that the language of Chile is Spanish, pronounced not with the
genuine sounds of Spanish, but with the sounds of the Araucanian
language substituted for them. Elsewhere in Spanish America
the language of the conquerors remained comparatively pure,
because the Spaniards were much fewer in number, and had
therefore to maintain themselves as a caste apart. For the same
reason Latin has split up into the numerous branches which we
know as the Romance languages. The particular line of
development which, e.g. French followed as compared with
Spanish or with the language of the Rhaetian Alps was conditioned
by the nature of the sounds in the language which preceded
it in the same area, and which was spoken by the ancient
Gauls who adopted Latin. The difficulty found in all of these
cases IS precisely of the same kind as that which an adult at the
present day speaking one language finds in attempting to learn
the pronunciation of another language. On the one hand, it
is only with the greatest difficulty that muscles for many years
accustomed to perform one set of movements can be forced into
performing another set which are very similar but yet not
identical; on the other hand, to an untrained ear the difference
between the two sounds may remain unappreciated. The result
is that the new language is pronounced with the sounds of the
speaker’s original language. If the new language is adopted by
a whole people to whom it was originally foreign, the children
naturally learn it from their parents with the sounds of the old
language which has now become obsolete. Thus the basis of
articulation is changed, and if, as was the case with Latin, this
process be frequently repeated among peoples speaking languages
with articulation widely differing one from another, it is clear
that a series of different dialects of the adopted language has
been created This kind of change is immediate and universal
throughout the whole area where linguistic change has taken
place.
Analogical change, on the other hand, does not affect the pronunciation of a language as a whole in the way that phonetic change does, but is confined to the formation, inflexion, syntax and meaning of single words or groups of words, and therefore is very apt to bear an entirely arbitrary and irregular character. A few instances will be sufficient to illustrate this and also to show how the apparently irregular phenomena of analogy may be classified. (a) In Old English a certain number of substantives formed their plurals by mutation of the root vowels, as fōt, fēt, or bōc, bēc. In Modern English this system of inflexion has been preserved in some cases, as in foot, feet, and altered in others, as book, books. Now, while foot, feet and book are the regular modern phonetic equivalents of the old fōt, fēt, bōc, the plural books can in no way be phonetically traced back to the old bēc, the phonetical equivalent of which in Modern English would be *beech. The only possible explanation of a form like books is that the older bēc was at some date given up and replaced by an entirely new formation, shaped after the analogy of the numerous words with a plural in -s without modification of the root-vowel. Such changes, which are very numerous, exemplify the first kind of analogy, which is generally termed formal analogy. Other examples are the almost entire disappearance from the language of the forms in er and en, which were earlier used as plurals in English. That they were originally stem and not case suffixes does not affect the point. In Middle English, as in Modern English, oxen was spelt as a plural; oxen survives, but eyen, except in such dialect forms as the Scotch e’en, has been replaced by the form in -s: eyes. Similarly in Middle English the suffix -er existed in many words which had been originally of the neuter gender. Thus the plural of child was childer, of calf was calver, traces of which, besides the survival in dialect of childer and of calver (become by the 16th century in northern Scotch cār—pronounced as cahr—which is still in common use), are to be found in the place, and hence personal, names Childer-ley and Calver-ley. The old plural of brother was brēther, where the suffix, however, contained an original -r, not -s changed into -r, as did childer and calver. In Old English, alongside the form for child making a plural childer, there had been a masculine form making its plural in -s. It would not have been surprising therefore if in Modern English the plural of child had been childs. But in spite of the common tendency to make the plural of all noun-stems in -s, child has gone in the opposite direction and has not only maintained its -r, but has added to it the -en of stems like oxen and eyen. In Wiclif we find a similar plural to calf, calveren, but here calves has long replaced in the literary language both the earlier forms.
(b) Let us now take another instance from the English verb. In Old English the different persons of the preterite indicative in the so-called strong (irregular) verbs were generally distinguished by different root-vowels, rīdan, “to ride,” and bindan, “to bind,” for instance, form their preterities thus; ic rād, ðū ride, hē rād, wē, gē, hīē ridon, and ic band, ðū bunde, hē band, wē, gē, hīē bundon. In modern English this difference in the root vowels has been abandoned, and rode, bound now stand for all persons, rode being the modern phonetic equivalent of the 1st and 3rd sing. rād, while bound represents the u- form of bindan. When one form or set of forms ousts other varying forms from the same paradigm, the change is described variously as material or logical analogy. Inasmuch as a similar process of levelling to that seen in rode has been carried through in all preterites of Modern English, regularity prevails even here, though a few traces of the old conflict are still visible in such poetic forms as sung for the preterite side by side with sang. But when we look to its results in the individual verbs we soon find that the choice amongst the different forms which might have served as starting-points has been entirely arbitrary It is indeed impossible to say why the old singular form should have been chosen as a model in one case, as in rode, and the old plural form in another, as in bound. From these and numerous similar instances we must draw the conclusion that it is beyond our power to ascertain whence analogical changes start, and to what extent they may be carried through when once begun. All we can do is to classify carefully the single cases that come under our observation, and in this way to investigate where such changes are especially apt to take place and what is their general direction. As to the latter points, it has been observed before that levelling of existing differences is one of the chief features in analogical change (as in the case of rode and bound). As to the former, it must be borne in mind that, before any analogical change can take place, some mental connexion must exist between the words or forms serving as models and those which are remodelled after the types suggested to the minds of the speakers through the former. Of such natural mental combinations two classes deserve special notice: the mutual relationship in which the different, say inflexional, forms of the same word stand to each other, and the more abstract analogies between the inflexional system of word-groups bearing a similar character, as, for instance, the different declensions of nouns and pronouns, or the different conjugations of verbs. The instance of rode, bound may serve to illustrate the former category, that of books the latter. In the first case a levelling has taken place between the different forms of the root-vowels once exhibited in the different preterite forms of rīdan or bindan, which clearly constitute a natural group or mental unity in consequence of their meaning. The form of rode as a plural has simply been taken from the old singular rād, the long a of which has become in Modern English ō, that of bound as a singular from the old plural bundon, the u- sound of which has in Modern English come to be pronounced as a diphthong. In the case of book, books for bōc, bēc, this explanation would fall short. Although we might say that the vowel of the singular here was carried into the plural, yet this would not explain the plural -s. So it becomes evident that the old declension of bōc, bēc was remodelled after the declension of words like arm, arms, which had always formed their plurals in -s. The changes indicated may generally be shown by a proportion, the new analogical formation being the unknown quantity to be ascertained. Thus in the case cited above, arm: arms＝book: x; and clearly the form to be ascertained is books. Isolated words or forms which are no part of natural groups or systems, inflexional, formative or syntactical must be regarded as commonly safe from alterations
