Page:EB1911 - Volume 23.djvu/539

Rh parallel from N.E. to S.W., e.g. Catalanian on the coast of the Mediterranean, akin to Provençal, Spanish in the centre, Galician-Portuguese on the Atlantic. From the historical point of view one part might be called Gothic-Romance, the other Suevo-Romance. But the national and linguistic history of the times and countries we are dealing with is still very obscure. The difference between the two idioms is chiefly one of phonetics, while in their morphology and vocabulary they do not greatly differ. Spanish may be described as a language which favours vowels at the expense of consonants, and which therefore shows, more than other Romance languages, a weakening even of initial consonants. It changes voiced stops first to fricatives, then to mere noises or “burrs” which finally disappear altogether, and s before a consonant or finally, becomes h (through a middle stage š) and is finally lost. The preferential treatment of vowels, however, entailed not a single change except that ĕ was changed to the diphthong ie, o to ue; all else were preserved, e.g. diez (decem), tiempo (tempus), bueno (bonus), fuerte (fortis); but haver (habere), lid (lite), corona (corona), humo (fumus). The weakness of the initial sound is shown in enero (januaruis), hazer (facere), llamar (clamare with a transitional *clyamar), llaga (plaga), &c. The written language has no sign for voiced plosives between vowels, but -atho or -ao is spread over nearly the whole region.

In contrast to Spanish, Portuguese has a strong pronunciation of initial sounds, and so does not go beyond janeiro, fazer, and changes cl (with transitional form cly, ky), and also pl (via ply, py) to ch, e.g. chamar, chaga. On the other hand, it has a careless articulation of vowels and consonants, and consequently no diphthongs. The unaccented vowels are weakened, as finals almost to vanishing point. It shows further a fusion of nasals with the preceding vowel, so as to form a nasal vowel, and this new nasality takes the colour of the preceding vowel, e.g. vina becomes vinho, but una becomes uma, otherwise before a vowel the nasal finally disappears; cheio and cheia, from plenus, plena. Similarly l was lost between vowels, e.g. ceo (caelum); before consonants it became ɫ, or u, e.g. outro (alteru), caɫdo (calidu). Voiced plosives have a weak pronunciation between vowels, and these are sometimes made fricatives. In relation to the somewhat careless articulation we note a marked reaction on accented vowels by the final vowel (e.g. novo has a close vowel, nova an open one), and also by the following consonants: ɫ velarizes, s palatalizes preceding sounds, hence estas pronounced istas, “thou art,” with reduced i, but devedor (debitor), “debtor,” with reduced e. Lastly, the division between words is not sharp—the interaction of initial sounds and finals being very striking. Devedor has a plosive d, a devedor has a fricative; istas has a breathed -s, but istas nos ceus, “thou art in heaven,” has a voiced -s; seja, “be,” has a reduced a; o nome is pronounced u nome, but seja o nome is pronounced sej o nome, with an open o from a+o, &c.

The separation of Gaul took place likewise in the second half of the 5th century, when the Visigoths had settled down in the south, the Burgundians in the east, and the Franks in the north. The type of language that was evolved here is distinct from Spanish primarily and principally in the loss of final vowels except a, or, when the formation of the word was incompatible with this loss, in a weakening to e. On the other hand, the declension is strongly conservative. Nowhere are the old case-endings so clearly preserved as in this region, e.g. reis, “king,” but la rei fille (regi filia), “the king's daughter”; veit le rei, “videt regem”; dunet le rei, “donat (dat) regi”; these are the modes of expression, and they last till far into the literary period. But at an early stage there was a breach between the Franks of the north and the Burgundians of the east on the one hand, and the Visigoths of the south on the other. For while the latter (the Visigoths) retained the old system of accented vowels, the former changed ĕ to a diphthong ie, ŏ became uo, ue, and moreover ē and ĭ became ei, ō and ŭ became ou; a was changed to ä, assuming that these vowels were long in accordance with the later Latin pronunciation, e.g.—

The northern group, moreover, weakened the consonants still further. D and g, secondary consonants from t and c, disappear like the primary ones, and thus pratellus becomes preau, S. Fr. pradel; advocatus becomes avoué, S. Fr. avogat; a secondary p (from b) becomes v, as we see by the form which replaces nepos above. If we are right in ascribing this to the effort to stress the accented vowel at the expense of the other constituents of the word, we may take this to be connected with the weakening of a where final, and between two accented syllables, e.g. N. Fr. aime from amat, as against S. Fr. ama; or in one case armëure (Mod. Fr. armure), in the other armadura, from armatura.

Parallel to the preservation of -s on the one hand, and the close following of the old flexions on the other, we find the type membra preserved at first, though not spreading, whereas the tempora-type is abandoned. In the verb the variety in Latin perfect forms is still fairly well preserved, though there is a distinct extension of the u-perfect and the dedi-perfect. As we might expect, the vocabulary seems to be strongly coloured by Germanic elements of Frankish, Burgundian and Gothic origin.

