The gift of Language

Citation preview

chlauch

e origins of ehglish;

the history of words; the nature of

grammar; semantics: the

uses of poetry; the effects on language of

propaganda and

politics.

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Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2010

http://www.archive.org/details/giftoflanguageOOschl

MARGARET SCHLAUCH

DOVER PUBLICATIONS,

INC.

NEW YORK

the

gift

language FORMERLY ENTITLED

THE GIFT OF TONGUES

Copyright, 1942, by Margaret Schlauch Copyright, ©, 1955 by Margaret Schlauch All rights reserved under Pan-American and International

copyright conventions.

This new Dover edition, first published in 1955, is a corrected, unabridged republication of the 1942 edition which was published under the title "The Gift of Tongues." It is published through special arrangement with Viking Press.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 56-13531

Manufactured

in the

United States of America

Dover Publications,

Inc.

180 Varick Street

New York

14,

N. Y.

Preface Almost everyone who talks must have wondered at one time why he used certain words for certain things. Children, whose ignorance is often so wise, have frequently baffled their parents by the penetrating question: "Mother, why do we say 'table'?" And mother is necessarily forced to evade this question, along with innumerable others. Bilingual persons usually speculate at least tentatively on the relations between the two languages they know. With three or more languages, they begin to wonder about more complicated questions in making comparisons. An American or an Englishman who knows German is aware that there is some likeness between the words "deep" and tief, and he asks himself what it may be. A person with a classical training who learns Russian wonders whether the adjective vernyi or BepHbiii, meaning "true," is connected with the Latin verus, meaning the same thing. A missionary priest learning Cakchiquel in order to work in Guatemala might be struck by the fact that Hebrew ishshah or "woman," or another

corresponds fairly closely to the native ishok, expressing the

same

idea.

He might be tempted

to regard this as evidence that Indian converts are descended from the lost but upon further study he will probably con-

his prospective tribes of Israel,

clude that the correspondence

is

purely accidental.

A

mother teaching her child to talk notices that he has trouble with some sounds while others come quite readily. While she patiently drills him in the "right" pronunciation (that

is,

the accepted one), she

John drop the

s

in 'story'

may say

and

say

'

to herself:

'tory'?"

A

"What makes

foreigner learn-

ing English shows some psychological

difficulties in handling our idiom; we ask him to explain why it is so hard for him to omit the article in using such words as "truth" and "beauty,"

and he

finds that

he can't explain except by saying that in

own language one

says "the truth"

and "the beauty."

his

The

vi

Gift of

Tongues

These are all linguistic speculations— that is, they deal with technical problems of language. They are sometimes very entertaining to the speculator. But the mere thought of reading or studying on the subject usually fills him with horror. Whatl Learn anything about linguistics! Why, that is surely the dullest of all subjects! Its disciples are supposed to be grim and chilly individuals with never an atom of humanity in their dispositions. Entertainment must be entirely absent from this recondite

field.

Romance may be expected

to lurk in physics,

chemistry, biology or mathematics; but in linguistics— never! Still,

with so

much curiosity about the subject evident among

people in general, the romance must after where.

The

all

be lurking some-

speculation implies at least a possibility of intel-

lectual adventure. Perhaps a

book

like this

can give the answers

to some of the questions popularly current about language, without at the same time marshaling a host of unnecessary facts in a forbidding formal array. There are ambitious textbooks and reference books in abundance which could be consulted

by inquiring amateurs, but it is doubtful whether the inquirer's ardor could escape dampening in the process. To a trained eye these same volumes may appear to be repositories of the most exciting information, but a non-linguist sees in them nothing but a mass of irrelevant and uninspiring facts. He

away— to look for romance rather in the expounding the sublimities of mathematics. The educated reader with an unprofessional, merely casual

groans and turns latest text

interest in language has not yet, I believe, received the

of

book he

deserves.

He is entitled to the information he wants,

expressed in language he can understand. superficial accounts

kind

which often

The overdiluted and

pass as popularizations give

and leave him justly dissatisfied. The heavily incomprehensible volumes which specialists sometimes produce under the illusion that they are being popular leave him, on the other hand, completely mystified. But surely there must be a middle ground for this much-abused general reader This book represents an attempt to reach the general reader and to find the middle ground. There is no wish to repeat

him

too

little

I

vii

Preface (less well)

the extremely competent general introductions to

more advanced students, such as the volumes by Graff, Bloomfield, Gray and Sturtevant, to which grateful recognition will be made in the notes. But the author does hope to answer some of the simpler questions clearly, and at the same time to show some of the fascination linguistics designed for

much maligned

of a

subject of study. Afterwards the reader

can consult more detailed works with pleasure and

There

is

a

profit.

pure joy to be derived from the perception of

where none was observed before. This exfor many persons a reward in itself. Linguistic studies yield it abundantly. But there is an even more practical reward to be gained too. If you learn that a certain clear relationships

citing experience

is

is apt to appear in a language of one given you are quite justified in looking for something elsewhere; and you will probably find it. As a result the

type of relationship family, then like

it

effort in learning the

What

is

known

second will be

as a "gift for

see these likenesses quickly.

much

languages"

To

see

is

easier than the

largely

an

first.

ability to

them is to remember more Memorizing new words

readily the words that exemplify them. is

only

difficult

when you

can't see

any sense to them— any

relationship to something already

known. Some relationships

become plain when we observe the

difference between our

own

pronunciation when we are being careful or bookish, and at other times

when we

are careless. For example: notice con-

what happens to your pronunciation of "Give me" when you are tired. It tends to become "Gimme." The [v]sound has been changed until it becomes identical with the next one, [m]. 1 The resulting [m] may be spoken a bit prolonged, as an indication that it is now taking the place of two different sounds. This "doubled" sound (if you will) is the sciously

result of a process

known

as assimilation, or the

two unlike things until they become more l It is

changing of

alike.

customary in employing characters of the phonetic alphabet to use en2, note 1. Ordinary letters are often ambiguous in

closing brackets. See chapter

our spelling.

The

viii

it

Gift of

Tongues

But if assimilation happens today, in our own rapid speech, must have happened many times before, in the speech of

other peoples.

And

did.

it

You

observe, for example, that Ital-

ian words with a "double letter," as

from an

clear signs of assimilation

were two different sounds.

It is

letters

easy to guess

it is

popularly called, show

when

earlier stage

there

representing two quite different

what sounds were there

originally,

before the change took place. If you encounter the

word

meaning

you

"eight," a little experimenting will lead

otto,

to sur-

connected somehow with our word "octave." Likewise notte shows connections with Latin mise that

it

was once

octo,

and

is

node and English "nocturnal," massimo with "maximum," and so on. Once this sort of thing has been pointed out it seems ridiculously clear

and obvious, and

it facilitates

the learning

of a whole series of similar words. Yet the relationship has to

be pointed out in the

first

place.

There is a practical use for all linguistic principles. They what was once obscure and they also make learning new languages very much simpler. The practical aids which linclarify

guistic study gives

science for

its

own

should not be scorned by the exponent of sake. In this

book there

will be constant

reference to the everyday helps to be used in learning languages.

There

will be exercises

periment, designed for those concretely.

The notes will From these

in each field.

and suggestions

who

tell

for further ex-

wish to apply the principles

of additional books to be read

initial studies the

roads lead out

endlessly into other terrains of research: psychology, sociology,

anthropology, music, physics.

.

.

.

It is a

presumptuous thing,

no doubt, to attempt so brief and undetailed a survey as this of a vast field

where

so

many

wish for brevity and simplicity

great scholars have labored.

may have

impressions in the survey. Yet

false

it is

A

led to inaccuracies or to

be hoped that the

may be served in some measure, no matter may be. These purposes are: a revelation of

two what the faults some of the poetry and romance in language studies, and an exposition of some of the more practical benefits which may be derived by teachers and learners from these same studies. chief purposes

CONTENTS PAGE Preface

v

1

Language

2

Sounds and Alphabets

3

Family Relationships

4

Treasury of Words

5

Semantics: Vocabulary in Motion

109

6

Grammar,

133

7

Kaleidoscope of Sound

170

8

Life-History of the English Language

193

9

Language and Poetic Creation

227

10

Social Aspects: Class, Taboos, Politics

260

11

Retrospect and Prospect

291

Appendix:

Index

as

Communication

l

19

Among

Languages

or the Building of Sentences

48 75

1.

Bibliography and Notes

299

2.

Diversions and Illustrations

307

3.

English

Words Discussed in This Book

327 333

i.

Language

Expression

in

as

Communication

Talking

Suppose you are about to step across a crowded street without An automobile is careening towards you in conspicuous contempt of traffic regulations. If you continue in your blind carelessness, you are sure to be knocked over, possibly killed. But a quick-eyed stranger, let us say a monolingual Hungarian, sees what is about to happen to you. Shrill with horror, he shouts something at you in the Magyar tongue. You get something of his message without understanding a single word, draw back suddenly, and are looking about you with due caution.

saved. at

Somewhat breathless and also more than

a little sheepish

your recent oblivion of surroundings, you stammer your on your

thanks. If in your sudden retreat you have stepped

you add some words of apology. He on his side smiles, disclaims any reason for your gratitude, and graciously accepts your apology in the appropriate Hungarian formula. Neither of you has understood a word of the other's speech, and yet the interchange has so far been quite clear and eminently agreeable to both participants. It was facilitated, of course, by the simplicity of the situation and the urgency of the first cry. Ideas have been exchanged; there has been communication in the sense that these ideas have been successfully made common knowledge to the two people concerned. savior's foot,

Again, suppose you are walking through the park of a port town frequented by sailors of the benches a visiting naval lad

nymphs, in

facile,

is

many

nations.

On

sea-

one of

declaring to one of the town's

well-practiced phrases, that she

is

the most

The

2

Gift of

Tongues

beautiful feminine creature that he has ever had the privilege

on a park bench. He utters his protestano matter how many times he has used the time-honored vows before. He may be speakof discoursing with

tions with the deepest conviction,

ing Swedish, however, whereas the temporary object of his

may be limited to self-expression in an obscure Indian dialect of the Pacific coast of Central America. Only a few words of most elementary significance are common

eternal vows local

two of them. Nevertheless, she unerringly comprehends the general import of his remarks, and with appropriate giggles and slaps— repulses not seriously intended— she may assure him that she knows how many times he has used these protestations before. He, for his part, is sure to increase the ardor and conviction of his wooing, employing oaths of sincerity at which (so they say) Jove has been laughing these thousands of years as he has heard their polyglot expression from all parts of the globe. The entire dialogue may be brought to a conclusion entirely satisfying to both parties without having one complete sentence in it actually intelligible to the party listening. And an eavesdropper ignorant of both tongues might also be aware of its import and its happy conclusion. In both of these situations the pitch, intensity, and tone of voice, the qualities which we generally call "expression" in talking, have conveyed the entire message. "Look out! Danger ahead!" can be understood in any language if the speaker dramatizes the warning sufficiently. It is also rather easy to convey the hyperbolic proposition, "You are the most beautiful girl I have ever met," across any conceivable barriers of speech. A tone of flattering raillery and caress is reported to be unmistakable from the Arctic to the Antarctic. to the

Gesture But variations in quality and volume of voice are not the only methods of carrying messages across a linguistic divide.

Gesture pression.

is

another aid very closely associated with tonal ex-

You

ask a stranger in a strange city

how

to find a

Language

as

Communication

certain public building. If his reply

is

3

to be, "Sorry; I don't

know," you will be aware of it before he has so much as opened his mouth, if he merely raises his shoulders and eyebrows, draws down the corners of his mouth, throws his hands out with the palms facing you, and frowns slightly. The extended palms appear to mean: "I put my entire knowledge at your disposal, concealing nothing, but unfortunately the information you require is not there"; the frown says: "I am concentrating on your inquiry— in vain, alas!"; the elevated shoulders and deflected mouth add: "I feel quite disconcerted and physically ill at ease to think that I should fail you in your need,

We

O

stranger."

use these non-linguistic means of conveying ideas,

of us, as an

accompaniment A means of communication

a gesture, are

than language sal

enough

beings.

to

When

as

we understand

it.

They

be conveyed to animals a

man

all

cry, a tonal inflection,

to speech.

far

more

universal

are in fact univer-

as well as other

human

snaps his finger at a trained dog and

points to the ground beside him, he

is

using gestures to sub-

an entire sentence: "Come here, Brownie, and sit beside me." Animals can also understand quite complicated commands by means of tone and voice inflection alone, with-

stitute for

out the aid of gesture.

We

have, then, various ways of communicating with one

another and with the lower animals, quite apart from a mutual

understanding of the separate speech symbols which we words. Communication of messages

is

far

call

more general than

an understanding of the languages used by human beings throughout the world. To understand a language, you must always attach the same meaning to a highly conventionalized group of sounds. An enormous number of these groups of sounds— words— in any language have an abstract meaning which could not possibly be conveyed by any gesture, even the most eloquent. There is a great gap between the cry "Look out! Danger!" and the statement "I regret what I did last year. Had I known this fact, then I should have done other-

The

4 wise." Certainly

Gift of

no conceivable

Tongues

gestures could convey the im-

port of the following terrifying sentence from

Immanuel Kant:

But, although extension, impenetrability, cohesion, and motion— in short, everything

which outer

senses can give

us— neither are nor

contain thoughts, feeling, desire or resolution, these never being

which underour sense that it

objects of outer intuition, nevertheless the something lies

the outer appearances

and which

so affects

obtains the representations of space, matter, shape,

when viewed at the

noumenon

etc.,

may

yet,

be same time the subject of our thoughts (Critique of Pure as

(or better, as transcendental object),

Reason).

Spoken language,

as contrasted

with gesture,

is

a highly

symbolical method of expression adapted to abstract concepts.

But because of the cries, gestures, grunts and similar elemental expressions which form a considerable part of its accompaniment, we are justified in asking ourselves whether it is not closely connected with the means of expression and communication employed by some of the lower animals. Speech of Animals was formerly assumed (with typical human conceit) that man, as a special and separately created being, had received It

the gift of language ready-made from his Creator. Just as

woman was if

supposed to have appeared suddenly, by a swift unaccountable exit from Adam's side, so speech was sup-

posed to have begun abruptly on the day

when Adam named

the animals and other creatures under God's tutelage. Many religions contain a myth about the origin of speech at a given moment under divine instruction. It seemed sacrilegious to

suppose, in these days of early speculation, that the infinitely flexible

human expression, which more than makes us men, could have any kinship with the

instrument of

anything

else

grunts and cries of the lower animals. larly those of a theological bent,

when Darwin and his

Some

writers, particu-

deny the kinship today. But

followers pointed out the biological kin-

Language

as

Communication

5

man

with those same lower animals, students of language re-examined their attitude. It became the intellectual ship of

fashion, indeed, to look for "evolution" in all matters concern-

ing living things. The sounds made by animals were regarded with a new and salutary respect, since they seemed to offer the

proximate simple explanation of the origin of human speech. Presumably grunts and cries merely became standardized and

number— and

increased in

behold!

the result was

human

speech: the result of a clear and steady development or "evolution."

Today we

are inclined to think that the relationship of

man's speech to animal cries is far more complicated than that. Mere numerical increase in the number of cries will not account for the appearance of abstract, highly conventionalized meanings. Moreover, the shift from the one level (haphazard expression) to the higher one (standardized meaning) may not have been the result exclusively of an infinite series of gradual adjustments, the kind of slow process implied in the term "evolution."

progress such as

We

shall

not impossible to imagine sudden spurts of occur in other cultural arts.

It is

never

know

just

how

or where language

first

de-

veloped, because no records of speech survive from that very distant epoch.

A number

of scholars have devoted themselves

hopefully to the observation and recording of the sounds

made

by chimpanzees. About the turn of the century, R. L. Garner went so far as to claim that these sounds should be dignified by the name of language. He also claimed that he had learned the meaningful sound-symbols used by his primate subjects, and had communicated with them in what might be called elementary conversations. Others denied this claim entirely, or restricted it to a few general correlations between sound and meaning. Two German students reported that the expression of fear was connected with a high sound like English

lament by a deep one resembling English 00, and joy by a series of repeated ah's. Another scholar recorded sounds with musical notations— since pitch might be an essenee,

The

6 tial

Gift of

Tongues

element here— and obtained what appeared to be mean-

ingful sound-symbols such as gak, nghak, gah, gha, hah, ko-ko,

and so on. There seemed also to be a general association of some of these sounds with certain emotional situations. But the curious thing is that despite the well-known ability of apes at imitation, and the evidence that they can reason their way through fairly complicated situations, all of these responses of theirs are too fluid and vague to constitute language. The sounds which some have called ape-words or the speech of the chimpanzee do not form symbols which can be repeated and recognized, always with the same meaning attached to them. In other words, although an ape can ape (imi-

he can not reproduce sound stimuli consistently Robert M. Yerkes suggests in his The Great Apes that these animals might, however, be trained to a gesture language such as deaf-mutes employ. tate gestures),

enough

to establish the beginnings of language.

Origin of

Human

Speech

The great question is: what was there in man's physical equipment and his mode of living in the earliest times which permitted him to make use of vocal stimuli and auditory impressions for speaking? It

of early tails

human

is

one of the most fascinating mysteries

development.

We

shall

of that progress forward towards

animals. But

ment and

we can be quite sure

never

know

the de-

humanity from the lower

that the physiological equip-

the beginnings of sociological organization were

very intimately associated in

making

possible the great stride.

Each element must have been both cause and effect; and whatever tended to advance the one no doubt advanced the other also. We no longer assume that the relation between speaking man and the unspeaking primates is a simple one— a matter of straight "evolution"— but neither do we any longer invoke miracles to explain the great differentiation. We can even go so far as to surmise some of the non-miraculous factors which caused it. If language means communication,

Language

as

Communication

7

probably communal activity played an important part in shaping

it.

Signals for

Returning

Words

to the

human

level, as

we know

it,

we

find

some

very elemental signals persisting and helping us in the task of reaching other riers.

In

fact,

we

human

beings quickly despite linguistic bar-

are very

little

aware how many signals we

and comprehend in our daily living apart from spoken words. Emotional sounds and gestures are of surprisingly wide range. We express not only fear, desire, and approval but receive

many

when we click the tongue against the mouth (mild disapproval or reproach), hiss (strong disapproval), cut short a yawn (boredom or sleepiness corother states too

roof of the

rected by regard for other people's feelings), expel the breath

with a whistling sound (surprise), inhale with a somewhat osculatory effect. (This last is self-explanatory.) The list could be greatly extended. Civilized

humans who

live in cities are constantly receiv-

ing complicated signals and interpreting them correctly with-

out the use of words.

A red light,

a green light, or the gestures

policeman— all these are the equivalents of imperative or permissive sentences. A bell which rings a certain number of times will announce to students a change of classes, to workers a shift in jobs, to persons on a party wire of a telephone the summons to a conversation with a friend. The bells on shipboard are highly conventionalized signals marking the passage of a day of maritime work. A trumpet call in the Tuileries garden of Paris warns visitors that they must depart. The dirge of a funeral and the chimes of a wedding tell a whole story without words. A green line painted on the ceiling of the New York subway station at Forty-second Street conveys the message: "Follow me, all you who would shuttle over to the West Side trains." The red line, pointing contrariwise, guides the tense and hurrying throngs eastward. Here the symbolism of signs and warnings is almost as elaboof a

traffic

The

8

Gift of

rate as that in Dante's Hell (to

further similarities), but

Tongues

which the place is said to have are accustomed to it fol-

we who

low the stylized guides without conscious reflection. A red flag seen in one context means: "Danger! Keep away!" In another connection it may convey a whole political platform, to which the spectator responds with either heated distaste or heated approval, according to his own complicated theories and beliefs. The heat he evinces when he sees the symbol indicates that

a

it

series of theses

People

who

may

is

of

without the agency of words.

make

live in cities, then,

of conventional signals, gestures

these

making him conscious

has at least been successful in

whole

and

use of a large

acts.

number

Their response

quite like that of "primitive" Indians— to

whom

to

they

otherwise feel themselves entirely superior— when using

an elaborate language of gestures. A dog responding to the snap of fingers, deaf-mutes conversing with their hands, Indians using signs, and New Yorkers intently pursuing a green line, are all behaving in precisely the same way, and to the seeing eye they are also showing their close kinship within the animal realm. Imitative

Words

Some spoken words can easily be recognized as concrete signals, hardly more abstract than the flashing of a red light to indicate danger (because that very destructive element, is

also red?).

Words

that imitate the

sound or

fire,

act they are to

designate are called onomatopoetic (from the Greek onoma, a name,

words

and poiein,

to

make; that

exist in every language.

is,

Many

"name-making"). Such people assume, without

further thought, that the languages of peoples remote from the doubtful blessings of European culture are necessarily

made up almost exclusively of such imitative words. Conversely, it is commonly thought that the languages of so-called civilized peoples contain a very small number of these words in proportion to the general vocabulary. Actually, the relative

number

is

very small in

all

languages, whether "back-

Language

as

Communication

9

ward" or "advanced." In English we have words

"humming "bow-wow." Many of them,

"whip-

like

poorwill," "peewee," "bumblebee,"

bird,"

mur," "ding-dong,"

it

and

"mur-

will be ob-

which are designated by an attempt to reproduce the sound they make. Latin gives us an excellent example of onomatopoeia in the sibilant susurrus, meaning "whisper." We must beware, however, of supposing that a word which we imagine to be imitative is necessarily "primitive" or that it was created by an act of imitation. Sometimes it has reached the form which we imagine to be onomatopoetic by a long development, beginning from entirely different sounds which would appear to us to be far less descriptive. Thus the German word for "anger," spelled Zorn and pronounced [tsorn], seems to suggest a disagreeable emotion by the hissing explosion of the initial sound; but when we examine its history we discover that it has developed from a milder pronunciation like the one preserved in the English "torn." (The words are actually related; in German, a sister language of English, anger served, refer to birds, animals,

is

insects

conceived to be the thing that tears at one's

farther back the

word

beginning with a

is

vitals.) Still

discovered to have existed in a form

with a root something like der-n. In its more primitive state, therefore, nothing appears of the violent d,

to-sound which presumably gives the tive

emotional

German Zorn

its

descrip-

effect.

Again, the English words "twitch," "witch," and "itch" end in a sound tsh, which may be imagined to be descriptive in one way or another; and yet in all of these words the sound was developed from a very different one, namely, k, which is

made

back of the throat instead of being hissed between and the palate. The Russian language is full of sounds which appeal to many listeners as exceedingly tender and caressing. There are those who find this quality in the word zhenshchina for "woman" (the zh being pronounced in jardin); and no doubt when properly like the French at the

the tongue

;'

spoken, in appropriate circumstances,

it

conveys the desired

The

io Its

effect.

Gift of

origin, however,

Tongues

shows a

The word comes from an

sonants.

less

tender set of con-

older form which

we can

(The first syllable is cognate with Greek yvvq [gune], meaning "woman," and also with English "queen" and "quean"— which were formerly undifferentiated.) It would be easy to imagine that the long-drawn-out sound at the beginning of "thin" was descriptive of a state of beinglong and narrow— but comparative study shows us that the word originally began with a simple t which cannot be prolonged at all. "Thin" is in fact first cousin to the Latin tenuis, which has kept the more primitive initial sound. reconstruct as guen-stina.

Meaning and the Speaker

What happens

mind

of a person using words

is a comsomething more will be said plicated process, about which later. It is at least clear after a moment's reflection that the

person

who

in the

talks

not only affecting the listener but also

is

affecting himself, insofar as talking

strengthen his

own

may

clarify his

own

ideas,

convictions, or bring to the surface doubts

The words he uses serve to bring back former experiences associated with them, more or less vividly.

hitherto unnoticed.

Meaning and the Listener If

we

look at the effect of speech on the listener alone, the

procedure

The

it.

is

more

patent.

signal differs

One

receives a signal

from the red

and

acts

lights, bells, flags,

tures we have been discussing in that

it is

made by

upon

and

ges-

the tongue,

the teeth, the vibration of vocal cords, or a combination of these.

The

The

advantages of these organs of speech are obvious.

is a process capable of wide variety, very rapidly. Perhaps at some fuaccomplished be and it can ture time humanity will develop a method even more rapid,

emitting of sounds

varied,

and

precise for the

communication of

ideas;

but so

we know of none more efficient than speech. Try to conceive of a human race without language and you

far

realize at

once what

it

has meant to us. There could be no ac-

Language

as

Communication

1

cumulation of the more abstract types of wisdom from one generation to another without the use of spoken syllables and

Only

later their recording in written characters.

skills involv-

ing muscular dexterity could have been passed on: improve-

ments in pottery-making, weaving, and building of the simplest sort. Speech is not entirely divorced from skill in handicrafts, as a matter of fact. It has been pointed out that control over organs of speech and increasing complexity and subtlety in their use have developed concomitantly with increasing skill in

made

the use of the hand. Speech

us men. Neither

is

and work together have

conceivable without the other.

complementary development had not occurred, yielding us the amazingly intricate and efficient and If,

however,

this

beautiful instrument

known as

language,

ine what our history might have been.

men

it is difficult

A

to imag-

race of speechless

Our dependence on the word alone is incalculable. The spoken word, which made possible Greek drama and oratory, Roman law courts, medieval preaching, and the political debates of the French is

really a contradiction in terms.

written

Revolution (to name but a few examples), has conditioned our whole culture as human beings.

Language and Community Life Language symbol

A

as is

communication implies community of not a symbol— that

is

to say,

it is"

living.

not effective—

understood in approximately the same way by a group of people living and working together. Students of peounless

it is

ples in remote parts of the earth have described in detail the overwhelming importance of the clan as a whole in shaping the life of an individual. Especially the major events of his career have a public significance far outweighing his private feelings in these matters. There is reason to believe, indeed, that the first person pronoun (singular) was a comparatively late development in some languages. This is vivid grammatical testimony to the relative unimportance of the individual as opposed to the tribe. It seems to imply that in such tribes

The

12

Gift of

Tongues

men

could conceive of themselves only as parts of a larger social whole. In such cases it was not possible to say "I do this,"

but something like "People do so-and-so by means of me, John." Perhaps it is for this reason that the pronoun "we" is rather awkwardly expressed in

some languages,

since

it

means

"you in addition to the insignificant me." For instance, in Nahuatl (descended from old Aztec), the word for "we" differs from tehua, meaning "thou," only in having an n at the end of it. Here the first personal idea seems to be subordinated to the second if affixing means subordination.

Apart from grammar, we know from other sources about some of the occasions and ceremonies which would tend to make an individual feel unimportant in earlier forms of society.

group

He would

submerged in a number of

activities calling for expression

instance, songs to

find himself quite

through language. For

and chants used while work

merge a man's ego in

social activity.

is

performed tend

Tribal dances accom-

panied by song are also said to reduce a person's awareness of himself. In this respect they differ

from our own

social danc-

ing in couples, where a heightened sense of personal qualities

and allurements

is

the gratification desired. It

is

perhaps un-

modern urban men, working so often in silent and amusing themselves in an individualistic manare prevented from enjoying this salutary experience. If language that has made us men, we forget at our own

fortunate that isolation

ner, it is

cost that language

Besides

employed

is

impossible without

work and dance, at

an early date

it

for

communal

would appear two

living.

that language was

closely associated functions:

praying and invoking curses. Blessings were important too.

We

are perhaps

less

apt to

remember them because

the rites

which generally accompanied imprecations, such as the stabbing and melting of waxen images, seem more vivid to our imaginations. In any event, it is clear that these spoken formulas represent an attempt to control nature through words. It was felt that if you expressed the desire "Send us rain" or

Language my enemy"

"Kill

or

Communication "May my child prosper" in as

13 the right

way, the wished-for consummation would surely result.

Magic

in

Language

From time immemorial men have thought that there is some mysterious essential connection between a thing and the spoken name for

You could use the name of your enemy, not only to designate him either passionately or dispassionately, it.

but also to exercise a baleful influence over him. Something about him could be affected for good or ill whenever you

To say "Curse and dewhose name I don't know," was considered to have little or no effect. The warrior would continue on his way, happily insensible of your hatred. But to say "Curse and destroy Chief Cross-Eye; strike him even as I strike this image of him" was supposed to have a most delpronounced the appropriate

syllables.

stroy that warrior over there,

on his health and spirits, even on his life. Chief Cross-Eye might confidently be expected to show serious damage within a very short time. Not only people, but plants, eterious effect

animals, forces of nature, gods, demons, in fact

could be affected for good or their

names

Such

ill

all

creatures

by solemn pronunciation of

in the proper context.

name and

were supposed

to

object was a form Things alike in appearance influence one another. Even today these ideas

among

us

more than

a close identification of

of sympathetic magic, as

prevail

it is

pose. Children have sayings

called.

the sophisticated reader

and

beliefs

may

sup-

which stem from the

primeval jungle: "Step on a crack; break your mother's back"; touch warts; a

wood

to

ward

bad luck; touch a toad and

off

wash your hands

you'll get

in the fresh rain water gathered in

hollow tree stump and you'll get rid of them. Even adults

do some things and avoid others friendly pair walking

down

for the

same

reasons.

A

a city street will scrupulously

avoid passing on opposite sides of a lamppost out of a dimly sensed apprehension that the physical separation will become

The

14 a

permanent

Gift of

Tongues

and the friendship may turn

spiritual one,

to

enmity.

about us are thus bound together to each no wonder that words too should be felt by many people to have a similar powerful magical connection with things. A child named for a famous ancestor is in If the objects

other and to us,

some

it is

societies considered to stand in very close relation to his

progenitor's soul, or even to be a reincarnation of

the

name

is

personality

hand,

if

Giving

here tantamount to conferring a whole defunct

on

a living person. In other groups,

the ancestor

him to consumed by cause

it.

is still

on the other

alive, transfer of his

name

will

die in the near future, since his spirit will be the younger growing lad to

whom

it is

trans-

ferred with the name. If this

organic connection exists between things and the

terms for them,

it

becomes extremely important

to apply

would like to placate. Calling help to make them so. Invisible

friendly epithets to beings one

them

friendly will actually

who might be too dangerous should not be named at but only alluded to by elaborate indirection. Substitute phrases are used for the Nameless One; then these phrases themselves become too dangerous to handle, and are avoided like a lit charge of dynamite. Substitutes for the substitutes succeed one another, so that some parts of a people's vocabubeings

all,

lary

become almost

unintelligible through timorous circum-

from fear of word magic. A special sometimes developed by the women of a tribe, which the men do not dare to use. Words are used in twisted meanings in order to deceive evil spirits. A woman will say to her child, with false zeal: "You poor, squint-eyed, rickety, locution. It all springs

vocabulary

is

miserable changeling!" ing

demon from

The words

will discourage

any lurk-

stealing such a misbegotten creature;

the same time there

but

at

is some danger that the child will become what the words say he is. Verbal magic again! To prevent them from working so effectively, the mother will make some secret sign, such as crossing her fingers, which will check

exactly

Language

as

Communication

15

the sympathetic magic of language from operating directly

her child. In games children

still

on

cross their fingers to indi-

cate that they are saying the reverse of

what they mean, and

that the fib "doesn't count."

