Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/503

 THE PRINCIl'UC OK I.KAST ACTION, KTC. 489 the direction of greater manageableness and agreeableness. Like every form of effort or motor activity, the motor service of speech shows a constant tendency to easy and effective utterance. It is probable that the pleasure felt at the harmonious co-operation of the muscles concerned, and the discomfort produced by difficult muscular combinations act as the guide of effort in the direction of motor ease. The process of the facilitation of pronunciation is sometimes spoken of as though it were a merely physiological process. I think this view ignores the psychical influences of comfort and discomfort. A certain muscular combination bringing a certain relief from effort is unconsciously stamped for repetition by the pleasure that it brings, just as the tendency to eliminate other combinations seems prompted by the corresponding discomfort which accompanies them. This process of facilitation shows itself in many ways in the evolution of spoken language. 1 Let us take the case of the evolution of Latin into French. (1) There is a general weakening of the Latin letters when they pass into French ; thus the c and ;/ pronounced hard by the .Romans before e and i, as in cedere, civitatem, soften into f and j sounds as in ceder, ciU. Similarly the Latin p is softened into v. (2) Letters in contact that do not represent easy vocal transitions are assimilated. Thus dr becomes rr ; e.g., adripare, arriver. But the inverse substitution of dr for rr never takes place. (3) Recurring letters that produce through recurrence a hard effect have their hardness frequently softened through the replacing of one of them by a kindred but softer letter. Thus if a Latin word has two r's, in French the pronuncia- tion will be softened by the change of the one r into I, as peregrinus, pelerin ; lusciniola, rossignol. This is known as dissimilation. (4) We have that displacement of a consonant which is known as metathesis. Thus paupertatem which in the Old French texts is met with as pauverttf, becomes pauvrett! by metathesis of the r. 2 All these changes follow what M. Brachet calls the Law of Transition. ' Permutation,' he writes, 3 ' moves on step by step, and never more than one step at a time. A letter 1 Cf. Baudry, Grammaire Compare?, pp. 85, 86. 2 Cy. Brachet, Etymological French Dictionary, Introduction, pp. xcvii.-xcix. 'Quoting from M. Baudry's work, Grammaire OOmparA du Sanskrit, du Grec, ft du Latin, p. 88.