WHITNEY: THE LAWS OF THE LIFE AND GROWTH OF LANGUAGE

Before tracing the chief directions of the movement of language-change classified by Whitney, we have to return briefly to his conception of arbitrariness and conventionality. The condition sine qua non of change is, in Whitney’s view, the fact that there is neither

a natural tie linking sign and idea, nor a natural tie linking the language and the world. Both ties are entirely arbitrary. The sign is arbitrary in a first degree, the language as a whole is an arbitrary framework for the conception of the world—this is arbitrariness of a second degree. To give one of Whitney’s examples; a certain colour can be designated by the sign ‘green’, or ‘vert’ or ‘grün’, or by a million other words (cf. LGL: 18ff.). The child learns whatever word is used in the community she is born into. But she learns not only one colour word but many, and these are not only different from language to language, but each language classifies colours in general in different ways. The classifications and the concepts of each language differ from each other, they have different ‘inner forms’ (cf. LGL: 22). Signs are not only arbitrary, but as one would say in a Saussurean phraseology, radically arbitrary. As there is neither a natural tie between word and idea, nor a relation of representation between language and world, both words and languages as a whole can be formed and shaped according to the changing needs of the speech community. There is also no direct relation between inner and outer aspects of the words, between meaning and phonetic form. Both can evolve independently of each other (cf. LSL: 100f.). In short; languages are open to change.

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Whitney makes a certain difference between change and growth, which make up together the life of a language (cf. LSL: 32f.). Just as one would say today that change is the product of constant variation, Whitney says that growth is the product of constant change. He studies ‘the changes which actually go on in language, and which by their sum and combined effect constitute its growth’ (LGL: 35).

He first gives some concrete examples of changes in the English language and then goes on to classify some general kinds of language change:

We may distinguish, then:—

I. Alterations of the old material of language; change of the words which are still retained as the substance of expression; and this of two kinds of subclasses; 1. change in uttered form; 2. change in content or signification; the two, as we shall see, occurring either independently or in conjunction.

II. Losses of the old material of language, disappearance of what has been in use; and this also of two kinds; 1. loss of complete words; 2. loss of grammatical forms and distinctions.

III. Production of new material; additions to the old stock of a

language, in the way of new words or new forms; external expansion of the resources of expression [borrowing].

(LGL: 44)

Whitney’s use of the terms ‘material’ and ‘form’ is sometimes confusing. To disentangle his semantic network it can be graphically represented as follows:

Alterations of the old material of language

Form

One of the main changes that every item of a language undergoes is abbreviation or contraction given the tendency of speakers to economize their articulatory efforts (the principle of economy) (cf. Whitney [1878] 1971:249–60). This tendency has negative as

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well as positive effects. The negative effects consist in a certain ‘erosion’ of linguistic forms, the positive effects are that these eroded forms, this linguistic waste, can be recycled, so to speak. Whitney’s favourite example is the adverbial suffix -ly, which he derives from the full word like. Like was used in compounds such as godelike, where it was abbreviated to godly (cf. LGL: 52), and a new suffix had been ‘born’. It is subordinated to the ‘root’, and is adapted to this purpose. The influence of the tendency to economy is ‘always cast in favour of subordinating in substance what would otherwise

be of loose structure—in short, of disguising the derivation of linguistic signs, making them signs merely, and signs easy to manage’ (LGL: 53). Bréal here would see an intellectual law, by which spirit subordinates matter, subfuses matter with spirit, or mere form with meaning. We shall return to this form of change in the context of the production of new forms via compounding. On formal changes Whitney writes that there are

on the one hand, the production of new words and forms by the combination of old materials; on the other hand, the wearing down, wearing out and abandonment of the words and forms thus produced, their fusion and mutilation, their destruction and oblivion—are the means by which are kept up the life and growth of language, so far as concerns its external shape and substance, its sensible body.

