Society for Pure English Part 10

[Footnote 10: Wherever this is not so--as in _rhetoric_, _rhetorical_, _rhetorician_, _company_, _companion_, &c.--we have a greater freedom in the use of the words. Such words, as Dr. Bradley points out, giving _Canada_, _Canadian_ as example, are often phonetic varieties due to an imported foreign syntax, and their p.r.o.nunciation implies familiarity with literature and the written forms: but very often they are purely the result of our native syllabising, not only in displacement of accent (as in the first example above) but also by modification of the accented vowel according to its position in the word, the general tendency being to make long vowels in monosyllables and in penultimate accents, but short vowels in antepenultimate accents. Thus come such differences of sound between _opus_ and _opera_, _omen_ and _ominous_, _virus_ and _virulent_, _miser_ and _miserable_, _nation_ and _national_, _patron_ and _patronage_, _legal_ and _legislate_, _grave_ and _gravity_, _globe_ and _globular_, _grade_ and _gradual_, _genus_ and _general_, _female_ and _feminine_, _fable_ and _fabulous_, &c. In such disguising of the root-sound the main effect, as Dr. Bradley says, is the power to free the derivative from an intense meaning of the root; so that, to take his very forcible example, the adjective Christian, the derivative of Christ, has by virtue of its shortened vowel been enabled to carry a much looser signification than it could have acquired had it been phonetically indissociable from the intense signification of the name Christ. This freedom of the derivative from the root varies indefinitely in different words, and it very much complicates my present lesser statement of the literary advantage of phonetic variety in inflexions and derivatives.

The examples above are all Latin words, and since Latin words came into English through different channels, these particular vowels can have different histories.]

Once become sensible of such beauty, and of the force of sounds, a writer will find himself in trouble with _no_ and _know_. These omnipresent words are each of them essentially weakened by the existence of the other, while their proximity in a sentence is now damaging. It is a misfortune that our Southern dialect should have parted entirely with all the original differentiation between them; for after the distinctive _k_ of the verb was dropped, the negative still preserved (as it in some dialects still preserves) its broad open vowel, more like _law_ than _toe_ or _beau_, and unless that be restored I should judge that the verb _to know_ is doomed. The third person singular of its present tense is _nose_, and its past tense is _new_, and the whole inconvenience is too radical and perpetual to be received all over the world. We have an occasional escape by using _nay_ for _no_, since its h.o.m.ophone _neigh_ is an unlikely _neigh_bour; but that can serve only in one limited use of the word, and is no solution.

[Sidenote: Punnage.]

In talking with friends the common plea that I have heard for h.o.m.ophones is their usefulness to the punster. 'Why! would you have no puns?' I will not answer that question; but there is no fear of our being insufficiently catered for; whatever accidental benefit be derivable from h.o.m.ophones, we shall always command it fully and in excess; look again at the portentous list of them! And since the essential jocularity of a pun (at least when it makes me laugh) lies in a humorous incongruity, its farcical gaiety may be heightened by a queer p.r.o.nunciation. I cannot pretend to judge a sophisticated taste; but, to give an example, if, as I should urge, the _o_ of the word _petrol_ should be preserved, as it is now universally spoken, not having yet degraded into _petr'l_, a future squire will not be disqualified from airing his wit to his visitors by saying, as he points to his old stables, 'that is where I store my petrel', and when the joke had been ill.u.s.trated in _Punch_, its folly would sufficiently distract the patients in a dentist's waiting-room for years to come, in spite of gentlemen and chauffeurs continuing to say _petrol_, as they do now; nor would the two _petr'ls_ be more dissimilar than the two _mys_.

[Sidenote: Play on words.]

Puns must of course be distinguished from such a play on words as John of Gaunt makes with his own name in Shakespeare's _King Richard II_.

_K._ What comfort man? How is't with aged Gaunt?

_G._ O, how that name befits my composition!

Old Gaunt indeed, and gaunt in being old, &c.

where, as he explains,

Misery makes sport to mock itself.

This is a humorous indulgence of fancy, led on by the a.s.sociations of a word; a pun is led off by the _sound_ of a word in pursuit of nonsense; though the variety of its ingenuity may refuse so simple a definition.