Examples of Magic

in

Language

Here are some examples of charms, prayers, and imprecations which illustrate the potency of words. They are not very ancient, having been recorded in recent historical times, but

they do suggest the atmosphere which probably surrounded

language at an early date. First, a

Roman

inscription, illiterate

but highly

effective,

which expresses someone's lively desire to cause the death of another man. The words fairly tumble over one another in an access of eager hatred: "Molo Porcelo molomedico interficite,

eum

occidite, enicate profucate Porcellu et Malisilla

usore ipsius!" Translated, this means: "Please kill Molus Porcellus the mule-doctor;

that

guy Porcellus— and

bump him (for

off,

croak him,

good measure)

kill

him,

his wife Malisilla

too!"

Just as intense is the imprecation which Schulze-Jena heard pronounced by a Quiche Indian in Guatemala: "Today I call on you, you cross of evil, and tell you this thing: So-and-so, a man who has money, he scorns me, and it gnaws at my vitals that he scorns me! Did I want anything from him? Did I want any of his money? Let him have it and welcome But today I Let him feel it now! Mountain of witchbewitch him. craft, cross of evil, I call on you. ... I call on a rocky cliff, I call on an abyss, on the hollow tree, on the clump grass, on 1

.

.

the thorn bush, see

and know:

repetitions

on"

is

is

I

.

on the wind and the

am

clouds, so that he

a master of witchcraft!"

The

may

effect of the

quite horrific in Quiche, for the phrase "I call

rendered each time

as

k-in-ch'ab-ekhj a

word

rich

in guttural sounds.

In a

poem written

in ancient Scandinavia during the Viking

The

16

Age we

Gift of

Tongues

find further lurid passages of this sort. Skirnir, the

messenger of the god Frey, utters the following curse on Gerth, a giantess who has been impudent enough to reject the god's

wooing: maid, with my magic To tame thee to work my will;

I strike thee,

There

The

On

shalt

where never again

thou go

men

sons of

shall see thee.

shalt thou ever

the eagle's hill

And

sit,

gaze on the gates of Hel;

More loathsome

to thee

than the bright-hued snake

To men, shall thy meat become. Survivals of

staff,

.

.

.

Word Magic

But we do not need

to

go to Rome, Guatemala, or ancient

Scandinavia in order to get a sense of the supernatural power attributed to the spoken word. This particular form of sympathetic magic, like the others mentioned, can be detected in

the people around us. Listen sharply to children at play in the streets of

New York and you may hear a dialogue

"What's your name?" "Puddin' Tane!— Ask

me

again and

I'll tell

like this:

you the same!"

"What's your number?"

"Cucumber 1"

The

second youngster

is

unwittingly repeating a time-

honored device for preventing an enemy from using the right name, or "number," even, to curse him by. Even so Odysseus replied falsely that his

name was "No Man" when

the blinded

Polyphemus asked him; and Sigurd the Volsung replied to the dying question of the dragon Fafnir: "The Noble Hart is my name, and I wander abroad a motherless man. I had no father as others have, and ever I live alone." The scribe who recorded

this in the

Poetic Edda, the great collection of early

Scandinavian verse about gods and heroes, added this note in prose: "Sigurd concealed his name because it was believed in

Language

as

Communication

17

olden times that the word of a dying man might have great power if he cursed his foe by his name."

Among

words are avoided out of a mixture of motives. Cumbersome and intentionally vague expressions are often substituted for the simple words "death" and "die." Here the reason is partly, no doubt, a courteous desire to avoid reference to topics presumed to be distasteful to the listener. Deeper still, however, are vestiges of fear that Death may respond too readily to the sound of his own name, and visit the heedless persons who use it. Hence the elaborate and (to the rational observer) cowardly-seeming phrases like "passed on" or "gone west" or "gone to their reward" for people who have died. Disease, too, is talked about by means of periphrases which betray personal apprehension as well as a sense of conversational etiquette. Magic awe is strongest where there is a

adults, certain

minimum

of scientific training, of course.

believes in the baleful

power

A woman who

of the evil eye will also tremble

sound of certain words of ill omen, believing that they can induce plague without the mediation of any germs known to the laboratory. Simple folk in various parts of the world who have vague or inaccurate ideas about paternity believe that mere phrases may bring about pregnancy in a woman; among them one is consequently apt to find cautious or veiled references to conception and gestation, as well as to wounds, blood, and death. This brief excursion into topics of magic and folklore has at the

perhaps enabled us to sense more vividly the aura of wonder

and

which most probably surrounded the use of words by early men. Despite their airy structure and evanescent nature, these meaningful sequences of sound must have been treated somewhat as were fingernails and spittle and shorn hair, which might be put to baleful use by an enemy. Utterance of the words gave power to the speaker; they were feared somewhat even by the most eager listener. They could be used along with other symbolic acts, it was believed, to control crops and weather and the animals of the chase. They could aid in fear

18

The

Gift of

Tongues

winning victory and in defeating death. They might arouse the dead and call spirits from the vasty deep. When chanted together they could induce a sense of profound well-being, of submergence and identification with the group. They could also shorten labor and speed a long march. They could extend men's memories, and enable sons to learn from their fathers what had happened before their time. When everything in the world was subject to magic, words were a most efficient

instrument of magic.

In a metaphoric sense they are instruments of magic still. Before telling more about them, it will be necessary to explain a few quite simple physiological facts about

way in which we make those purposeful sounds which go to make up words. Then it will be possible to explain what happens to words in the processes of change and development to which they are constantly being subjected while we talk. the

Sounds and Alphabets

2.

1.

SOUNDS

The Consonants you stop to become aware how you make the sounds which flow from you when you are talking, you are already half way to an understanding of the changes in any language at any If

time or place.

The

very nature of talking involves a lack of

on the part of the listener. He hears words from a different personal background, with a different set of experiences which color his reception of both the physical sounds and their meanings. And his attention may be distracted, too. In any event his thoughts are apt to be a step or so ahead of the words vibrating in the air at the moment, so that he does not take them in precisely as pronounced. Nor does the speaker actually hear his own words as he really says them, since he too is constantly thinking ahead as he speaks. There results a lack of complete coincidence between sounds intended and sounds made, a series of slight maladjustments and readjustments which inevitably cause change. During the course of centuries the changes become very perfect perception

great. Slowly or

more

rapidly, as the case

may

be, a language

be so transformed that the older written records are unwho wrote them. Such changes are by no means arbitrary. If we know the physiologiwill

intelligible to the descendants of those

sound production, we can actually reason back to the nature of the older sounds, and perhaps in some instances even foretell what our present sounds are about to become. Reasoning of this sort underlies much of the science of com-

cal basis of

19

The

20

Gift of

Tongues

parative linguistics. Although evanescent, speech can be cap-

tured and analyzed. It is

not necessary to go into an elaborate study of phonetics,

or the scientific analysis of sounds used in speech, to discover the

main

physical principles of

and a few

descriptions for

our purpose.

The

A

sound change.

few general

definitions of terms are quite sufficient

rest

is

really a matter of observation

and

common sense. Look

at

someone

talking,

obvious movements are

and you

made by

will see that the

his lips.

most

A number of sounds

made by them, either alone or in combination with other organs of speech. The technical name given to such sounds is labials. Examples are [p] and [b], 1 both made by blowing the are

because their formation

lips apart. Partly

children learn to

make

is

clearly visible,

labials easily.

Watch more closely for sounds from just inside the lips, and you will find that they are made by using the teeth in conjunction with the tongue. These are called dentals. In making English dentals the tongue does not usually strike at the teeth directly, but at a point on the hard ridge just behind them. The effect is slightly different, but not greatly so. In either event the sound is called a dental. Examples are [t] and [d]. Deeper in the throat and therefore more difficult to observe are the sounds made by elevating the back part of the tongue towards the back of the roof of the mouth (the "soft palate"); [k] and [g] are among the sounds made at this point. It has been suggested that many children find these more difficult to manage than the dentals, since they can catch glimpses of the tongue at work on the teeth, but not of its activity at the back where gutturals are made. Hence they tend to substitute dentals when trying to learn gutturals. They say "Turn to papa" for

"Come

to papa."

The

[p] gives

no trouble

at all at this

early stage.

In between a l

It is

[t]

and a deep

customary to enclose

square brackets.

letters

[k]

it is

possible to

make a higher

which represent phonetic values within

Sounds and Alphabets

21

sound, resembling a [k] but formed by the tongue up on the bony roof of the mouth. It resembles a [k] with a y (as in "yes") following

it.

In English

we hear

it if

the

word "key"

is

pronounced very high in the mouth; also in certain dialects where a gliding sound follows all k's as if the word "yes" were about to follow. An example is the local Southern American pronunciation of "car" as something like [k ar]. (The symbol [j] is used for the sound of y in English "yes.") For accuracy j

it is

customary

sound.

Probably

high or palatal

to use a separate letter for this

It is possible to

write

[c]

or [k] or [k

j

]

to express

it.

the best symbol since

it indicates that the sound comes from a different position in the mouth than [k]. A corresponding palatal exists for [g] when it is raised as if one were about to say a "yes" after it. This may be written as [j'] or

[c] is

really

[g]

or

[g>].

We now lips

have a whole

and retreating Labial

to the

sounds beginning with the back of the throat. Here they are:

series of

The

22

Gift of

Tongues

important tendency in language. Laziness of one sort or anmany changes in speech down through the ages.

other explains

The

drift

towards voicing the voiceless consonants has been

we

very strong at certain times in languages

Whether

voiceless or voiced, the

all

sounds so

know. far listed are

one respect: they are quickly made and quickly finished. If you try to prolong a p-sound you simply become red in the face as if you were very angry. So it is customary to refer alike in

to all of these [p, b,

t,

d, k, g] as stop

sounds, because they are

stopped quickly and cannot be prolonged.

There

is

a double set of sounds corresponding to the ones

already listed, and made in approximately the same positions, which we shall call continuants (others say spirants) because they do lend themselves to prolongation. The voiceless ones in English are the labial [f ] and the dental which we write "th" but which phoneticians write with the Greek character theta [0]. Other languages have in addition the voiceless prolonged palatal sound (as in German ich), written phonetically [cj, and the corresponding guttural (as in German Nacht), which is written with the Greek character chi [%]. The voiced sounds are in English the familiar labial [v] and the voiced dental "th" as in "this" (written [d] to keep it distinct from the voiced

sound in "think"). The two deeper sounds are the palatal [j] (made by voicing y> P>

!> 3>

>

J>

The

26 a stop

it is

between the

an entirely different one: a continuant made

teeth.

stand for a k or an of ours

Tongues

followed by a separate voiceless aspiration or breath-

[t]

ing [h];

Gift of

is

Again, in ordinary spelling the letter c s

a great handicap. Merely to avoid confusion

worth while

may

in pronunciation. This doubtful spelling

to use the

few extra symbols

listed

above in

it is

lin-

our orthography made use of them as a language would be much easier for children regular thing, our guistic discussion. If

and foreigners trying to write it correctly. A little practice in rewriting words in the scientific alphabet will bring home to you as never before what we really say in talking— which is, for English, perceptibly different from what we write.

SUMMARY TABLE OF CONSONANTS

Sounds and Alphabets

27

makes use of combinations and modifications of them which present some difficulties for our tongues. Among other innovations (from our point of view), Russians have

made

a

new

and additional set of consonants out of most of our plain ones by shifting them towards the palate. They possess not only [1, r, t, d], and so on, but also a second series of consonants made as if these were about to be followed by the glide-sound t d ] or [1', r', t', d']. It makes a real difference in [']: [P, r meaning whether one says [stal] or [stal ], since the former J

3

,

j

,

j

means "he stood" and the

latter "steel."

When

modifications

like the presence or absence of that small palatal glide

difference in

meaning in

we

a language,

say that

we

make

a

are dealing

with two quite different units of sound or phonemes; but when —as in English— it is felt that such minor variations of a given

sound are unessential to its meaningful use, we say that only one phoneme is represented by it. We recognize but one lsound in English for practical purposes; hence it is for us a single phoneme.

The Vowels

A description much more

of the vowel sounds familiar to us in English

is

complicated than an account of the consonants.

Here our orthography

is

even more confused.

tional symbols, the traditional a,

e,

i,

The

conven-

o } u, are so inconsistently

employed that they must drive foreign students to despair. In every one of the following words the letter a has a different phonetic value from each of the others: "play," "arm," "any," "cat,"

"amuse," "awful." Inconsistency could hardly go

far-

ther.

There are many tion.

One

historical reasons for this anarchic condi-

of the most important ones

is

the great respect with

which succeeding writers and printers treated the spelling first established by Caxton in the fifteenth century. The first presses, under his direction, made use of a final -e no longer pronounced even in his day, to show that the preceding vowel was spoken long, as in "take." Therefore we still write scores }

The

28 of

Gift of

unpronounced final -e's

Tongues

to the mystification of all foreigners.

Furthermore, English spelling has been disorganized by large

from many other languages. Some observers regard the archaic spelling of words like "knight" and "cough" as an endearing example of the Anglo-Saxon love of tradition. The causes must be explainable, but they do baffle the casual observer and render his way more thorny when he

numbers

is

of loan words

trying to learn "correct" orthography.

In the phonetic alphabet vowels are treated with more scrupulous care. In general the values given to the ters are those

the spelling relates lish. If

five

vowel

let-

accepted in Italian, Spanish, or German, where

more

consistently to sounds than in Eng-

you know one of these languages you will have no

further difficulty in recognizing the values in phonetic transcriptions.

For approximate English equivalents these words

will help: [i]

as in the

word "machine"

"

"

"

"

"they"

"

"

"

"

"so" (spoken as a single vowel)

[u] "

"

"

"

"rule"

[e]

father"

[q] [o]

Each of these may be prolonged. written with a colon after

it:

When

it is

long, a

[mi:] for "me."

vowel

is

Note that the

vowels are arranged as the consonants were, beginning with the ones

made high

in the front of the mouth, with the tip of and retreating to the low or back sounds. Notice, too, that as you pronounce the series in order, your lips change from a parallel to a rounded formation. Thus [u] is called a rounded vowel, and [i] is unrounded. Between [e] and [a] we have a "lowered e" written [e], which you can hear in positions where an [r] follows (or used to follow). The vowel in

the tongue,

"there" [de:(i)]is lower than the one in"they."(In French the

two sounds are spelled

e

and

e respectively.)

There

are a few

additional symbols needed to account for the other chief vowel

sounds in English:

Sounds and Alphabets [a] as

the

first

Tae] as in the

[u] [o:]

part of

word "cat" good" awe"

the final sound of

"

Other languages contain in English.

when

(a short

29

"I")

sound)

pin" (short)

[I]

3l

diphthong of

U P"

[A] r

(the

[ai]

They

reference

is

"Cuba" (unaccented,

still

short)

[kjubg]

further sounds, unrepresented

will be explained in the course of discussion

made

to

them.

Diphthongs

When

two vowels come together in a word they may be pronounced with the same expulsion of the breath or with two separate expulsions. In the former instance you have a diphthong (from Greek di-phthongos, or "sounded twice") in a single syllable: "gray" [g-iei] is an illustration. But when two vowels come together they may be in two separate syllables, as in the word "re-enter." Here you can detect the slight separation caused by the fresh impulse given to the expelled air on the second e: [ji'enta]. Vowels thus separated are not diphthongs. If you prolong a vowel beyond the length of time usual in normal speech, you will find it difficult to keep the sound pure. As in singing, the longer you make the quantity the more you are apt to modify the quality also. In English we generally assume that we pronounce a long clear [i:] in such words as "me" [mi:], but one can quite frequently hear an off-glide [ ] at the end of the sound: [mi: ]. The tongue appears to become restless at the prolonged maintenance of a single position, and shifts slightly towards the end. Such a tendency repeatedly J

1

causes "long" vowels to

become diphthongs. Actually, we don't

say "go" with a pure long vowel sound, but with a final round-

ing of the lips which gives [gou] as a result. Likewise the word

"they" contains a diphthong rather than the simple long

[e:].

Most persons say [dei]. In Cockney speech, diphthongs even become triphthongs through excessive prolongation. The ef-

The

go feet

Tongues

Gift of

supposed to be intrinsically humorous: at

is

least it is so

and playwrights, who themselves usually belong to a different class. They indicate the Cockney version of "now" as "naow" [nasou]. The Russian language, unlike English, has no "long" vowels; at least, none prolonged as we treat them in accented final position. Probably this is one reason why accented vowels have remained comparatively stable in Russian for many treated by novelists

centuries.

A

tendency opposite to lengthening, namely curtailment,

can also be noticed in the treatment of vowel sounds. Just as over-long vowels tend to become diphthongs, so diphthongs in rapid speech tend to become simple vowels (usually, but not always, long).

Many

of us say

"my"

[mai] without the second

element, in other words as [ma*], although on being chal-

lenged

we

usually deny the clipping vehemently. (The raised

dot means a semi-long vowel.) Lengthen the simplified sound a bit,

and you have something

pronunciation of the word. in

"now"

The

like the

Southern American

second part of the diphthong

[nau] often disappears, giving an abbreviated [no/],

occasionally even

[nas*].

to say vulgar, especially

The effect is distinctly colloquial, not when the vowel is nasalized by sending

part of the air through the nose. Because the speech habits of the majority of educated persons do not permit such simplifi-

cation of the diphthong,

[nas*] for

"now"

is

of low social standing. In the end, though,

accepted pronunciation,

if

considered a it

diphthongs in English becomes widely prevalent. nasality

is

not vulgar per se.

the

the tendency to simplify existent

ency has prevailed before now;

and Polish words are

mark

may become

it

may do

The same

The

so again.

tend-

Even the

effects in certain

French

classically correct.

Accent

When

sounds are put together in words, especially in long

some new elements appear in the situation. It would be very hard to pronounce a long word such as "circumstantially" ones,

Sounds and Alphabets in a dead even

31

manner, without varying the stress and level of we are accustomed to emphasize one or

musical pitch. Instead

two

melody while we speak. by placing the symbol

in a musical

fall

them more energy of emisand we permit the voice to rise and

syllables quite sharply, giving

sion than the others get,

Accent or

stress (indicated

the syllable to be emphasized)

may be important

[']

before

in determin-

ing the meaning of a word. "I shall re-'cord the 'rec-ord" shows

nouns and verbs expressing the same idea are at times distinguished only by the shift in accent— nothing more. Many pairs of words show this grammatical function of accent in that

English.

Think

"Now am and

of Shakespeare's I

cabined, cribbed, con-'fined" (Macbeth)

his

"Shall in these 'confines with a monarch's voice

Cry 'Havoc!' and

let slip

the dogs of war." (Julius Caesar)

Sometimes we tend

to shift accent

The usage is limited in English. pronunciation of

on words

It is

to

show emphasis.

exemplified in the variant

" 'absolutely" as "abso-'lutely"

tively" as "posi-'tively."

and of

Neither of these variants

is

" 'posi-

considered

"good" or accepted English. The principle they exemplify is important, however, in other languages, where shifted accent indicates a change in

meaning connected with emotional

stress.

Now you can

that see

we have surveyed the most important symbols, how a passage in transcription looks when com-

pared with conventional spelling:

The

phonetic alphabet

is

use-

you are learning new languages, and you wish to keep in mind the actual sounds by means of a system ful because

of

it's

characters

clear. If

scientifically

ar-

[da fo'netik 'aelfabet bi'kD:z

its

'kli:3(j).

if

iz 'jusful

ju a(j)

'b:(j)nir) nju: 'laerjgwi^z, aen ju ta ki:p in maind da 'aektjual saundz bai mi:nz av 3 'sistem 3v

wij

'kacjiktaz saian'tifikh 3'jeiri5d,it

The

32 ranged,

it

Gift of

will help you.

phonetic alphabet

is

The

even more

Tongues wil help ju. da fo'netik 'aelfabet izi:vnmo:(i)']usiu\io(j.)z'i2uinz

useful for a foreigner about to

g'bauttg'stAdi

study English, since our spell-

'spelirj iz

ing

is

most confusing.

It's

a good

thing for such a person to master a

phonetic transcription of

each word he learns, at least until

he's

accustomed to our

gud

0irj

'irjglij,

moust

smsau3(j)

kn'fjuzirj. its 9

fo(j) SAtJ 9 'p9:(i)sn ta

'maest9(j) 9 fo'netik tjaen'skjip

Jn

9 V i:tj W9:(j)d hi:

aet

li:st An'til

hi:z

b:(j)nz,

9'kAtmd

t9

au9

stjen3 o(j) 'Gagjifi.]

strange orthography.

Symbols in parentheses are pronounced by some speakers and not by others. There are of course

many

variations according

to local dialects.

Intonation Musical intonation, the melody of a sentence, can serve the

purpose of modifying meanings in a manner which requires special mention. It is ignored in ordinary phonetic transcriptions.

Commands and

much

as

questions can be detected by melody as by word order. In some languages the melody alone distinguishes between such sentences as "You are reading" and "Are you reading?" Furthermore, some languages make a permanent distinction of meaning between certain syllables spoken with a high pitch and exactly the same syllables spoken low. It might be a matter of life and death to distinguish

between

%

,nd

j

ma

if

* ma

In such cases the musical pitch has semantic value; that

is, it

changes the whole meaning of a syllable. In languages like

Chinese and

Mende

(an African dialect) there are a

number

of clearly distinguishable pitches with semantic connotations.

Writers

who wish

to indicate their musical value in

ing order standing for notes in

phonetic

number in ascendan ascending scale. The Mende

transcription use subscript numbers, each

Sounds and Alphabets

33

language, as studied by Ethel Aginsky, uses tonal patterns to differentiate

nyms, such

among words which would

otherwise be homo-

as

kpu 4 i^ 2 meaning "woodcock" D4

"

"swelling"

kpu 2 i3 2

"

"container"

kP u

4

1

An approximation of the relative intervals may be obtained in

m ^ m

musical notation:

j. wood cock

' swell

/ny

container

ht

kpa^

lo H

kpu z hi,

kpu* The

only analogous situation arises in English

intonation of the same

word

varies to

show

when our

a change in

emo-

tional attitude corresponding to differing grammatical func-

an unspoken sentence. You can say "Helen!" with a ." peremptory expression implying command, or "He— len with a reproachful down-glide on the first syllable, or "Helen?" with an inquiring upward inflexion. The printed page cannot tions in

.

.

indicate these differences satisfactorily, but musical notation

would

afford an impression of the differences:

MP

-

Helen!

To show how much

i

1 He... ten the intonation implies,

P

Helen ? we have only

to

expand the three forms of address into the sentences they stand for. According to context, they may mean: "Helen! Come here!" or "Helen How could you do it?" or "Helen! What are you doing?" The music of the word may imply a whole predication about Helen's charm or misbehavior or dilatoriness. When you are learning a foreign language, it is .

.

.

The

34 worth while

Tongues

Gift of

to identify

and

practice the typical sentence pat-

tern of intonation that goes with

it.

The melody

will rise to

your ears above the current of a general conversation that is as it yourself will help you to

yet unintelligible to you. Using

achieve what as

popularly called a good "accent" quite as

is

much

the proper formation of the individual sounds in a word.

Speech Habits

in

Languages

Each language

is

marked by some dominant speech

Certain types of sounds are avoided, both individually

have seen) and in

clusters.

Others are preferred.

A

j

(as

we

Russian

tongue finds no difficulty in forming the combination beginning of the word ['mst i-tel ], meaning "avenger." 3

habits.

at the

To

us

would probably be more than awkward to a native of Hawaii, whose maternal tongue favors open syllables ending in vowels, and eschews the group [mst]

is

at least mildly

awkward.

It

the grouping of heavy consonant sounds together without

intervening vowels.

The

Polynesian languages, besides, are

conspicuously inclined to the use of identical syllables in repetition, as in

hula-hula and "Waikiki." This particular config-

uration of sounds in a word

comparatively

little

of

it

is

known as reduplication. We have Words like "mama" and

in English.

"papa" and "tomtom" are obvious examples. Reduplication is one of many devices conspicuously employed in some languages and avoided in others. It must not be thought, however, that the tendencies and preferences of languages for certain patterns of sound are fixed and unchanging things. And it is really inaccurate to talk of a language itself as "preferring" one type of configuration over another.

We mean that the people who actually speak the lan-

guage have themselves eliminated one type or built up another. It is always dangerous to talk about a language as a living

from those who speak it. The changes in speech made by speakers, not by disembodied forces or tendencies in the language. Our task is to find out when and, if possible, why the changes occurred.

entity apart

are

Sounds and Alphabets

35 The historical development of consonant clusters in Russian is a case in point. They were not always there. From its earlier history we know that the first three sounds of ['mst i-tel did J

j

]

not always form a single group. Originally a vowel existed be[s], as we can surmise, in fact, from the [m est ] meaning "revenge." Though we

tween the [m] and the cognate simple word

j

j

may

feel now that difficult consonant groups are "typically Russian" and in some mysterious way express the "Slavic soul,"

there

The

is

nothing essentially soulful or sempiternal about them.

lack of accent simply caused loss of the

was once a

trisyllabic

form

^mes-'ti-tel*]. 1

first

vowel in what a long devel-

Thus

many individual words was necessary to produce the groupings now felt to be characteristic of Russian, Czechish, opment

in

and other Slavic tongues. In the same way, the use

common

in other languages of vowels as the

may have arisen out of an which consonants were the most usual final sounds, but were later slurred and finally lost. Italian, with its characteristic vowel endings, developed from Latin, which used final consonants more freely. "He doesn't like my mother" was in Latin "Meant matrem non amat," or more colloquially "Illam meam matrem non amat"; in Italian we have "Non ama la mia madre." The final [t]'s and [m]'s were lost, and the resulting sentence became as a result more "liquid" and musical to our ears, because more vocalic. most

endings for words

earlier situation in

2.

SYSTEMS OF WRITING: ALPHABETS

Picture Writing

Now

that

we have reviewed

the sounds most

commonly used

in speech, together with the conditions of accent affecting them,

and pitch

be interesting to look at some of the devices which have been employed throughout history to it

will

record them in writing.

We

must remember that written

ords have been very recent in man's cultural history. For 1

An

asterisk before a

word

indicates that

it is

written in what

rec-

many

we presume

be an earlier form, deduced from existing forms but nowhere recorded.

to

The

36

Gift of

Tongues

ages languages have been developing, expanding, merging,

changing, and disappearing in

of the world without

all parts

Many are as if they had never been, who spoke them had no method of put-

leaving any trace behind.

because the ting

lost tribes

them down

whole of man's

The

first

is,

in relation to the

modern

invention.

attempts to express ideas graphically belong to the

history of art.

way

Writing

for future ages.

history, a comparatively

The

to a sentence.

entire picture of an act corresponds in a

We

have

all

heard the anecdote so famous

in the chronicles of journalism about an editor anxious to

explain the nature of "news" to a young reporter.

He

did so

"Dog bites man; that's not news; man bites news!" The humorous inversion can be expressed

epigrammatically:

dog— that's

quite clearly in pictures.

A

medieval scribe did in

fact

once

draw a picture presenting such a comical situation graphically. At the bottom of a page on one of the manuscripts formerly displayed at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, a visitor could have

huntsman setting out to chase a timorous hare; next to it he was shown the hare suddenly reversing the chase and pursuing the man, who is forced to climb a tree with all the symptoms of comical distress plainly visible on his face. The humor of the inversion emerges withseen a lively

out words.

little

It

sketch showing a bold

corresponds quite clearly to a grammatical inver-

sion of sentence parts (subject

Early history, that

is,

a sequence of pictures

and

verb).

straight narrative, can

which yield

dents with a fair degree of clarity.

their

be recorded in

meaning

to later stu-

We know most of the impor-

tant events in the lives of certain royal personages

who

lived in

Mexico before the Spaniards because they left such picture chronicles. Herbert J. Spinden has been able to decipher the career of a princess

named

Six

Monkey

living in the Toltec

from the pictured accounts of her in one of the preConquest codices. She was, it seems, much sought in marriage. One of her suitors, named One House, received a rebuff when he came hopefully bearing gifts. The picture units give mean-

region,

ings equivalent to the following English sentences:

"A

suitor,

Sounds and Alphabets One House,

brings presents to

37

Nine Wind and Ten

Eagle, the

parents of Six Monkey, living at Cloud-Belching Mountain,

but Six Monkey turns her back on him."

Reproduced from Herbert G. Spinden's "Indian Manuscripts of Southern Mexico," Smithsonian Institution Reports 1935, p. 436.

The

wooer's discomfiture

is

eloquently expressed, as

is

the

maiden's rebuff, by means of posture.

Such ideas

as

wooing, fighting, and rejecting— "turning one's

back" on someone— can be depicted unambiguously by

method. The separate groups of

figures expressing

this

one simple

idea each are called pictographs.

Hieroglyphs It is

easy to

make such

units a bit

more conventional and

generalize the ideas they represent. Stylizing of pictures first

is

to

the

step to conventional writing. In the Egyptian hieroglyphs

or sacred carvings this stage

leaning on a

staff is

is still

apparent.

used to represent

A figure of a man

*^ the idea "old

man";

but it is also used for the related l/i ideas "age, old; lean upon." At this point the picture may be called an ideograph. A more symbolic one, which is nevertheless still an ideograph rather than a letter, liquid, or

is

the figure/wv\ indicating water

any action connected with water.

hieroglyphs, "sacred characters,"

is

The

and

general term

used because such ideo-

graphic writing originated with a priestly caste.