(LSL: 100)

The key terms in Whitney’s conception of external change processes are combination and adaptation, as well as material and form:

Material are the grammatically independent lexical items, formal are the subordinate, grammatical affixes, of inflection especially. Certain parts of language are highly structured into formal classes, other parts not, and this can be explained by how long they have been undergoing this constant process of combination and adaptation, which seems to be a unilinear evolutionary tendency.

(Silverstein 1971:xvii)

This tendency has recently been explored by Helmut Lüdtke, who has taken the processes of combination and adaptation as starting points to discover the quantitative laws of language change, especially on the phonetic and morphological level (cf. Lüdtke 1980, 1985, 1986). Lüdtke’s theory is rooted in what Whitney calls the ‘aggregative theory of Bopp’ (1880:11), or his theory of ‘agglutination’. It explains the change processes going on here and now and allows the linguist to reconstruct the prehistoric period too. Whitney summarized it as follows:

1. Throughout the whole known history of Indo-European speech, there have been made combinations of elements which then by degrees assumed the character of integral words, and sometimes, by subordination of the one element to the other, of forms; and examples of forms, of every class and every age, appear plainly to have been so made. 2. No material of this

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sort is seen to have been made in any other way; wherever exceptions, as forms with internal flection, seem to show themselves, they can be proved to be the inorganic result of processes originally aggregative. 3. There are nowhere found any formal distinction of such a kind that they refuse explanation as made by aggregative processes similar to those by which other forms are actually seen to have been made. Hence, 4. If aggregation is thus demonstrably a real method of Indo-European form making, and the only one possessing that character, and if it is adequate to the explanation of all the facts, then we ought to accept it as sufficient, and to acknowledge that we have no reason to suppose that forms have been made in any other way.

Whereas this type of change can be regarded as springing from an unconscious use of linguistic material in the most economic way, there exists another type of change, which Whitney has called ‘mental economy’: analogy. Analogy enables the speaker to repair anomalies (cf. LGL: 74) and avoid exceptions. But in a more general sense the ‘force of analogy is, in fact, one of the most potent in all language-history; as it makes whole classes of forms, so it has power to change their limits’ (LGL: 75). Analogy is a ‘structural’ force that gives each language its specific shape and ‘inner form’. We have already said that the ‘prevailing’ analogies in a language (and they differ from language to language) shape the speakers’ innovations and the communities’ selection. As Silverstein points out: the processes of combination and adaptation remain the same, but they have different effects in different languages, according to the different frameworks of analogical preferences (cf. Silverstein 1971:xviii).

Bréal, too, stresses the importance of analogy, the primordial condition of all language (cf. ES: 8677), the condition of language acquisition as well as of language change. According to him, we use analogy as a linguistic instrument to avoid difficult expressions, to achieve more clarity, to stress an opposition or similarity, or to conform to an old or a new rule (cf. Delesalle 1987:290). For Bréal analogy is more than an instrument that repairs damage done by blind, sound laws (a view held by some of his contemporaries), it has a positive, creative value. Analogy is an essential instrument of thought and language. It works constantly in every act of speech (cf. Bréal LN: 628). In a sense, Bréal’s conception of analogy foreshadows that of Saussure, who like his former teacher observed analogy in our daily linguistic activity, but who also saw in it one of the main forces of linguistic creativity and change. Opposed to the random influences of sound-change and agglutination, analogy was for him, as for Bréal, a form of grammatical, rule-governed change. As Delesalle writes in her article on Bréal and Darmesteter: ‘[analogy] is responsible for the dynamics of the grammaticality of language’ (1987:289).

This dynamism, this creativity, is best expressed by Bréal who insists on the fact that analogy is ‘a rule not yet formulated; a rule at which mankind strives to guess, and which we see children trying to discover. By pre-supposing its existence, the people actually create it’ (ES: 8072).

Meaning

Laws of language-change 83

Whitney claims that to some extent ‘the change and development of meaning constitute the real interior life of language, to which the other processes only furnish an outward support’ (LSL: 100). He distinguishes between two major directions of semantic change, or, as he calls it significant change (LSL: 110):

1 restriction of meaning,

2 extension of meaning. Other types of change are only mentioned en passant such as pejoration, amelioration,

euphemism, and fashion words (cf. LGL: 97), although Whitney does not use these terms, so common in modern treatises on semantic change.