The Raetic dialects, in their prehistoric phase, are less clear than others. Their contact, at an age nearing the Carolingian, with the French of the south-east in Valais seems to have caused a similar process of growth, especially as they change e and o into the diphthongs ei and ou, leaving at the same time the consonants more intact. At an early stage the inroads of the migrating nations cut off Raetia from the Po valley, and the pressure of the German tribes severed its union with the Romance-speaking nations of the west. Thus isolated it was free to follow its own course. This language also preserved at first the three cases and the type membra, the latter being developed later freely in use as a collective plural. But its further development was checked by the Lombards and Venetians.

But the most difficult problems are those that arise in Italy. Though one may say generally that the dialects of the region of the Po, and those of Liguria, belong to the types of north and western Romance, that is to say that the breathed plosives between vowels became voiced, yet they approach the typically Italian groups by their loss of -s. This means that when the whole Italian peninsula was separated from Gaul as well as from Iberia (after the close of the 5th century) and became again one homogeneous whole, the forms without s found their way into the north of Italy only slowly, so that s has remained in the west, i.e. in Piedmont, in monosyllabic words to this day, e.g. as, “thou hast,” ses, “thou art”; the same rule prevailed in older times in the east, in Venice, and there the s was also preserved (in questions) in polysyllabic words, e.g. venis-tu, “comest thou?”; and the old form maintained itself in Milanese in the single form sistu, “art thou ?” To the loss of s we trace the extinction of declensions, but as its action began to take effect later, the membra-type gained little footing, the tempora-type none at all. In the vocabulary the Lombard elements are numerous, extending, like the supremacy of the Lombards, over the whole peninsula. It may be that s was lost under the influence of central Italy acting on the north. If so, we may surmise that a similar influence has changed cl, p1, and fl to chi, pi, fi (chiamare, pianta, fiamma). For it is precisely this point that differentiates both the Raetic dialects and Provençal from the contiguous Italian dialects, and the change certainly took place only after the latter were completely detached. On the other hand the Italian vocabulary has been strongly influenced by the north, especially in Tuscany.

The rise and development of the Romance languages, in its large outline, appeals to the imagination as a vast historical phenomenon closely bound up with the fate of nations. One other element must not be overlooked on which we have touched more than once in the above sketch, for it bears so directly on the Romance vocabulary as to deserve the tribute of a general survey: this is the Germanic.

When mercenaries of Germanic origin pervaded the Roman armies, Germanic words found their way first into the language of the camp, and thence into the vulgar language generally. And at that stage perhaps many words may actually have been imported which were, partly at any rate, lost again later. Roman and Greek authors admit a considerable number of Germanic words, including terms belonging to warfare, e.g. bandum, “standard,” used by Procopius, which still continues in the form of O. Fr. ban, Ital. bandiera, Sp. bandera, &c. Brutis, “bride,” “daughter-in-law,” which occurs frequently in inscriptions, may date from the period of camp life, but for the rest it is retained only in Fr. bru, and in Friuli and Dalmatia. On the other hand, companio is clearly a Latinization of Gothic ga-hlaifa, the meaning of which carries us back to the same sphere. Other old words express ideas of culture, or names of animals which the Romans learned to know in the German-speaking north, e.g. ganta, “wild goose” (in Pliny), O. Fr. gante, Prov. ganta; or taxo, “badger,” Ital. tassone, Fr. taisson, Sp. tejon. But the impression made was not pronounced until the age of the Germanic invasions, and then we find a great variety in the various Romance countries. In Italy we have two invasions to consider—by the Goths, and by the Lombards. But the destruction of the rule of the Lombards by Charlemagne, and the introduction of Frankish elements consequent upon it, should not be considered under the same head, since these Franks may themselves have been a Romance-speaking tribe. Goths as well as Lombards have left a trail as noticeable in the language as elsewhere. Thus we find in several instances some uncertainty as between b and p as an initial sound in Italian words borrowed from Germanic, e.g. banca and panca, balla and palla, the forms with b being Gothic, those with p Lombardic. Or again recare, “to bring up,” goes back to Gothic rikan, “heap up,” “collect”; ricco, “rich,” to Lomb. rihhi, &c. Whereas the vocabulary shows impartially an impress of both nationalities, the Lombards have left their stamp unmistakably on the proper names. Speaking generally, Italy as well as the other Romance countries follows the rule that medieval names of persons are either “Christian” (in the strict sense) and therefore of Hebrew or Graeco-Roman origin, or on the other hand Germanic. Roman names that are not also Christian seem to have survived only in south Italy in any great number, while on the contrary the Germanic are not represented at all in Dalmatia. One of the characteristics