Now

it

happens that Old Egyptian was very rich in homo-

The

38

Tongues

Gift of

nyms, or words (largely monosyllables) identical in sound with other words, like our

own

and "be." Therefore

it

pair "road" and "rode," or "bee" was possible for an ideograph to do

duty not only for the word pictured, but for too.

all its

homonyms

For example, the word kha meant "lotus" and was repre-

sented by the picture of this flower^ the numeral 1000.

The word djeba

\

but

meant

"finger,"

but also

way

of writ-

it

the numeral 10,000. Therefore the conventional

^JMl

ing "32,000 cattle was

three fingers plus two lotuses. Notice that the idea

"oxen: 32,000" instead of "32,000 oxen."

comes

first

in Egyptian.

The

familiar to us in the drawing

meant

itself;

The

an ox plus is

expressed

limiting image

principle employed

room game

also

is

the one

of charades.

Letters In some

cases,

true letter: that

however, a symbol in Egyptian served as a is, it

represented the same sound wherever

appeared, regardless of sense.

An example is the symbol Certain simple and complex sounds in various languages are to be explained as the result of palatalization. It cult to reconstruct the unpalatalized consonant

had a 4

little practice.

Words

in

The sounds in question are,

Modern English beginning with

[sk-]

is

not

diffi-

when you have in addition to

are loan words, mostly from

Scandinavian languages. They were imported into English in large numbers at the time of the Danish invasions, from the eighth to the eleventh centuries.

Examples are "sky,"

"skull," "skill," "skirt."

[sk]-sound; Swedish has palatalized

it

to

[J].

Modern Danish has preserved

the

Kaleidoscope of Sound [Jl :

[*!]> [^3]'

[

ts ]»

The

[J]-

palatalized

185

group

is

common

in

Modern

Castilian Spanish shows [yj and [0] resulting from palatalization. Some languages, like American Spanish

Russian.

and Modern French develop [s], as in the words cielo,

a palatalized [k ciel

j

]

all

the

way

from Vulgar Latin

to

an

*cjelo,

"heaven."

Some examples [t] is

followed by

make

will

the development clearer.

When

"Tube"

[tjub]

readily

[j] it

becomes

[tj]].

you are not careful; or it may become a simple [s]. The development into [0] is more likely for Spanish tongues. Examples of the various possibilities are afforded by an unaccented syllable [-tja] in a Vulgar Latin word *platja (from older plated) meaning an open square or slides easily into [tfjub] if

public place.

It

became

Italian piazza ['pjatrsa:],

German Platz,

French place, Spanish plaza. Another possibility is the development of [tj] into the similar combination [tj]. The Russian word for "tea," derived from Chinese te, is chai [t/ai]. When [k] is followed by [j] or even [i] or [e] it is first raised to [c] and then shifts frequently to other palatal sounds such as [tj], later possibly to [j] or, as we have just seen, even to [s].

name show these possibilities with Spanish employing [G] here also. German kept an unpalatalized form in Kaiser. In English we occasionally find both palatal Romance forms

of Caesar's

and unpalatal forms of the same initial consonant: for instance, chart and card (older carte); cattle and chattel. The variety is due to the fact that English borrowed from more than one dialect of French in the Middle Ages. The Parisian dialect had palatalized [k] to [tj] even before an [a]. Old English also vowel then was introduced; the [j] consonant itself was changed. Even Latin words showed this transformation if they were borrowed early enough. Roman camps had been called by the name castra in Latin; this term was adopted early by the Anglo-Saxons and developed from

transformed

initial [k]-sounds if a front (or fronted)

followed them. First the glide

[kastra] to [kaestr] to [cjaester] to [t/jaester], written ceaster.

Hence our

suffix "chester" in place

names

like Westchester.

1

The

86

Gift of

Tongues

So "cheese" has come from a Vulgar Latin *caseo, and "chamber" from camara (with dissimilation). Germanic *kerl be-

came Anglo-Saxon

The

palatalized

ceorl [t/jorl],

form of

modern English

[d] can

"churl."

be heard frequently in con-

temporary pronunciation of "due," which is at times almost identical with "Jew" [d3Ju:]. An example is modern Italian raggio [fad3:jo], from Latin radius, *radio. The sound has been obscured in French to a mere [j], as in Old French rai from the same Latin form. Other palatalized consonants, like [bj], and even original [j] alone, can give rise to the sound [d3]. This sound [d3] was fairly common in Old French. When we borrowed it in French words at an early date we have kept it, as in words like "judge" from juge [d3yd39]. But in recent times the French have simplified [d3] to [3], so that more recent loans from that language appear with the softer sound; for instance, rouge (which comes from rubeus, *rubjo with palatalized [b]).

Other consonants which are often affected by a neighboring palatal are [1], [n], [g]. For instance, [lj] has been reduced to a simple [j] in French words like merveille (from mirabilia). Spanish changed the combinations [pi, kl] at the beginning of a word into [lj], which in Latin America is pronounced simply as [j]. Words like plorare, clamare, meaning "to weep," "to call out" simplified first to llorar, llamar, and are now spoken as [ljo'rar, lja'mar] in Castile, but |p'rar, ja'mar] in South and Central America. An original [lj] in Latin, however, such as is contained in mulier ("woman") gave the sound [%]: mujer. Palatalized [n], or [ri], does not undergo very spectacular transformations. It is similar to the initial sound of our word "new" [nju:], and is familiar in "canyon" or canon, a Spanish word. As for [gj], exemplified in Vulgar Latin *legione, its development into [d3, 3] appears in such words as French legion, English "legion," Italian leggione. Old Spanish often eliminated [g] before a palatal vowel: hermano, "brother," comes from *gi ermano.

Kaleidoscope of Sound

187

Aspiration, or Strong Breath Explosion is, finally, another situation within a word which is apt make consonants change. Strong aspiration of stop consoto nants like [p, t, k], when expelled as if [h] came after them,

There

will tend to shift

them into

the rank of continuants.

Germanic ancestors began to explode these sounds k

h ],

[f,

%].

0,

A

form

up

like *piskis (from

in

you aspirate the

self

as [p

h ,

t

h ,

they initiated a development which eventually produced

derived) turns If

When our

which Latin

piscis

was

Germanic (Gothic) as fisks, English "fish." sound of "true" you may find your-

initial

saying "through"; likewise an aspirated "please"

may

The statement of a whole series of soundwhich occurred in Primitive Germanic, is known as Grimm's Law. 5 For an example of two forms of [p], h both aspirated and not, observe the word "peept" [p i:pt], sound

like "fleas."

changes like

this,

preterite of "peep."

The

initial

consonant keeps

its

aspiration

because a vowel follows; the second [p] loses it because a following consonant blocks it off. It is the first, or aspirated [p] in this word which may become [f] if you explode it too strongly.

Reconstructing Sounds by a knowledge of general tendencies such as these that we are able to surmise the nature of an older language, even one that perished without being written down. ReasonIt is partly

ing backwards from the sounds preserved in living languages 5

The

full

statement

aspirated or not,

is

this:

became the

the voiceless stops [p, voiceless continuants

t,

[f,

k], d,

whether originally

xY>

tne voiced sto P s

voiceless stops [p, t, k]; the somewhat problematical sounds represented as [bb, dh, gh] became [b, d, g]. Curiously enough, a similar shift occurred in Armenian. Just as Germanic shifted original [d] to [t], as exemplified [b, d, g]

became the

"two" beside Latin duo, so Armenian also substitutes [t] for the same sound. Here the word meaning "I give" is tarn, cognate with Latin dare and Russian dam, "I shall give." The word cognate with Latin genus is [cin], showing the same sort of shift we have in English "kin." For reference to comparable consonant changes in Hebrew, see chapter 3, note 3. in

The

188

Gift of

Tongues

and knowing in general the reasons for shifts, scholars make a very good guess about the phonological aspect of the parent Indo-European speech. They are aided today,

are able to

in their surmises, of course, by loan words into non-Indo-Euro-

pean tongues at an early date, and by the earliest records of the most archaic descended languages. These give concrete evidence for a period soon after the scattering of sections of the linguistic family.

Consonants and Vowels of Indo-European

The consonants are not difficult to reconstruct,

since they have

been comparatively stable. It is thought that the parent language contained [p, t, k] (both aspirated and unaspirated), [b, d, g], and a series of sounds, possibly spirants or continuants, which are represented in textbooks as [b b d h gh ]. Their exact nature is not clear; but they correspond to a series of consonants in Old Indian in which an aspiration really was heard after the voiced stops. There were in addition the series of nasals [m, n, ji, rj], and the liquids [1, r] which could serve either as vowels or consonants. (In exactly the same way [1] is a vowel in our word "table" but a consonant in "tabulation.") The sound [s] also existed; and [z] developed from it in certain positions. The semi-vowels [j, w] must have been ,

close to

[i,

,

u] in pronunciation.

The most important vowels were apparently [a, e, o], both long and short. The other two, [i, u], were most conspicuously used to form second, thongs such as

[ei,

less stressed,

elements in falling diph-

eu, oi, ou].

Examples of Indo-European Sounds Here are some examples of words in related languages which have preserved consonants from Indo-European: [p] in Latin pater, Greek pater; cf. English "paternal." [t] in Latin tres, Greek treis; cf. English "tri-une." [k] in Latin clepo,

maniac."

Greek klepto

("I steal"); cf.

English "klepto-

Kaleidoscope of Sound [b] in Latin

Greek

baculum,

meaning

baktron;

189

English

cf.

"bacillus,"

"little staff."

[d] in Latin dens, dentis,

Greek o-don, o-dontos;

cf.

English "den-

tal."

[g] in

Latin genus, Greek genos;

Shifting of

Vowel Sounds

cf.

in

a fairly

6

Indo-European

Although vowels are notoriously

we have

English "generic."

than consonants,

less stable

clear picture of their behavior in parent Indo-

European.

For one thing, we know that they were subject to change according to the movements of the accent in various related

forms of the same word or root. served in

Modern

differences in vowel

The same

changes can be ob-

English. Take, for instance, the striking

sound which

result

from

shift of accent in

these two words: [defVniJn]

[di'fain]; definition

define

[9'djes]; address

address (verb)

(noun)

Sometimes a polysyllabic word may have over as

many

history

['aedjes]

accent shifted

its

as three syllables in various forms: historic

['hist.ii];

[his'tojik];

historicity [histgj'isiti]

memory

['mem(9)ji]

;

memorial [ma'mojial];

memorability [memajg'biliti]

In all of these variations we observe, once more, that stressed vowels are clearly preserved, and unstressed ones are reduced or disappear entirely.

Throughout the declensions and con-

jugations of the parent Indo-European language, vowels be-

haved in the same way. They were clear if the accent fell on them, but became diminished or even eliminated entirely if the accent was moved away. They could be lengthened, too, if OThe

English words are of course not native, but borrowed from the classical When cognate words appear in the Germanic heritage of English

languages.

they have been shifted. For instance the native English words corresponding to pater

and

tres are "father"

and "three." See note

4.

The

190

Gift of

Tongues

a following syllable completely disappeared

These

shifts are

known

as gradations.

from lack of stress.

The names

for the vari-

ous stages are: lengthened, normal, reduced, and vanishing gradation. In the that

we

word

"history," for instance,

in extremely elaborate discourse the o

which we

shows normal gradation of the same

here accent insures

and

its clarity;

said

possibilities

is

spell so

The

"his-

syllable, since

we have

in "historicity"

the same sound in reduced gradation.

shifts

may be

from speech. The related word

carefully has vanished torical"

it

use vanishing gradation of the middle vowel. Except

entire range of

termed quantitative gradation. 7 The various

have affected quantity or length.

The

principles of gradation have really been discussed

above, under the general heading of lengthening and shortening.

They were not

different in

Indo-European from the same

Modern English. But IndoEuropean appears to have made thorough and systematic use of them. Diphthongs were subject to the same processes of lengthening and eliminating as normal single vowels. The only difference was that "vanishing gradation" of a diphthong meant elimination only of the first element, so that the unaccented form of [ei] or [oi] was [i], and of [eu] or [ou] was [u]. general principles operating in

Examples of Vowel Change or Gradation Certain words in English have come

show

traces of gradation dating

down

to us in

example: there was a root *pet- which meant "to

mal form 7

of

it

was used

to

The term used by German

forms which

back to Indo-European. For fly."

The nor-

make a word *petna, "feather," which

writers for gradation

is

Ablaut. In addition to

quantitative gradation, Indo-European also employed qualitative gradation in

words of the same

root. It

is

clear that Latin tegere, "to cover,"

is

related to

Greek legere "to speak" with logos "a word." In both cases there is normal gradation, but the quality is different. Such alternation (the French call it alternance vocalique) was used, among other things, to show change of tense. In Greek it is still clear: the diphthong [ei] alternates with [oi] and a vanishing form [1] in verbal forms. In English we still have qualitative gradation in our strong verbs, "sing, sang, sung" (from *seng\ songh, sngh). toga, "a covering robe";

Kaleidoscope of Sound

191

However, when a word was constructed mean "winged," the accent was placed

in Latin became penna. 8

from the same root to on the ending, and as a result the root syllable lost its vowel. The word appeared as Greek pteros, which is used by us in learned Greek compounds like "pterodactyl," meaning "wingfingered." Here loss of accent has put the root into the vanishing gradation, leaving nothing but the difficult combination [pt].

In the same way *gen, meaning "to know," appears in

vanishing gradation in the word "gnosis"

(a heretical belief).

Latin s-umus "we are" represents vanishing gradation of a root *es-,

meaning "to

be."

Various forms of a root *peh or *ple have produced words

Greek polu ("many," as and by Grimm's Law "full"

like "complete/' "plenty," fix "poly-syllabic"),

in our pre(since the

became [f]). When loss of a vowel left a liquid or same syllable, it could assume the function of a vowel like the [1] in our word "table." Later it might develop a new vowel, somewhat as we do when we say "fillum" for

original [p] nasal in the

"film." English has developed a short [u] before such liquids

and nasals in syllables representing vanishing gradation. Hence the vowel in our word "full," from Indo-European *plnos, appears as [u]. Our prefix "un-," meaning "not," comes from an older *n alone, vanishing gradation of some syllable like *en. In Latin the same vanishing gradation produced in-. The Germanic form exists in our word "unlikely"; the Latin form in "incontrovertible." Both alike go back to an unaccented form which had lost its vowel completely but later developed a secondary or "parasitic" vowel sound. If you see a short [u] before [1, r, m, n] in a Germanic word, like "sung" or "drunk," you can assume that it goes back to a form with no vowel at all: that is, vanishing gradation, with the liquid or nasal doing the work of a vowel. All of this is the same in principle as the gradation in living English words like "history" and "historicity." 8

Our

[t],

English "feather" contains the same root, with the consonants, [p] and

transformed by Grimm's law to

[f]

and

[6]

respectively.

The

192

Gift of

Tongues

Practical Uses of Phonology

These are the chief principles involved in the phonological changes of a language. When you have mastered them you will be able to make many canny guesses about words you encounter in foreign languages. To take an obvious case: you will see that the word "Nazi" ['na:tsi], an abbreviation of NationalSocialist when pronounced German fashion, contains a form of palatalization of the sound combination [t ]. When you j

learn in Russian that the

search for")

is

ishchu

first

person singular of is'kaO ("to

you will remark: "Quite underremember: the first person singular has

[i/t/ j u],

standable and easy to

merely palatalized the

-sk-

of the infinitive."

pleasures of learned specialists,

who must

You can share the much time to

devote

reconstructing lost forms, and at the same time hasten your acquisition of living languages.

painfully slow for most people

What makes

language study so

is the seeming absence of logical arrangement in the patterns of sound. It is true that at best one must rely very largely on mere memory. Nevertheless, knowledge of sound changes often tells you what to expect in various forms of a word to be studied. It helps you to guess relations intelligently, and by putting order in the place of arbitrariness it makes your task of learning more pleasurable. The reward is surely worth the effort required to grasp the sound changes as a whole.

8.

Life-History of the English Language

Importance of Studying English Historically Very often throughout

this

book

it

has been necessary to ex-

modern words or expressions by reference to earlier forms. Our English language is in fact such a curious mixture from many sources that a brief sketch of its biography plain puzzling

really essential to an understanding of its structure today. Moreover there is an interesting parallel to be drawn between the development of the language and the vicissitudes of the

is

people speaking

it.

If

we

trace the history of English,

we

shall

observe historical relationships which also obtain in the

his-

tories of other languages.

The Roman Period Under the later Roman emperors, as everyone knows, Britain was a Roman province with a flourishing colonial culture. The population was predominantly Celtic, to be sure, and spoke a

language akin to modern Welsh. (See chapter native dialect cities

no doubt

grew up about former

Roman

families,

habitually.

patrician

They did

so

3, p. 56.)

The

persisted in the countryside, but the

Roman camps and

included

many

and plebeian, who used Latin

even when they intermarried with the

employed them as workers and slaves. All the amenities of Latin culture were enjoyed in the cities of this distant province: baths, forums or market places, comfortable villas with plumbing and tessellated floors, schools of rhetoric, theaters, and libraries. The Roman army was famous for making itself at home and mingling with native populations British or

193

The

194

Gift of

everywhere, with or without

indeed

much

Tongues

official formalities.

It

deserves

of the credit for spreading Vulgar Latin as an

international language

among

the

ancient world. Cultured Britons were

common people of the Roman citizens and used

the recognized dominant language of the empire with slight

due time they were adopting the new religion, which was rapidly becoming the chief Roman

modifications. In Christianity,

faith in the fourth century.

The Anglo-Saxons The ancestor of the English language appeared first in Albion when some tribes from Northern Germany, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, began to harry the shores and invade the island. This happened in the middle of the fifth century a.d. The raids were

movement known to historians folk migrations. From the shores

part of a larger diffuse

as the

Volkerwanderung or

of the

Black Sea to the coasts of Britain, the northern boundaries of the

Imperium Romanum were harassed by

restless

Germanic

peoples: Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Franks, Langobards,

Burgundians, and the so-called Anglo-Saxons,

hold within the provinces.

many reasons, and

the

who sought foot-

Roman resistance was weakened for

Germanic peoples were able

to establish

themselves in the heart of some of the most fertile sections.

The

when the Angles and Saxons began The mother cities, Rome and Constantinople, could give no help. More than that: Rome was obliged

struggle was at

its

height

the invasion of Britain.

to call

on the

British provincial

army

to give aid

on the

conti-

By the year 500 the Germanic invaders were established. There was an end of the sophisticated urban culture of the Romans, with their debates and theaters, their laws, government, army, and incipient nent. So Britain was doubly exposed.

Christian Church.

The newcomers were

pagans, worshipers of

Woden and

other Teutonic gods. Their organization was tribal rather than

urban. They were described by contemporaries as tall, blond, and blue-eyed. In the early days of the "Germanic peril" it had

Life-History of the English Language been the fashion for

Roman

matrons

195

dye their hair or wear

to

By this time, however, no mere subject for coif-

wigs in imitation of barbaric blondness.

become grim

the threat had feurs'

The

earnest;

modes.

Germanic tribes about 450 a.d. were closely alike. They might more properly be called dialects of a General Germanic tongue shared by all, as English

languages spoken by

now

is

ing world.

the

divided into dialects throughout the English-speak-

The Germanic dialects had

sprung from a tive

all

in turn, as

fairly unified (lost) ancestor

we have

which we

call

seen,

Primi-

Germanic.

Early Old English

We have no written documents in the Anglo-Saxon or Old English of the first

few hundred years. Later, when Christianity was

re-established in Britain in the early seventh century, schools,

books, and the art of writing followed

it.

From two

sources the

newly converted Anglo-Saxons received instruction in these amenities. The missionaries from Rome acted as pedagogues chiefly in the south, in the kingdoms of Kent, Sussex, Wessex, and Mercia. In

quiDEi

Northumbria some excellent work was done by Irish Christian missionaries, whose influence was felt in places like Lindisfarne, Yarrow, and Whitby. The alphabet taught here shows clearly its kinship with the Old Irish characters still used in

Modern of

Gaelic.

Old English

The

first

blooming

manual TIVTITTTrVPnilTTT

LIaUU LUKI/IhA

Reproduced

from

the

Lindisfarne Gospels. Cotton Nero D.

iv,

folio 139.

literature occurred

in this north country in the latter seventh and the eighth centuries. To the northern English schools of writing belonged Cynewulf, Caedmon, the Venerable Bede (who, like Alcuin,

wrote in Latin), and the

poems were written on

unknown author

of Beowulf. Epic

the native heroic pagan traditions,

and

The

ig6

Gift of

Tongues

Christian themes were also treated in lyrical and heroic style

—all in the Northern dialect. Unfortunately this glorious

promise was cut short by the violence of the Danish invasions, beginning at the end of the eighth century. Monastic schools

were reduced

to

smoking

ruins, the learned writers scattered

or killed, and precious manuscripts were destroyed.

West Saxon

A revival of letters occurred later, onslaughts of the Danes, in the Alfred.

The

among

his followers.

clergy his

had sunk into

means

of

Wessex under King

king was acutely aware of the need for education

wish "that

cient

despite the persistent fierce

kingdom

all

According to

his

own

account, even the

a distressing condition of illiteracy. It

the freeborn youth of England

to devote themselves thereto,

be

who have

set to

was

suffi-

learning so

long as they are not strong enough for any other occupation, until such time as they can well read English writing. Let those

be taught Latin

promote

to

whom

higher

it is

proposed to educate further, and

office."

The language spoken by Alfred and his court was the Wessex or West Saxon dialect of Old English. It may be compared to Modern German in respect to declensions, for in both there are nouns with four

cases in the singular

and

plural.

There were

approximately half a dozen different schemes of declension. In

Modern German it is necessary to know what declension a noun "belongs to" in order to give

it

the proper forms in a sentence

(according to use or "construction"); this too was true of Old

The

similarity of pattern is clear if one compares the two cognate or related words meaning "stone," a masculine noun:

English.

inflection of

Life-History of the English Language There are reasons for the However, the kinship is conservative

A Roman

first

197

differences to be noted in the plurals. clear enough.

Modern German

is

a

cousin of Old English.

missionary trying to learn Anglo-Saxon for pur-

poses of persuasion

had

to

terns to follow with every

remember which of about six patnew noun acquired. It would have

been felt to be a bad blunder if, for instance, he had used the "-e" ending of the plural of a feminine noun to make a plural for stdn. In precisely the same way Americans who learn Ger-

man

are constantly in danger of falling into barbarous error

if

wrong pattern in inflecting a newly acquired noun. Since articles and adjectives presented forms for every case, gender, and number, and each form had to be carefully chosen so as to agree with the coming noun, the difficulty was they choose the

greatly increased.

A

Latin-speaking missionary might find

all

this entirely

natural and understandable, since his native speech was also

highly inflected, but he would have been puzzled by the exist-

ence of two separate and distinct declensions for

all adjectives,

and the "weak." The former was used when the "good man"; the latter demonstrative article or came before the adjective, as when an in "the good man." Latin had no such distinction, but German had and still has: the "strong"

adjective alone preceded a noun, as in

STRONG SINGULAR DATIVE godum marine O.E.

Germ,

"[to] good man" gutem Manne

WEAK SINGULAR DATIVE godan manne "[ to tne g°°d men" dem guten Manne pd'?n

]

Old English Verbs In the system of verbs one can see

many resemblances

be-

tween Old English and German. Both languages show a large number of verbs, called "strong," which indicate changes in tense by internal vowel change. The pattern is a very ancient one based on the vowel gradations of the old parent language

198 (Indo-European). pattern: INFINITIVE

The

Gift of

Some words

Tongues

still

show the

basic similarity of

Life-History of the English Language

199

help you learn German. Moreover, even the vowels show

fairly

The Old

Mod-

consistent parallelism.

ern

German ei, pronounced

[ai],

English a

[a:] parallels

in a multitude of words:

start,

Stein (stone); ban, Bein (bone); an, ein (one), etc. So with the

Old English diphthong ea [e:a] and Modern German au [au]: heap, Haufen (heap); leapan, laufen (run, leap); eac, auch useful to compile your

(also, eke). It is

own

list

as

you proceed.

To

be sure, minor changes in both languages have by now obscured some of the neat correspondences. Old English was particularly prone to assimilations of various sorts: palatalizations

which changed [k] into [tj*]— as you will note in the pair Kirche—and subtle changes in vowels, also

of words "church,"

The causes of these changes bewhen the Old English forms are com-

of an assimilatory character.

come apparent,

usually,

pared with others in the related Germanic dialects. For practical purposes Modern Dutch is even more useful than Modern

German

in showing family similarities.

A few lines of Old English, illustrate

Ond

some of the

Pharaones dohter cwaed

to hire:

"Underfoh

fed hit me,

ond

f)is

cild

ond

ic sylle \>e {rine

mede." J>aet wif underfeng ^one cnapan, ond hine fedde ond sealde Pharaones dehter.

Ond heo hine lufode ond haefde for sunu hyre, ond his

naman

"For{)am{)e

Moises, ic

nemde

ond cwaed:

hine of waetere

genam."

Exodus

from a Biblical

translation, will

characteristics of the language:

And

Pharaoh's

x

daughter

quoth to her: "Receive this child and feed it (for) me, and I (shall) give thee thy meed." The woman took the boy and fed him and gave (him) to Pharaoh's daughter,

And

she loved

(him) as her son,

him and had and named his

name Moses, and quoth: "Because I took him (out) of water."

2:9-10

(Literal translation)

Connections with Indo-European

Even in this short passage there are a few words which show the more remote kinship of Old English with languages outside l

Note that K,

eim which

hem (confusingly The loans show the intisettlers who must have been

gradually displaced Old English hie, hiera, like the singular

macy

finally

masculine pronoun).

achieved by northern

at first bitterly resented.

Late Old English By the end of the Old English period, then, England had what might be called a recognized literary language, already used for several hundreds of years for important creative and translated writings. By the year 1000, however, certain changes were beginning to affect the literary language. The multiplicity of endings was gradually being reduced. Cases originally kept distinct were beginning to fall together with identical terminations. You could no longer be sure, without relying more and more on context, whether a given form meant a dative singular or a dative plural. If the confusion was appearing in formal documents written by men at least semi-learned, it was no doubt

far

more widespread among

the unlearned.

And

very

soon the process of confusion or leveling was speeded up by

an important

political event.

The Norman Conquest In 1066, as every school child knows, England was invaded and

conquered by William, Duke of Normandy, commonly called "the Bastard." He used as pretext a doubtful claim to the Eng-

crown after the death of Edward the Confessor, "last of the Saxon Kings." The army attendant upon William was chiefly composed of Normans, men speaking a provincial dialect of French but related by blood to the Danes. Their forefathers, most of them, had migrated from Scandinavia and conquered the land of Normandy even as they themselves were now proposing to conquer England. Their success meant more lish

The

204

Gift of

Tongues

than a mere change in dynastic rule for the inhabitants of The old local kingdoms and tribal organizations were swept away— such as had survived the period of unified Danish Britain.

In their stead the whole of England, excluding Scotland and Wales, was placed under a single complex feudal system rule.

of administration.

Feudalism in England Feudalism of course was a highly stratified organization of society. In France there were already many ranks or orders of men, from the lowly unfree serf, up through free traders and workers, landless knights, land-owning knights, little barons, big barons, and recognized kings. Military service and other obligations were the basis of land ownership. Rights rogatives were at times vague or conflicting, rise to fierce

and preand hence gave

combats. Feudal France was divided into great

duchies, each with a hereditary overlord at

its

head. Roughly

speaking the dialects of medieval French corresponded to these feudal divisions. Within the confines of each duchy there was

not a great deal of difference between the language of the lower

and the higher orders, except insofar as differences of interest and preoccupation tended to mark off the stores of words used.

The husbandman

ing more or

less

talked about agricultural matters, us-

simple sentences studded with the technical

terms of his job; the knight employed a more aristocratic

vocabulary referring to tournaments, etiquette, literature, and

and the techniques same dialect within the same region. The regional dialect divisions were probably much more noticeable than class divisions, apart from limited art (within limits!), terms of inheritance,

of warfare; but in general they spoke the

items of specialized vocabulary.

Bilingual England

When William of Normandy

transferred this feudal organiza-

became more complex. At once the lowest orders were doubly marked, not only by tion to England, the linguistic situation

Life-History of the English Language

205

economic position but also by the use of a separate, despised tongue. Since the Church, which conducted most of the schooling of the time, was also taken over by NormanFrench bishops, abbots, and other prelates, instruction in English practically ceased. Most of the native speakers became necessarily illiterate and remained so for several generations. inferior

The recording of English was very much reduced almost everywhere. While English thus remained neglected in writing

and uncorrected by formal teaching, it tended to change more it had been doing before 1066. The leveling of forms, now accelerated, produced a greatly simplified grammar. Many of the distinctions of Old English were lost in the process. Earlier writers like Sir Walter Scott have probably exaggerated the cleavage between Norman French and English, and the length of time it endured. But it was sufficiently marked at least to intensify the drive towards simplicity, already noticeable in Old English. rapidly than

Early Middle English English re-emerged as a literary language in the hands of

churchly writers in the latter twelfth century. These men, schooled primarily in Latin and

Norman

French, merely

adapted the classroom spelling of these upper-class languages to the native idiom.

Some few may have known

a little

about

Old English written before 1066, especially in places where had been made to keep the old Anglo-Saxon Chronicle up to date under the Normans. In all cases they tried to write what they actually heard, phonetically. Where inconsistencies arose they were due to regional dialects in English itself, or to a conflict between French and traditional English orthography. In Old English, for instance, the word hus for "house" was pronounced with a single long vowel [hu:s], and was so written. In the so-called Middle English period, from 1 100 to 1400, it was still being pronounced as before, but under French influence the spelling became hous for [hu:s]. We can be fairly the

efforts

The

206

Tongues

Gift of

certain of the pronunciation because of the general consist-

Some writers, moreover, were interested enough in the problem to indicate the reasons for their spelling, and what it was supposed to represent.

ency.

