Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin - Otto Jespersen

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to this new point of view was constantly changing and developing, so also, during these years, were Grimm’s own ideas. And the man who then exercised the greatest influence on him was Rasmus Rask. When Grimm wrote the first edition of his Grammatik (1819), he knew nothing of Rask but the Icelandic grammar, but just before finishing his own volume Rask’s prize essay reached him, and in the preface he at once speaks of it in the highest terms of praise, as he does also in several letters of this period; he is equally enthusiastic about Rask’s Anglo-Saxon grammar and the Swedish edition of his Icelandic grammar, neither of which reached him till after his own first volume had been printed off. The consequence was that instead of going on to the second volume, Grimm entirely recast the first volume and brought it out in a new shape in 1822. The chief innovation was the phonology or, as he calls it, “Erstes buch. Von den buchstaben,” which was entirely absent in 1819, but now ran to 595 pages.

      II.—§ 5. The Sound Shift.

      This first book in the 1822 volume contains much, perhaps most, of what constitutes Grimm’s fame as a grammarian, notably his exposition of the ‘sound shift’ (lautverschiebung), which it has been customary in England since Max Müller to term ‘Grimm’s Law.’ If any one man is to give his name to this law, a better name would be ‘Rask’s Law,’ for all these transitions, Lat. Gr. p = f, t = þ (th), k = h, etc., are enumerated in Rask’s Undersøgelse, p. 168, which Grimm knew before he wrote a single word about the sound shift.

      Now, it is interesting to compare the two scholars’ treatment of these transitions. The sober-minded, matter-of-fact Rask contents himself with a bare statement of the facts, with just enough well-chosen examples to establish the correspondence; the way in which he arranges the sounds shows that he saw their parallelism clearly enough, though he did not attempt to bring everything under one single formula, any more than he tried to explain why these sounds had changed.[4] Grimm multiplies the examples and then systematizes the whole process in one formula so as to comprise also the ‘second shift’ found in High German alone—a shift well known to Rask, though treated by him in a different place (p. 68 f.). Grimm’s formula looks thus:

Greek p b f t d th k g ch
Gothic f p b th t d h k g
High G. b(v) f p d z t g ch k,

      which may be expressed generally thus, that tenuis (T) becomes aspirate (A) and then media (M), etc., or, tabulated:

Greek T M A
Gothic A T M
High G. M A T.

      For this Grimm would of course have deserved great credit, because a comprehensive formula is more scientific than a rough statement of facts—if the formula had been correct; but unfortunately it is not so. In the first place, it breaks down in the very first instance, for there is no media in High German corresponding to Gr. p and Gothic f (cf. poûs, fotus, fuss, etc.); secondly, High German has h just as Gothic has, corresponding to Greek k (cf. kardía, hairto, herz, etc.), and where it has g, Gothic has also g in accordance with rules unknown to Grimm and not explained till long afterwards (by Verner). But the worst thing is that the whole specious generalization produces the impression of regularity and uniformity only through the highly unscientific use of the word ‘aspirate,’ which is made to cover such phonetically disparate things as (1) combination of stop with following h, (2) combination of stop with following fricative, pf, ts written z, (3) voiceless fricative, f, s in G. das, (4) voiced fricative, v, ð written th, and (5) h. Grimm rejoiced in his formula, giving as it does three chronological stages in each of the three subdivisions (tenuis, media, aspirate) of each of the three classes of consonants (labial, dental, ‘guttural’). This evidently took hold of his fancy through the mystic power of the number three, which he elsewhere (Gesch 1. 191, cf. 241) finds pervading language generally: three original vowels, a, i, u, three genders, three numbers (singular, dual, plural), three persons, three ‘voices’ (genera: active, middle, passive), three tenses (present, preterit, future), three declensions through a, i, u. As there is here an element of mysticism, so is there also in Grimm’s highflown explanation of the whole process from pretended popular psychology, which is full of the cloudiest romanticism. “When once the language had made the first step and had rid itself of the organic basis of its sounds, it was hardly possible for it to escape the second step and not to arrive at the third stage,[5] through which this development was perfected. … It is impossible not to admire the instinct by which the linguistic spirit (sprachgeist) carried this out to the end. A great many sounds got out of joint, but they always knew how to arrange themselves in a different place and to find the new application of the old law. I am not saying that the shift happened without any detriment, nay from one point of view the sound shift appears to me as a barbarous aberration, from which other more quiet nations abstained, but which is connected with the violent progress and craving for freedom which was found in Germany in the beginning of the Middle Ages and which initiated the transformation of Europe. The Germans pressed forward even in the matter of the innermost sounds of their language,” etc., with remarks on intellectual progress and on victorious and ruling races. Grimm further says that “die dritte stufe des verschobnen lauts den kreislauf abschliesse und nach ihr ein neuer ansatz zur abweichung wieder von vorn anheben müsse. Doch eben weil der sprachgeist seinen lauf vollbracht hat, scheint er nicht wieder neu beginnen zu wollen” (GDS 1. 292 f., 299). It would be difficult to attach any clear ideas to these words.

      Grimm’s idea of a ‘kreislauf’ is caused by the notion that the two shifts, separated by several centuries, represent one continued movement, while the High German shift of the eighth century has really no more to do with the primitive Gothonic shift, which took place probably some time before Christ, than has, for instance, the Danish shift in words like gribe, bide, bage, from gripæ, bitæ, bakæ (about 1400), or the still more recent transition in Danish through which stressed t in tid, tyve, etc., sounds nearly like [ts], as in HG. zeit. There cannot possibly be any causal nexus between such transitions, separated chronologically by long periods, with just as little change in the pronunciation of these consonants as there has been in English.[6]

      

      Grimm was anything but a phonetician, and sometimes says things which nowadays cannot but produce a smile, as when he says (Gr 1. 3) “in our word schrift, for instance, we express eight sounds through seven signs, for f stands for ph”; thus he earnestly believes that sch contains three sounds, s and the ‘aspirate’ ch = c + h! Yet through the irony of fate it was on

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