Restriction of meaning works in language from its beginnings. Whitney supposes that the first names were given to things according to one or another striking attribute (e.g. planet—the wanderer). Such ‘epithets of things, representing some one of their various attributes, become the names of things, through every department of nomenclature. Our etymologies are apt to bring us back finally to some so general, comprehensive, colorless idea, that we almost wonder how it can have given birth to such strongly marked progeny’ (LGL: 83–4). As an example, he gives the varied and definite meanings of post which all go back to the sense of ‘put, placed’ (cf. LGL: 84) (cf. Bréal: law of differentiation).

The extension of meaning is brought about by metaphorical or figurative use of old forms, e.g. head, foot, tail, etc. It is astonishing that these ‘figurative uses of words do not perplex us; they do not even strike us as anything out of the way; they are part and parcel of the sphere of application of the word’ (LGL: 87), stretching and expanding it increasingly. Again, our willingness to forget the original meaning is the guarantee for the unhindered invention and use of metaphorical expressions. The main metaphorical movement goes from the concrete to the abstract (cf. LGL: 88f.), a tendency that Bréal will also comment upon. He does, however, differentiate between extension of meaning and metaphor, the first being a slow and gradual, almost insensible, process, the second the result of an instantaneous insight into the similarity of two objects, acts, etc. (cf. ES: 135122).

A related type of linguistic change is the one where terms of independent meaning acquire a formal value. This topic is now dealt with under the heading of ‘grammaticalization’ (cf. Traugott 1985). Whitney gives the examples of verbs such as to

be, to do, to have; prepositions, such as of and to; articles, conjunctions, relative pronouns, and phrases. The evolution of relative pronouns will also be discussed by Bréal and Wegener, who agree substantially with Whitney, according to whom relative pronouns have emerged from demonstratives and interrogatives, which were put to new use (cf. LGL: 95–6). Some of the topics dealt with by Whitney in this context will be taken up and elaborated by Bréal, when he describes the evolution of syntax (cf. ES: ch. XXII).

Loss of words and forms

This type of change, which Bréal calls ‘extinction of useless forms’ (ES: ch. VIII), is in some sense trivial because ‘Existence in speech is use; and disuse is destruction’ (LGL: 98). Disuse can either have external causes, such as the disappearance of certain conceptions or objects, or old words are also lost if they cannot survive in the struggle for

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existence against the import of new words or synonyms (cf. LGL: 101). The influence of French on English after the Norman Conquest is an excellent example of this type of change. Another kind of loss, which is constantly occurring, is the loss of old meanings (cf. LGL: 102).

As far as wordforms are concerned, one can observe the loss of old distinctions of grammatical form. Whitney gives the example of the old infinitive ending an (from Germ. -en), a loss which has been repaired by the substitution of to as an infinitive marker for the obliterated affix (LGL: 103). This type of loss also affects inflection, gender, etc., most markedly in English (cf. LGL: 105; and Bréal: law of specialization).

Production of new words and forms This last mode of change…constitutes in a higher and more essential sense than any of the others the growth of language, and ought to bring most distinctly to light the forces actually concerned in that growth.

(LGL: 108–9)

Most of the time we say something new by using and combining old material in new sentences (cf. LGL: 109), but in every new sentence the old words enter new contexts, are used in new situations, and are thereby slightly changed. No act of speech leaves the old material unchanged. This does not do any harm to the meaning of the words used. On the contrary, it is totally congruent with the nature of meaning itself, as it is the ‘customary office of a word to cover, not a point, but a territory, and a territory that is irregular, heterogeneous, and variable’ (LGL: 110). The variation introduced by the speaker is not disturbing, rather it redefines the boundaries of the word’s territory in accordance with the communicative context. This is a sort of subterranean change, relentlessly at work in language: ‘It is, as we have called it before, the mind of the community all the time at work beneath the framework of its old language, improving its instruments of expression by adapting them to new uses’ (LGL: 110). Apart from this slow process of improvement and adaptation, there also exists a more active way of renewing language, based on a certain ‘creative pleasure’. This natural delight in language-making can be observed particularly well in slang (cf. LGL: 113), and its most widely used instrument is metaphor.