[Sidenote: An indirect advantage of h.o.m.ophones.]

It is true that a real good may sometimes come indirectly from a word being a h.o.m.ophone, because its inconvenience in common parlance may help to drive it into a corner where it can be retained for a special signification: and since the special significance of any word is its first merit, and the coinage of new words for special differentiation is difficult and rare, we may rightly welcome any fortuitous means for their provision. Examples of words specialized thus from h.o.m.ophones are _brief_ (a lawyer's brief), _hose_ (water-pipe), _bolt_ (of door), _mail_ (postal), _poll_ (election), &c.[11]

[Footnote 11: It would follow that, supposing there were any expert academic control, it might be possible to save some of our perishing h.o.m.ophones by artificial specialization. Such words are needed, and if a h.o.m.ophone were thus specialized in some department of life or thought, then a slight differential p.r.o.nunciation would be readily adopted. Both that and its defined meaning might be true to its history.]

2. _THAT ENGLISH IS EXCEPTIONALLY BURDENED WITH h.o.m.oPHONES._

This is a reckless a.s.sertion; it may be that among the languages unknown to me there are some that are as much hampered with h.o.m.ophones as we are. I readily grant that with all our embarra.s.sment of riches, we cannot compete with the Chinese nor pretend to have outbuilt their Babel; but I doubt whether the statement can be questioned if confined to European languages. I must rely on the evidence of my list, and I would here apologize for its incompleteness. After I had patiently extracted it from the dictionary a good many common words that were missing occurred to me now and again, and though I have added these, there must be still many omissions. Nor must it be forgotten that, had obsolete words been included, the total would have been far higher.

That must plainly be the case if, as I contend, h.o.m.ophony causes obsolescence, and reference to the list from Shakespeare in my next section will provide examples of such words.

Otto Jespersen[12] seems to think that the inconvenience of h.o.m.ophones is so great that a language will naturally evolve some phonetic habit to guard itself against them, although it would otherwise neglect such distinction. I wish that this admirable instinct were more evident in English. He writes thus of the lists of words which he gives 'to show what pairs of h.o.m.onyms [h.o.m.ophones] would be created if distinctions were abolished that are now maintained: they [the lists] thus demonstrate the force of resistance opposed to some of the sound-changes which one might imagine as happening in the future. A language can tolerate only a certain number of ambiguities arising from words of the same sound having different significations, and therefore the extent to which a language has utilized some phonetic distinction to keep words apart, has some influence in determining the direction of its sound-changes. In French, and still more in English, it is easy to enumerate long lists of pairs of words differing from each other only by the presence or absence of voice in the last sound; therefore final _b_ and _p_, _d_ and _t_, _g_ and _k_, are kept rigidly apart; in German, on the other hand, there are very few such pairs, and thus nothing counterbalances the natural tendency to unvoice final consonants.'

[Footnote 12: _A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles_, by Otto Jespersen, Heidelberg, 1909. Streitberg's _Germanische Bibliothek_, vol. i, p. 441.]

3. _That h.o.m.ophones are self-destructive and tend to become obsolete._

For the contrary contention, namely, that h.o.m.ophones do _not_ destroy themselves, there is prima facie evidence in the long list of survivors, and in the fact that a vast number of words which have not this disadvantage are equally gone out of use.

[Sidenote: Causes of obsolescence.]

Words fall out of use for other reasons than h.o.m.ophony, therefore one cannot in any one case a.s.sume that ambiguity of meaning was the active cause: indeed the mere familiarity of the sound might prolong a word's life; and h.o.m.ophones are themselves frequently made just in this way, for uneducated speakers will more readily adapt a familiar sound to a new meaning (as when my gardener called his Pomeranian dog a Panorama) than take the trouble to observe and preserve the differentiation of a new sound. There is no rule except that any loss of distinction may be a first step towards total loss.[13]

[Footnote 13: To give an example of this. In old Greek _we_ and _you_ were [Greek: aemeis] and [Greek: umeis]: and those words became absolutely h.o.m.ophonous, so that one of them had to go. The first person naturally held on to its private property, and it invented _sets_ for outsiders. Now the first step towards this absurdest of all h.o.m.ophonies, the ident.i.ty of _meum_ and _tuum_, was no doubt the modification of the true full _u_ to _ii_. The ultimate convenience of the result may in itself be applauded; but it is inconceivable that modern Greek should ever compensate itself for its inevitable estrangement from its ancient glories.]