Changes

With

Grammar

in

Old English declensions the English word order habitual with us predicate, complement. Otherwise it would

the reduction of

sentence

fell

increasingly into the

today: subject,

have been impossible, eventually, to distinguish one part from

had used the inverted order be found in Modern German.)

the other. (Old English sentences

and delayed clausal verbs to Almost all the nouns were attracted into the declension represented by stdn, with a plural in -as later weakened into -es. Only a few survived in the other declensions. The vowels of unaccented endings were reduced to the obscure sound [a], written

The

-e-.

verbs retained endings not unlike those cur-

rent in the time of King Alfred:

we singen

I singe

pu

he singeth

The

2

ye singen

singest

\>ei

singen

adjectives retained vestiges of inflection, even slightly

differentiating strong forms

clensions of

Old English

from weak; but the elaborate dewere forgotten. The reduc-

adjectives

tion of endings to short, unstressed syllables gave the language a trochaic

Changes

and

in

dactylic effect.

Sounds

Although the consonants survived with little change, there was some shifting in the quality of the vowels. Old diphthongs were simplified

and new ones

This North

Midland form of the

2

is

the

singes.

dialects

The

distinction

from one another.

arose.

is

Old long vowels were shortened

plural. In the

typical of

many

South

it

was singeth, in the

others which

demarked the

Life-History of the English Language

207

and short ones were lengthened under special conditions and for special reasons which need not be rehearsed here. In general the resulting new vowels were pronounced as in Modern Italian, Spanish, or German: in short, with the so-called "continental" values. Thus: a was [a:] as in "father";

was

e 1

[e:]

was

or [e:] as in "they" or "there," respectively; as in

[i:]

"machine";

6 was

[o:

u was y was

identical with

]

(not [ou]) as in "lone";

[u:],

sometimes written "ou", I

as in "rouge";

in pronunciation.

All vowels were intended to be spoken, except

coming

when two became

together in a sentence were elided (the intente

with three syllables to the second word). Diph-

th' intente,

thongs were pronounced by giving the above values to the separate parts: thus "au" represented [a] plus [u] in one syllable. When you have grasped these few principles you can read Middle English aloud and enjoy the music of

it

along

with the sense.

Persistence of

The

earliest

Old English Words

Middle English

texts

almost pure English vocabulary.

composed with an

were

still

The

spelling, too,

was con-

servative for a time, especially in the South, so that a casual

glance at some of the early texts sion that tion,

(ca.

Old English was still being written.

A closer examina-

however, shows that the simplification of forms was

ready far advanced at this time. Here

poem

1200) leaves the impres-

is

a short passage

written in the South about 1170.

It deals in a

al-

from a quaint

medieval manner with the transitoriness of earthly happiness, yet there

is

a perennial appeal

about

its

grave simplicity:

Ich aem elder J^en ich wes a wintre and a lore; Ic waelde

Wei

more Jeanne ic dude; mi wit ah to ben more. ic habbe child i-beon a weorde and ech a dede;

lange

The

20 peh

ic

beo a wintre

me

Ylde

is

Ne mihte (I

am older

than

I

did;

me

for

eom

a rede.

.

.

.

awyste;

aer ic hit

iseon before

smeche ne

for miste.

was in winters and in lore; I have more strength wit ought to be more. For a long time I have been a

than

my

eald, to ying I

on

bestolen

ic

Tongues

Gift of

I

word and eke in deed; though I be in winters old, too young I am in rede. Old age has stolen on me before I ever wist it; I could not see before me for the smoke and for the mist.) child in

Some

of the lyrics retain pure English vocabulary at an even

later date, because they deal

we

still

with

warm

intimate things which

prefer to express with the "Anglo-Saxon" part of our

language.

Wynter wakeneth

Nou Oft

thise leves

I sike

al

my

and mourne hit cometh

When Of

this

Nou hit is, Al so

care,

waxeth bare;

worldes

sore in

joie,

an nou hit

[sigh

and mourn

my

thoht

hou

hit geth al to noht.

sorely]

nys,

hit ner were, ywys;

That moni mon

seith, soth hit ys:

Al goth bote Godes Alle

we shule

wille:

deye, thoh us like ylle.

[though

it

displeases us]

French Loan Words Meanwhile, however, French was

still

the language of court,

and Parliament. Even as late as the fourteenth century some outstanding English men of letters wrote

school, diplomacy,

exclusively in French.

The

English vocabulary could not long

remain unaffected by this environment. What had at first been a mere infiltration of French words into English increased until by 1 300 it was flood-tide. The new terms came from many occupations: from law, philosophy, theology, and military science; cookery, weaving, architecture, book-making; and the trade in wool, wine,

and other commodities. Many of the more

Life-History of the English Language

209

learned importations were long words which must have seemed

by their vagueness imposing and slightly awesome to English French words like contritioun, transubstantioun reverence, penaunce, obligacioun, dominacioun must have arrived with double impressiveness: first because they referred to lofty matters of religion and government which the common man uneasily shies away from; and second because they simply sounded different from the native vocabulary. During the years when it was chiefly the language of illiterates, English had naturally veered away from the tendency to form lengthy compound abstractions out of native elements. Only a few like rihtwysnesse ("righteousness") and agenbit ("remorse") had survived. On the whole the native vocabulary had conserved best the basic non-abstract terms and hence turned now to an alien treasury for the needed terminology of learning. The loans were conspicuous for another reason besides their length. They still preserved the French accentuation on the last syllable, in direct opposition to the English tendency to ears.

,

throw accents forward. Even when this English tendency began to affect the French importations, a strong secondary stress was retained on the do-mi-nd-ci-oun.

last syllable: con-tri-ci-oun, re-ve-ren-ce,

The

tendencies in accentuation produced a of stress

and English wave-like rise and fall

struggle between French

which added even more dignity,

physical impressiveness

of the words.

may well be, to the The alternation of

it

strongly stressed root syllables in native English, followed by the shrinking unstressed endings, was already contributing to

Out of these divergent sources came the movements of English which Chaucer used

the same effect.

iambic-

trochaic

so bril-

liantly in his narrative verse.

The Combined Vocabulary in Chaucer And Chaucer illustrates, too, the aesthetic uses to be made of the new polyglot vocabulary. No one knew better than he how to juxtapose, contrast, or temporarily isolate the

dual elements

of fourteenth-century English. In this respect he

may be com-

The

210 pared to his

Gift of

Tongues

own advantage with many modern

time Chaucer permits the

full

poets.

At one

grandeur of the French poly-

syllables to roll out:

For of fortunes sharpe adversite

The worste kynde of infortune is A man to han been in prosperity, And it remembren when it passed

this:

is.

(Troilus and Cressida,

III,

1625 ^-)

1.

This poignant comment on human felicity, paraphrased from Dante, gains in dignity from the use of the italicized Romance words. At the same time, the last line has a simplicity of everyday speech, the more effective by contrast; and the delayed verb in the archaic Old English style gives it a falling cadence which heightens the wistfulness. The same artful contrast of polysyllabic dignity

and native simplicity

found in many

is

other Chaucerian passages. In the ballade called "Fortune"

he begins: This wrecched worldes trdnsmutdcioiin As wele or wo, now povre and now honour Withouten ordre or wys discrecioiin Governed is by Fortunes err our.

He

laments the passing of a happier day

truth and their

word was

as

good

when people

as their

told the

bond:

Sometyme this world was so stedfast and That mannes word was obligdcioun. .

.

stable

.

("Lak of Stedfastnesse")

You on

will notice that the

melody of Chaucer's

lines

depends

a correct rendering of the unaccented syllables. Unless the

vowels are pronounced in these, the verse

is harsh and undue value to the unstressed vowels (including final -e's), however, and retain strong secondary stress at the end of French loan words, and you will have verse as musical and diversified as any in English. In less exalted moods Chaucer often undertook to describe

metrical. Give

Life-History of the English Language

21

and persons and small adventures of common folk. Here his brilliant realism was re-enforced by an appropriate vocabulary and a sentence structure echoing the cadences of ordinary speech. In drawing the picture of an elderly carpenter's young wife, with her gay amorous ways, her "likerous eye" and her "middle gent and smal" as any weasel's, he concludes the lives

gustily:

Hir mouth was sweete as bragot or the meeth, Or hoord of apples leyd in hey or heeth.

Wynsynge she was, as is a joly colt, Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt.

.

.

Hir shoes were laced on hir legges hye. She was a prymerole, a piggesnye For any lord to leggen in his bedde, Or yet for any good yeman to wedde.

The homely

mead]

na y or heath] [

.

[primrose or "pig'seye" (a flower)]

and comparisons expressed in everyday hay"— are enough make the reader's mouth water, as indeed they were indetails

language— "sweet to

[ale or

as

apples laid in heath or

tended to do. And the simple vocabulary of ordinary life is beautifully used when the same fair Alison rebuffs (but not permanently!) an amorous overture by her boarder, a hand-

some young student: [She] seyde, "I wol nat kisse thee, by

Why, lat Or I wol

Do wey

be,"

quod

crie 'out,

harrow' and

'alias'!

youre handes, for youre curteisye!" ("Miller's Tale,"

With

my fey!

she, "lat be, Nicholas,

CT, A3261

ff.)

the English vernacular being handled in so masterful

a manner,

it

had surely reached

legal majority

and could no

longer be regarded as a subject dialect. Conversely, cause English had already

voted his genius to

it

won

it

was be-

recognition that Chaucer de-

rather than French or Latin. Significantly

enough, Parliament was the chronicler Trevisa

first

tells

opened

in English in 1362,

and

us the native language was used in

the schools in 1385. Both events

fell

in Chaucer's lifetime.

The

212

Gift of

Tongues

The Fifteenth Century Soon

after Chaucer's death, in the fifteenth century, there

was

a renewed drift towards simplification in English. Final un-

accented vowels, by 1400 already reduced to a very slight mur-

mur, were entirely

lost. Still

more nouns were

majority declension (with plurals in in the minority declensions.

left

shifted to the

-s)

shifted to the

out of the small group

More and more

weak conjugation from those

still

verbs were

retaining the

internal vowel change. For a time, of course, there was a choice

Malory could decide between either "he clave" or how one knight smote another asunder, as they were so frequently engaged in doing in the Morte d' Arthur. Similar fluctuations arose between "he clomb" and "he climbed"; "he halp" and "he helped." Some of the quaint of forms:

"he clefte" in telling

surviving constructions out of

Old

English, such as impersonal

verbs with the dative, the inflected genitive case for nouns de-

noting things, and the double negative, began to use.

They

persist in the fifteenth century,

fall

into dis-

indeed even into the

sixteenth, but they are felt increasingly to be archaic survivals.

Where Chaucer said:

He

nevere yet no vileynye ne

Later English has:

He

ous about anybody

sayde

In

never said anything villain-

al his lif

unto no manner

In

all his life to

any person.

wight.

Me

[to

me] were

levere a thou-

sand fold to dye. Me thynketh it acordaunt to

I'd liefer [rather] die a

thousand

times over. It

seems reasonable

to

me.

resoun.

Our

The

present worldes lyves

space.

...

In hope to stonden in his lady [gen. sing, fern.] grace.

space of our present

life

of [in] this world.

...

In hope to stand in his lady's grace.

Another important usage became increasingly prevalent in and early sixteenth century: the bolstering of verbs with a number of auxiliaries derived from "do" and the fifteenth

Life-History of the English Language

213

"be." In Middle English a question was asked with the simple

form of the verb in inverted position: "What say you? What think you?" For a couple of centuries after 1400 this was still done habitually, but more and more people fell into the habit of saying "What do you say? What do you think?" The "do" was colorless and merely brought about a deferment of the main verb. In effect it makes our English usage somewhat like Russian, which says "What you say? What you think?" without any inversion of the verb before the subject. In simple statements the "do" forms were used for situations where we no longer feel the need for them. An Elizabethan would say "I do greatly fear it" (an unrestricted statement). We should use the less emphatic "I fear it greatly." Compare Shakespeare's I

do prophesy the election lights Fortinbras; he has my dying voice—

On

and many other instances. During the same period there began the gradual spread of the so-called progressive conjugation, with forms of "to be":

am coming; he is sitting down." These two special forms of English conjugation have developed an intricate etiquette, with many modifications of usage, which cause great trouble to "I

the foreign student.

One

of the last distinctions he master*

is

the one between "I eat breakfast every

"I

am

eating breakfast now"; between "I

"I

do

morning" and believe that" and

indeed believe that."

One

of the most fateful innovations in English culture, the

use of the printing press, had

on the language in The dialect of London, which had for over a century been gaining in currency and prestige, took an enormous spurt when it was more or less codified as the language of the press. As Caxton and his successors normalized it, roughly speaking, it became the language of officialdom, of polite letters, of the spreading commerce centered at the capital. The local dialects competed with it even less successfully than formerly. The art of reading, though still a privilege of the

many

ways.

its effects

214

The

Gift of

Tongues

favored few, was extended lower into the ranks of the middle classes. With the secularizing of education later on, the mastery

was extended to still humbler folk. Boys William Shakespeare, were sons of small-town merchants and craftsmen, could learn to read their Virgil and Ovid and Holy Writ even if they had no intention of entering the Church. Times had distinctly changed since the thirteenth century. It may be added that changes in society— the gradual emergence of a mercantile civilization out of feudalism— gave scope to printing which it would never have had in the earlier Middle Ages. The invention was timely in more than one sense. All this may have been anticipated by the early printers. Their technological innovations may have been expected to facilitate the spread of culture. But they could not have foreseen that the spelling which they standardized, more or less, as the record of contemporary pronunciation, would have been perpetuated for centuries afterwards. Today, when our proof the printed page

who,

like

nunciation has become quite different,

we

are

still

teaching

our unhappy children to spell as Caxton did. Respect for the printed page has become something like fetish-worship. A few idiosyncrasies have been carefully preserved although the reason for them is no longer understood. When Caxton first set up the new business in London he brought with him Flemish workers from the Low Countries, where he himself had learned it. Now the Flemish used the spelling "gh" to represent their own voiced guttural continuant, a long-rolled-out sound [y] unlike our English [g]. English had no such sound at the time, but the employees in Caxton's shop were accustomed to combining the two letters, and continued to do so in setting up certain English words. In words like "ghost" and "ghastly" it has persisted, one of the many mute witnesses to orthographical conservatism.

Humanism and Classical Influences English vocabulary continued to be diversified as printing and increased communication with the continent diversified its

Life-History of the English Language

The

215

(a term we shall widened interest in pagan classical learning. It was not so much an innovation as an extension of the already lively medieval interest in the same heritage. But linguistically the debt was expressed in a new manner. Whereas Roman words had formerly been taken over in French form, with all the modifications due to centuries of use, now the Latin vocabulary was plundered direct, at least to a much greater extent than before. Writers who knew some

cultural needs

and

interests.

Renaissance

not attempt to define here) brought with

it

classical

philology did not hesitate to adopt into English a

number

of forms unmodified except for a slightly Anglicized

ending.

W ords T

like "armipotent,"

"obtestate," "maturity,"

"splendidous," "matutine," and "adjuvate" had not been in

French popular use for centuries before reaching English; they were lifted directly out of classical texts with little change. Browne's Religio Medici furnishes many examples. Some writers

went

such lengths that their language was crusted

to

over with Latinisms.

The to

tendency had begun in the fifteenth century and went

absurd lengths in the sixteenth. Ben Jonson satirized

his Poetaster,

3.

for the

in

play in which a character guilty of pretentious

made to vomit them forth in a basin, in victim, named Crispinus, is supposed to stand playwright Marston who actually committed verbal

verbal concoctions sight of

it

all.

is

The

atrocities of the sort.

When

the pill

is

administered Crispinus

cries out:

am

Crispinus.

Oh,

Horace.

A basin,

I

sick-

a basin quickly, our physic works.

Faint not, man. Crispinus.

Oh— retrograde— reciprocal— incubus.

Caesar.

What's

Horace.

Retrograde, and reciprocal, incubus are

Gallus.

come up. Thanks be

Crispinus.

Oh— glibbery—lubrical— defunct;

Tibullus.

What's that?

that,

Horace?

to Jupiter.

oh!

.

.

.

The

216 Horace.

Nothing,

Crispinus.

Magnificate.

Maecenas.

Magnificate?

Among

Tongues

Gift of yet.

That came up somewhat hard.

other words thus "brought up" are "inflate," "turgi-

dous," "oblatrant," "furibund," "fatuate," "prorumped," and

The

"obstupefact." tions

by Virgil

to the

ungentle satire concludes with admoniexhausted Crispinus: among other things

You must not hunt

To

stuff

But

let

And

if,

for wild, outlandish terms,

out a peculiar dialect;

your matter run before your words; at any time, you chance to meet

Some Gallo-Belgic phrase, you shall not straight Rack your poor verse to give it entertainment, But

let it pass.

.

.

.

The critical attitude represented by Jonson was exaggerated in some cases into a fanatical purism. There were some who leaned over backwards in their attempts to avoid English neol-

ogisms out of Latin or Greek.

If

they went too far

it

was be-

cause the "ink-horn" terms of "aureate" or gilded English had

become

a kind of stylistic rash

on the

literary language. Still,

many of the conscious creations of this period filled a real

need,

and were permanently adopted into standard speech. Another consequence of the renewed, if not at all new, devotion to Latin was the freshened awareness of the component words in English. In the hands of gifted poets semantic rejuvenation of words which will be further discussed in the next chapter. Even spelling was affected by this awareness. Words pronounced still in a French manner were given a Latinized orthography which did not correspond to usage: thus "victuals" for ['vitlz] from French parts of Latin

this resulted in a

vitaille.

Latin Syntax

in

English

Not only the English vocabulary was affected by the intensified devotion to Latin.

Many

attempts were

and sentence structure conform

too.

made

to

have syntax

There were attempts

to

Life-History of the English Language implant long absolute constructions Latin ablative absolute, and to

This

is

the sentence a tissue of

were at times monone sentence committed by Sir Philip Sidney

intricately related clauses. strous.

The

an imitation of the

as

make

217

results

in the Arcadia:

But then, Demagoras assuring himself, that now Parthenia was his, and receiving as much by her own

her own, she would never be

determinate answere, not more desiring his ing Argalus,

whom

he saw with narrow

the perfection of his desires;

own

happiness, envy-

even ready to enjoy strengthening his conceite with all the eyes,

mischievous counsels which disdained love, and envious pride could give unto him; the wicked wretch (taking a time that Argalus

was gone to his country, to fetch some of his principal friends to honor the marriage, which Parthenia had most joyfully consented unto), the wicked Demagoras (I say) desiring to speak with her, with unmerciful force (her weak arms in vain resisting), rubbed all over her face a most horrible poison: the effect whereof was such that never leper looked more ugly than she did: which done, having his men and horses ready, departed away in spite of her servants, as ready to revenge as they could be, in such an unexpected mischief.

You can amuse

yourself by counting

you are delayed in

up

the

numbers

of times

by participial constructions in -ing ("assuring," "desiring," "strengthening") just when you this sentence

are waiting breathlessly for the

sentence (after the

last

thing as close as

we can

on Latin

and

lines;

it

main

verb.

The end

of the

colon) starts with "which done," someget to a passive absolute construction

omits a necessary pronoun subject to

"departed," since Latin verbs do not normally need to express 'he" or "she" or "it" as subjects. Moreover, a

number of words

are used by Sidney in their original Latin sense rather than the

familiar English one: "perfection"

completion"

Latin Style

as perficere, perfectus

in

means "accomplishment, had meant "to complete."

English

Even those authors who

tried to

eschew an excessive Latin

vocabulary sometimes followed Latin sentence structure and

The

2i idiom very

closely.

Tongues

Gift of

Reginald Pecock begins one of his sen-

tences thus:

Even as grammar and divinity are 2 diverse faculties and cunand therefore are unmeddled [distinct from each other], and each of them hath his proper to him bounds and marks, how far and no farther he shall stretch himself upon matters, truths, and nings,

conclusions.

.

.

.

how

Every reader will notice

foreign-sounding

sion "his proper-to-him bounds." it

the expres-

is

Today we should

consider

impossible to thrust a modifying phrase between "his" and

the word it limits. But the phrase was so handled by Pecock, no doubt, because he was thinking of the Latin fines sibi proprias. The "how far" clause modifying "marks" has a Latin flavor also, recalling quousque clauses.

how Pecock

Notice too

creates

lating literally certain Latin

new

English idioms by trans-

compounds. By "stretch himself

upon," used in the non-physical sense, our author means "extend," from Latin ex-tender e "stretch out." In

all self-con-

scious writers of the time there was a strong inclination to

build elaborately balanced sentences, with clause counter-

weighing clause, in the manner of

Roman

rhetoricians. Pe-

cock did this too. In formal exposition there was great use of constructions to contrast ideas "on the one

other hand.

.

.

."

hand"— "and on

the

In belles-lettres these elaborate balancings,

both great and small, were often underscored by alliteration,

making an

intricate pattern of

sound

to

correspond to the pat-

tern of sense: It

young imp to arrive at Naples, a place of more and yet of more profit than piety, the very and windows whereof showed it rather to be the tabernacle of

happened

this

pleasure than profit, if alls

Fenus than the temple of

Festa.

Thus John Lyly starts his hero Euphues on chronicle of his adventures.

The

alliteration calls attention to the ideas

worded show how

the artfully

italicized letters

put in

antithesis.

And

Life-History of the English Language

219

once again we find illustration of Latin sentence structure used contrary to English idiom. It is not natural for us to say "It happened this young imp to arrive"— with "imp" presumably in an oblique (inflected) case as subject of the infinitive; nor was it probably a natural way of talking in Lyly's day. It

is,

however, a

literal

rendering of the Latin accusative

with infinitive— con tigit iuvenem pervenire.

One more

instance of non-English structure has persisted in

limited scope into our day. after

It is the placement of adjectives nouns on the model of both French and Latin— more par-

ticularly the former. Phrases like "lords appellants,"

royal," "siege apostolic" are paralleled in

"blood contemporary use

by surviving legal inversions: "notary public," "estates gen"body politic." Only the stereotyped inversions live on in ordinary speech, but poets avail themselves of the ability to create new ones when they. are trying for an exalted effect. Thus Hart Crane, writing "wings imperious" and "junctions elegiac" is carrying on a minor Latin-Romance heritage of word order. In a phrase like "court martial" the unaccustomed inversion adds to the sense of ominous strangeness. Poets use this atmosphere to heighten desired effects deliberately. eral,"

Unstandardized Elizabethan Attempts

and

Bacon represented simplicity was highly mannered.) Besides, English gram-

simplicity. (Francis

of a sort, but

mar was

on the Procrustes bed of Latin achievement the of a generally accepted style

to stretch English

grammar delayed of vigor

Grammar

it

There were conflicts of usage due to the heritage of archaisms from the Middle English period, and the competition of dialect forms from the regions outside of London, which persisted into the Elizabethan era. The third singular present of the verb is a good example of this fluctuation. If Shakespeare, writing in London, had followed the London tradition in this he would have used the -eth ending always, and consistently set down "singeth, loveth, creepeth." But another ending, -(e)s, had been gaining popuin a fairly unstable condition.

The

220 larity at the

Gift of

expense of

-eth.

Tongues

Originally

-es

developed in the

North country, but it spread southwards until in the sixteenth century it was becoming as acceptable as the native southern form. Shakespeare was able to use the two indifferently: "the bird of dawning singeth all night long" but "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day."

Other matters of grammar were less rigidly established in There were still strong traces of grammatical gender in the use of "he" and "she" for inanimate objects where we should say "it." Pecock, it will be noticed, Shakespeare's day than ours.

spoke of each faculty having "his" proper bounds, instead of "its." Shakespeare wrote, "The corn hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard," and spoke of the soul as "she," as

Hamlet

Since

And

my

dear soul was mistress of her choice

could of

Hath

men

distinguish, her election

seal'd thee for herself.

.

.

.

(Hamlet,

The

when

says to Horatio:

leveling of forms having proceeded with

III, ii)

uneven tempo,

there was considerable latitude of usage in inflected forms.

Nominative and oblique

cases of

pronouns became somewhat many cases been approved

confused; the newer usages have in

by custom. The plays give us such forms child but I,"

him

that

cuse?"

"When him we

first cries

There

serve's

as

"My father hath no

away,"

"And damned be

and "Who does he acexamples of compound subjects and even

'Hold, enough!' "

are also

straight plural subjects with singular verbs, singular verbs

with plural subjects, plural pronouns like "they" referring to singular indefinites like "everyone," double comparatives like

"more braver"— in short, most of the hair-raising mistakes which cost students bad marks today. In formal prose there was more rigid usage than this, but the drama, closer to current speech, reflects a wider tolerance. In addition there were commonly accepted formulas which we now feel to be quaint rather

Life-History of the English Language than wrong.

We

221

are accustomed to think of abstract qualities

such as "honor," "truth," and "courtesy" as single indivisible units:

an Elizabethan, however, often made plural forms

indicate distributive use. His

"Commend me

to

to their loves," a

way of expressing things, simply appears odd to us, the numerous words and phrases that have fallen into dis"I fain would know it," and so on.

very fair like

use:

The Age of

Classicism and

Formal Rules

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was a strong reaction

away from Elizabethan

laxity

and in favor of formal

Once more Latin exerted an

regularity of grammatical usage.

influence, this time for the legislation of "rules": the intricate

"do's"

and "don'ts" to be observed if, as simple people often it, one is to "talk grammar." The drive toward reguand conformity in speech may be considered part and

express larity

parcel of the general cultural manifestation sicism," another

here.

At

term which we

least there is a certain

shall

known

as "clas-

not attempt to define

appropriateness in the fact that

grammatical relations were treated with a free and easy

toler-

ance during an age of exploration, conquest, and colonization

when plain piracy and robbery of land were being idealized; and that decorum and strict congruence were demanded as matters of taste (not only in grammar) when conquest had been organized into accepted, consolidated, and hence respectable empire. The parallelism may be worked out by students of culture in the large.

What we do know is that grammarians of the classical period down fixed rules for the behavior of pronouns and verbs with a definiteness new in the history of English. A "good" writer could no longer put down "Between who?" even for the set

if he intended it to be spoken by a prince like Hamlet. Such a locution was limited to low-class characters on the rare occasions when they were permitted to appear (for relief) in

stage,

polite literature.

When

in doubt, the legislators of

appealed to Latin for authority.

Was

there

grammar

some doubt about

The

222

expressions such as "It

Tongues

Gift of is I,"

"It

is

me"

or even "It

am

I"?

Latin rule about nominative cases as predicates after a

form of "to be" decided the matter, and

"It

is

I"

The

finite

was decreed

despite a strong native tendency to say "It's me." In this period too, the fluctuating uses of "shall"

to rules

and "will" were subjected

with complicated minor ramifications. Significantly

enough, it was not a native Englishman but a French grammarian (George Mason) writing in 1622 for foreigners, who first tried to lay down the rules. In France as well as in England the dominant cultural tendencies favored regularity, probably for the same reasons. A Frenchman learning English would have been shocked at anything so chaotic as the "shall-will" conjugation, and it was natural for him, at that particular period, to try to give

it

a formal

(if

intricate) pattern.

Such an attitude affected the conservation of grammatical distinctions, too.

While

it

regularized

it

also arrested leveling.

For instance, the subjunctive in forms like "If I were you" or "If it be possible" had been giving way to the indicative, but a clear distinction was now reaffirmed in the precepts of eighteenth-century grammar. That codification has remained in force until our own times. Teaching has as usual had a conservit were not for the careful preservation of these dying forms in school books, I should have begun this sen." As it is, we tend to tence with the words "If it was not.

ative effect. If

.

.

limit the few surviving subjunctives to formal discourse,

printed or spoken.

In France an final,

Academy had been

authoritative

mar and

usage.

established in order to give

judgment on disputed questions of gramwriters in England advocated the estab-

Some

Academy to legislate for the Engwas felt in some quarters that refinement and formality should be made official. However, the project was never realized. Historians of English explain the resistance to lishment of a similar British lish

language.

It

by citing the rugged independence of English character. This no doubt true as far as it goes, but it is not a basic explanation. The rugged independence paradoxically manifested even

it

is

Life-History of the English Language in an age of conformity

must

itself

223

be explained: perhaps by

reference to the political interlude of the English

Common-

wealth, which effectively and permanently checked absolutism in

government

in the seventeenth century. It could not be suc-

cessfully tried for

any length of time after 1649. Any tendency

towards absolutism in language was to some extent, therefore,

checked by the changed political atmosphere resulting from the Commonwealth. Voltaire found this atmosphere to be very

compared with the French. Despite great simibetween French and English taste, there were great

libertarian as larities

differences. France, lacking such a check as the experience of

government in the seventeenth century, showed and cultural matters, down to 1789. The readjustment was the more drastic because it was so long delayed. The French Revolution, too, had its effect on the style and vocabulary of accepted speech— not only in France, but in England to a certain extent. The vogue of "simple" speech and rural dialects (one

a republican

the exaggerated effects of absolutism in both linguistic

of the aspects of "romanticism") taste

is

connected with

shifts in

which heralded and accompanied the French Revolution.

Imperial Expansion

Meanwhile the English language had been spread

far

and wide

over the globe, following the course of imperial expansion. India, at

first

settled

and claimed by the French

as rival colo-

under exclusively English sway in the eighteenth North America also French claims were forced to yield throughout the entire territory represented by Canada and the Thirteen Colonies. French survived as a language only in the Quebec region of Canada. English discoveries and settlements led to the claim over Australia and New Zealand. In

nists, fell

century. In

the nineteenth century the greater part of the continent of

under English sway, both direct and indirect. The Dutch Colony of South Africa was taken over after the Boer War; large territories like the English Sudan became British dependencies in the form of colonies of "backward" peoples;

Africa

fell

The

224

Gift of

Tongues

and some countries

like Egypt were in practice directed by commercial and administrative interests while maintaining formal independent statehood. Not everywhere in this far-flung territory has English been adopted as the prevalent speech. The dominions use it, of course; but in some of the colonies there has been little attempt to disseminate it beyond

British

and in certain quarters met with conscious opposition.

the circle of resident administrators, India, for instance)

The

it

has

linguistic results of imperial

(in

expansion were manifold.

We have already noticed the influx of foreign loan words into English from

all

quarters of the globe (chapter

4).

In addition,

each colonial dialect separated from the mother country has

developed

its

own

special idiosyncrasies, so that English-speak-

ing visitors to England can be labeled, by their pronunciation, as

emanating from Canada, Australia, South Africa, or "the

States."

The settlement of Englishmen mentous

in India

was particularly mo-

for the history of linguistic science.

of battle died

down somewhat and

When

the dust

peaceful contacts became

possible, administrators with the gift of intellectual curiosity

began

to

be impressed with the character of the various Indian

languages belonging to the Indo-European family.