A more mundane type of lexical renewal is borrowing (cf. LGL: 114ff.), a more exotic type is the actual invention of new words, either arbitrarily (e.g. gas) or via onomatopoeia (LGL: 120f.). However, the commonest type of production of new words is composition (cf. 121ff). Here we come back to a type of change discussed earlier on. It has already been pointed out that Whitney attached a special importance to the fact that affixes of derivation and inflection derive from independent words (cf. LGL: 124). This special case of composition of words is illustrated by some further examples: dutiful, where ful has evolved from Germ, ‘voll’, or doubtless, where less has evolved from Germ. ‘los’. The new suffixes can again be combined in words such as plenti-ful-ly, doubt-less-ly, etc.

What Whitney discovered are some general laws of language change that are sufficient for any linguistic explanation. Naturally, every concrete case of change always needs an extra-linguistic, historical explanation as well.

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BRÉAL: THE INTELLECTUAL LAWS OF LANGUAGE-CHANGE Whitney’s main interest lay in the discovery of the laws of formal change processes,

whereas his interest in semantic change processes was somewhat limited. Although the term semantics, or ‘sémantique’, was widely used after 1883 (cf. below; and Read 1948),

he never used it in his writings. Nor did he include it in his Century Dictionary, where one can only find an entry for semasiology, the term used by Bréal’s German ‘competition’ (cf. Cent. Dict.: 5481). Semasiology and ‘sémantique’ covered the same area in the nineteenth century, as the definition given in the Century Dictionary shows, when compared to Bréal’s definition: ‘The science of the development and connections of the meanings of words; the department of significance in philology’ (1897:5481). Bréal introduced the term ‘sémantique’ in 1883, that is about sixty years after Reisig had invented the term ‘semasiology’ (cf. Reisig [1839] 1881, vol. 1:19).

The study to which we invite the reader is of such a new type that it has as yet no name. In fact, most of the linguists have exercised their skill in studying the body and the form of words: the laws that preside over the transformation of meaning, the choice of new expressions, the birth and death of locutions, have been left in the dark or only indicated en passant. As this type of study, just as phonetics and morphology, merits to have its name, we call it semantics…, that is the science of meanings.

Bréal’s treatment of semantic change, including morphological and syntactical change, is more complex than the sketch provided by Whitney. To understand his theory of semantic change, one has to define in more detail what he understands by history, intelligence and will.

History is not only the internal history of words, studied by historical linguistics (cf. ES: 124111). For Bréal history itself, external history, the use of words in historical contexts, is important (cf. Delesalle 1887:288). He repeatedly points out that we can only understand the meaning of words if we know the historical situation in which they have been used, including the ‘things’ the words signified. This historical grounding also includes the state of the language at a given time, the linguistic context so to speak. The actual meaning of a word—or as Bréal terms it, its value—depends on the historical state of the world and the language.

Intelligence, as already pointed out, does not mean reflection; it means rather that we do not speak by mere reflex or instinct, but because we think and because we want to communicate.

Will again does not mean the will to change language, but the will to speak—we have the intention to speak, and we do it for a certain purpose. On this point Whitney’s conception of language is more exhaustive than Bréal’s, because he points out what the nature of our intention is; the adaptation of means to ends, governed by the laws of human action in general. That is to say: Whitney attaches more importance to languages as human action than Bréal does. But in another sense Bréal goes beyond Whitney when

he examines what actions speakers accomplish with language, a topic taken up and treated comprehensively by Wegener (cf. chapter 8 and part two).