It is probable that the working machinery of an average man's brain sets a practical limit to his convenient workable vocabulary; that is to say, a man who can easily command the spontaneous use of a certain number of words cannot much increase it without effort. If that is so, then, as he learns new words, there will be a tendency, if not a necessity, for him to lose hold of a corresponding number of his old words; and the words that will first drop out will be those with which he had hitherto been uncomfortable; and among those words will be the words of ambiguous meaning.

[Sidenote: No direct proof]

It is plain that only general considerations can be of value, unless there should be very special evidence in any special case; and thus the caution of Dr. Henry Bradley's remarks in note on page 19.

I remember how I first came to recognize this law; it was from hearing a friend advocating the freer use of certain old words which, though they were called obsolete and are now rarely heard, yet survive in local dialects. I was surprised to find how many of them were unfit for resuscitation because of their h.o.m.ophonic ambiguity, and when I spoke of my discovery to a philological friend, I found that he regarded it as a familiar and unquestioned rule.

But to prove this rule is difficult; and as it is an impossible task to collect all the obsolete words and cla.s.sify them, I am proposing to take two independent indications; first to separate out the h.o.m.ophones from the other obsolete words in a Shakespearian glossary, and secondly, to put together a few words that seem to be actually going out of use in the present day, that is, strictly obsolescent words caught in the act of flitting.

[Sidenote: Obsolescence defined.]

Obsolescence in this connexion must be understood only of common educated speech, that is, the average speaker's vocabulary.

Obsolescent words are old words which, when heard in talk, will sound literary or unusual: in literature they can seem at home, and will often give freshness without affectation; indeed, any word that has an honourable place in Shakespeare or the Bible can never quite die, and may perhaps some day recover its old vitality.

[Sidenote: Evidence of obsolescence.]

The best evidence of the obsolescence of any word is that it should still be frequently heard in some proverb or phrase, but never out of it. The h.o.m.ophonic condition is like that of _aural_ and _oral_, of which it is impossible to make practical use.[14] We speak of an _aural surgeon_ and of _oral teaching_, but out of such combinations the words have no sense. It happens that oral teaching must be aural on the pupil's side, but that only adds to the confusion.

[Footnote 14: The words _aural_ and _oral_ are distinguished in the p.r.o.nunciation of the North Midlands and in Scotland, and the difference between the first syllables is shown in the Oxford dictionary. In Southern English no trace of differentiation remains.]

In deciding whether any obsolete h.o.m.ophone has been lost by its h.o.m.ophony, I should make much of the consideration whether the word had supplied a real need, by naming a conception that no other word so fitly represented; hence its survival in a proverb is of special value, because the words of proverbs are both apt and popular; so that for the disuse of such a word there would seem to be no other cause so likely and sufficient as damage to its signification.

The glossary is relied on to contain, besides its other items, all the obsolete words: the h.o.m.ophones separated out from these will show various grades of obsolescence, and very different values as examples bearing on the question at issue.

_Table of h.o.m.ophones taken from among the obsolete words in Cunliffe's 'A New Shakespearean Dictionary,' Blackie_, 1910.]

ANCIENT: replaced by ensign.

BATE = remit.

BECK = a bow of the head: preserved in 'becks and nods', mutual loss with beck = rivulet.

BOOT = to profit: Sh. puns on it, showing that its absurdity was recognized.

BOTTLE (of hay): preserved in proverb.

BOURNE = streamlet: preserved in sense of limit by the line of Sh. which perhaps destroyed it.

BREEZE = gadfly.

BRIEF (_subs._): now only as a lawyer's brief.

BROOK (_verb_).

BUCK = to steep (linen) in lye.

COTE: as in sheepcote.