But while the weakening of stronger vowels is the phenomenon so common in German, the Norse, over and above this, abounds in examples of the converse action. Thus /calla, " to call," has kalluni, "we call," where ö has a sound more nearly akin to u than to o itself. Again, drecka, drink," has a past tense sing. Brack, pl. druckum, while the subjunctive is drycki. Similarly dar," a spear," has in the pl. : n. derir, ac. deri, dat. gen. darra. Nay the influence of the added suffix often extends over two syllables. Thus from the same verb, kalla, is deduced a past tense, which in the singular has for its first two syllables kallaS ; but taking a u in the three suffixes of the plural, presents us with Per kolluZura, Per leolltineS, keir Similarly among the adjectives, the form hagast," most handy," annar (= Lat alter), have for the, dat. pl. li6oustuni, oitrum. Still more effec tive is the attraction in ketil, a " kettle," which has pL : n. katlar, ac. katla, dat. kallum, gen. katla.
In the Keltic family the following examples of modified plurals are taken from the Breton : baz bizier ; taro, falch, " scythe," filehier ; mab," son," mipien ; deed," starling," dridi ; lestr, " boat," listri ; and even with the influence extending through two syllables : kalvez," carpenter," kilvizien ; enez," island," inizi. In some of the examples the suffix of plurality, whether it was en or er, after effecting the modification of the previous vowel, is itself dropped ; no doubt because the modification itself gave a sort of notice that the plural suffix was about to appear, and so by anticipation rendered that suffix superfluous, the consequence being that, what was thus useless, was dropt. Similarly we find dant, " tooth," pl. dent ; oan, "lamb," sin; dafiraci, "sheep," dared; abostol, " apostle," atestel ; azrouand," devil," ezremnd ; mob, " bishop," esquebyen, or esqeb. The Breton verb is even more instructive in respect of this law. Thus gall-out," to be able" (ral-ere), has for its future : I. gellinn or gillinry 2. gelli or eitti ; 3. gallO or gelid; pl. 1. gellimp or gillimp ; 2. gallot or ;Idiot ; 3. gellifit or gillifit—where it may be observed that yell has to contend with a rival, gill, whenever the weak i follows, and with gall before a suffix containing a strong o. In the verb larar-out," to say," the assimilation runs through two syllables, as lavarann, "I say ;" tererez," thou sayst ; " livirit," ye say." It should be added that when the vowel thus subjected to " umlaut " is ou (a, oo), a trace of the no sound is preserved by the substitution of we. Thus from gouzout," to know," comes a future, gwez-inn. In English the principle has a more extensive sway than is commonly supposed. A few examples are : old, elder; good (Germ. gut), better (for gwetter--cf. gwezin a, just dealt with); cat, kitten ; foal, filly ; one, any ; fox, vixen ; shake, shiver ; quake, quiver ; pray, prythee ; cock,chicken ; Jane, Jenny; Kate, Kitty. And not unfrequently the modification extends beyond what the written form denotes, as in Greenwich ; grass, grazier ; one, any ; brother, English, women. In our plurals, such as geese, feet, women, we have what was just seen in the Breton, the modification of the root vowel (of goose, &c.) by the weak vowel of a plural suffix, and then the loss of that suffix.
We may occasionally trace the action of the same principle in the classical languages, as youo-(n. vouos) and venecr-(n. veuos), from the verb rea.eir ; 7050-(u. yovos) and yeveav-(n. 75505), from ye of vyreir ; crrponpa. and vaata-, as secondary verbs, from and yea-, while in beside the verb epee-, we see two syllables subjected to the influence. For Latin we may quote Gene beside bonus; velim, vdle beside role, volam, volunt ; and in the conjugation of the verb f " go " and the pronoun i- (n. is) the law holds that whenever the following vowel is a, o, or u, the i of the base gives way to the stronger vowel e, as earn, eo, cunt for the verb, ea, eo, eum for the pronoun. The instances now quoted are few, but must not be taken as in any way a fair measure of the extent to 'which the law of vocal assimilation ' holds in Greek and Latin. Other examples will follow, and more be hinted at.