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The intellectual laws of semantic change put forward in the Essai operate on two levels: on the level of form and meaning, and on the level of meaning alone. The laws of the first type are treated in the first part of the Essai, the laws of the second type in the second. They are intellectual laws, that is regularities of change that stem

In this chapter I shall draw quite heavily on this article.

from certain tendencies of the mind, from the mind’s striving for more and more perfection and progress, often integrating or profiting from historical progress. The laws of form and meaning, for example, are based on the mind’s tendency to replace synthesis by analysis, the laws of meaning-change exemplify the mind’s tendency to go from the concrete to the abstract, from the individual to the general and from single occurrences to

a certain multiplication and proliferation. Types of change of the first kind are: the law of specialization, the law of irradiation, the law of the survival of inflections, and the law of differentiation (of synonyms). The first part of the Essai is also devoted to analogy, to new acquisitions in language, and to the extinction of useless forms, that is selection and thus restriction of the superabundance of word-creation. In the second part

We propose to examine by what causes words, once created and endowed with a certain meaning, are induced to restrict, to extend, to transfer this meaning from one order of ideas to another, to raise or to lower its dignity, in short change it. It is this second part which, properly speaking constitutes Semantics or the Science of Significations.

(ES: 10999)

The main laws of semantic change are restriction and extension of meaning, metaphor, polysemy and certain laws that regulate the change of words in syntagms and locutions; the transitive force, contagion, and articulated groups. This overruns into part III of the Essai, where Bréal deals with the evolution of syntax.

The law of specialization

This law is fundamental in Bréal’s view because it accounts for the substitution of variable, subordinated elements by invariable and independent ones, related to the mind’s search for simplification. Examples are the replacement of cases by prepositions, the evolution of the comparative from Latin to French where plus is special-

Here, Bréal anthropomorphizing the ‘action’ of words, instead of saying, as he has so often

pointed out, that the meaning of words is restricted, extended, etc. by the use of the speakers. This is all the more surprising as he argues at the beginning of the chapter against the mistake of attributing certain ‘tendencies’ of change to words, such as prejorization (cf. ES: 109f.99).

ized as a comparative marker and replaces the Latin suffixes (cf. ES: 1514), the evolution of auxiliary verbs in French, etc. This shows that the development from Latin to French cannot be described as decay, that is as a process where the perfect grammar of Latin disintegrates and French does some piecemeal repairwork on these ruins. For Bréal the evolution of grammar is a real progress, a progress that achieves increased clarity of expression, by replacing synthetic by analytic forms.

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The law of irradiation and the survival of inflections

This law points in the same direction as the first, the law of irradiation marking the interdependence of morphology and meaning in the word, the law of the survival of inflections the importance of syntactic constraints as traces of lost forms. An example of the first law is the attribution of meaning to a suffix which initially did not have this meaning, such as the Latin verbs ending in -sco. This suffix has become the marker of a gradually achieved action, the inchoative. That is, the meaning of some verbs having this ending has contaminated the suffix, given it a specific meaning that it now carries into all the words where it is used. The second law marks the fact that in French, for example, where cases no longer exist, ‘case’ has nevertheless survived in syntactical constraints attached to certain nouns (cf. also Bréal’s ‘transitive force’).

The law of differentiation

For Bréal the law of differentiation is of primary importance in semantics. He writes: ‘We know little about the creation of Language; but Differentiation is the true Demiurge thereof’ (ES: 4036). Differentiation is based on a need of thought to introduce more and more subtle distinctions into the world and the language we use. In his description of the process of differentiation Bréal, who normally likes to speak of the creativity of the people and of the popular logic proper to language, suddenly becomes elitist, a phenomenon that Delesalle has studied in some detail (cf. Delesalle and Chevalier 1986:4th part). Bréal writes:

Distinctions are first made by a few minds that are more subtle than others: then they become the common property of all. Intellect, as has been said, consists in seeing differences in similar things. This intellect is communicated up to a certain point by Language, for by recognising the distinctions, which the most gifted alone perceived at first, the mental sight of each individual becomes more piercing.

