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I

LECTURE V.

GRIMM'S LAW.

INTEND to devote to-day's Lecture to the consideration of one phonetic law, commonly called Grimm's Law, a law of great importance and very wide application, affecting nearly the whole consonantal structure of the Aryan languages. The law

stated as follows:

may be There are in the Aryan languages three principal points of consonantal contact, the guttural, the dental, and the labial, k, t, p.

At each of these three points there are two modes of utterance, the hard and the soft; each in turn is liable to aspiration, though only in certain languages.

In Sanskrit the system is complete; we have the hard checks, k, t, p; the soft checks, g, d, b; the hard aspirated checks, kh, th, ph; and the soft aspirated checks, gh, dh, bh. The soft aspirated checks are, however, in Sanskrit of far greater frequency and importance than the hard aspirates.

In Greek we find, besides the usual hard and soft checks, one set of aspirates, x, 9, 4, which are hard, and which in later Greek dwindle away into the corresponding breathings.

In Latin there are no real aspirates; their place having been taken by the corresponding breathings. The dental breathing, however, the s, is never found

in Latin as the representative of an original dental aspirate (th or dh).

In Gothic, too, the real aspirates are wanting, unless th was pronounced as such. In the guttural and labial series we have only the breathings h and f. The same seems to apply to Old High-German.

In the Slavonic languages, including Lithuanian, the aspirates were originally absent.

We see, therefore, that the aspirated letters exist only in Sanskrit and Greek, that in the former they are chiefly soft, in the latter entirely hard.

Let us now consider Grimm's Law. It is this: "If the same roots or the same words exist in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Slavonic, Lithuanian, Gothic, and HighGerman, then wherever the Hindus and the Greeks pronounce an aspirate, the Goths and the Low Germans generally, the Saxons, Anglo-Saxons, Frisians, &c., pronounce the corresponding soft check, the Old HighGermans the corresponding hard check. In this first change the Lithuanian, the Slavonic, and the Celtic races agree in pronunciation with the Gothic. thus arrive at the first formula:

We

Secondly, if in Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Lithuanian,

*The letters here used are to be considered merely as symbols, not as the real letters occurring in those languages. If we translate these symbols into real letters, we find, in Formula I., instead of

Slavonic, and Celtic, we find a soft check, then we find a corresponding hard check in Gothic, a corresponding breath in Old High-German.

This gives us the

Thirdly, when the six first-named languages show a hard consonant, then Gothic shows the corresponding breath, Old High-German the corresponding soft check. In Old High-German, however, the law holds good with regard to the dental series only, while in the guttural and labial series the Old High-German documents generally exhibit h and f, instead of the corresponding mediæ g and b. This gives us the third formula:

It will be seen at once that these changes cannot be considered as the result of phonetic corruption. Phonetic corruption always follows one and the same direction. It always goes downward, but it does not rise again. Now it may be true, as Grimm says, that it shows a certain pride and pluck on the part of the Teutonic nations to have raised the soft to a hard, and the hard to an aspirated letter. But if this were so, would not the dwindling down of the aspirate, the boldest of the bold, into the media, the meekest of meek letters, evince the very opposite tendency? We must not forget that this phonetic law, which Grimm

* Cf. Curtius, Kuhn's Zeitschrift, ii. 330.

has well compared with a three-spoked wheel, turns round completely, and that what seems a rise in one spoke is a fall in the other. Therefore we should not gain much if, instead of looking upon Lautverschiebung as a process of phonetic strengthening, we tried to explain it as a process of phonetic weakening.* For though we might consider the aspiration of the hard t as the beginning of a phonetic infection (th) which gradually led to the softening of t to d, we should have on the other side to account for the transition of the d into t by a process of phonetic reinvigoration. We are in a vicious circle out of which there is no escape unless we look at the whole process from a different point of view.

Who tells us that Greek t ever became Gothic th? What idea do we connect with the phrase, so often heard, that a Greek t becomes Gothic th? How can a Greek consonant become a Gothic consonant, or a Greek word become a Gothic word? Even an Italian word never becomes a Spanish word; an Italian t, as in amato, never becomes a Spanish d, as in amado. They both come from a common source, the Latin; and the Greek and Gothic both come from a common source, the old Aryan language. Instead of attempting to explain the differences between Greek and Gothic by referring one to the other, we ought rather to trace back both to a common source from which each may have started with its peculiar consonantal structure. Now we know from the physiological analysis of the alphabet, that three, or sometimes four, varieties exist for each of the three consonantal contacts. We may pronounce p as a hard letter, by cutting the breath

* See Lottner, Zeitschrift, xi. p. 204, Förstemann, ibid. i. p. 170.

sharply with our lips; we may pronounce it as a soft letter, by allowing the refraining pressure to be heard while we form the contact; and we may pronounce it an aspirate by letting an audible emission of breath follow immediately on the utterance of the hard or the soft letter. Thus we get for each point of consonantal contact four varieties:—

k, kh, g, gh,

t, th, d, dh,

P, ph, b, bh.

This rich variety of consonantal contact is to be found, however, in highly-developed languages only. Even among the Aryan dialects, Sanskrit alone can boast of possessing it entire. But if we look beyond the Aryan frontiers, and examine such dialects as, for instance, the Hawaian, we see first, that even the simplest distinction, that between hard and soft contact, has not yet been achieved. A Hawaian, as we saw, not only finds it extremely difficult to distinguish between k and t; he likewise fails to perceive any difference between k and g, t and d, p and b. The same applies to other Polynesian languages. In Finnish the distinction between k, t, p, and g, d, b, is of modern date, and owing to foreign influence. The Finnish itself recognises no such distinction in the formation of its roots and vocables, whereas in cognate dialects, such as Hungarian, that distinction has been fully developed (Boller, Die Finnischen Sprachen, p. 12).

Secondly, in some of the Polynesian languages we find an uncertainty between the hard checks and their corresponding hard breaths. We find the New Zealand poe, ball, pronounced foe in Tonga,* just as

*Hale, Polynesian Grammar, p. 232.