mean the sound 7. Lottner is of opinion that it was developed in that language from which sprang, according to his view, as so many distinct forms, but nevertheless in a particular way akin to each other, the Aryan languages of Europe. Schleicher would not include it in his table of the sounds of the Indo-Germanic mother-language, as he jections to Fick's hypothesis is 'that it would leave the Holethnic speech without a pure k." The merit of IIavet's hypothesis, says Douse, consists in the respect it ap pears to pay to the Principle of Least Effort. But he disagrees with Havet as to the relative value of kw and k pure, the latter of which Havet considers to be a debilitation from the former. Havet relies mainly on the history of kw (qu) in the Romance languages. Douse considers the doctrine unsafe. "On the whole, then, M. Havet's view of the relative strength of kw and k pure seems to me to be inconsistent both with the comparative physiology of the two sounds, with the analogy supplied by the relationship between ky and k, and with the tendency of kw to become p." To Douse's own theory it is impossible to do justice within the short limits of a note. We must content ourselves with quoting the summary of his argument in his own words. He claims to have shown that "1st there is originally a single language (the Holethnic) employing a single sound of a certain character (k); 2nd, this language divides, or tends to divide into (for our present purpose) two dialects, an Asiatic and a European; 3rd, in one of these (the Asiatic) a debilitation (ky) of that sound springs up and spreads; 4th, the other dialect (the European) at first resists that debilitation; but 5th, the two dialects continue in presence of each other; hence, 6th, by the habit of answering to ky by k pure a perception of incongruity and the Dissimilating sentiment are at last awakened among the Europeans; and 7th, under the influence of the former, this people proceed to adjust (as they suppose) their sounds to those of the commingled dialect; but, diverted by the latter, their efforts only result in a counterbalancing corruption of such of their own pure k's as correspond to the unaffected Asiatic k's-the sound they actually produce, however, not being an exact reproduction of the Asiatic ky, but differing from it in being a stage nearer to kw (say kü), from which it ultimately descended or advanced to kw (qu).". We strongly recommend the reader to master the whole argument of pp. 134-175, which does not yield to the rest of the book in lucidity and close reasoning. The last section (§ 64) contains some clever suggestions on the evolution of i and u from a.—Tr.] 1 For r and physiologically considered see Sievers, Grundzüge der lautphysiologie, etc., pp. 50-6. 2 Über die stellung der Italer innerhalb des indoeuropäischen stammes (Zeitschr. f. vgl. sprachforschung, vii. 18-49, 161-93). 1 called it. Fick, moreover, in the second edition of his Vergleichendes wörterbuch der indogermanischen sprachen (section I. 1870) marked under / six among the words and roots which he attributed to the primitive and fundamental Aryan: but afterwards, in the corrections and additions with which. the second half of the second section closes, he substituted r for 1,3 thus giving us to understand that he had gone over to the opinion of the two philologists above named. And in the work already mentioned, Die ehemalige spracheinheit der Indogermanen Europas (Göttingen, 1873), he proceeded decisively to defend the position of Lottner, considering the l as one of the characteristics which, according to him, lead us to believe in the existence of a European linguistic unity and distinguish it from the Indo-Iranie :* this view we shall have to discuss in the second part of the present work. The 'consonantismus,' for so he expresses himself, 1s of the Aryan languages of Europe is distinguished from that of the cognate languages of Asia by the copious development of the common to all the former, while the Aryan mother-language, and the Indo-Iranic period, do not yet know this sound, and in place of it offer in every case r, whence we must suppose the European has sprung. The less ancient Sanscrit exhibits, with tolerable frequency, the sound for the most part in the same roots and words which possess it in the European languages: nor, continues the author, is the less diffused in Iranic, but it is only in epochs considerably later. To the languages of this family in the most ancient period of them which is known to us, that is, to the languages of the Avesta and of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, the 7, according to Fick, is altogether unknown. In order to admit that it existed in the period of the Indo-Iranic unity it would be necessary to suppose that it was lost in the neighbourhood of the Iranians as soon as these were separated from the Indians: a hypothesis certainly not absurd, but in the highest degree improbable and impossible to prove, because in all else the phonetic systems of the old Indian and the old Iranian dialects are closely cognate, and do not differ from each other in the total loss of primitive and common sounds, but only in developments and transformations of some among them; moreover languages, instead of losing their ancient sounds have a tendency to develope new modifications of them to be capable of expressing, by these, differences of meaning. Let us add that in the language of the Vedas, or the most ancient form of