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The Psychological Basis of Phonetic Law and Analogy

“All's love, yet all's law.”—Browning, Saul XVII

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2021

Extract

The subject of Phonetic Law and Analogy belongs to Psychology as well as to Philology; it originated, however, and was for a long time kept within the domain of the latter discipline. When it first came into the foreground of our interest, it was agitated by scholars in historical philology. The experience of daily linguistic research suggested both the question and the answer, and in fact the main importance of the whole problem was seen in the influence which its solution must have upon the methods of detailed investigation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1894

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References

Note 1 page 315 This list is not meant to be exhaustive or representative; it suggested itself to the author at random, merely on the ground of his own studies.

Note 1 page 317 Little is known, as yet, about the real nature of this process, and if in the following lines we use expressions like “impress, imprint, deep” etc., we are merely using figures of speech which are not meant to contain any intimation as to the way in which our mental activity is carried on.

Note 1 page 318 This does not preclude the possibility of conscious interference with the development of words. That factor may have to be considered in a study of results, but the usual psychological phenomena are not thereby altered.

Note 1 page 319 Cf. Leuba in Clark University Minor Studies in Psychology, I.

Note 1 page 320 In fact from a physiological as well as a historical point of view, there is in man a double connection between the seats of the various senses: the one, of a higher order, located mainly in the cortex in which all the centripetal and centrifugal nerves are combined into a more or lees self-conscious unit; this is best developed and capable of highest perfection in man, diminishing and graduating away in the lower animals;—the other, located in the lower parts of the brain, the cerebellum and the medulla, the province of reflex actions between the different branches of the system; this interrelation is stronger and more depended upon in the lower animals than in the more developed ones; it is evidently the remnant of the original uniformity of the whole nervous system.

Note 1 page 321 This question, like many others relating to the working of the nervous system and the brain, is yet far from being settled. Numerous cases are on record of a very distinct and immediate inter-relation between the different senses. The author can here speak from his own experience; the vowel sounds most vividly suggest to him colors and vice versa; a = red, o = blue, e = green, ä = as yellow, i = white, u = purple-black, etc. Our languages abound in precipitates of such and similar connections: loud colors, soft sounds, etc., etc—But however immediate, unavoidable, and natural, such mutual interrelations may appear to us, it seems difficult to prove, that they are not the result of early associations brought about by personal experience of the individual or of his ancestors.—Yet see now Krohn, “Pseudo-Chromesthesia,” Am. Jour. of Psychology, V, pp. 20–42.

Note 1 page 324 In this connection we mention the controversy, if such it may be called, between Max Müller and Whitney. Max Müller has published and republished large volumes in which he assumes and tries to prove that Language and Thought are identical; Whitney has several times taken occasion to expose the absurdity of this assertion, but apparently without any effect upon Müller whose recent publications still essentially repeat the fundamental errors of the first editions.

Note 2 page 324 Cp. Wegener, Grundfragen, pp. 13 and 66.

Note 1 page 326 Scherer, Osthoff, Kauffmann. Very different from their theories is the fact which Sievers first discovered, that the ordinary position of the organs of speech—“Indifferenzlage”—and therefore the basis of articulation is a different one in the speakers of different languages. How far this is due to racial differences or to the influence of the languages themselves, remains to be decided. My own observation leads me to believe that it is not only the cause but mainly the result of speech-peculiarities.

Note 1 page 336 We suggest the word “anaphony” for this phenomenon, in order that the expression “phonetic analogy” may be reserved for those interrelations between word-elements which are based upon equality of sounds.

Note 1 page 340 We would here quite especially refer to Paul who first established this very important distinction between change and interchange of sounds—“Lautwandel” and “Lautwechsel.”