When some

of the bolder spirits extended their inquiry so far as to under-

take the study of ancient Sanskrit, the classical literary lan-

guage, they were further impressed by

known

classical

its affinities

with the

languages of Europe. Sir William Jones was

able to draw the proper conclusion as early as 1786: he wrote that Sanskrit,

when compared

to

Greek and Latin,

and in the forms grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists: there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same bears a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs

of

origin with the Sanskrit.

Life-History of the English Language

225

William was quite right. His studies may be said to have opened the door on comparative philology, encouraged the work of Rask, Bopp, Grimm, Leskien, and the other pioneers Sir

who

established family relations

among

languages in the nine-

teenth century.

Contemporary English In the recent past our language has shown no of

major importance.

1500, producing the

A

new

tendencies

great vowel shift has occurred since

modern sounds we

associate with the

The host of borrowed words is increasing from all parts of the world. A supplementary list is being created from Latin and Greek roots to serve the purposes of scientific research. There is a revolt— within limits— against the rigid rules of classical grammarians. "Good" writers are again printed symbols.

daily,

permitting themselves forms like these:

Those two, no matter who spoke, or whom was addressed, looked at each other. (Dickens, Our Mutual Friend.) It depends altogether on who I get. (May Sinclair, Mr. Waddington of Wick.)

(Middleton Murry, The Things We Are.) Kitty and me were to spend the day there ... (by the bye, Mrs. Forster and me are such friends!) (Jane Austen, Pride and If I

were her.

.

.

.

Prejudice.)

Her towards whom

it

made /

Soonest had to go. (Thomas Hardy,

"In the Garden.")

Until very recently, histories of the English language usually

ended with cheerful speculation on the outlook for it as a world language. There were several cogent arguments in favor of it. First, it was pointed out that it is a living language already spoken by a great number of persons it

all

has a comparatively simple grammar.

over the globe. Second, It

boasts of a rich

and

glorious literature which offers a strong inducement for any

student to acquire mastery of

words, as well as

profit.

it.

It offers

And within

pleasure, in other

the last few years a simpli-

The

226 fied

form of

it,

Gift of

Tongues

Basic English, has been offered to beginners as

a means of expediting communication through a vocabulary

By means of and even achieve

of 850 words, adequate for all practical purposes. this list a

student

is

able to express any ideas,

certain aesthetic values of simple poignancy, within a very

short time.

He

learns to say "go in" for "penetrate"

out" for "exude," and

is

and "flow

thus able to meet any situation with

an adequate periphrasis. (Whether he can understand the ent replies of a native ignorant of Basic

is

flu-

a different question 1)

These are surely inducements towards the adoption of English. Mr. Ogden claimed too much when he stated that absence of an international language like Basic English is "the chief obstacle to international understanding, and consequently the chief underlying cause of war." Unhappily,

needed than a single speech certain advantages that

date they

may be

to

much more will be

end wars. Nevertheless, Basic has a practical value. At a later

may have

discussed for practical application.

But in the present rivalries among contending empires, it would appear foolhardy to make any arguments or prophecies. The advantages of English, aside from its archaic spelling, still stand. But it may be some considerable time, longer than many of us had hoped, before these matters are decided by such mild individuals as professional philologists.

The

the argument from simple practicality for

appeal to reason,

all

mankind, may

have to wait upon history for a long time. And by then it may be that another candidate among the languages of the world

may have

achieved the position of outstanding advantage.

can only wait and

see.

We

Language and Poetic Creation

g.

Pleasurable Aspects of Speech

We may

know

but

probably safe to assume that

it is

well as use in

about the origin of human speech, men found pleasure as from the very beginning. Like other means

very

it

little

employed to make life increasingly bearable in a practical way, it was adapted also to aesthetic satisfactions. Pitch and stress, qualities of vowel and consonant, tempo and dynamics were present in spoken sentences and offered the raw material for artistic creation. We may assume that as long as men have been human they have been aware that one way of saying a thing might be more pleasing than another. We have no reason to suppose that they have ever been mere animated machines, content to enunciate a wishful statement with the utmost of curt efficiency. If the earliest pottery shows a striving for design, early sentences

probably did

too.

from the other media which may be It has some noteworthy advantages— which upon closer examination turn out to be handicaps to

Language

used for

is

artistic

different

purposes.

the aspiring apprentice in the poetic art. Conversely, of course,

there are media in which the initial difficulties

dued

to

may be

sub-

downright advantage.

For one thing, the process of learning your mother tongue occurs early, and

members

of the

is

performed by

community.

It is

all

normally functioning

a painless act

when compared

with the struggles over raw materials in the other

arts.

Every-

body, so to speak, starts out as a potential artist in words.

an extraordinarily large number of children show 227

at least

And some

The

228 impulse towards

Gift of

Tongues

form of aesthetic expression if they are To put the situation simply: you have rise above the average high level of achieve-

this

given encouragement.

good to ment which is the rightful prerogative of every speaking human being, not to mention the occasional outstanding accomplishments of average citizens under emotional stress. This is one way in which your initial advantage turns against you. to be very

Words

as Symbols

For another thing, you are operating with a highly symbolic medium when you put words together. The word is not the thing, as we are frequently reminded. A pot may be a pot plus

something more imponderable: an expression of aspiration, let us say, or of squat complacent solidity. But the word is nothing but that imponderable plus, the symbol. Like ambition (as described by Rosencrantz in Hamlet) the word is of so airy

and

meaning,

light a quality that

as

we have observed

it is

but a shadow's shadow. Its is purely conven-

repeatedly,

and exists only by tacit consent on the part of the community as a whole. To elevate it to higher significance is a correspondingly difficult feat. There must be a second, added aura of symbolism to provide the aesthetic element. This is not meant to imply anything too pretentious. Perhaps a simple example will explain. The single word "rain" is a sentence— a presentative sentence, as explained in the last chapter— insofar as it announces or presents the appearance of a familiar form of precipitation of moisture from the heavens. Yet there is nothing in the sounds of [jein] to compel their relationship in our minds with falling water. That is due to habitual association. An intional

flection of the voice

may

suggest pleasure in the rain, but

still

an everyday experience. The individual sounds if pronounced by a pleasingly modulated voice, may have aesthetic quality, in and of themselves. But the symbol stands alone as a factual sign. There has been no organization of elements (sounds as parts or symbols) with the primary present

it

as

in the word,

Language and Poetic Creation intent to convey aesthetic experience.

229

And aesthetic experience

requires meaningful organization of a

medium, according

to

principles of unity, diversity, balance, imbalance (and so on),

which have been found by experience to add power to ordinary experience.

effective

elements

of emotive

The word "rain" as ordinarily used is a jaded symbol. It evokes no tactile memories of stinging impact, cool envelopment, or warm spraying diffusion; no lively visual memories of slanting silver wire;

no auditory memories

heavy drops or the sharp battering on wishes to

make you

of dull thudding

slate roofs. If

an

artist

relive the experience of rain

by sharing in he must operate consciously on the medium and galvanize you into fresh awareness, the more powerfully since words are so much a part of your everyday experience. If his word-stimuli,

he does this one thing alone he has conveyed a certain higher symbolic meaning to "rain" in merely causing you to relive it thus in terms of verbal symbols. He has put a frame about the

image and thus heightened its meaning, for frames add to the sense of what they enclose merely by setting it off. This may be worth doing for itself. The imagists were content with this accomplishment. But the word-artist may be engaged in a more exalted act of patterning his elements. He may be evoking the experience of rain as part of a much more complex creative effort in organization of the medium. The

may contribute

mood, and at the same time put forward the plot of a story by its effect on the characters. Finally it may itself suggest more elusive analogous meanings of an rain

abstract order while

to a larger

it

accomplishes the concrete re-creation

of physical experience. It

is

thus that Joyce treats

snow

in

"The

Dead," the last story of his incomparable Dubliners. Here the verbal symbols are used in the erection of higher order symbolism, as

is

frequently the case in Dante.

Linguistics and Poetry

To investigate the methodology of all a

new handbook

of poetics.

But that

this is

would be

to

attempt

not the purpose of this

The

230

Gift of

Tongues

wish merely to indicate briefly the uses of some practical linguistic knowledge in studying literature, chapter. Instead

I

work of modern poets reputed to be "difficult" may be a humble follower in the train of the Muses, but she is of some assistance in gaining you an introduction to the loftier handmaids of Apollo. The thorny path traveled in some of our earlier chapters may lead particularly the

for technical reasons. Philology

you

direct to pleasures of the Pierean spring— or at least help

to speed

In the

you on your way. first

place, certain concessions are necessary

from the

unpracticed and possibly impatient reader. Since the idiom of

much contemporary writing alien, readers

nothing at

To

do

so

all.

special

it

and

expresses

They label it nonsense and so have done with it. comprehension effectively. A more is

to

assume that something

The comprehension

effort,

is

to barricade

is

fruitful attitude said.

(especially in verse)

tend to assume over-hastily that

of

it

may

is

actually being

require several types of

including a fresh approach to language. In the end you

may decide that the effort was not worth making. The content may not, in your opinion, justify the technical difficulties put in your way.

But

if it

does, the effort of collaboration with the

author will have intensified your eventual appreciation. The discovery must at least precede the judgment. Remembering

medium, you are asked to surmount it. And the most urgent demands put upon you is the

the basic handicap of language as a

consent to innovations

among one

of

which

will help to

obligation to look at words afresh.

The

following are some of the most stimulating techniques in contemporary writing. observed be to

Semantic Rejuvenation

We have seen in the discussion of compound words (chapter 4), some

most abstract terms in the language are really faded metaphors. On examination it turns out that an earlier meaning, now forgotten, is often lively in the extreme. Hence an obvious means of invigorating our jejune vocabulary is to that

of the

Language and Poetic Creation fall

231

back on those lively older meanings. True enough, the

average speaker does not

know

that they ever existed.

not reminded that "express" once meant, cally, "to press out."

a context. It

tended, or cal are to

it

But he can learn

it

literally

and

He

is

physi-

instantaneously from

may be that only the archaic literal sense is inmay be that both the physical and the metaphori-

be grasped simultaneously. In any event, the impact

of the divergent use

on an

attentive reader forces

him

to a

new

experience of the word, without sacrificing comprehension.

An example will be

of the use of "express" in this revivified fashion

found in Emily Dickinson: Essential oils are wrung;

The Is

attar

from the rose

not expressed by suns alone,

It is the gift of screws.

In the age of Shakespeare, intensive

classical

education had

shaped a reading public (among the few, of course) who could sense the older

The

meaning with

less effort

than

many

feel today.

plays offer repeated vivid uses of etymological rejuvena-

tion of words. Horatio's "Season thy admiration for a while

with an attent ear" makes use of the Latin sense of admirari, "to

wonder

at"

something and of "attent" in the sense of

no speculation in those eyes?" recalls meaning of speculate, "to gaze, look upon." "Occulted guilt" means guilt covered over, or hidden. When Troilus says "there's no maculation in thy heart" he reminds us of the concrete meaning of macula, namely "spot (of dirt)," and when he refers to his "sequent protestation" it is in the concrete sense of "my calling on witness, which now follows." "stretched." "Hast thou

the literal

Hamlet's injunction "Let

it

be tenable in your silence

still"

evokes the basic meaning of Latin tenere, "to hold"— not

merely "to maintain a theoretical position." So when Laertes warns his sister that "nature, crescent, does not grow alone in thews and bulk," the adjective reminds us that crescrere meant

The

23 *

Gift of

Tongues

"to grow," to mature in a physical sense. In Troilus

and

Cres-

sida Ulysses can speak of "deracinating" a political state

and thus call upon us to think of racine, a root, so that the meaning of "uproot" is conveyed in an unaccustomed startling manner. The usual word having lost emphasis, the learned one infuses new life by causing us to share in the original metaphoric

synthesis.

Sophisticated writers

impose the etymological task upon

still

may be said, one of the devices by which readers share in the creative act. The enormous

their readers as part of the aesthetic experience. It

in fact, that etymology are

now called upon to

is

influence of English metaphysical poets of the seventeenth

Donne-

century on modern writers— notably the influence of has accentuated this etymological awareness.

The

reason for a

return to metaphysical poets as a source of inspiration

our subject here. But a consequence of it

is

is

not

certainly a recourse

to similar linguistic devices.

James Joyce, for instance, has evinced etymological preoccupations throughout his entire work. When he says that one pugilist's fist is "proposed" under the chin of another, he intends the word as Latin proponere, "to place under"; and he is capable of using "supplant" as "to plant under" in describing the Gracehoper

(i.e.,

Grasshopper) of Finnegans Wake: "he

had a partner pair of findlestilts to supplant him." T. S. Eliot expects the same etymological collaboration from his readers in his simile from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock": Streets that follow like a tedious

argument

Of

insidious intent

To

lead you to an overwhelming question.

.

.

.

Like Shakespeare, he wishes you to remember that "intent"

and that "insidious" (Latin insidiae, "sitting or lurking within") means "ambushed" against an enemy. At the same time the literal metaphor of warfare is merged in the image of a verbal argu-

means a thing

that

is

taut

and stretched

for action,

Language and Poetic Creation ment. In "Preludes" there evokes from the streets of a

The

is

233

many he

another figure of the

city:

conscience of a blackened street

Impatient to assume the world.

remember that "assume" means "to and hence "to play the part of." In his epithet "maculate giraffe" ("Sweeny among the NightinHere

it is

necessary to

take on" (ad-sumere)

gales")

he

is

doing exactly

Shakespeare did: reminding us

as

that our faded theological term tains a sharp visual

image of

"immaculate conception" con-

literal,

physical spots.

So C. D. Lewis makes use of both the

literal

and

figurative

"You that love England." He means lonely and abandoned mills, of course, but also mills that have simply and unmetaphorically been "left behind"

senses of "derelict mills" in

(de-linqui)

by those who formerly worked in them.

Auden, speaking of

ingrown

in "Sir,

No Man's Enemy" of "the distortions

virginity," surely intends us to feel the root

ing of "twist, physical bending from the abstract "distortion."

fume

And W. H. mean-

norm" under

When he uses the expression

the

"trains that

in the station" he evokes the literal visual image "to

smoke"

as well as the later

extended meaning "to be impa-

tient."

Hart Crane's strange vigor

is

in part derived from the re-

minder of root meanings. Here are a few examples. In a description of an airplane flying over

Mount

Hatteras, the pilot

is

thus

addressed:

Remember, Falcon-Ace,

Thou

hast there in thy wrist a Sanskrit charge

To conjugate Anew ... If

the general sense

infinity's

dim marge—

1

is

the quasi-magic

power of dominating the

horizons of infinity, the root meaning of "conjugate"

is still

The

234 felt as

Tongues

Gift of

"to put a yoke on," rather than "to inflect a verb." In

"Garden Abstract" the opening

lines are

The

apple on its bough is her desire,— Shining suspension, mimic of the sun.

The

abstract

thing which

word "suspension"

is

to

be interpreted

as "the

hung." In the haunting phrase "the silken skilled transmemberment of song" there is an enormous is

heightening of

effect

when

the trite

word "trans-formation"

form into another) is replaced by "transmemberment" (passing of one member into another). This particular instance shows how readily an acquired skill in etymological rejuvenation will pass into creative independence in (passing of one

handling words.

It is

but a step to

Word Formation out of elements already

known

or guessed.

There

is less

down-

right creation of words, even by the boldest innovators, than is

popularly supposed. Hart Crane's "thunder

is

galvothermic"

(from "The Tunnel") creates a word not registered in the dictionaries: "electrically

but its component parts make clear the sense of warm." (The fuller form "galvanothermic" would

have been more conventional.) Thomas Hardy subdues language to his purposes when he writes verbs like "to unbe," "unillude," or "unbloom," and nouns like "unease" and "lippings" (meaning "talk"). James Joyce has experimented in the

new word forms

meet special needs, especially monologue in Ulysses. In this he diverges conspicuously from the example of his predecessor Dujardin, whose novel of interior monologue, Les Lauriers sont coupes, does not contain any linguistic innovations and is written in conventional French. Joyce tried to approximate the stuff of our flowing wakeful consciousness by reproducing in speech the leaps, combinations, and blurrings of word and image characteristic of our private thoughts. Only certain parts of the novel are composed creation of

to

adapted to the passages of interior

Language and Poetic Creation

235

in this fashion. Cutting across these are sharp word-images

recording the sounds and sights of the objective world. Onomatopoeia shapes some of the new formations of words. A long-held note of a song, a "longindying call,"

is

said to dis-

woman's hair is "wa^yavyeavyheavyeavyevyevy"; the sound of passing horses' hoofs becomes "steelhoofs ringhoof ring." The mundane sound of body gases accompanies the hero's solemn meditation: "Then, not till then, my eppripfftaph. Be pfrwritt." Disjointed meditation is indicated by clipped forms: "He saved the situa. Tight trow. Brilliant ide," for "He saved the situation. Tight trousers. Brilliant idea." But it is noteworthy that the most audacious

solve in "endlessnessnessness"; a

coiners of verbal currency are limited to units capable of con-

veying sense— and therefore meaningful because they are in

some degree

familiar.

Punning is

a technique

now being

existence of

homonyms

more in all seriousmade possible by the

exploited once

ness after centuries of disrepute. It

is

in a language: words identical in

spoken form but having different meanings, often different origins. The spelling may or may not differ. In French there

meaning "to praise," from Latin meaning "to rent" from Latin locdre. The identity of forms today makes it possible to construct a witty compliment to a landlord in French, using a single phrase to indicate that a house is both praiseworthy and rentable. "Je loue votre maison parceque je la hue!" In Shakespeare's day

are two words louer: one,

laudare; the other

double use of homonyms was considered a legitimate adjunct of superbly serious style. It was not limited, although this

it

was also applied, to joking frivolous discourse. In Julius Mark Antony spoken alone over the dead

Caesar the words of

body in the Senate—

O

world, thou wast the forest to this hart,

And

this indeed,

O world,

the very heart of three—

The

236

Gift of

Tongues

were not meant to elicit smiles. The conscious balancing of the two homonyms was felt to heighten the intensity of Antony's tribute because it offered an auditory bond, "hart: heart," for the linking of two very serious metaphors.

Among modern

writers

James Joyce

spicuous exploiter of the pun.

He

uses

again the most con-

is

it as

part of his general

attempt to widen the scope of language. There are tentative trial instances in Ulysses: "She rose and closed her reading rose of Castille," or

With

"With the

grace of alacrity

.

ing pages of Finnegans

.

greatest alacrity, Miss .

she turned herself."

Wake we

Douce

On

agreed.

the open-

find the following double

meanings:

= Dublin, doublin' = retailed, re-taled told again) erse solid man = Erse solid, arse-solid wills = wills and wills (vb., opposite to "won'ts") Finnegan = Finnegan, Finn again half = halve, have wan = wan, one lean on = lean on, lien on doublin

retaled

(i.e.,

(n.)

If foreign

words may be included the

list

may be

lengthened:

bygmester r= big master, Danish Byggmester (master builder)

= viola d'amore, violator of loves = wall hall, Walhalla one eyegonblack = ein Augenblick; a blackened eye violer d'amores

wallhall

fern == fern (the plant), fern (distant) far =z far (adv.),

mere

Danish Far

= only, Meer (ocean)

(father) (p.

(cf.

p. 628)

628)

Verbal and Phrasal Distortions In

many

of the

punning expressions of Joyce, there

is

use of

words not strictly homonymous. Two words not precisely alike in sound are related to each other by a slight distortion of one of them which brings them closer together. This is employed far

more widely than

straight

punning

in Finnegans

Wake.

Language and Poetic Creation The purpose

237

extend the application of a single word or phrase by evoking simultaneously another one also pertinent is

to

to the occasion although in

an entirely different fashion.

allusions are not limited to English.

The

As with the simple puns,

the phrases are so treated as to include references to other

languages. dontelleries

= dentelleries (French for lace-adorned ob-

jects); also discreet,

intimate garments which "don't

tell"

erigenating

Duns

=

originating;

also

Erigena-ting

(from

Scotus Erigena, the "Erin-born" philosopher)

venissoon after =r very soon after; venison after; Venus'

son after

= horoscope; Eros-scope; hero-scope = Phoenix Park; Park of Fiends museyroom = museum; musing room Champ de Mors = Champ de Mars; Field of Death eroscope

Fiendish Park

(Mors)

= hereditary; hero-doter; Herodotus(?) = made like a pig; pigmied

herodotary

pigmaid

Whole

phrases are

made

that a simple statement

is

to

evoke others at the same time, so

paralleled by another heard in over-

tones:

and of course all chimed din width the eatmost boviality and of course all chimed in with the utmost

=

joviality (implications of noise, expansiveness, beefy

appetite)

honeys wore camelia paints

=

Honey swore Camelia

qui mal y pense haloed be her eve, her singtime sung, her paints; also

honi

soit

unhemmed as it is uneven!

rill

be run,

= the Lord's prayer trans-

ferred to a mythological goddess-river

when ginabawdy meadabawdy

=

gin-bawdy, meadbawdy; also "gin a body meet a body" sware by all his lards porsenal =r pig's fat; Lars Porsena

The

238

Gift of

Tongues

=

and a jaw forever a thing of beauty and a joy forever; also a bore Are you not danzzling on the age of a vulcano? dancing on the edge; also, dazzled in a volcano-like age a king off duty

=

(also, Vulcan-like).

Polyphonic Sentences

The purpose

of Joyce

is

the achievement of the effects of

polyphonic music in verbal writing. Hitherto

it

has seemed

impossible for literature to approximate the advantage of

music: namely an ability to have the ear apprehend, simultaneously and yet distinctly, two or

more themes being un-

folded at once. Joyce substitutes for melodies polysemantic verbal patterns realized by of the phrase

This

is

is

means

of distortions.

The

intonation

important in establishing the secondary motif.

not the place to discuss the value or aesthetic

justifica-

may be pointed out, however, that the curious and ambiguous linguistic medium is employed tions for Joyce's experiment. It

to treat a subject-matter derived largely

from the subconscious:

dream state. There is an aptness in the occasion, at any rate. The material of the "story" is the dream of a Dublin citizen, with lapses into nightmare, interruptions, and starts into half-consciousness,

a

throughout a long night. The author tries to penetrate beneath the most inclusive recordings of a flow of waking consciousness,

and

to express in this

new

sight to result in little

gibberish.

A

medium the flow The attempt appears

literary

conscious imagery in a dream.

more than

of subat first

a private, non-communicable

page of these multiple simultaneous themes,

re-

and capitalization, the uninitiated. But it does yield

plete with unconventional punctuation

looks like strange nonsense to to patient analysis.

To be sure a

properly equipped reader

is

expected to be un-

precedentedly polyglot and widely read. Very few, presumably, are in a position to decipher the text.

questions which

And there are all

sorts of

may be legitimately raised about the ultimate

value of the significant content which

may

underlie

all

the

Language and Poetic Creation

239

verbal distortions. Nevertheless the sheer virtuosity of Joyce's

beyond comparison. Even a slight experiment it will be found to be linguistically exhilarating. At the very least a reader will emerge newly alert to the resources of language as more ordinary people use it.

performance

is

in interpretation of

Concretes to Express Abstractions

There is another way of refreshing verbal concepts besides reminding readers of the component parts of abstract terms. It is to

make bold

substitution of entirely concrete simple terms for

which are actually intended. "Protection" is a chilly, colorless word. It becomes more vivid if you are reminded that it means a covering-over (tegere) in behalf of (pro) someone. It becomes poignantly immediate if it is translated into the still more concrete image of "roofing over" the vaguer abstract ones

(tectum).

The

disadvantage

is,

however, that the implied ab-

meaning, may be lost from the image. Width of scope may be sacrificed to immediacy. "He gave me the roofing over me" is a heart-warming statement, but it may fail to convey the general and inclusive function of protection-in-general. It may be taken as a bald statement of a mere night's shelter— limited, literal, and

straction,

although

still

essential to the

entirely

unsymbolic.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

is

a master of the successful trans-

position of abstract into concrete. ity,

The

implications of general-

even of universality, are never missed when he intends to them through a tangible word. In "Felix Randall,'

suggest

and handsome body of the man died— "his moult of man"— "pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it." The errancy of thought during delirium is brought close by the concrete term. Of God it is said, "He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change," a vivid the priest speaks of the large

who

has just

transmutation of theological terminology about divine creation.

The acceptance of castigation is expressed: I

did say yes

O

at lightning

and lashed

rod.

The

240

Gift of

The grandeur and sweep

Tongues

of the adjoining images prevent any

misunderstanding of the unpretentious

first

four words. Less

might have failed, because of over-simconvey the complex metaphysical act to be designated. This would have defeated half of the intent. Vigor would have been gained at the price of significance. Gertrude Stein sacrifices more than most writers are willing to do in order to gain musical quality and immediacy. Most

skilfully placed they plicity, to

board in her effort to achieve concretion. Her consciously primitivistic vocabulary— a very different thing, by the way, from a primitive one!— is a perpetual challenge to the reader to create afresh the intended abstractions out of presented monosyllables. This one trick is in fact the summation of her style. A word portrait of a woman is an polysyllables go by the

example: Florence Des cotes

Never Never Never Never Never

to

to

be restless be afraid

to ask will they

come

have made to like having had Little that is left then She made it do One and two Thank her for everything.

Under

to

the seemingly guileless statement you are supposed to

perceive a sophisticated delineation, something like this: "She

was a balanced, reconciled and courageous person; she did not harass herself and others about trifles. She never thought the thing done perfect nor did she seek possession. She was content with the residue of experience, great or little. She commands our gratitude." In a recent novel, Ida, Miss Stein manages to convey the symbolical value of simple experiences by the use of this simplistic

friend

The heroine is in conversation with a young named Arthur:

vocabulary.

Language and Poetic Creation He began

241

He said. All the world is crying crying about want a king. She looked at him and then she did not. Everybody might want a king but anybody did not want a queen. It looks, said Arthur, as if it was sudden but really it took some time, some months and even a couple of years, to understand how it all.

to talk.

They

all

everybody wants a king.

He said. Do you know the last time I was anywhere I was with my mother and everybody was good enough to tell me to come That was

all long ago. Everybody was crying because I went was not crying. That is what makes everybody a king that everybody cries but he does not.

again.

away, but

I

Presumably the sense

is this:

"All persons are congenitally in-

clined to seek a ruler or a type of leader

admirable patterns of conduct and

live

up

who

will establish

to them. Curiously

enough they do not usually look to a woman for this leadership. The last time Arthur had a significant experience of this was an occasion when he alone maintained self-control while others succumbed to emotion. This difference embodied the essential quality of the leadership which others seek." The sentiment may be questionable but the purpose is fairly clear.

in

In other writings Miss Stein

Three Acts the

ganized that there pretation,

is less

lucid. In

primitivistic material offered

is

Four

Saints

so little or-

much wider scope to the reader's intermuch less certainty about the themes be-

is

and thus

ing handled. Certain repeated juxtapositions seem to indicate that the two leading saints— Theresa and Ignatius— represent a cunningly planned contrast, let us say between the unratio-

cinating mystic (Theresa) and the analytical, intellectual saint (Ignatius).

The

unifying vision

is

repeatedly contrasted with

the discriminating intellect which looks for distinctions. But this

is

merely suggested by fragmentary unsyntactical phrases

and indirect

allusions:

Saint Theresa seated

many

and not surrounded. There are

a great

persons and places near together.

There are

a great

many

persons and places near together.

The

242

Gift of

Tongues

There are a great many

Saint Theresa once seated.

places

and

persons near together. Saint Theresa seated and not surrounded.

There

are a great

many places and

persons near together

A reader with patience and a lively imagination, the verbal interchange of abstract and concrete,

(p. 22).

trained in

may

para-

phrase this to mean: "Saint Theresa, a brooding mystic, undelimited, passive

and visionary, had the

gift of

perceiving things

in juxtaposition which are conventionally regarded as separate.

She annihilated space in her thought." (Mind you, I am this is precisely what was meant, but it can be

not sure that

drawn out of the

The description is amplified by a

text at will.)

comparison with the inconscient

fertility of the earth:

and laid. Not observing. coming to go. Saint Theresa coming and lots of which it is not as soon as if when it can left to change change theirs in glass and yellowish at most most of this can be when it is that it is very necessary not to plant it green. Planting it green means that it is protected from the wind and they never knew about it. They never knew about it green and they never knew about it she never knew about it they Saint Theresa with the land Saint Theresa

never knew about

it

they never

green means

knew about it she never knew about

necessary to protect it from the sun and from the wind and the sun and they never knew about it and she never knew about it and she never knew about it and they it.

Planting

never

it

knew about

(p. 3

it is

f .)

1

The fundamental image contained in

the

first

line

compares

the saint to tilled land, not "observing" in the sense, presum-

embroidered by repetitious concrete statements in which an abstract term like "inconscience" ably, of not reflecting.

or "awareness"

know"

is

This

is

replaced by near-conjugation of the verb "to

in a negative form.

Saint Ignatius,

on the other hand,

is

linked repeatedly with

concrete expressions implying intellectual preoccupations, as

would be appropriate

for the founder of the Jesuit order:

"Saint Ignatius might be very well adapted to plans and a dis-

Language and Poetic Creation tance"

(p. 32);

"Saint Ignatius occurred Saint Ignatius with-

drew occurred withdrew" line

and

243

"Saint Ignatius [says]. In

(p. 44);

in in line please say

it first

to his "friends" (the chorus),

he

is

in line" (p. 47). According

interested in things distant

hand: "the magpie in the sky" as well as the "pigeons on the grass alas"! In fact, "he asked for a disas well as things close at

tant

magpie

as if they

Ignatius able to

a difference" (p. 47L).

"Was

Saint

Apparently he was, for he is described "A saint to be met by and by by and by continuing reading

lyptus trees?" as

made

the difference between palms and Euca-

tell

(p. 33).

read read readily"

(p. 37).

In the end the contrasted saints are

characterized in summary.

To

makes

"Saint Theresa and Saint Theresa

it

do" the answer

is,

"who makes who

the question

too"— an affirmation of her creative or unifying role? To the question "who makes it be what they had as porcelain" (i.e., fragile), the answer is: "Saint Ignatius and left right laterally be lined"— a description of the analytical and demarking function of his intellect? called, I

These two

definitions,

if

may be

such they

conclude the "opera."

do not know whether these proposed interpretations are is, aesthetically justified or conformant to the

correct, that

author's plan.