Indian known to us, the / seems to be only at the commencement of its development, and many roots which later in Sanscrit have 7, in Vedic are still written with r. As it cannot be supposed that, from the very outset, there have existed double forms, one group with, the other with 7, for the same roots, and as it may be shown in every one of such forms that the is a 19 transformation of r, the latter, and not the former, should be considered as the primitive sound in all of them. And hence Fick proceeds to note several words in which he thinks we must attribute to chance alone the agreement of Sanscrit and the Aryan dialects of Europe in the substitution of the sound / for r, which he deems the primitive. He admits the existence of seven words which, on both Indian and European ground, agree in the 7 of the suffix without our being able to point to the more ancient r beside the l: but, though we recognised them as primitive forms, we should still not be bound to consider them provided with the as early as the Proto-Aryan stage. We might with better reason suppose that, in these cases, only the less ancient Sanscrit forms with 7 have reached us, while the archaic forms with r were accidentally lost. No one, concludes Fick, will deduce from these words a proof of the primitive nature of the sound 7. We may at the most allow that in the Proto-Aryan the r was pronounced not always uniformly, but in some cases with a sound approaching, especially at the end of a root and in the suffixes. But assuredly the, as a sound quite distinct from r, cannot be assigned either to the great Aryan unity or to the Indo-Iranic unity: it was developed separately in Sanscrit, in the less ancient Iranic languages, in the fundamental European language. All the Aryan dialects of Europe agree in the change of to 7; but the Greek and the Slavonic sometimes have 7 where in the other languages the is preserved unaltered: among the numerous examples quoted by Fick we will notice only laghu (light), li (Lat. linere), lik (to leave), ligh (to lick), lip (to anoint), luk (to shine), lug (to break), klu (to hear). Moreover it should be observed that the Europeans availed themselves of the change of r to l to denote new ideas, akin to those represented by the more ancient forms with r: or, if such forms had a widely extended sense, it was so distributed that part of it was left to the older forms with r, part 20 was derived from the later with . There follows a third series of roots which have in the European languages, and to which there do not exist corresponding Indo-Iranic forms with r. Are they new roots which have arisen on European ground, or do they represent older roots with r which have been accidentally lost in the Indo-Iranian? The author does not venture to propose a solution of this problem, and contents himself with observing that without doubt also the languages of India and Irania lost a considerable part of their oldest store of roots, nor, perhaps, should we unconditionally deny to a linguistic period so remote from us as that of the European unity the power of creating roots. But, continues Fick, roots of this kind, whatever be their origin, attest by their form a common European activity. It is attested also by the l of several suffixes, since in the European languages new formations of words appear with derivative elements, the characteristic of which is the sound 7: and among these formations especial mention should be made of the diminutives, which, while very rare in IndoIranic, abound in the European dialects.' § 4. To the results of Fick's investigations into the history of the sound / stand in point blank opposition those which Heymann arrived at in his researches, and which he offered, furnished with as many proofs as he could collect, 21 in a recent monograph. He thinks that the agreement of Sanscrit with the European languages in the development of the 7 in a series of examples cannot but lead us, as in similar cases, to admit the Proto-Aryan nature of this sound. In a large number of roots and words, undoubtedly primitive, appears as the symbol of a well marked modification of the original sense, as opposed to older forms with r; and of this modification, no less than of the power of which expressed it, those who spoke the most ancient ProtoAryan tongue must have been conscious. Among the twenty-five examples quoted by Heymann it must suffice to mention ruk (to shine) and luk (to see), ri (to flow) and li (to adhere). Nor can Old Bactrian stand in forcible opposition to the claim of 7 to be original, because, observes 1 Among the characteristics of the European mother-language, the existence of which he endeavours to prove, Fick enumerates also the development of the vowel sound e from a. Such development, he says, is common to all the European dialects, and was begun, and in great part completed, in the period of the unity of the European languages and peoples. This e, common to all the Aryan tongues of Europe, and ascending, therefore, in all probability to the primitive and fundamental Euro pean, is found especially: (1) in a considerable series of old and important nominal forms (about 30); (2) in present-tense-stems (40 or more), the e of which sometimes pervades all the other forms of the verb. See ibid., v. 176-200. With respect to this argument we shall see later the opinion of J. Schmidt (see § 31). Das 1 der indogermanischen sprachen gehört der indogermanischen grundsprache, Göttingen, 1873. |