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 jot, jet, or boc, béc 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 jot, jet, boc, the plural books can in no way be phonetically traced back to the old béc, the phonetical equivalent of which in Modern English would be
- beech. The only possible explanation of a form like books is
that the older bec 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 chzld was chzlder, of cab' was coloer, traces of which, besides the survival in dialect of chzlder and of calver (become by the 16th century in northern Scotch cdrpronounced 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 brether, where the suffix, however, contained an original -r, not -s changed into -r, as did chzlder and calver. In Old English, alongside the form for chzld 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. Bur in spite of the common tendency to make the plural of all noun stems in -s, chrld 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 preterit indicative in the so-called strong (irregular) verbs were generally distinguished by different root-vowels, ridan, “ to ride, ” and bindan, “ to bind, ” for instance, form their preterities thus; ic rdd, 612 ride, he rdd, we, gé, hié ridon, and ic band, on bunde, he band, wé, ge, hié 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. rzid, 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 materral or logical analogy. Inasmuch as a similar process of levelling to that seen in rode has been carried through in all preterit es 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 preterit 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 inffexional, 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 preterit forms of ridan or bzndan, 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 rdd, the long a of which has become in Modern English 6, 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 boc, bec, 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 boc, bec 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