Much

of the Steinian text

sound alone, and there

is

also

much

is

constructed for

jocosity in the

form of

puns, bizarre juxtapositions, and startling transitions, perhaps

Some of the puns are Joycean. "An egg and add some. Some and sum. Add sum. Add some" (p. 27) recalls Joyce's play on Latin adsum. There are many such jests in Stein. Though decorative, they surely do not make unrelated to any central theme.

But certain passages invite creative reinterpretation by the reader; and it appears that we are invited to pursue some method like the one here suggested. for clarity.

The

value of Miss Stein's innovation

was Joyce's.

may be

My own criticism of her work

is,

questioned, as

not that

it

means

nothing, but that the rather snobbish pleasure derived from collaborating with her in a quest for

meaning

is

not great

The

244 enough

to justify the effort

tent of her verse all.

To

Gift of

is

Tongues

and the

slight results.

The

con-

limited to truisms and facile antitheses after

a lesser degree than Joyce she does provide a kind of

linguistic rejuvenation

by a method of her own, but other poets

give a heightened pleasure in language with far less sacrifice

of propositional content.

Abstractions to Express the Concrete If the

use of a limited concrete

acy, the use of

word heightens

vivid immedi-

an abstract one for a concrete situation will

heighten the general sense of importance and significance in

Much

awe and reverence attendant is due to its formation out of Latin abstract nouns with no homely connotations in ordinary speech. In other languages with a more homogenethe situation.

upon

of the vague

the religious vocabulary in English

ous vocabulary this

may not be

true.

A German child learning

Empfdngnis may recognize in the first word the humble word Flecke, "spot," which he first learned the term unbeflecktes

when he

spattered

mud or grease over his clothes. The correla-

tion will help clarify the semantic situation for him, but

it

may

somewhat reduce his sense of awe. An English-speaking child has no similar experience to fall back on when he learns the august phrase "immaculate conception." connotations

may

The

vagueness of the

therefore heighten his sense of mystery in

dealing with the phrase. Emily Dickinson employs occasional abstractions in order to give transcendent value to poignant

homely

situations.

Go

not too near a house of

The depredation of a breeze Or inundation of a dew Alarm its walls away; Nor try to tie the butterfly; Nor climb the bars of ecstasy. In insecurity to Is joy's

lie

insuring quality.

rose,

Language and Poetic Creation

245

Instances can be found in contemporary poets too.

The

from defined situation to an abstraction often marks the end of a poem. This is in line with the transmutation of significance implied in an abstract term. Robert Graves, concludshift

ing a brief sketch of a "Quayside," refers to the spaces at sea for contrast,

where on

ships are few, each

With no In a

poem

called

its

proper course,

occasion for approach or discourse.

"O Love

in me," he presents

first

graphic

images of the impact of existence, and then concludes:

Take your delight in momentariness, Walk between dark and dark, a shining space With the grave's narrowness, though not its peace.

Two examples from Auden: You

alone, alone,

O

imaginary song,

Are unable to say an existence is wrong, And pour out your forgiveness like a wine. ('The Composer")

May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust,

[i.e.,

Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair Show an affirming flame. ("September

The

effect of abstractions is exploited in

1,

the Just]

1939")

connection with the

concrete theme of moonlight: "This lunar beauty has no tory.

his-

." .

.

There

is

sustained use of abstractions implanted

ticulars in the following stanza of

tery Park:

Ben

High Noon": Suddenly

Between

The

flint

and

glitter,

the leant leaf

formal blueness, blooming over

Struck into glass and plate,

among

par-

Belitt, describing "Bat-

slate.

The

246 The

Gift of

Tongues

public tulips, treading meridian glare

In bronze and whalebone by the statue bases

Elude the Battery Square,

Turn, with a southern gesture, in remembered

And Hart Crane

claim a loved identity, like is

faces.

bold with abstractions

as

as

.

air,

.

.

with their op-

posites. In fact it may be said that much of his verbal effect comes from swift alternation of stingingly concrete images with

abstract terms.

The

"A boy

illustrations are easy to find:

runs

with a dog before the sun, straddling Spontaneites that form their

independent

orbits.

out equivocations" albatross's ity it

.

(p. 93);

."

.

(p. 67);

"from palms

white immutability"

"Smutty wings

flash

to the severe/Chilled

(p. 105); "Infinite

bears— This tendered theme of you. ..."

consanguin-

(p. 104);

"Ex-

pose vaunted validities that yawn/Past pleasantries. ..." 130).

To

paraphrase these

ately strove for. Still,

is

some periphrasis

is

challenges the intellectual participation as appreciation, quite in the poets. It will

much

as

is

sensuous

manner of the complex metaphysical

be noticed that in these quotations the

the abstractions

(p.

Crane deliberrequired, since Crane

to spoil the effect

effect of

heightened by emplacement near extremely

and "equivocations" heighten each other by contrast, as do "validities" and "yawning." This leads to the general question of semantic enrichment by means

vivid words. "Smutty wings"

of another technique: juxtapositions.

Juxtapositions

We

have seen in the chapter on semantics that

all

words are

surrounded by an aura of connotations in addition to the precise denotations. When two words with similar connotative spheres are put together they strengthen each other so far as factual information

is

concerned, but they do not offer a chal-

lenge to the attention or a marked stimulus to the imagination. It is

otherwise

when two words

are juxtaposed out of different

Language and Poetic Creation connotative spheres.

A

pression.

The element

247

of conflict enriches the ex-

simple form of the usage has long been practiced

by English poets.

It consists in

placing together two words be-

longing to two different realms of physical sense. Milton's

"blind mouths" "eyes

is an example. which mutter thickly" (is

"noisecolored" (W> or Viva, p.

One,

Three,

and

iv),

speaks of

of something

a "rolypoly voice"

[is 5,

i).

The Eliot

3),

Cummings

E. E. 5,

is

general device

is

being widely employed today. T.

a past master of this technique,

his larger

S.

which harmonizes with

purpose of contrasting moods and cultures deliber-

by way of satiric commentary. The technique is epitomized in the sentence from "Whispers of Immortality": ately

".

.

.

her friendly bust/Gives promise of pneumatic

where the derisive adjective

more

conflicts

bliss,"

with the traditionally

way Gertrude Stein does the same thing: witness her titular expression "Tender Buttons." The satirical intent is lacking in such a pairing off; what "poetic" noun. In a

you receive fuse that

it

is

rather a verbal shock producing an effect so

The I

dif-

can scarcely be used to serve a wider purpose. Eliot,

much farther than simple combinations may involve parts of a sentence. In

of course, goes

words.

abstract

oi

balance

have measured out

my

life

with coffee spoons.

the caesura of the line marks the break between the two antithetical elements.

The same poem, "The Love Song

fred Prufrock," contains an extended position.

There

And That

will be time to

time for lift

all

murder and

create,

the works and days of hands

and drop

of J. Al-

example of phrasal juxta-

a question

on your

plate;

Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and

tea.

The

248

Gift of

Tongues

Here the first imposing line— held in suspense in your mind while you read the next five— is contrasted with the mundane ordinariness of the last. Within this enclosing envelope of juxtaposition there are smaller units: "murder" put beside "create," the abstract "question" beside the concrete "plate."

And

there

is

also a case of etymological rejuvenation.

The

juxtaposition of "revisions" beside "visions" reminds you that the

word once meant "seeing

supposed to grasp both the

Here you are and metaphorical meanings

for a second time."

literal

simultaneously.

"The Waste Land"

is

of course built

on an elaborate

pat-

tern of contrasting juxtapositions. Echoes of Dante, Parzival, Tristan, Shakespeare, Verlaine, Baudelaire,

and others of

august connotation serve to enhance the bitter sordidness of

contemporary allusions. Eliot demands recognition of these allusions for a full appreciation of his purpose.

A crowd

flowed over London Bridge, so many, had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, I

And

each

man fixed his eyes before

his feet.

Unless you perceive the use of Dante's "io non avrei max creduto / Che morte tanta n'avesse disfatta," you do not get the full effect.

An

elaborate

and bizarre instance

is

given in the

drab, furtive, meaningless seduction of a city typist by a small

house agent's clerk, "carbuncular."

The episode is opened with

an echo of Sappho's beautiful distich on the evening star, which

summons home to rest "all that the glittering morn hath driven afar,"

and is concluded with a sardonic modernization

smith's

"When

lovely

woman

of Gold-

stoops to folly." Insofar as the

pleasure of recognizing literary allusion

is

at present limited to

few out of the reading public, enjoyment of Eliot's technique remains snobbishly restricted. The necessary linguistic prowess is less

exacting, however.

The reasons for exclusiveness are spe-

Language and Poetic Creation

249

from the ones encountered in Joyce. They are based chiefly on ability to recognize allusions; much less on ability to manipulate linguistic elements.

and

rial

different

Levels of Discourse

Comparable

to the juxtaposition of

connotations

is

be explained in the chapter on society and

to another. It will

linguistic strata,

words with conflicting

the abrupt change from one level of discourse

problems that languages

like ours exist in several

according to the economic and cultural positions oc-

To

cupied by different speakers. the confines of a single

poem

is

pass

from one

to another in

to give the reader another type

of stimulating shock: a rhetorical one.

John Dos

Passos, in-

terrupting lyrical passages in his novels with snatches of popular song, journalistic headlines,

and colloquialisms, made

tained use of this variety in his novels. in prose,

nation of

is

Alfred Doblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz.

styles

may be found

in

sus-

A German example, also

poems

like

The

alter-

Horace Gregory's

"Columbo Dominico" and "Longface Mahoney

Discusses

Heaven." Archibald MacLeish makes judicious use of the admixture of colloquial in Rockefeller's City.

lofty context in Frescoes for

Edgar Lee Masters

tried the

abrupt

Mr.

shift in

Spoon River Anthology, though here it was images rather than locutions which were put into bizarre jux-

some poems of

his

taposition.

Some contemporary poets are conducting experiments in total use of

substandard colloquial speech for

the

lyrical purposes.

John Weaver did so, some time ago, in his poems In American. Kenneth Fearing is exploring the possibilities today. E. E. Cummings sometimes produces a mystifying example of his

own it is

on

special type of "phonetic" writing

not phonetic.

this level,

It takes liberties

it

this level.

Of course

with the sounds really used

presumably in order

Mr. Cummings, and

on

to satisfy the inner ear of

indulges in a curious vivisection of

The

250

words to conform ample: oil tel

Gift of

to his

duh woil

Tongues

rhythmical desires. Here

an

is

ex-

doi sez

dooyuh unnurs tanmih eesez pullih hizmus tah oi dough un giv uh shid oi sez. Fur Croi saik ainnoughbudih gutnutntuhplai? .

.

.

.

You may decipher

this readily

.

enough

.

if

you read

it

aloud

without regarding the divisions of words.

Evocation of the Unsaid Because we learn words and phrases in contexts, each fresh them tends to recall the original association. In expres-

use of

word or and preg-

sions frequently employed, like proverbs, the initial

two will be sufficient to recall the whole. An allusive nant style results when discourse is made up of the minimum verbal signals necessary to recall an entire statement. No one is puzzled by the fragmentary

"A word

to the wise."

The

equiva-

even more pregnant, since it can be reduced to two words: "Verbum sapienti." Writers who attempt to record a stream of consciousness use fragmentary allusion generously, since it corresponds in some sort to the rapid lent statement in Latin

short-cuts

we make

is

in thinking without elaborate verbaliza-

on the emotive level. Here again a considerable burden

tion, especially

is

placed on the reader.

The difference between complete understanding and complete mystification may depend on knowledge of one incomplete allusion. So in the otherwise clear character sketch

by E. E.

Cummings: yonder deadfromtheneckupgraduate of a somewhat obscure to be sure university spends her time looking picturesque under the as

it

happens quite

erroneous impression that he nascitur.

Language and Poetic Creation

251

The task of supplying punctuation is not difficult, but the whole point of the sketch is lost if you fail to recall the Latin saying, Poeta nascitur non fit, "A poet is born, not trained." If you do remember, you will realize that "he" must be a poet. The self-conscious young lady graduate spends her time posturing for "him" under the illusion that he is a poet and will immortalize her. (The same proverb is alluded to in another .") of Cummings' lines: "Each dream nascitur, is not made. Without knowledge of the unsaid, that which is said usually conveys little or no meaning. .

.

Shift of Grammatical Category Since the Renaissance, poets have been ticity of

many

English grammar. There

is

making use

of the elas-

nothing to distinguish

verbs from the nouns derived from them; adverbs are

often identical with adjectives or with prepositions in outward

form. This being

so,

a creative writer

the elasticity of ordinary speech

is

when he

easily led to increase

transforms

higher ends. Shakespeare uses an adjective as a verb

it

for his

when he

with the pale cast of thought" or "violenteth strong"; a noun as a verb when he says "Lord

says "sicklied o'er

in a sense as

Angelo dukes"

it

well. It

is

quite usual to hear "but

me no

buts" in ordinary speech; and most school children will recall

Tennyson's "Diamond me no diamonds," and "Prize me no prizes" from the Idylls of the King. The moderns furnish plenty of instances; in fact one is embarrassed by the multiplicity of them. Of course when writers abandon formal grammar temporarily it is hard to tell how much shifting is going on, and you are presumably at liberty to interpret the syntax (if any) as you please. This is only true, however, in the most esoteric passages of writers like Stein. Elsewhere a little reflection will clear up a seeming snarl of relationships.

Occasionally Gerard Manley Hopkins permits himself a dar-

ing shift in parts of speech.

Deutschland"

as

He

refers to the

ocean in "The

"widow-making unchilding unfathering

The

252 deeps."

Gift of

Tongues

Not only are two nouns here made

into verbs, but they

are provided with unprecedented negative forms. In the same

poem an adverbial phrase becomes a noun: "dandled the to and Joyce has made two similar adverbial expressions into verbs. "The hitherandthithering waters" of the Liffey River fro."

conveys the effect of currents and eddies; a dog "almosting" a

bone indicates strain and frustrated effort better than the usual expression because it embodies the central transitive idea in the verb where it belongs. ("Get" has become as colorless as "is.") An adjective is treated the same way in the phrase "warm sunshine merrying over the sea." Here again the conventional expression "making merry" is ineffective because the verb— which should be important in a verbal idea— is lacking in color. A pronoun becomes a noun in Cummings's "the feline she with radish red legs." An adverb sprouts unorthodox suffixes in the phrase "hoop returns fasterishly." In Auden's

the

Sir,

no man's enemy, forgiving

But

will his negative inversion, be prodigal,

noun "inversion" appears

object preceding. This

is

to

be used

all

as a verb,

with the

not certain, however. There

is

simi-

doubt about the construction of the sentence in his Double Man, lines 194-99, which hinge on the ambiguous words "frowns the young Rimbaud guilt demands." The hesitation engendered by such innovations may delay the current of the reader's attention in a salutary manner. But this is true only if lar

the arrested flow serves to underscore a genuinely significant

thought.

Rearrangement of Sentence Units Normal English word order tends to carry the attention forward in a sequence Subject -» Predicate -> Complement. Modifiers are usually placed unobtrusively, where they will cause least interruption. Variations on the normal order are limited because of a lack of inflections to show syntactic relations. Still, poets

and other writers take certain

liberties

with

Language and Poetic Creation normal word order in order

to gain for themselves

advantages of inflected languages. This too

The

the history of English literature.

is

253 some of the

nothing new in

seventeenth-century

prose writers imitated Latin ablative absolutes and other constructions

which might not

at first

blush seem at

to the genius of the English sentence. It

that

modern

German

is

all adapted by inversions chiefly

writers try to approximate the values of Latin or

sentence structure.

Whenever Joyce's hero

of Ulysses,

Mr. Bloom, pursues a reverie with any freedom, the sentences recording it become replete with inversions. The main image is put first, whether it is shaped in an adverb, a phrase, a verb (finite or non-finite) or any other part of speech. Whatever else is said becomes the predicate— that is, the thing predicated— no matter what its formal structure. Curiously enough, this unconventional handling of sentences corresponds to the theory of "segmented parts" elaborated by two French scholars, Ferdinand Brunot and Charles Bally, for the French language. Their books, by the way, are heartily recommended to any persons handicapped by too great regard for traditional gram-

mar

in the approach to contemporary literature.

This

is

how Joyce reorganizes sentences into "inverted parts"

of image plus predication in Ulysses:

God

they believe she

By went See

me

The

scores of

or goddess

he might

Glorious tone he has

Down

is:

his eyes

she

sat.

examples of

simply illustrate what Bally

still

All ousted looked

usage in the novel

this sort of

calls

segmentation in discussing

the elasticity of sentence usage in colloquial speech. Ordinarily

we

use

and formulas in order to shift to the position "theme" (as he calls it) those parts not grammatically

little tags

of major

constituting a "subject" in the traditional sense. For instance, to give the desired stress

we

say:

"So far

cerned, they never intended to keep

as the treaty

it,"

is

con-

instead of merely

The

254

Gift of

Tongues

"They never intended to keep the we say: "That piece over there— if

treaty." it's

Or

in conversation

done give

it

to

me." In

the preceding discussion, the present author exemplified segmentation in the sentence beginning "It is by inversions chiefly ." French has its own formulas of segmentation like that. quant a ("so far as"); some appear cryptic to a foreign listener: .

.

Q a alors—mais quand-meme—par exemple!—je ne su! or Cette

fille

la—vraiment

je

ne

la

Vai jamais

A different

connais pas.

intonation marks a segmented presentation from an ordinary sentence. In

German

the larger

number

of inflections

makes

rearrangement of parts possible in a sentence without modification of formal syntax. But in colloquial speech emphasis

brings about sentences like:

Den Mann dort—den

hab' ich nie

vorher gesehen. All of this

make eral

is

by way of indicating that creative writers often

use of colloquial practices long since recognized by lib-

grammarians. From Walt

Whitman

to

Archibald Mac-

Leish they have been giving us whole catalogues of nouns in

MacLeish Other poets lean on

verbless presentations. Cleanth Brooks has spoken of

poet of the noun, not of the verb.

as the

verbs at the expense of nouns.

The

poetic innovation, then, often consists in the

heightening and exaggerating of a usage familiar to

all

mere of us.

In an earlier day poets gained elasticity by a very different manner.

They

tence.

tried to

impose alien structures on the English sen-

John Milton's opening lines of Paradise Lost complement to the head of a sentence:

also shift

a predicate

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us. and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse.

With

.

The

effect

is

interesting to

.

.

from the rhythms of colloquial speech. It is compare the difference in technique and effect.

far

Language and Poetic Creation

255

Reinforcement by Sound This aspect of the poetic elementary. In

all

art

might seem

to

be most simple and

periods the phonological values of language

have been exploited to heighten emotional effect. Euripides permits Medea to hiss her reproaches at Jason in a line full of play). Virgil imitates the sound of clumping pace of a giant in the Aeneid. English poets have been attempting mimesis of droning bees, whistling wind, lumbering quadrupeds, and other natural

sibilants

(1.

476 of the

horses' hoofs or the

phenomena for a long time. In little new to offer. It still uses

this respect

modern poetry

has

sibilants for hissing, gutturals

and nasals for languorous effects. These are lasting and appear to be quite fundamental.

for weight, liquids

associations

For English readers in particular, however, a bit of technical knowledge is helpful towards an appreciation of the sound values of verse.

Our spelling causes a discrepancy between what

the eye sees

and what the ear

you may be

satisfied

hears. If

you are visual-minded

with the rhymes "flood: food" or "love: drove," but if you tend to hear internally what you are reading

you will

feel the discord.

rhyme "one: sun" [wAn:

Wordsworth followed SAn] of

"To

Small service

is

Of humblest

friends, bright creature! scorn not one:

The

daisy,

true service while

by the shadow that

it

Protects the lingering dew-drop

But he

is

his ear in the

a Child": it lasts:

casts

from the sun.

led astray into a visual or "eye-rhyme"

when he yokes

together "one" with "stone" [waii: sto:n] in a stanza of the

"Lucy" poems:

A violet

by a mossy stone

Half-hidden from the eye!

—Fair Is

You

as a star,

when only one

shining in the sky.

will find slips of this sort

among the most admired of nine-

teenth-century poets. That they were mistakes and not cun-

The

256

Gift of

Tongues

ningly planned dissonances

is indicated by the rigid perfection rhymes in the poems concerned. Spelling alone appears to be the cause. Moreover, spelling very probably restrains writers from using legitimate rhymes which look misleadingly different on paper. In Southern England and the Eastern United States "born: dawn" is an acceptable rhyme. Dialect influence plays a part here, however. A Scots poet or a Middle Western American would refrain from rhyming them because in their pronunciation a vowel difference really exists, besides the differ-

of all other

ence in the consonantal endings.

Many modern

poets find perfect conventional rhymes

mo-

notonous, and are deliberately reverting to assonance and

near-rhyme for variety. Assonance was the accepted ornament of Old French heroic poetry in the twelfth century. It consists in putting together final syllables in

which the vowels are opposed to rhyme, where they too must be identical). This is how Old French poets handled it:

identical but the consonants can be anything at all (as

Tres vait

Parmi

la noit,

eel host

et apert la clere albe

sovent e

menu

reguardet

Li emperere;

molt fierement chevalchet. "Seignors barons," dist li emperere Carles Veez les porz et les destreiz passages: Car me jugiez qui iert en la riere-guarde!" (Chanson de Roland, 11. 737

ff.)

Near-rhyme avoids identity of vowel, sometimes of consotoo, and yet uses sounds approaching perfect rhyme. In Auden's "Epilogue" there is sustained use of near-rhyme which occasionally becomes assonance. The paired words— "reader: rider," "midden: madden," "fearer: farer," "horror: hearer"— keep the consonants quite parallel but change the vowels in a nant

manner suggesting vowel gradation

(except of course that the

paired words are not derived from identical roots). In the same

poem

there

is

one example of assonance: "path:

pass."

The

Language and Poetic Creation

257

vowels are identical but, as in Old French, the consonants differ.

The two sounds

[0]

and

[s]

be sure, very

are, to

close.

Lispers confound them entirely. Here are some other nearrhymes employed by Auden: add: god

result: guilt all:

haunted: wanted

prodigal

touch: itch

this: ease

When he puts together the verbs just slipping into a

mistaken eye-rhyme,

the case of Wordsworth; he

is

and "drives" he

"lives"

as

is

not

we should suspect in

consciously

making use

of the

approximation of sounds not identical.

Enjoyment of Poetry

The best heritage of poetry belongs, like the best of all the arts, to all the people who can enjoy it. Under more favorable circumstances I am convinced that this would include vast numbers who never hear about their heritage today. The chorus of snobs and cynics will say: "Ah, but the people as a whole are congenitally incapable of appreciating the

known

work of those choice

Such things are not for them. They them by press, movies, and radio. Artists and critics must turn their backs on the profane herd to save themselves." Certain of the illuminati enjoy thinking this, as they are thus proved to be the rarer souls by contrast. Such judgment is found in various forms, variously disspirits

as poets.

prefer the cheap and vulgar sensations offered

guised. It involves sociology as well as literary criticism. Social attitudes are of course always closely related to literary dicta. If a critic believes that limits

and

stultification

and

indiffer-

something to do with malnuunemployment, and despair; with low vitality and the conscious commercial debauchery of literary taste, he will not conclude that innate human bestiality is the prime ence in the reading public have trition, poverty,

cause for a limited circulation of the

classics.

Horace's Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.

He

He may

will not

echo

instead won-

The

258

Gift of

Tongues

how the barriers to culture may be broken down and the fertile tide released. Even the most "spiritual" of literary critics may have noted that he is himself temporarily der optimistically

some degree from professional activity if he has allowed extreme hunger to bring on a headache. Conversely, he may therefore concede that food, light, air, and sleep may transform seeming dullards into alert people. It is no magic, only elemental human bio-chemistry. And it is a process which disqualified to

we now know

is

capable of realization.

The

conditions for do-

ing so have been explored and tested.

How then, if in addition illiteracy were to be abolished, specter of insecurity banished,

and the

the

arts of recreation so pre-

sented as to refine the public's sensibilities instead of corrupt-

ing them? The luminous possibilities can only be dimly imagined in our age of Hollywood films and venal journalism, not to speak of the actual bleak analphabetism of hundreds of

thousands of our fellow-citizens.

If

deep-lying biological fac-

have indeed worsened some part of our stock beyond repair, there is no need to assume that this is true of most of it, and certainly none to cause us to adjust all popular tors of inheritance

arts to the least talented of

men and women among

us.

All of this has some bearing on the material of this chapter.

You will have

noticed that

I

have expressed from time to time

a certain doubt as to the enduring value of some of the authors

Naturally we cannot know which writings of today will earn the enduring affections of posterity. Even where great

cited.

indubitably exist, as with James Joyce, we have reason to doubt whether they have been applied to themes and techniques of perennial value. But one thing is sure: if the value is there, mere technical difficulty will not keep it alien to the gifts

reading public of the future.

It is their

heritage and they will

Technical obscurities have a way of disappearing within the span of a generation. Some of us have the courage to enjoy

it.

hope that the first real age of human Enlightenment may succeed the contemporary horror. If science is at last permitted to serve the public's physical needs as

it

could do, art

may

Language and Poetic Creation minister to the spiritual solace of

all as

259

never before. For such

readers of the future the technical devices of poetry here sur-

veyed will no doubt appear in our

own

much more

transparent than

now

day.

And even now there many

as they do.

public, as

small

called, there are

it is

amount

is no reason why they should mystify as Within the limited circle of our own reading

of guidance

many

already waiting for the

needed towards the comprehension

of beauties they vaguely surmise in the current offering of literature. It

is

a

genuine

offers so little help.

peal, could

pity, I think, that critical interpretation

The

radio alone, with

its

direct aural ap-

be used to foster a tremendous renascence of poetry

and the appreciation of poetry. Many of the appeals described in this chapter could better be explained by a speaking voice

than by printed words.

An

elementary knowledge of

linguistics, then,

the cultural enrichment of all our people. science has

its

humane

Even

could aid in

this

forbidding

applications, too long neglected.

should like to see the study of language pursued, not only

an esoteric end in

itself,

but also

as

I

as

an auxiliary to aesthetic

enjoyment. This chapter, an unconventional item in a book devoted primarily to

way

just

how

linguistics,

may indicate

the assistance can be given.

in a very sketchy

Social Aspects: Class, Taboos, Politics

io.

Language Like Clothing Speculating on the function of clothes in society, and what they

have done to us, Carlyle at one point of Sartor Resartus asks us to imagine the functioning of "government, legislation, property, police,

and

civilized society" if all persons

were abruptly

forced to appear in public without any clothing whatsoever.

We

are so accustomed to reliance

and materials

on badges, buttons,

styles,

in judging our fellow-men, he argues, that

august institutions would dissolve in "wails and howls" with-

out them. These are the signs of rank and

class;

we

deplore

but we need them. "Lives the man," he asks, "that can figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords? Imagination, choked as in mephitic their artificiality,

air, recoils

on

itself,

and

will not forward with the picture.

and plush gown that announce the judge; without them he would be no more by day than he is by night, only "a forked Radish with a head fan.

."

.

It is

the wig, squirrel-skins,

tastically carved."

But Carlyle

is

wrong. Even with the badges and uniforms

stripped away, something less

would remain

as a guide, as sure if

ponderable, to the social position of each forked radish.

Even a naked Duke of Windlestraw, upon opening his mouth, would speak the English language with a certain air, an accent and intonation inextricably associated with his rank and authority. An untrained impostor from the lower levels of society would be detected by his speech, although appearing as one nude radish among many. Of course, his speech could be faked 260

Social Aspects: Class, Taboos, Politics

261

but so could his clothes, for other occasions. Both types of deception have been practiced. It is a pity that Carlyle did not urn his attention to language as a metaphorifor this occasion;

cal clothing of

man

in society.

Class Dialects

The

existence of different

various ranks

is

manners of speech

a familiar fact.

We

for persons in

are constantly sorting

classifying people according to them.

A

tional language according to social levels

and

variation of any nais

called a class dia-

lect. Even within the class dialect there may be many variations and minor divisions. For instance, the younger members of a

privileged class a special jargon

who attend special schools sometimes develop among themselves which is almost incompre-

hensible to outsiders. Yet

it is

clearly

an offshoot of the general

"upper-class" dialect of their parents. Poorer youngsters also as local and esoteric as and other restricted groups develop special jargons mystifying to an outsider. But these are even more clearly recognized and assigned to the general class dialects to which they belong. When we talk, then, we tell much more about ourselves

develop a kind of tribal school jargon the other.

Even

families

than the factual statements we are making. small nuances will indicate

much about our

The sum

total of

training, environ-

ment, economic position, and even profession. In conversation we are unconsciously providing a rich commentary about ourselves which supplements the clothing sessions

we

and outward

pos-

gather.

Cockney English Not

all

European languages

offer the

same number of

levels

contrasted with equal sharpness. W'ithin the English-speaking

world the sharpest contrast is probably to be found between Cockney London dialect on the one hand and "upper-class" speech on the other. Londoners are not skittish about admitting this contrast; they are very frank about the existence of

The

262

Tongues

Gift of

The

attitude of most observers is that humorous, and can be appreciated— at best— only by a condescending tolerance. Of course this is a result of the social connotations of the speech. In an early play, class levels in speech.

Cockney

intrinsically

is

Captain Brassbound's Conversion (written before his better

known Pygmalion), George Bernard Shaw experimented with the use of Cockney for dramatic purposes involving class distinctions.

One

of his problems was the difficult task of record-

ing the vowel sounds of his low-class character, Drinkwater.

This

is

what the attempt looked

like

on the printed page.

Drinkwater, an engaging ne'er-do-well, finds himself entertaining Sir

Howard Hallam,

appeared

defendant:

as

a judge before

Drinkwater {placing the chair for libbety, Sr Ahrd.

pawdn for the Sir Howard

(looking at him).

You

Drinkwater.

ev, Sr

Sir

whom

he once

Howard). Awskink yr

have seen you before somewhere.

I

Ahrd. But aw do assure yer

it

were hall

a mistike. Sir

Howard. As

(He

usual.

down.) Wrongfully convicted, of

sits

course.