(ES: 41f.38)

Bréal gives some highly scholarly examples for this subtle differentiation of meaning, for instance between the pleasure of the senses and ideal pleasure, which are designated by two different words in modern Greek but had once been denoted—horror of horrors—by one single word alone.

In some ways this law can be compared to the law of specialization. We differentiate, for example, synonyms by attributing to them special social values (e.g. nighty and négligé; second-hand car and pre-owned car), which means at the same time that we specialize each synonym for a specific kind of use. This differentiation of synonyms can even be achieved by more humble human beings; the people (cf. LN: 31).

Differentiation has its limits, however. Too much of it is embarrassing, too little would signify that thought has not progressed and expanded. But the amount of differentiation varies from speech community to speech community.

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Laws of semantic change

We now come to the laws of semantic change as such, but shall not dwell on the restriction and extension of meaning, quite well-known phenomena of semantic change. However, it is important to note that for Bréal the restriction of meaning is based on internal laws of the language, whereas the extension of meaning has historical causes (cf. ES: 128115).

One of the basic credos of Bréal was his postulate that words are necessarily disproportionate to things and that this forces the mind to readjust this disproportion constantly (cf. ES: 118106). The expansion of meaning denotes, as one might expect, the progress of thought. An example that Bréal gives is pecunia which changes from meaning ‘wealth in stock’ to meaning ‘wealth’ in general (cf. ES: 130117). ‘These facts must not be laid at the door of Metaphor. Metaphor is the instantaneous perception of a resemblance between objects. Here on the contrary we are dealing with a slow displacement of meaning’ (ibid.). Compared with differentiation, metaphor seems to stem from an opposite need of the mind: instead of looking for distinctions, it wants to see resemblances and creates resemblances, for example, between different domains of human activity: sight and hearing, touch and taste, man and inanimate objects, organs of the body and inanimate objects, etc. (ibid.: 143130). Its main tendency is to create abstract meanings from concrete ones. Inventors of metaphors come from all classes and professions, from famous writers to unknown seamen, for example, aborder une question, échouer dans une entreprise, etc. As we shall see in more detail when dealing with Wegener, metaphors tend to wear out. From being somewhat inadequate but expressive, they gradually become adequate for what they are used to express, but this means that they lose their expressiveness proportionately. The aged metaphor (which has been emancipated to the status of pure sign) can in turn be used to create new meaning metaphorically, and so on.

In this sense metaphor is one motor in the evolution of polysemy, a term Bréal introduced for the first time into linguistics.

Different from metaphor, and going in the opposite direction, is another phenomenon called concretization of meaning (épaississement du sens). This is, in fact, a form of metonymy, but Bréal does not use this term. He gives as examples the use of general or abstract terms in specific ‘languages’, for example, ouverture in the language of music, etc.

Polysemy

We shall see in chapter 7, pp. 135–7 that polysemy in Bréal’s semantics is complementary to ellipsis. Whereas in ellipsis we have to make sense from something which is not there, in polysemy we have to make sense out of an excess of something. Polysemy stems from the fact that the new meanings that words acquire in use—

It is possible that Bréal was influenced by Max Müller in the choice of his term. Müller had

written: ‘He [the student of language] ought to show how frequently different ideas are comprehensible under one and the same term, and how frequently the same idea is expressed by different terms. These two tendencies in language, Homonymy and Polyonymy, which favoured, as we saw, the abundant growth of early mythology, are still asserting their power in fostering

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the growth of philosophical systems’ (1864:568).

and this in all the ways explained above—do not automatically eliminate the old ones. The new and the old meanings exist in parallel:

They exist alongside of one another. The same term can be employed alternately in the strict or in the metaphorical sense, in the restricted or in the expanded sense, in the abstract or in the concrete sense. In proportion as a new signification is given to a word, it appears to multiply and produce fresh examples, similar in form, but differing in value.

We shall call this phenomenon of multiplication Polysemia.

(ES: 154f.139f.)

