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greater elasticity and freedom of displacement (so to speak) are being acquired by the English language.

631. The following quotation affords an example of the point and force that may be gained by displacement :

by us.

The sphere of our belief is much more extensive than the sphere of our knowledge; and therefore, when I deny that the infinite can by us be known, I am far from denying that by us it is, must, and ought to be, believed.-Sir William Hamilton.

In public speaking such a displacement would seem stilted, and it would have a bad effect unless it were borne out by an extraordinarily appropriate modulation.

The illustrative utterance of the English language is worthy of attention in the interest of national culture; for if all who have something profitable to say were skilful modulators of their mother tongue, they would find more docility in the ranks of the popular audience, and better speed that moral improvement which lightens the cares and the expense of government. The famous Bishop of Cloyne seems to have been fully convinced of this, when among his other queries, he put the following one: Q. Whether half the learning of these kingdoms be not lost, for want of having a proper delivery taught in our schools and colleges? 1'

1'

This query of Bishop Berkeley's seems to imply that the modulation which makes the beauty of Language ought always to accompany cultivated speech ;-that such accompaniment renders it more agreeable and more persuasive, more effective also for the conveyance of meaning and the diffusion of knowledge ;—that a melodious command of the mother tongue is the natural and proper finish of a high

1 Thomas Sheridan, Lectures on the Art of Reading, third ed. London 1787; p. 117.

education, and that something is wanting to the humanizing instrumentality of Speech unless it have the support and illustrative cooperation of Noble Sound.

2. OF SOUND AS A FORMATIVE AGENCY.

632. We now proceed to consider sound as a power which affects the forms of words. The attention must be directed to the accentuation and its consequences.

1. The simplest instance is where the accent has a conservative effect upon the accented syllable, while the unaccented syllable gradually shrinks or decays. Thus, in the word goodwife the accented syllable was preserved in its entirety, while the second syllable shrank up into such littleness as we are familiar with in the form of goody. This is a plain example of a transformation conditioned by the incidence of sound.

In American literature the word grandsire has assumed the form of grandsir from the same cause1. The accented syllable remains complete, while the unaccented dwindles. The following quotation will be sufficient to establish the fact:

Viewing their townsman in this aspect, the people revoked the courteous doctorate with which they had hitherto decorated him, and now knew him most familiarly as Grandsir Dolliver. All the younger portion

1 I have to thank Mr. Charles E. Stratton, of Boston, U. S., for a useful observation. He writes: The form grandsir is of common use only in the country districts and among the farming class (and only in New England, I think), and would never be used, except in quotation, by educated people.' That is to say, the natural form has suffered restoration in America just as it has with us in England. Already, so early as the fifteenth century, we find the form which is now discarded on both sides of the Atlantic. In that treasury of English, the Paston Letters, No. 225 (ed. Gairdner) it stands: she was maried to Sir Hug' Fastolf, graunsir to this same Thomas.'

of the inhabitants unconsciously ascribed a sort of aged immortality to Grandsir Dolliver's infirm and reverend presence.-Nathaniel Hawthorne,

The way in which the accent has wrought in determining the transformation of words from Latin into French, has been briefly and effectively shewn by M. Auguste Brachet, in his Historical Grammar of the French Tongue. The unaccented parts have often lost their distinct syllabification, while the syllable accented in Latin has almost become the whole word in French. Thus

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A good example is afforded by the modern Greek negative. The negative in modern Greek is dév, and this is an abbreviation from the classical ovdév. A person who looked at ovde might be inclined to say that the essential power of that negative is stored up in the first syllable, while the second is a mere expletive or appendage. From this point of view it would be inconceivable how the first part should perish and the second remain. But if we consider that the first is the elder part, and that the second was added for the sake of emphasis, it is plain that the second part would carry the accent, as indeed the traditional notation represents it.

This effect of the accent must be particularly attended to, as presenting, perhaps, the best of all keys for explaining the transformations which take place in language. Were we to disregard the influence of the laws of sound, and imagine that the sense only was to be taken into consideration, we should often be at a loss to understand why the most sense-bearing syllables have decayed, while the less

significant ones have retained their integrity. The national and characteristic Scottish word unco is an instance. It is composed of un and couth, the ancient participle of the verb cunnan, 'to know.' So that uncouth meant 'unknown,' 'unheard-of,' and consequently strange.' In England the word has retained its original form, because the accent is on the second syllable; but in Scotland, the accent having been placed on the first, and the word having been mostly used in such a position as to intensify the accent by emphasis, the second syllable has coiled up into its present condition.

2. So far we have been considering the formative effect of accent in its simplest instances,-those namely where the accented syllable retains its integrity, while the unaccented seems to wither, as it were, by neglect. We now proceed to a somewhat more complicated phenomenon. The accent does not always prove so conservative in its operation. It is like wind to fire; a moderate current of air will keep the fire steadily burning, but if the air be applied in excess, it will depress the flame which it nourished before. So with the accent; if it be highly intensified it will not conserve, but rather work an alteration in the syllable to which it is applied.

A familiar instance of the effect of an accent in altering the form of a syllable may be seen in the word woman. This word is compounded of wife and man, and the change which has taken place in the first syllable exhibits the altering effect of an intense accent 1.

The same thing may be observed in the word gospel. The word is composed of good and spel; but the first

1 This is not the whole account of woman, because it does not explain the o; perhaps the plural would have made a better example for this place in its pronounced form wimmen.

syllable has been reduced to its present proportion by correption,' if we may revive the very happy Latin term by which a shortened syllable was said to be seized or snatched.

Other familiar instances are gossip God sib, shepherd, and the pronunciation of vineyard. In all these we see the accented syllable has suffered alteration through its accentuation.

When we seek the cause why accent should have operated in manners so opposite, we shall probably find that the diversity of result is due to a difference of situation in the usual employment of the composite. A word, for instance, whose lot it was to be often emphasized would naturally be the more liable to correption of its accented syllable.

3. As we have seen that each of the syllables of a disyllabic word may be in different manners affected by the accent, so we may next observe that both of these changes may sometimes be found in one and the same word.

The word housewife is often pronounced huz'if, and this pronunciation is the traditional one. The full pronunciation of all the letters in housewife is not produced by the natural action of the mother tongue, but by literary education. Regarding huz'if, then, as the natural and spontaneous utterance of housewife, we see that both syllables have suffered alteration. The attenuated condition of the second syllable is accounted for by the absence of the accent; while the first syllable has suffered from an opposite cause, namely, the intensification produced by the accent. And when, through the beat of metre, the accent becomes emphasis, we find the first syllable spelt with correption, even in literature:

:

The sampler, and to teize the huswives wooll.

John Milton, Comus, 751 (ed. Tonson, 1725).

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