Drinkwater (with

Naow, gavner. (Half whispering,

sly delight).

with an ineffable grin.) Wrongfully hacquittid! Sir

Howard. Indeed! That's the

first

case of the

kind

I

have

ever met.

Drinkwater: Lawd, Sr Ahrd, wot jagginses them jurymen was!

You an me knaowed Sir

Howard.

it

too, didn't

daresay

I

we

did. I

nature of the difficulty you were

Owny the aw Rowd kice. Wot

Drinkwater.

Worterloo

we?

am sorry

in.

to say I forget the exact

Can you

refresh

my memory?

[high] sperrits o youth, y'lawdship.

they calls Ooliganism.

.

.

.

Nime

[name] giv huz pore thortless leds baw a gent on the Dily Awll eng [hang] abaht within ile [hail], gavner, Chrorncile. hin kice aw should be wornted. .

.

.

In this conversation,

it

will

be observed, the only attempts

at phonetic writing are limited to the speech of the

Cockney.

Social Aspects: Class, Taboos, Politics Sir

Howard Hallam's

speech

is

given in conventional (that

Shaw admits,

highly unphonetic) spelling. As

quite inconsistent, but

it

263

this

procedure

has the merit of convenience.

is,

is

When

educated persons, for instance professional people, read a printed page each assumes that the unreal orthography stands for his

own

special

form of "acceptable" English.

It

would be

too complicated for a dramatist to indicate every shading (even

he could) within that very inclusive

territory. Shaw finds Cockney dialect, and is particularly impatient with the snobbish contempt of outsiders for the so-called "misplaced aitch" which is one of its characteristics. "Roughly speaking, I should say that in England he who bothers about his h's is a fool, and he who ridicules a dropped if

many

attractive features in the

h a snob."

Yet persons with social ambitions have spent

much

time and

suffered real distress in an effort to achieve conformity with

The matter has been treated with solemnity in a novel by May Sinclair, The Divine Fire, which was widely read about a generation ago. The hero their "betters" in details such as this.

was supposed to be a gifted poet born with the soul of ancient Greece lodged in a Cockney bosom: "The child of 'Ellas and 'Ollywell Street— innocent

one of the London

literati

of— er— the rough breathing,"

puts

it.

x

as

Later his "innocence" of that

minor phoneme when under emotional stress causes him the most excruciating social agonies. It is amusing to remember that at a certain time in ancient

Rome

it

was considered very

chic to insert unhistorical /^-sounds before words normally be-

ginning with vowels.

It

gave a fashionable Greekish flavor to

ordinary everyday Latin. Catullus

tells

us in one of his

poems

that the fops of his day were saying hinsidiae for insidiae

("hambushes" for "ambushes"). ney poet's

failing.

It

was the obverse of the Cock-

So relative are the social connotations of a

single sound! l

This

is

the term used in Greek

grammars

to designate initial [h].

The

264

Gift of

Variations of British

"

Tongues

Standard" Speech

Rarely, for the reasons indicated by Shaw, has an author tried to record the peculiarities of a dialect of general upperclass speech.

In one case, Mr.

Thomas

Wolfe's Of

Time and

the River, the attempt appears to be the result of bad temper.

The hero of this novel

young American writer, resident in Oxford during term time. He resents what he conceives to be is

a

the tight, complacent, exclusive atmosphere of those

who

''be-

long": the products of the cricket fields at accepted public

The

whether real or imagined, drives him to an extreme form of defiant provincialism, so that he flaunts his vulgarity and his special form of American speech self-consciously. And he falls into the fallacy of assuming that speech differing from his own is "affected." Naive Americans visiting England have often expressed this astounding attitude towards any and all of the class dialects of the mother country. Wolfe attempts a phonetic rendering that is individual, if nothing else. "Year" is sometimes spelled as "yoh" and "there" as "thoh," though not always. The effort is inconsistent as well schools.

exclusiveness,

as inaccurate.

English writers themselves have sometimes jeered at certain details of "public school-Oxford" speech as

such detail

is

being affected.

One

the tendency to change words like "dear, hear"

"deah, heah" [dio, hia],even [dja:, hja:]. Aldous Huxley records such variations with palpable distaste when he makes a character in Point Counter-Point say "ryahly fyahful" for "really fearful." He remarks of the speaker, Sidney Quarles: "His voice was resonant and full of those baa-ings with which the very Oxonian are accustomed to enrich the English language. ... It was as though a flock of sheep had broken loose in his vocabulary." [di:a(j), hi:a (j)] into

Levels of Speech

The

existence of an accepted upper-class dialect associated

with those

who govern

a country

and man

its

professions has

Social Aspects: Class, Taboos, Politics

some amusing consequences. The

265

sociological implications

have never been adequately explored. For one thing, the levels

change

will not be clearly preserved

it

rapidly, as at the time of the

French Revolution.

historical

moving

is

And

even

where change has been slow and barriers are clearly marked, the rise and fall of individuals brings about incongruities— lack of harmony, let us say, between the physical clothing and the garment of speech. It is only human for people in a stratified society to want to appear more smart and elegant than they are by birth and training. This is true if the society does leave some opportunities for personal advancement from the lower ranks. When people are over-eager to climb, they adopt a speech of uneasy

and is

as

self-conscious gentility.

One

of

its

obvious characteristics

an excess of zeal for correctness: zeal to "talk good grammar," it is sometimes called. This solicitude produces what we call

hypercorrect forms.

Hypercorrectness For instance, a person may have been drilled in school

to cor-

rect his native speech in the matter of present participles: to

"pronounce the

final g," as the unscientific saying

like "ringing, singing, eating."

self-consciousness,

the syllable

[irj]

and he

The

drill

is,

embarrasses

in words

him

into

tends, for safety's sake, to substitute

for all final [in]'s in his speech. So

he says

"curting," "garding," "ruing" for "curtain," "garden," "ruin."

Or

it

may be

"Him and me

that in

triumph

at

having corrected errors

get along fine" into

"He and

I

like

get along well,"

the rising individual produces sentences like "It's a secret be-

tween him

The

(he)

and

arriviste in

perfect tenses

and

I."

language to

is

also apt to gloat in the use of

overdo them. "It was a great pleasure

to

have met you." Excessive self-consciousness about adverbial endings produces "finely" or "fastly" cently learned to avoid

doubled in sentences

"He works

like "It's the

if

the speaker has re-

good."

marVfor

A

preposition

whom

I

is

was wait-

The

266 when

ing for"

Tongues

Gift of

the speaker

is

unlearning "who

just

I

was wait-

ing for."

Another more refined person

is

vice of the self-consciously correct

the refusal to use unstressed forms of articles or

they were always vulgar.

He

pronounces "the man and the girl" with painful distinctness, as if he were still in first grade struggling over individual words under a teacher's strict eye. He says [di: maen aend di: g3.il], pedanprepositions, as

tically;

and yet

tured English,

if

it is

who

English, too, there

"too" [tu:].

the best speakers, those at

is

maen an da

[da

say:

a clear difference

The man

home

between "to"

at ease in society says:

in cul-

In accepted

ga:l].

[ta]

and

"I'm about to

'kAm 'tu:] not the hypercorrect 'kAm 'tu:], which is in fact a bad self-betrayal. a'baut 'tu: [ai 'asm A mistaken snobbishness prompts this schoolroom isolation of

come too"

as

[aim a'baut

ta

words. Yet the most snobbish of snobs, the inherited confidence,

forms— provided, of

is

who

the one

man

poised with

freely permits slurred

course, they are the "right" slurred forms,

hallowed by general usage in his

"set."

Snobbishness and Informality Class feeling in language

is

a

huge and diverting

subject, not

yet sufficiently studied by professional linguists. There

is

one

aspect of it which you can pursue for your own amusement as you read even very light fiction, preferably of British make. It has to do with the language of butlers and valets, as preserved in week-end novels and detective stories. Thorstein Veblen and other observers of social behavior

have pointed out a phenomenon known as vicarious spending or vicarious leisure. A man of wealth may not wish, or be able to, consume the goods to which his income entitles him, or he

may not choose easily

buy

to avail himself of the idleness his

for him. Nevertheless he

dicate to the

world about him

may

money could

feel that

he must

in-

that he could dress in three or

four gold-braided suits at once,

if

he so desired, or he could

Social Aspects: Class, Taboos, Politics spend

do

his

day in conspicuous idleness. So he hires others to him. He employs flunkeys, doormen, extra

for

this

chauffeurs, often in quite dazzling costumes,

advertise his resources to the world for him. (the last

267

word

if

lets

them is

free

about in dark,

in-

he wishes, and to busy himself to

his

in snobbishness, this!) to go

conspicuous clothes

and

Then he

heart's content; even, conceivably, at a useful occupation.

Thus

far the sociologist,

But notice the

observing the ways of the "leisure

accompaniment in this transfer of function. Just as the heir of wealth may become bored with elaborate trappings and ostentatious leisure, he may wish class."

linguistic

to relax the formal speech traditionally associated

with gold

braid and buckles. So he relegates to the archaically clad

menials the archaic speech of his

come irksome

to

class ancestors that

has be-

him. So long as his butler pronounces rounded

periods of eighteenth-century English in the style of Burke or

Johnson, milord

is

free to

be

as slangy or as

fatuous as he

pleases. In fact, it becomes the swank thing to be both slangy and fatuous. Of course, it would never do for a man on a modest income to affect these lapses. It might appear (in the

absence of a Johnsonian butler) that the speaker did not

any

know

better.

Secure in the knowledge that Jeeves, his butler,

Olympian self the

for

is

being

him, Mr. P. G. Wodehouse's hero permits him-

following type of discourse in describing a misadven-

ture by one of his friends in America:

"This is a rotten country," said Cyril. "Oh, I don't know, you know, don't you know!" I said. "We do our best," said George. "Well, why don't the policemen in New York dress properly? ... I mean to say, why don't they wear helmets like they do in London? Why do they look like postmen? It isn't fair on a fellow. Makes it dashed confusing. I was simply standing on the pavement, looking at things, when a fellow who looked like a postman prodded me in the ribs with a club. I didn't see why I should have postmen .

.

.

The

268

Gift of

Tongues

prodding me. Why the dickens should a fellow come three thousand miles to be prodded by postmen?" "The point is well taken," said George. "What did you do?" "I gave

him a

shove, you know. I've got a frightfully hasty

temper, you know. All the Bassington-Bassingtons have got frightfully hasty tempers, don't

the eye

and lugged me

"I'll fix it,

you knowl

And

then he biffed

me

in

off to this beastly place!"

old son," I said.

While the Wodehousian hero and his cronies talk as the excerpt indicates, the Wodehousian butler Jeeves is delivering himself of remarks like these: "Well,

chanced

Sir,

Spenser, Mrs. Gregson's butler

were lunching

who

inadvertently

something of your conversation when you

to overhear

at the house,

did mention certain of the details to

me; and I confess that, though it may be a liberty to say so, I entertained hopes that something might occur to prevent the match. I

doubt

if

the

young lady was

entirely suitable to you, Sir."

.

.

.

young lady, Sir. I think it is beyond question that she would be an admirable influence for Mr. Little, should the affair come to a happy conclusion. Such a union would also, I fancy, go far to restore Mr. Little to the good graces of his uncle, the young lady being well connected and possessing private means. In short, sir, I think that if there is anything that we can do we should do it." "I hear nothing but excellent reports of the

Here by contrast we have,

faithfully preserved, the tricks of

eighteenth-century oratory which remind you of

Burke in rupted

full flight.

(as for

Edmund

Jeeves uses complicated sentences, inter-

breath) by "I fancy"; imitations of Latin con-

structions (as in the phrase about "the

young lady being well

connected"— the closest he can come to an ablative absolute), and the delicate periphrases ("should the affair come to a happy conclusion" for

cadence of

"if

they get married") which recall the formal

classical English. It is

quite like butlers' formal dress.

both Olympian and archaic,

Social Aspects: Class, Taboos, Politics

269

Underworld Speech There

is

another type of

class dialect

more

baffling to the un-

underworld of great

cities. Here the normal substandard speech is deliberately and frequently modified by slang periphrases to keep outsiders from understanding. Thus it is that jewels become "ice," and stolen jewels, the object of police questing, become, quaintly enough, "hot ice." Drugs like heroin and cocaine become "snow." A whole vocabulary has developed around the use of the forbidden "reefers" of marihuana by "vipers" (addicts). It is interesting to note that American argot has had its influence on the underworld of foreign cities. Paris, rich in its own special language, shows in addition some loans from American gangster speech. In fact the word "gangster" has been taken over unchanged save for accent. Collaborated robbery is called "American

initiated: the argot of the

robbery" or vol a Vamericaine.

If three

work together they

are

VAmericain and I'utilite ("utilityman"). If there are two, one is designated by an AmericanEnglish phrase, le contact-man, and the other is le banquier called le leveur ("lifter"),

("the banker"). Professions life

more or

less

related to a robber's

are also designated by picturesque English loans.

woman who works

for a souteneur

is

called by

including an English one: biftek ("beefsteak").

work

is

many

A

called by another English term: le bizness.

The

words,

prostitute's

The

under-

world shows a certain measure of internationalism in its vocabulary. For the most part, however, it relies on metaphor and semantic

shifts in native

words.

Courtly and Polite Forms

we show our social levels primarily by choice of words and general style. One method used by other languages is unknown to us: the multiplication of personal pronouns to In English

express various social attitudes towards the person addressed.

We

say "you"

when

talking to someone, whether he

haughty superior, a friendly equal, or a subservient

is

a

inferior.

270

The

Gift of

Tongues may be said to be make differences which

In this one pronominal respect English

Other European languages seem formal or exclusive or arrogant or groveling to us users of the simple "you." In addressing a child or an intimate or (strangely enough) one for whom he feels contempt, a German says du. In addressing a stranger, he uses Sie, which is identical in form as well as origin with the word for "they"— a tribute to the distance and importance (plurality) of the person addressed. If he wishes to be deferential he uses a third-person noun while he looks straight at the person addressed. Thus, "Did the lady (or the gracious lady) sleep well? Has the gentleman finished his coffee?" Other languages use the third person similarly for cautious and reserved address. A Dane will say "Har Fruen tabt sin Bog?" and a Frenchman "Est-ce que Madame a perdu son livre?" ("Has madam lost her book?") But both use such forms more sparingly, I think, than the polite German. In courtly circles it was formerly quite customary to use (usually feminine) abstract nouns like "Excellency" or "Your classless.

Excellency" in speaking directly to a person of rank.

noun which might be

The

pro-

substituted for this abstract noun, in

languages with grammatical gender, was naturally "she." The contemporary Spanish word for "you" comes from a feminine noun with distinctly courtier-like connotations. Usted is a contraction of vuestra merced,

"your graciousness."

A

which means "your mercy" or

touch of the ancient formality of a

sixteenth-century Spanish grandee hangs about the word.

Nothing in Europe, however, corresponds to the elaboration some Eastern languages. In Malay a whole series of social levels are stratified in the pronouns of address. Nobody can simply and blithely say "you" without further reflection. He must stop to think: "How far is this man above or below me on the social ladder?" And according to the relative positions on that ladder, he will modify not only the "you" but also "I" and "we." The following table will indicate how many forms a Malay speaker must choose among,

of pronominal snobbishness in

Social Aspects: Class, Taboos, Politics

271

according to the social positions of the three possible persons to be designated. The choice involves not only words for "you"

but

all

pronouns; and there are ten

Person speaking

levels:

The

272

Gift of

Tongues

properly speaking, yield 3x3x3 or 27 modal forms.

and other verbal

inflections

logical relations— titles

language

is

may

also

Thus

voice

be determined by socio-

and income, in short. The Algonquian complex stratified forms of polite

said to possess

locution also.

Regional Dialects It is

customary to distinguish

gional dialects.

mark people

The

off

class dialects

from

local or re-

latter include the ways of speech which

according to the province, village, or region

from which they come. "Everyone who does not speak a Regional dialect," says Henry Cecil Wyld, "speaks a Class dialect." Yet the matter is not quite so simple as that. The two dialect types cannot be so completely separated. In America, for instance, we have several varieties of regional dialect. A citizen of Louisiana is said to speak Southern American; one from Massachusetts, New England American (English). A few tricks of pronunciation of vowels and many niceties of sentence tempo and intonation betray the regional origins of the two. The former will say "po'k" [po:k] for "pork"; the latter, [po:k]. Each one, in fact, may tend to jeer at the other with entire good nature because of these perceptible differences, minor though they may be. But although the educated, traveled, and affluent Southerner may share some of these traits with poor cotton-pickers and mill workers, there are other ways of speech quite as marked which separate the two groups within the confines of the very same regional dialect. Comparative analyses are still lacking. It is probable, however, that the study of the levels within such a regional dialect

would show two

things: that the individual sounds were very throughout the region, regardless of class, but that the syntax (grammatical structure) of sentences was different. In saying "He doesn't like me any more," speakers of all levels

much

alike

would agree on the vowel sounds in "like" [lark] and "more" [mo:], and they might have the same deliberate and agreeable speech melody; but the mill worker would change the verbal

Social Aspects: Class, Taboos, Politics

273

agreement and use a double negative as Chaucer often did: "He don't like me no more." In this he would agree with many persons of the same class in other parts of the country.

Dialect and Governmental Power

Where

and economic power have been one place and one dialect, the use of regional

the governmental

associated with

language

may be

a social or class handicap.

clear in England, its

overlapping

where the broad Lancashire

venerable history,

person wishing to

The

is

is

dialect, for all

a label of class as well as region for a

rise in the social scale.

According to English is heard with prac-

writers, the speech of the "better class" tically

no variation

English," and

all

all

over the country:

it is

"Public School

else— "the vulgar English of the towns, and

the English of the Villager

who

has

abandoned

his native

Re-

gional Dialect"— is Modified Standard. In compiling his Eng-

Pronouncing Dictionary Daniel Jones tells us that he is "most usually heard in everyday speech in the families of Southern English persons who have been edulish

recorded what

The pronunbe heard, to an extent which is considerable though difficult to specify, from educated people in the South of England who have not been educated at these schools." It is assumed, however, that the linguistic influence radiates from them. The Lancashire manufacturer may despair of changing

cated at the great public boarding schools. ciation

may

.

.

.

also

his jvvn speech,

but he will probably see to

learn Public School English.

Even

it

that his children

Scots dialect, with

its dis-

tinguished literary history, has been regarded as a handicap. J.

M.

What Every Woman Knows, presents the an ambitious politician who, with his wife's help,

Barrie's play,

efforts of

is at some pains to smooth out of his speech the local flavor which might hamper his career. In ancient Greece, the Attic dialect became the accepted "superior" language because it was used in the powerful city-state of Athens and particularly was employed in the writings of a splendid galaxy of writers in the fifth and fourth centuries b.c. As a consequence Attic

The

274

speakers began to look

used other local

Gift of

Tongues

down their noses at "countrymen" who The only exception was perhaps

dialects.

power and had an early, distinguished literature. A politician hampered by a "countryman's" dialect has always been a subject of unkind jests by his enemies. Ionian, which also represented political

Politics

and American "Provincial" Speech

In the early days of the American republic our ancestors were sensitive about the minor differences of pronunciation and vocabulary which already marked us off perceptibly from British speakers. Political independence seems to have converted the uneasy sense of inferiority into a truculent claim upon "superiority," as might be expected. Ardent patriots hoped that a new day had dawned for the English language in America. They wished to see differences recognized and accelerated. On the other hand, British writers tended to sharpen

American "provincialon a lively discussion on the desirability of showing the world by means of our language that we had become an independent, proudly their attitude of disapproval towards

isms."

Some of the Founding Fathers

republican

state.

carried

English was supposed to be "purer" in the

land of freedom, at the very time

when

making contemptuous remarks about

British critics

were

it.

Frontier Life

some of the very "provincialisms" cited in American speech, and condemned by British purists, give a lively picture of frontier life and struggles. They make up a colorful creation— an unconscious linguistic record of early American ways of living. Here are a few As a matter of

fact,

early dictionaries of

of them, classified according to the pioneers' occupations:

Farm Life to make

a bee-line

have a long row to hoe to fly off the handle

to

Social Aspects: Class, Taboos, Politics to sit

on

the fence

to

have an ax to grind go haywire [origin in doubt]

to

have a chip on the shoulder

to

275

to fork over to

have the wrong end of the

stick

Hunting and Gunmanship to make the fur fly to to to to to

knock the spots out of draw a bead [i.e., to take aim] bark up the wrong tree get on one's own hook be up a tree

Warfare (Indian

style)

to scalp to to to to

walk Indian file bury the hatchet put on war-paint go on the war path

Pioneering to

make

tracks

to blaze a trail to

jump

to pull

to peter

to

a claim

up

stakes

out

be as easy as rolling

off a log

to clear out to spark [to

woo

a girl]

have the latchstring out to be stumped to

to

For

all

swap horses

in mid-stream

their vividness, however,

it

may be imagined

that

would be regarded low barbarisms in the sophisticated coffee houses and drawing rooms of eighteenth-century London, and would therefore be a social handicap to the user of them. these expressions redolent of frontier life

as

The

276

Tongues

Gift of

Lower-class Speech in Earlier Times

The lower

ranks of society had a dialect of their

own

in past

ages too. Feudal England gives an especially clear case of linguistic division

1066, as

on

we have

For

class lines.

a certain

period of time after

observed, government, courts, and local ad-

ministration were in the hands of persons speaking a tongue foreign to the native English: French as opposed to Anglo-

Saxon.

The

situation was solved

more

quickly,

it

now

appears,

than earlier historians supposed. But out of the original vision

came the tendency

still

di-

noticeable in English to use

Anglo-Saxon words for homely, intimate, and even ugly or indecent things, and to use French words for the loftier ideas (or to conceal the ugly ones).

With class

town

the development of

life

speech was further diversified.

and commerce, lowerwas not merely the

It

language of the peasant as opposed to that of the knight.

It

included the language of guildsmen and artisans, of retainers,

and hangers-on of the aristocracy; of beggars, thieves, sharpers, and peddlers. Each trade had its own cant. Most clerks,

diverting was the speech of the

last

group.

Robert Greene, Shakespeare's contemporary, wrote a series of satirical pamphlets describing the tricks of sharpers and cheats in the

London underworld. They

give us most valuable

material on substandard urban locutions during the reign of

From dictionaries and other sources we can then underworld language through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thievery created a list of metaphors which were not only esoteric— for trade use— but also poetic. Here are a few, taken from a dictionary compiled in the reign Elizabeth. trace the

of

William and Mary: bacon: skin; body.

"He saved

his bacon,"

meaning "he escaped."

bracket-face: ugly, homely, ill-favored briers: trouble. bess:

"To be

an instrument

in the briers," to be in trouble.

to crack

open a door

Social Aspects: Class, Taboos, Politics jenny: "an instrument to

up

lift

a grate,

277

and whip anything out

of a shop-window."

dead men: empty bottles dub: a. pick-lock key

him" is thus glossed: "Let us Pick that man's Pocket, the newest and most dexterous way: It is, to thrust the Fingers, strait, stiff, open and very quick into the Pocket, and so closing them, hook what can be held between them." fork: a pickpocket. "Let's fork

green-bag: a lawyer milch-kine: "a term us'd by Gaolers,

when

their Prisoners will

bleed freely to have some Favor, or be at large." mill: to rob, steal, break open. "Milling the

Gig with a Betty,

Door with an Iron-Crow, milling the Glaze, c. Breaking open the Window." queer birds: "such as having got loose, return to their old Trade of Roguing and Thieving" Spanish-money: "fair words and Compliments" c[ant for] Breaking open the

splitter-of-causes: a lawyer

unrig: to strip the clothes off

someone— whether

for stealing or

amorous purposes.

Metaphors of Slang One fact emerges clearly from both past and present.

and

its

any other trade

omy

No

peculiar qualities.

the study of disreputable slang,

one impulse explains its creation from specialization, like

It results

dialect; also

from

a

need

for secrecy, for econ-

of expression; but certainly also from

humor, delight

in

metaphor, and a quite uneconomic playfulness. Both concise-

and a pleasing contempt for conciseness will be found more respectable trades as well. No occupation is more rushed, for example, than quicklunch counter service at high noon. Hundreds of thousands of busy, nervous Americans besiege these dispensaries of pabulum every noon-time. Above the clamor of dishes and public conversation can be heard the cries of waiters and chefs calling and repeating orders for food in a language as special, mysterious, and playful as any thieves' cant. Surely here, you

ness

operative in the slang of the

The

278

Gift of

Tongues

would suppose, the feverish tempo of service would make economy the paramount virtue of speech. And some expressions, like "B.T." for "bacon and tomato sandwich," are in fact a kind of spoken short-hand designed to clip a second or off the

two

necessary communication. Others are graphic as well

as brief: fizz for

"carbonated water"; freezone for "chocolate

one-down (referring to the electric toaster) for "an order of toast"; and sparkle one for "an order of BromoSeltzer." But what shall we say of the gay wastefulness of the frosted milk";

following delightful expressions:

Adam's ale: Water Clean up the kitchen: Hamburger; also hash Coney Island bloodhounds: Frankfurters Dough well done with cow to cover: Bread and butter

Draw one in the dark: Black coffee Hudson River ale: Water Noah's boy with Murphy carrying

a wreath:

Ham

and potatoes

with cabbage Shot out of the blue bottle: Bromo-Seltzer Slab of

Twelve

moo— let him chew alive in a shell:

Yesterday, today,

They

and

it:

Rare rump steak raw oysters

A dozen

forever:

Hash

ignore the requirements of economy but provide verbal

entertainment.

Taboo on Death Another

social attitude reflected in

our language is the exwhich must be avoided

istence of all sorts of forbidden subjects

or carefully disguised

when we

speak.

The

reasons for fear in

connection with certain words and names are deep-lying and complicated.

The

use of such words presumably gives the

speaker an exposed and vulnerable feeling, due ultimately to the magic powers originally attributed to language. (See chapter

1 .)

To name death, disease, and wounds was felt, and indeed,

is still felt,

to

be a way of inviting their presence. Hence elabo-

rate phrases are to be

found among many types of people,

Social Aspects: Class, Taboos, Politics

and

279

uncivilized, to avoid use of the simple

words "die"

or "be sick."

We

who

that death

a fortunate release into a happier hereafter, or

civilized

is

that disease

is

use

them

too.

The

very persons

protest

a negligible inconvenience easily conquered, are

most wary about using the simple straightforward words describe these aspects of our mortality.

They

to

use euphemisms

on" or "passing away" or "being taken away." noncommittal terms about someone who is Of course it is true that another element appears

like "passing

They

also use

seriously

ill.

in the situation

when

politeness impells us to avoid direct

reference to topics unpleasing to the listener. This

not be true

on

this

among all

motive so far

peoples, but as

we

we

may

or

may

certainly pride ourselves

ourselves are concerned. Never-

theless it is very likely that some of the old fear of spirits and demons lurks within us still. Rational as we may think we are, we can still feel for the peasant of the fairy tales who cries out carelessly: "May the Devil take this stubborn mule of mine" —and at once beholds the Old Man himself at his elbow, smiling and saying "Always ready to oblige 1" We still feel in some obscure way that to name is to summon.

Taboos on Physiology

The

questions of decency and obscenity are

cated.

study.

still

more compli-

The very nature of the subject makes it difficult for The words avoided because of a general feeling of

"coarseness" in contemporary English cover a wide variety of

and their sympnames of certain animals and insects. It will be noticed that fear and regard for decency overlap. References to blood, dirt, and disease can be classified in one category or the other depending on context. There is topics: sex, physiological functions, diseases

toms, parts of the body, odors,

an element of primeval fear persisting even today, as we have from the times when language was felt to have magic powers, and the mere naming of a disease might bring about a

seen,

visitation of

it

upon the speaker. Drawing-room prudery has in modern causes and connotations, no doubt.

addition some

The

280

Gift of

Tongues

But in recent years the wide economic independence of women, and also their advanced education, have contributed to the liberation of their speech. It

unreasonable to expect the

"legs" to evoke blushes

how vigilantly when her scientific ter

on

is

on a young girl's cheeks (no matshe has been protected from "experience")

word

training has taught her to discourse glibly

and monosexual reproduction in

genes, chromosomes,

plants.

Nationalism investigate than language

combination somewhat easier to and indecency. Nevertheless we sel-

dom

the great import of language in po-

Language and

politics offer a

stop to reflect

litical

issues

upon

such as the conflict of nations.

Many bloody

and oppressions which

struggles have centered about claims

used languages as symbols. When a people engage in agitation for political independence, one very appealing issue is the de-

mand it

to use a native

tongue for

taught in the schools.

official

foreign

officials,

by the most indifferent endured by any people

It is usually felt

of observers that a real grievance

when

purposes, and to have

is

supported by a foreign army, take over

and suddenly forbid the use of a language hitherto officially accepted, as well as dear and familiar, to the

a school system

children. Suppressed patriotism frequently centers about the

determination of families to maintain the despised language within the home, no matter what may happen to

and

it

in the courts

schools.

A conspicuous example is the faithful preservation of Polish as a national

language

when

the country

three empires in the eighteenth century. rallying point for peoples

who have

had been divided by

A

language

is

also a

never enjoyed the privi-

nationhood in the modern sense. In Ireland the Gaelic speech was consistently repressed for centuries, and a child who inadvertently slipped into native idiom in the (exclusively English) schools was severely punished, according to nineteenth-century reports. Parallel situations may be found all leges of

Social Aspects: Class, Taboos, Politics

281

over the world, especially in colonies and semi-colonial countries. Here the native peoples frequently have no access to any schools except those founded

group, a linguistic minority

and maintained by an outside

who have

established themselves

by military or commercial invasion. Today, when conquest succeeds conquest with terrifying rapidity, the shifts in official speech must be confusing in the extreme to young students. If there were time in the midst of

world affairs, it would be very enlightening to have a study by trained psychologists on the emotional and mental difficulties engendered in students by some of the recent political shifts of territory.

In some Central American countries the

The Indian populations have quietly and faithfully retained the indig-

situation

is

very complex for different reasons.

enous dialects

primary speech; Spanish, the official language, is still regarded as the imposed dialect of a conquering minority. But Spanish itself now finds competition in Engas their

employed by resident company officials, higher paid employees, wives, children, and teachers connected with the small "colony" of American business enterprises. If Spanish is still resented by many natives, it would be curious to know what attitude is being built up towards English, the superlish,

language of rulers.