The concept of polysemy seems to be the centre of gravity around which Bréal’s whole semantic rotates. Polysemy is central to the evolution of language, in so far as it manifests clearly the application of an old form to designate a new idea, thereby enriching language and thought. It also demonstrates Bréal’s belief in the progress of language, thought, and society. Polysemy is an indicator of progress. It also makes clear that meaning is not subordinated to form, but that meaning is indeed the real force in language evolution. Polysemy shows, like no other process of semantic change, the accumulated victories of mind over matter. But Bréal asks himself how speakers and especially hearers manage not to get totally confused by these overwhelming multiplications of meanings. This is only possible because the words are always used in the context of a certain discourse and a certain situation which fades out all the adjoining meanings, highlighting only the one in question (or better: in speech). Bréal points out also that this evocation of the right meaning is helped by the fact that the association of ideas proceeds according to the things, not the sounds (cf. ES: 156141).

At any given point in time a single word may have multiple meanings or senses. But for a speakerhearer a word has, at any moment of speech, only one meaning or value. In discourse words have a situated, contextualized meaning, determined by the situation and the topic, by what we are talking about. This situational determination of meaning will be central to Wegener’s conception of language.

The evolution of syntax

Bréal’s semantic analysis is not restricted to the word level, as is so often asserted. In Part

I of the Essai he deals with semantic processes at the sub-word level, the morphological relations and influences within the word. In part II he deals with composition and articulated groups of words, that is the semantics of syntagmatic relations. In part III he deals with the semantics of syntactic relations properly speaking, for example contamination, where the meaning of the whole sentence influences the use of a word, and with the transitive force, that is, for example, the evolution of transitive verbs, verbs that have evolved in such a way that they necessarily need a complement. More generally, words contract certain affinities with other words through their use in the context of a sentence, and these affinities gradually gain an obligatory character, so that in the end, certain words can no longer be used without certain others.

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We shall leave aside Bréal’s chapter on composition and come directly to his treatment of articulated groups, a phenomenon that is particularly well illustrated by the French language. What is true for compositions holds true for articulated groups as well: ‘True composition has its criterion in the mind’ (ES: 175157)!

If one can say that words are the building blocks of a sentence, articulated groups are, so to speak, whole prefabricated parts. Examples are: parce que (because), pourvu que (so long as), etc. These are ready-made formulas where separate words have formed a conglomerate conveying a single meaning. These agglomerations occur naturally, because words do not exist in isolation, they are always used in certain word-complexes (cf. ES: ch. XVII). The process whereby meanings are melded together, accompanied or not by a merger of forms, is constantly at work and affects even the articulated groups themselves. Cependant, for example, did not originally mean ‘however’ or ‘nevertheless’; ce pendant was an adverb meaning ‘during that time’. But being frequently used to enumerate two concomitant facts and to oppose them, it now has become a conjunction meaning ‘however’ (cf. ES: 188168). This could be regarded as a case of contamination, although Bréal does not use this term here.

The standard example of contamination is the evolution of the markers of negation in French (cf. ES: ch. XXI). In old French negation was marked by Latin non → ne. For emphasis, words like pas, point, mie were added (not a step, not a point, not a crumb), of which only pas and point have survived. Being constantly used in relation with the negative marker, they have contracted a negative meaning, and in modern spoken French pas alone is used as the negative marker. This is an example of the evolution of syntactic elements through contamination.

The central point in Bréal’s treatment of the evolution of syntax, however, is the emergence of grammatical categories or parts of speech, such as adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions etc. Conjunctions, for example, first had a full and concrete meaning, but lost it through their specific uses in a sentence:

The German word weil, ‘because’, is an ancient substantive dragged into the class of conjunctions. The form used to be die wîle, die weile, ‘as long as’. Luther uses it in this way, and Goethe too, who loved the language of the people, often employed it. But the word was transferred from the conception of time to the conception of cause, as happened also with the Latin quoniam. At present weil gives the impression of an abstract word indicating the motive of an action.