The principles which have been enounced, of consonantal and vowel assimilation, together with the general doctrine that man endeavours to lessen the labour of speech by every species of curtailment and abbreviation, are not sufficient to explain, the anomalies of word form ation. We must further allow for the interchange of convertible letters, on which subject we may refer to the article ALPHABET, where the general relations of the letters to each other are considered, and to the separate articles on the individual letters. But it is scarcely more important to Lay down true principles than to guard an inquirer against prevailing fallacies. No field more abounds in weeds of this character than the learned pages devoted to the subject of the so-called gram matical figures. To such of them as denote the loss of letters, whether initial, internal, or final, the only objection is, that they are often thought to carry with them an explanation, whereas their only use can be to servo as Labels for a given class of changes. But all those pseudo
learned terms which are so freely used by philologers to account for letters and syllables whose pnaiweace they cannot explain, are unqualified nuisances, the removal of which can only be beneficial to the science. Such are all those which *alums the addition of letters or syllables I; bleb are coufeaseelly of no meaning, and so only add to the labour of utterance, as epenthesis, and parasose. They are habitually called in to explain the older and fuller forms of language, on the strange aseumption that the later, and for that reason common, and at the same time more corrupt, varieties are the genuine words. lo truth, when a word occurs in two forms it may be assumed, d priori, that the fuller is the older, if only because the loss of letters is explained by man's general tendency to abridge his labours ; while to the doctrine of added or inserted letter. there is always opposed the difficulty of answering the question, why one letter rather than another was selected. This objection especially applies to those eases where it con sonant is said to be inserted between two vowels for the sake of avoiding the disagreeable proximity of vowels, Motes ritandi cause. There is also the standing objection in all such cases, why does the speaker add unnecessarily to his labour of speech f But these general arguments, grounded on theory, are constantly receiving fresh con firmation from the results of historical inquiry in particular cases. The plow& " for the a once," " the tone, the /other," are now Vs plainer] by the fact that the pronoun the had older forms, then and thet, the final consonants of which have been unduly ascribed to the following word. It seems too not improbable, that the forms auntie, Nan, Ned, &c., owe their first letter to a similar theft from the pro noun aline. as though mine uncle was erroneously divided into my Istieele. In the contest between the claims of a nerd and en eft, it may be difficult to come to a just decision, but " epenthcsis " is wholly out of the question. That an rather than a is the earlier form of our so-called article is now generally admitted, and equally so that the familiar a privative of the Greek language in but a corruption of an older as. Similarly, 0071s, fTl4t, (for erv4tr), Acrovirot, Arroyos are the more genuine forma, which a careless pronunciation reduced to /errs Acr000t, Anon, t, and ultimately Anon. But perhaps the most amusing instance of inverting the order of time is the explanation, still often met with, that the archaic infinitive of the Latin, such as inirarier, is to be deduced from the /ate form stirari by the addition of a meaningless cr. As regards the t which appears as an iutruder in the French airne-t-il. a moment's thought will show that it is but the final letter of an older nine for the Latin anal ; and similarly, to quote a parallel ease, though the I is silent in it cst rrai, it assumes its full power in cat-il-rrai f But if these are matters now admitted, there still prevails the practice of treating many initial vowels as added for the sake of euphony. Thus the words mous auxin, opvcrece,aparrace, when fully examined, will be found to have in the syllables or, eX, op, ap, at any rate a portion, it may be the whole, of the radical element. In the case of °soya it is demonstrable that an initial 7 has been lost, the change being similar to that from "arOpg to crOpat, "carp'," to ajar, "oicupor to ata pa. In and ap-aoo-w the syllables veer and ace are no more radical than in ale-eaese and IzaA-curo-w; while the syllable ea, in the /sense of "little," in familiar in all the branches of the ludo European family, and not the more to be despised because it commonly occupies the less important position of a suffix. Moreover it is a fact productive of suspicion, that the said euphonic, vowel is usually claimed in cases where the next adjoining consonant is a liquid, especially one of the three, r, /, a, which, as above noticed, aro constantly putting forward false claims to the initial place in a root. It will not, how ever, be at variance with the principles hero expressed, if it be admitted that on the importation of a foreign word commencing with two consonants difficult of pronunciation, an initial vowel is naturally prefixed to aid pronunciation. In such cams as the French nombre, comble, gendre, vendreli, or the German wochentlich, the letters to, d, and i are no way insertions of foreign matter ; they serve merely as notes that the preceding liquid must be pronounced with apocial dis tinctness to Nave them from absorption under the Influence of the following r or 1; for whenever we produce an in or at with unusual pressure of the organs, we have forthwith before us what in better denoted by Jab and red. It Is on this principle that our own Itusguage has the words head, sound, and In the vulgar tongue gownd, in place of the simple • of maims, seams, and gown.