, who had always stood on independent ground. The difference between the two schools, however, was less strikingly marked in their writings, because it chiefly concerns general views of language and the Indo-Germanic languages in particular, although the characteristic task of the period alluded to was that of working out the more minute details of compari son ; but behind all this the general interest still clung to Bopp s old glottogonic problems. Lately, however, a new v lin- movement has begun, and a younger school of linguists has sprung up who are united in their opposition to many theories of the older generation, yet often differ materially krit. Death, however, prevented him from completing more than the above-mentioned preliminary studies by means of which he had intended to open the field for his greater work. (For fuller biographical details see Bezzenberger, in his Beitrage, viii. 239 sq.} 1 The extensive progress made in this period is best illustrated by the foundation of ttvo periodicals especially devoted to Aryan comparative philology, Kuhn s Zdlschrift fur veraleichende Sprach- forschung, Berlin, from 1851 (now 27 vols.), and Kuhn s Reitrdge zur vergleichenden Sprachfnrschung, Berlin, from 1858 (8 vols.). Benfey s school is more especially represented by the contributors to Benfey s Orient und Occident, GiJttingen (3 vols.), from 1862, and subsequently through Bezzenberger s Beitmye zur Kiin>le der indogermardschen Sprachen, Gottingen (8 vols.), from 1877. France possesses two periodicals of the same kind, the Revue de Linguistique, Paris, from 1868, and the Memoires de la Xociete de Linguistique de Paris, also from 1868, while England is represented by the Proceedings and Trans actions (if the Philological Society, and America by the Transactions of the American Philological Association (from 1868). both with regard to method and the solution of individual problems. In its present state this younger school (often branded with the name of Neo-Grammarians, "Junggram- matiker," by its opponents real and imaginary) is marked by certain distinct tendencies. In the first place, they are inclined more or less to abandon glottogonic problems as insoluble, if not for ever, yet for the present and with the scanty means that Aryan philology alone can furnish for this purpose. In this they are in opposition to the whole of the older school. In the second place, they object to the use of all misleading metaphorical compari sons of processes in the history of language with processes of organic development, comparisons used at all times, but especially cherished by Schleicher. In the third place and this has been of the greatest practical import ance they hold that our general views of language and our methods of comparison should be formed after a careful study of the living languages, because these alone are fully controllable in every minute detail, and can there fore alone give us a clear insight into the working of the different motive forces which shape and modify language, and that the history of earlier periods of language, conse quently, can only be duly illustrated by tracing out the share which each of these forces has had in every individual case of change. Of these forces two are found to be especially prominent phonetic variation and formation by analogy. They generally work in turns and often in opposition to one another, the former frequently tending to differentiation of earlier unities, the latter to abolition of earlier differences, especially to restoration of conformity disturbed by phonetic change. There are, however, other important differences in the action of the two forces. Phonetic change affects exclusively the pronunciation of a Phonetic language by substituting one sound or sound -group for cna "o u - another. From this simple fact it is self-evident that phonetic changes as such admit of no exceptions. Pronun ciation that is, the use of certain sounds in certain com binations is perfectly unconscious in natural unstudied speech, and every speaker or generation of speakers has only one way of utterance for individual sounds or their com binations. If, therefore, a given sound was once changed into another under given circumstances, the new sound must necessarily and unconsciously replace its predecessor in every word that falls under the same rules, because the older sound ceases to be practised and therefore disappears from the language. Thus, for instance, the sound of the short so-called Italian a in English has become exchanged for the peculiarly English sound in man, hat, &.(.-., which is so exclusively used and practised now by English speakers that they feel great difficulty in pronouncing the Italian ^ sound, which at an earlier period was almost as frequent in English as in any other language that has preserved the Italian sound up to the present day. Again, the sound of the so-called long English a in make, paper, &c., although once a monophthong, is now pronounced as a diphthong, combining the sounds of the English short e and i, and no trace of the old monophthong is left, except where it was followed by r, as in hare, mare (also air, their, irhrw, A-C.), where the a has a broader sound somewhat approaching that of the short a in hat. This last instance may at the same time serve to illustrate the restrictions made above as to sounds changing their pronunciation in certain groups or combinations, or under given circumstances only. We may learn from it that phonetic change need not always affect the same original sound in the same way in all its combinations, but that neighbouring sounds often influence the special direction in which the sound is modified. The different sounds of the English a, in make and hare are both equivalents of the same Old English sound a ( = the Italian short a) in macian, hara. The latter sound has