(ES: 205186)

Whereas prepositions and conjunctions are a quite recent acquisition of language, Bréal believed that the personal pronoun was created at the origin of language (cf. ch. 8), that it constitutes, in fact, the oldest grammatical category:

I believe this to be more primitive than the substantive, because it demands less invention, and because it is more instinctive, more easily explained by gesture. We must not therefore allow ourselves to be led astray by the appellation ‘pronoun’ (pro nomine),…In my opinion pronouns are, on the contrary, the most ancient portion of Language. How

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could the me have ever existed without a designation by which to express itself?

(ES: 207187)

One can detect here the influence of Bopp and especially Grimm who wrote: ‘The lever of all

words seems to be the pronouns and verbs. The pronoun is not only, as its name could make us believe, the representative of the noun, it is virtually the beginning and starting point of all nouns. Just as the child whose faculty of thought has been awakened pronounces “I”, I find explicitly acknowledged in the Jadschurveda, that the primitive being says “I am I” and that man when called answered “that’s me”’ ([1851] 1911 2nd edition, 281f).

Bréal also stresses another aspect of pronouns, that will become very important in chapter

From another point of view pronouns constitute the most versatile part of Language, since they are never definitely attached to one entity but are perpetually travelling. There are as many I’s as individuals who speak. There are as many thou’s as individuals to be addressed. There are as many he’s and it’s as there are real or imaginary objects in the world.

(ES: 187f.207)

In chapter XXII, Bréal explains the evolution of relative pronouns, the article and auxiliaries. Relative pronouns have evolved from demonstratives, or just deictical gestures. Being deictical in origin, they have become anaphorical (cf. HM: 228). Just like Whitney and Wegener, Bréal relates the emergence of relative and interrogative pronouns to demonstratives. He gives an example from the Vedas: ‘“Quod sacrificium protegis, id

ad deos pervenit”. Jam ja nam paribhūr asi, sa deve u gacchati’ (ES: 230207f.). And

he offers the following comment:

We shall be asked the reason why the relative proposition is thus launched before the chief one. I believe that we have here a semantic fact of which examples are to be found in other families of languages. By the action of the mind an interrogation must be established, with the result that the two propositions form the question and answer. This is probably the reason why a large proportion of the Indo-European languages make the one pronoun fulfil both the interrogative and relative functions.

(ibid.)

Again one has to note Bréal’s insistence on the role of thought and intelligence in the evolution of language, just as Wegener had done in 1885. This belief is even more strongly expressed in his final comment on relative pronouns:

The creation of a relative pronoun is therefore one of the capital events of the history of language; without a word of this kind, every idea possessed of any force, of any completeness, was impossible. But this creation was obtained by the slow conversion of one of those numerous pronouns which served to accompany a gesture in space. So we here find the human mind patiently forging the instrument of which it is in need.

Change in language 92

(ibid. 230–1208)

By transforming the demonstrative pronoun, thought also forged itself another syntactical tool: the article. Other grammatical tools, such as the copula être and the auxiliaries, such as avoir, have evolved from words with full meanings, such as to stand or to possess.

To close this brief excursion in the domain of syntactic evolution one has to quote Bréal’s following statement:

The advance (progrès) is obvious to all eyes. The words which were, so to speak, shut up in themselves, are gradually linked with the other words of the phrase. And the phrase itself… appears now a work of art possessing its centre, its lateral parts, and its dependencies, now an army on the march, with all its subdivisions in connection with and in support of one another.

(ES: 220199)

Compared to lexical semantic change, syntactic change is a rather slow and invisible process. But neither process is ‘natural’. Both are the product of the speakers’ and the hearers’ use of language, the only real cause being the intelligence and will of human beings. In the next two chapters the speaker will be the central object of attention: what she does with language, which speech act she performs, and what she does to language, that is how she recreates it all the time.

Linguistic creativity 93

WHITNEY: THE LAWS OF THE LIFE AND GROWTH OF LANGUAGE