So strong is the feeling for language in relation to nationality quite possible to resurrect a language long since dead

that

it is

and

re-establish

point.

it among the living. Hebrew The tongue of the Bible had become

everyday

life is

Palestine has

is

an example in

extinct so far as

concerned, but the zeal of Jewish re-settlers in

made

it

once more a living and expanding

medium. In the conflict of nations, enthusiasts for one side or another sometimes claim superiority for their special language. They affirm that their cause must be right because their language is "naturally" better than that of the opponent. Such statements are based rather on emotion than scientific judgment. An overpatriotic

German

will claim that his language

is

superior be-

The

282 cause

it

Gift of

has such qualities as Innerlichkeit and Tiefe— and he

will prove

this to

you triumphantly by pointing

chosen for the purpose.

fully

Tongues

On

the other

to

idioms care-

hand

the com-

placent Frenchman, sure that civilization and France are coextensive, will claim for his language a

"Tout ce qui

est clair est frangais!" It

monopoly

of lucidity:

should be remembered,

however, that the best scholars carefully avoid these extravagant and unscientific claims.

The German

Literaturblatt has

frequently reproved linguistic flag-wavers for their excesses,

with exemplary scientific honesty, and the French sins of a similar nature have been most devastatingly satirized by French-speaking scholars like Daniel Mornet, Charles Bally,

and Ferdinand Brunot. Purism versus Internationalism Patriotism

is

sometimes exhibited in exaggerated form in the

attitudes adopted towards loan words. Since English

very polyglot in little

way

its

resentment

is

already

composition, for historical reasons, there

felt at

the frequent additions

of direct borrowing. French

made

to

it

is

by

and German are by contrast

comparatively homogeneous (though only comparatively

so).

Loans in these languages stand out more sharply and are more often the subject of acrimonious discussion. The attitude to such words very neatly reflects some of the contradictions arising in modern society out of worldwide international trade. The modern industrial era opened up to European nations an international vocabulary of science and invention, more or less hospitably received by those who participated in the industrial revolution. Names of electrical units derived from inventors' names— the ampere, watt, volt, ohm, coulomb, farad —symbolize the collaboration of French, English, Italian, and German scientists in creating an international type of culture based on the use of electricity. With trade, invention, and communication accelerated, the current of words was accelerated too. But the fierce rivalries engendered by foreign trade gave rise to a countercurrent. With wars and other contests for

Social Aspects: Class, Taboos, Politics

283

commercial supremacy, there came self-conscious resistance to the language of national rivals, and a revulsion in many instances against the words that had accompanied actual benefits. Zealous spokesmen for national interests set about purging their vocabularies of alien contributions as a symbolic act

meant to affirm national political superiority. When the German empire asserted its role in international affairs (latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) there was a systematic

purgation of long-accepted French terms, even those con-

nected with the arts and other amenities.

Thus Theater

yielded to Spielhaus, Telephon to Fernsprecher, Billet to Fahrkarte,

and even the

Solemn debate adopting terms which seem

discreet Toilette to Abort.

took place over the advisability of

desirable to us as a matter of course, because of their universal

currency in other European countries.

Racism and "Superiority"

in

Language

Chauvinism in language has recently been allied to a related subject: chauvinism in race. Political programs including suppression of minorities and foreign aggression have been justified on the plea that the ruling group are "racially superior" to those attacked.

And often these claims have received support

not only from politicians but also from interested or misled professors.

They have used

appeals to language as evidence.

It

has been claimed that a people using suffixed inflectional end-

must be naturally superior to others using agglutinated prefixes. Both German and Italian apologists for their political systems have maintained that Indo-European languages in ings

own in particular) are human thought, and that all

general (and their

the best possible

others must yield right and even must be before them. Hence, by implication, desirable to launch tanks, machine guns, flame throwers, and bombers against unfortunates who happen to use HamitoSemitic or other vocabulary and sentence structure. The evi-

instruments of

it

dence, such as

it is, is

linguistic,

but the divisions are called

The

284 racial. One

Gift of

Tongues

even hears the nonsensical term "Indo-European race." Plainly there is need for a little clarification.

The word "race" is a rather loose term referring to a group who share certain bodily characteristics through common inheritance. Among the tests used to establish unity of people

of race are such simple, objective matters as color of the eyes,

type of hair (straight, curly, "kinky"), stature, the skull.

But within the confines of a

and shape of

single political nation

you will often find all three types of skulls— long, round, and medium. Some American Indians are reported to have the narrowest skulls ever measured, and some the broadest. But there is no relationship whatsoever between the shape of people's skulls and their ability to think— or to learn one language

more readily than another in infancy. When archaeologists dig up skulls of primitive men, dead for tens of thousands of "These men were dolichocephalic were brachycephalic (roundheaded)"; they cannot say "These men must have spoken a years, they

can only

(long-headed)"

or

say:

"They

highly inflected language."

Only the extremely ignorant, or conscious demagogues, contwo categories. And what is true of cephalic size is also true of hair, pigmentation, eyes, and stature. There is no correlation between any of these and language— or the ability to learn a language as a child. A blond Scandinavian captured by a swarthy African tribe in extreme infancy will grow up speaking the indigenous language to which he was first exposed. The same would be true of a swarthy African baby kidnapped and reared in a Scandinavian village. Languages have spread by conquest and wholesale migration to peoples biologically quite unrelated to the original speakers. Sometimes the assimilation has been complete, and at other times only partial. But that depends on historical conditions which have nothing to do with "innate" intelligence or linguistic ability. fuse the

Americans, for instance, sometimes assume that there is an innate tendency on the part of Negroes to pronounce vowels in a certain way; to say [pork] instead of [po:k] for "pork." It

Social Aspects: Class, Taboos, Politics is

285

assumed that when whites say the same thing their speech

has been "corrupted" by that of Negroes. Actually, of course, the Negroes learned their English in the only possible

way

open to them: by imitating the special dialect of their owners. George Philip Krapp says: "The Negro pronunciation of head, dead to rhyme with laid has earlier historical justifications;

even the so-called lazy or relaxed general tone of South-

ern speech,

its

slow tempo,

its

loose articulation of final conso-

is an inheritance from the general colonial English of the seventeenth century."

nants, often explained as the result of climate,

In the West Indies the natives acquired British English (sometimes even the special form of

known

it

as "public-school"

English); in Haiti, French; elsewhere (as in

The

Cuba) Spanish. due to social

dialect differences within these groups are

distinctions, not to the

amount

of

pigment in the skins of the

speakers.

The

foremost anthropologists are agreed that no evidence

hitherto produced justifies any claim to superiority in potential abilities

It is

along lines of language or physical characteristics.

very important to

brutal oppression

is

remember

when grammar

these things today,

so often justified

by appeal

to

traits. The confusions and persecutions "Aryan" make one hesitate to use the word even in the justified sense (meaning the languages descended from Old Iranian and Old Indian). At the same time it is a salutary thing to recall that National Socialists and Italian Fascisti have had no monopoly on this cruel chicanery. Everywhere that there is abuse of subject peoples you are apt to find justification of it pretentiously expressed on grounds of racial superiority, with language dragged in as part of the proof.

or somatic (bodily) associated with

Undeveloped Languages

may urge, some languages are limited in one way or another. They may at this given moment have an inadequate vocabulary for modern needs, or their traditional syntax may be needlessly elaborate, or they may lack the use But, someone

The

286

Gift of

Tongues

of simple common nouns like "tree" or "table" without which one cannot conceive of the philosophical "tree-in-general." Hence they can never rise to the abstractions of lofty Western European philosophy, with its tradition of abstract thought reaching back to Plato. If this is so, perhaps we are justified, after

all,

in thinking of such languages as really inferior, since

they are handicapped by their very structure in comparison

with our own.

We have touched on this question before, but it is so important that a bit of repetition

Let us grant that

is

not out of place.

at this particular

moment

in world history

some languages, remote from major currents of

events, are

developed than others in the directions required by a dominant civilization based on industry and machines. The gramless

mar may employ cumbersome,

repetitious constructions to

express simple relations. Nevertheless even these languages are dynamic, not static.

Change

is

always going on, rapidly or

The comneeded words borrowed or chapter 4). Even sentence struc-

slowly according to the stimulus of cultural change.

plex syntax created by ture off

is

may be

simplified; the

compounding

(see

modified with the ages. Useless distinctions are sloughed

when

the need for

them has

most

consciously, for the

died. If this has occurred un-

part, in the past,

it is

increasingly

done with conscious direction today.

Under kindly

tutelage directed towards the people's cul-

tural advancement, a

adapted, out of

its

backward language can be speedily potential resources, to meet the re-

own

quirements of modern civilization. Franz Boas reports how young Indian students can be introduced to the concept of Platonic universals even though their language traditionally lacks unmodified common nouns. They can easily be taught to isolate the

term "house" out of expressions meaning "that-

house-yonder,"

tions like "quiddity"

the natives

may

and

"my-house-here,"

wood." In the same way medieval

when

they

At

first

doing violence to their

Ian-

felt

feel that they are

"the-house-made-of-

scholastics created abstrac-

the need for them.

Social Aspects: Class, Taboos, Politics guage, since traditional syntax

demands

that every

287 noun must

have a modifier; but once they have been made to feel the intellectual need for the bare term "house," they will accept the usage— and thus push the language ahead a thousand years in

one generation. A minority may first avail itself of the development, but there is no inherent reason why its use may not become general. The potentiality was always there; all that was needed was to elicit its application in a new situation. Unfortunately people speaking undeveloped languages have hitherto encountered more developed idioms in a highly unpleasant manner. It was difficult to appreciate the virtues of a more economic speech when fellow-tribesmen had just been massacred in large numbers by those using

be quite different when a more fraternal

it.

The results may

spirit prevails.

When

the emissaries of a modern culture arrive with no intent to exploit or deceive or oppress, and without any arrogant as-

sumption of superiority, they may obtain quite a different reception. There will be no sullen resistance to linguistic instruction, we may assume, when there is no resentment or fear. Under such happy circumstances a backward language can surmount structural handicaps in a very short time. Deficiencies in vocabulary have never presented serious difficulties. There is no reason why such adaptations should be left to slow and bungling processes as in the past. Conscious direction may be desirable in this situation as in others where an interchange occurs between one culture and another. Rarely, in fact, is the debt exclusively on one side when two languages meet on such a basis, even if one is more "advanced" than the other. Sex Divisions

There

is

in

Language

another social division which finds some reflection in

language, namely the differentiation between women's inter-

and men's insofar as the activities of the two sexes are kept apart. In some civilizations there is a high degree of specialization along sex lines. Men may limit themselves to hunting and

ests

women may do

all

the agricultural work, with a resulting spe-

The

288

Tongues

Gift of

At times it is even pronounce certain words connected with manly pursuits, or for men to intrude on the specialized vocabulary of the women. The discrimination may be so extensive, even, that it is possible to speak of a men's or a women's cialization in subjects for conversation.

forbidden for

women

to

"secret" language.

The reason for sex taboo in

When women name

language can easily be surmised.

are forbidden to touch or approach or even

the weapons of men, one of the causes appears to be the

may

idea that feminine debility (at the menstrual period) affect the

weapons

adversely.

The

the sympathetic influence from

points might be blunted by

women,

or women's speech.

may be present among people with women otherwise husky. From such a

Fear of the magic power of blood otherwise brave,

simple taboo the restrictions on vocabulary might easily be

extended

to other terms separating the concerns of the

two

own society there is no sharp division in vocabulary between men and women. The only examples we can muster are a few expressions avoided by men because they are "sissy." Some of them are terms of approval, like "sweet," "darling," "ducky," and "divine." The opposite category of sexes.

In our

rough masculine words, formerly limited to bar rooms and exclusively male haunts, is shrinking under the incursions of

women

into all these realms. Swearing, like smoking, has been adopted by women with such enthusiasm that it may become in time a feminine trait abandoned by men in unspoken protest against

the intrusion.

Slogans

Of course

there

is

no

aspect of man's social life

which

is

not

re-

flected in his language. Politics too offers material for the linguist.

He may amuse

engendered in a

lively

himself by collecting the metaphors

campaign, or analyzing the special

vocabulary of modern war, or tabulating the semantic

which accompany a change setting

movements

like the

shifts

French Revolution. Up-

like that of 1789 create a

new

terminology,

Social Aspects: Class, Taboos, Politics elevating

humble terms and hurling ancient ones

card, to the perturbation of conservatives. irate

opponent of Liberte,

disapproval of the

Venice a

Nuovo

into the dis-

Back in 1799 an

Egalite, Fraternite expressed his

new order by publishing anonymously in Dictionary— really a political tract— called

Vocabolario Filosofico-Democratico, "indispensable,"

as the title

new

satirical

289

page announces, "for all

revolutionary language."

who wish

Among

to

understand the

the cliches the author

denounced were: "ally, alliance," which, he said, "is used by Democrats only when they plan deceit"; "hypocrisy," a term applied to Napoleon and his followers for flirting with religion after denouncing it; "perfection, to perfect" an optimistic formula of Enlightenment expressing the hope of human progress, here stigmatized by the author as the immoral and irreligious slogan of assassins. Other expressions to be found alphabetical index are:

the

in

"celibate,"

"gazette," "regeneration," "revolution," ical slogans that

"civic

guard,"

and "tribunal."

Polit-

have been cordially loved have also been

cordially hated, until in

many

cases the intellectual content

(if

any) has been submerged by emotional inundations.

The linguistic aspect of demagogy and political spellbinding more study than it has hitherto received. The Insti-

deserves tute of

Propaganda Analysis has done useful work in exposing

the psychological devices employed. interesting.

sound

tion,

The

rhetoric

is

just as

For instance, archaisms are used, along with effects, epithets,

ings of the listeners.

and

so forth, to play

itera-

on the

feel-

A Biblical flavoring of seventeenth-century

language will reinforce the appeal. Here

it is still

possible to

use extinct pronouns like "ye, thou, thee" or verbal endings

long since discarded, or constructions no longer understood like

"Woe worth

the day!" Such phrases affect people

more because they

are mysterious

all

the

and unclear, with sacred

connotations. Likewise the figures of speech are kept archaic

when appeal

is

made

to feeling rather than reason. Orators will

speak of defending the gates or the walls of the city even

none

exist, as

when

everyone knows. Certain undefined terms like

The

2 go

Gift of

Tongues

"free enterprise" or "rugged individualism" are used in a

manner more

more readily than reasoned exno department of human expression justifies

to suggest incantations

position. Perhaps

clearly the cynical statement that the chief function of

language

is

to conceal thought.

Social Values of Clarity Nevertheless other.

we

still

use

hopefully, to understand one an-

it,

By becoming aware

of limitations

vent them. Since language

is

we begin

to circum-

so eminently social there

no

is

problems interrelating society and language. Amateurs may provide themselves with unending diversion if they wish to extend their original observation of language behavior

end

to the

into various special aspects of the subjects here indicated, to others as well. In a living

medium

there are always

and

new

developments, significantly indicative to the trained listener.

You

and

lan-

guage will deepen your understanding of both: what you and the milieu in which you say it.

say,

will find that the correlation of social tendencies

In language as in

many

other things awareness

step towards intelligent adaptation

is

the

first

and change. Laymen

as

well as professional linguists can have the fun and also the

A pencil, a notebook, and an alert ear are you need. You will learn much about yourself and your fellow man if you jot down striking phenomena connected

benefits of awareness. all

with social concerns important for here surveyed, but others. in a short time to

make an

your discoveries. Language there

is

no reason why

all of us:

And you may very

not only those

possibly be ready

original contribution concerning is

all of

the heritage of all of us,

us

may not be

it— or even creators in the use of

it.

and

so

critical students of

Retrospect and Prospect

ii.

From

be hoped that the some idea of the be enjoyed in language study. This has been an

the preceding cursory chapters

it is

to

patient reader has by this time obtained

adventures to

unconventional sort of survey, omitting or slurring over

many

loom large in the usual book on linguistics, and including others which are generally avoided. The intricacies of grammar and syntax, for instance, are usually treated in elaborate detail, even in books which modestly proclaim themselves to be "Introductions" or "Handbooks" or technical matters that

"Manuals." For the general reader, however, it is probably by way of example but a few of the adjustments

sufficient to cite

which are necessary in adapting oneself to an is the ability to make the adjustment which is

in one's thinking alien syntax. It

important.

My

It

may constitute

the humanistic value of the study.

purpose will have been achieved

if

my

few scattered

examples have pointed out the type of pleasure and

profit

which may be derived from a cultivation of the mental elasticity requisite in feeling one's way into another grammar.

From this point on it is up self

and savor

it

in true

to the reader to get the pleasure

him-

Epicurean fashion, by actually learning

a few languages: not with traditional dull conformity, by sheer

memory, but with alert awareness from one idiom to another.

On

of all shaded differences

the side of inclusiveness in this

book there may be

reck-

oned the discussion of poetry and poetics, a subject commonly left to literary critics. This is their domain, to be sure. Yet it

may be

gently suggested that the august critics as well as lowly 291

The

292

Gift of

Tongues

laymen might gain by some measure of knowledge about the neighboring domain of language. I think the thesis is clearly defensible that poetry becomes

more enjoyable

as well as

more

should say because more intelligible?) when one knows something about language, its medium. intelligible (perhaps

I

Similarly the daily intercourse with our fellows becomes richer

when our

ears

of their speech.

have been sharpened to the social implications A knowledge of word compounding, of etymol-

ogy, of semantic spheres will change the material of everyday speech into a cultural heritage of deepened significance.

Throughout the book

it has been necessary to insist, perhaps wearisome repetition, on the essential dignity of all human speech. It is to be hoped that the need for such stress will soon pass away. In fact much that has been said on these pages arose from the need to counteract the widespread misunderstandings and prejudices, even hatreds, of our own

to the point of

would be a happy thing if we could look forward to a speedy change, making these stressed passages in the present volume quickly outmoded. The sooner it becomes possible for era. It

readers to say

"How

old-fashioned!

How

unnecessary!" about

such remarks on racial and linguistic minorities, the better

it

will be for the entire race. But, alas! that day seems far distant

now. For the moment

I

presume

I

have

little to

fear in the

way

of readers' condescension in this regard. It

has not been

my

intention, of course, to

deny differences

of type or degrees of development in languages.

point of view of the learner

From

the

unquestionably true that some present a more cumbersome structure than others. Many are it is

backward in vocabulary, because of isolation from major curBut all have a potentiality for development. Nor need that development be left to the slowest possible

rents of world affairs.

tempo, the result of accidental, usually sluggish evolution. Language, like other parts of human culture, is susceptible of

change consciously directed by its creators. Certain types of simplification can be planned; provided intelligibility does not suffer, they do not have to wait upon centuries of slow evolu-

Retrospect and Prospect

293

don. Within narrow limits such conscious modifications have occasionally been tried. Bolder innovations may be attempted in the future.

A new

linguistic science

mented by more

chapter will be written in the history of

when

the recording of languages

creative direction of them.

is

supple-

We have been slow

in realizing that matters closest to us can also be shaped by us,

we so desire, instead of being "left to chance." Language may be one of the last institutions to be rescued from laissezif

faire attitudes, simply because

it is

so close to us.

When

this

happens, some of the principles assumed to be universal and necessary will turn out, as often happens, to be temporary com-

promises, products of a wasteful and roundabout procedure by trial

and error.

The

imperfections of ordinary speech have already attracted

some few independent spirits zealous for logic and symmetry. Their creative impetus has taken the form of attention from

elaborating perfect "artificial" languages, freed of the incon-

and anomalies marring even the most advanced of civilized languages. In intervals between world wars, attempts have been made to disseminate the study of Esperanto, Ido, Volapiik, and other artificial languages as an aid to international communication. Those persons who expected to foster international amity by purely linguistic means have been repeatedly doomed to bitter disappointment as war after war has swept away the frail filaments of correspondence in these languages extending over national boundaries. We have seen more sistencies

than once the demonstration of their insufficiency— taken alone

—in promoting brotherhood among

peoples.

But they have

served practical purposes creditably, within limits.

They have and the more basic

facilitated the functioning of international congresses

written communications of scientists.

When

the

problems of national fraternity have been solved, including such mundane matters as colonies, investments, and access to raw materials, then some type of international language can begin to function in aid of an amity already established. Enthusiasts are convinced that an artificial language may

really

The

294

Gift of

Tongues

one day replace all living ones and become the sole, universal means of communication for the entire world. The question is at this stage theoretical. For the present it is difficult to imagine exclusive reliance on a structure of speech so formally perfect. Put it into the hands of peoples still widely separated in their cultural development, and it will cease to be either logical or universal. It will be distorted in a thousand ways by local influences, and in a short time it will have broken down into dialects and even new separate languages. Still, it may be widely useful as an ancillary language supplementing a gradually diminishing

number

may be

little

In time of peace, this be seriously discussed. Professional linguists

of national languages.

problem ought

to

interested as scientists, since they conceive their

study to be limited to a factual analysis of languages as they are;

but they

may be persuaded

to consider the

problem

as

citizens of the world.

Some readers may challenge the phrase about a "diminishing number of national languages." I admit it is merely a guess, and

deals with a highly problematical future. Nevertheless

it

there

some reason

is

for expecting

diminution instead of

in-

crease in numbers.

Contemporary history has offered us a

spectacle of

posing tendencies in respect to national languages.

two op-

A number

of small independent states were created by the Treaty of Ver-

out of the former Austrian, German, and Russian empires. These new or revived nations showed extreme awareness of their status. They properly regarded their recognized

sailles (1919)

official

languages as symbols of national integrity. Linguistic

pride was sometimes permitted to degenerate into provincialism. Czechish citizens in the streets of Prague often as to refuse to

tourists

went

so far

speak the language of Goethe with helpless

(though they knew

ciate themselves completely

it)

because they wished to disasso-

from any knowledge of

their late

imperial masters. Nationalism was one of the dominant currents of

European culture from 1919 to 1939 for reasons not now. In its wake came the multiplica-

at all mysterious to us

Retrospect and Prospect tion of barriers— including languages.

suppressed languages recognized as rescued and given a

new

Not only were formerly

official,

but dying ones were

lease of life. Gaelic, Flemish, Polish,

Finnish, and Czech were added to the

resented on the maps.

295

The more

list

of languages rep-

eagerly one wished to be a

good European and a good internationalist, the more separate languages and dialects he was expected to master, in order to prove his international culture.

But during these fateful two decades technological advances were working in an entirely opposite direction. The radio and the speaking movies suddenly began to bring distant languages close to the ears of all nationals. Invention gave an enormous impetus to languages associated with the most important centers of radio diffusion and motion picture industry. In England, the British Broadcasting Corporation, popularly as

BBC, has been

at

some pains

to

known

adopt and disseminate a

which is thus brought to in on London. Aerial trans-

single version of standard English,

the ears of

all

hearers able to listen

mission thus offers a

first

powerful competitor to the many

obstinate local dialects persisting in England, and

the language to millions of other peoples

who

before the days of radio. American English

it

also brings

rarely heard is

similarly ex-

tended, after a fashion, to populations hitherto cut off from outside languages. So far there has been

But

if

little effect,

all

of course.

radio and motion pictures were consistently directed

towards the spread of several chosen languages, and above if

it

all

they were connected with universal and truly popular educa-

tion in

all

countries (a

dream

yet to be realized),

we should

have a strong counter-tendency operative towards reduction in the number of dialects and languages. Even now, high school students of foreign languages— in certain favored communities

—enjoy the enormous advantage of being able to see and hear movies acted in the languages they are studying. Students are able to aid their aural skill by playing phonograph records or tuning in on a foreign station of their radio. These last two methods are less effective than the first, since they fail to con-

The

296

Gift of

Tongues

vey the important accompaniment of facial expression and gesture,

but the newer

art of television supplies both.

Before such unifying forces can be given fair scope, politics, economic organization, and technology will have to be brought

more harmonious accord than they show

into

today.

As

it is,

beneficent inventions are permitted to remain frustrated by the fierce rivalries of our times.

We can only surmise how they

may one day assist us when we permit them to do so. The conditions then prevalent will no doubt determine whether world communication will be more facilitated by adoption of an artificial

auxiliary language in addition to the traditional ones

still

extant, or by the gradual spread of

first

as

supplement

to all the others

one living language,

and

possibly, far in the

future, as ultimate substitute for all of them.

And there is the still more remote and speculative possibility that spoken language

itself,

for all

its

advantages,

may one day

be replaced by some better means of communication from one is impossible to imagine now what of the body appear to be better organs other that may be. No adapted than the ones we now use in talking. Mr. H. G. Wells intelligence to another. It

has suggested in one of his Utopian novels, Men Like Gods, that the human beings of the future may learn to communicate

more

directly

by means of some

sort of bio-physical process of

thought activity in the brain cells. The medium is represented being much subtler than the gross vibrations of air on which we now depend, but none the less purely physiological. This immediate transfer of thought would apparently reduce the as

possibility of lying, a factor

change

At the moment, Utopian be

which would alone do much

to

human nature and human civilization. possibilities for

as little likely of realization as

language seem to

any other.

The

gloomier

prophets of our day are inclined rather to point to deterioration if not extinction of what civilization we have. I do not think that linguists as a group tend to take the

gloomy view. Insofar

the general subject of their study, they

they reflect at all on must be impressed with the enormous value of the as

gift of

Retrospect and Prospect power

humane

297

speech and

its

again:

language that has made us men. There

it is

evidence that in time

Even now,

may

in the

of service for

we

will

shadow

permit

it

to

ends. Let

make

is

it

be said

plenty of

us better men.

of threatened general slaughter,

dare to hope for the day

when language

we

will collaborate

humane we may the

with the other arts of peace to the adornment of a truly

way of life. With the vision more easily take courage

of such a day before us, to

continue living hopefully and

cultivating the study of languages for the values they will yield in a

more auspicious

future.

APPENDIX BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES

I.

NOTES TO CHAPTER The

1

sentence from Kant, quoted to illustrate abstractions,

Max

tique of Pure Reason, translated by F.

is

from The

Muller (New York, 1934),

Cri-

p. 339.

A good short history of earlier theories on the origin of speech is given by Otto Jespersen, Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin (New York, 1925). For an exposition of the theological point of view, which denies any kinship of human speech with expression in the lower animals, see the learned work of Wilhelm Schmidt, Sprachfamilien und Sprachenkreise der Erde (Heidelberg, 1926).

The

studies of R. L.

Garner are presented

in several

books

such as The Speech of Monkeys (London, 1892) and Apes and Monkeys: Their Life and Language (Boston, 1900). Rothman and Teuber correlated emotional expression of the chimpanzees with vowel quality in Einzelausgabe aus der

Anthropoidenstation auf Teneriffa (Berlin: Presussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1915). The work of R. M. Yerkes is embodied in his The Great

Apes (New Haven,

On

1929).

For a survey of earlier studies see

ibid.,

302

ff.

the terminology "reference" and "referent" in linguistic communication

I. A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning (New York and Willem Graff, Language and Languages (New York, 1932), chapter 2. On the general problem of communication see Karl Britton, Communication: A Philosophical Study of Language (London, 1939). Gustaf Stern elaborates the analysis of Ogden and Richards, emphasizing psychological factors and semantic applications, in his Meaning and Change of Meaning with Special Reference to the English Language (Goteborg, 1931: Goteborgs Hogskolas Aarskrift, XXXVIII, no. 1). There is a wealth of material on sympathetic magic in Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough (London, 1911-26; one-volume edition 1926). See also J. W. E. Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkulte (Berlin, 1875-77) and Edwin Sidney Hartland, The Legend of Perseus (London, 1894-

see C. K.

Ogden and

London,

1923); also

96), Vol. II:

The

The

Life Token.

curse from a

Roman

nischen Sprache (Leipzig: is

and

is

cited by Fr. Stolz, Geschichte der latei1910), p.

121; the

Quiche

text

Schultze-Jena, Indiana (Jena, 1933), I, p. 186. The curse of Sigurd's conversation with the dragon are translated in Henry

given by L.

Skirnir

inscription

Sammlung Goschen,

S.

Bellows Adams's

The

dation, 1923), p. 115

Poetic ff.

and

Edda (New York: American Scandinavian Foun372.

299

Appendix

goo

NOTES TO CHAPTER

2

The

phonetic characters used for transcribing English can be studied in more detail in any one of several excellent handbooks such as Walter Ripman's English Phonetics

An

Jones's

(New York: Dutton,

revised edition).

The examples

Daniel

1931), or in the introduction to

English Pronouncing Dictionary (London and

New

York: Dutton,

of ambiguity in spelling with the letter "a"

Way (New York: Barnes Padre Ignacio de Paredes comments on the monotony of Aztec consonants in the Preface to the Compendio del Arte de la Lengua Mexicana of Padre Horacio Carochi (Puebla, Mexico, 1910 edition), p. 15. Ethel Aginsky's A Grammar of the Mende Language was published by the Linguistic Society of America (Philadelphia, 1935). For an introduction to Egyptian hieroglyphs and grammar, see Alan H. Gardiner's fascinating Egyptian Grammar (Oxford, 1927). The article "Alphabet" by B. F. C. Atkinson in the Encyclopcedia Britannica contains some instructive illustrations, as does Holger Pedersen's Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931). The graphical are taken from Beulah Handler: English the American

and Noble,

1940).

Monkey is discussed by Herbert J. Spinden in "Indian Manuscripts of Southern Mexico," Smithsonian Institution Reports (1935), pp.

history of Princess Six

429-51. For additional examples of picture writing

and alphabets,

see

Jensen, Geschichte der Schrift (Hannover, 1925). On runes and their history see inter alia the article by E. Sievers,

und Runeninschriften" in lin, 1891-93), I; Helmut

Hans

"Runen

Paul's Grundriss der germanischen Philologie (Ber-

Arntz, Handouch der Runenkunde (Halle, 1935), including a survey of all theories concerning the origin of runes; Wolfgang Krause, Runeninschriften im alteren Futhark (Halle, 1937) with many exam-

and commentary. The Old English runic poem is W. M. Grein's Bibliothek der angel-sdchsischen Poesie (Hamburg, The similar passage in the Elder Edda is to be found in the Ad-

ples with transliteration

printed in C. 1921),

I,

331.

ams' translation, p. 391 ff. For an episode describing cure by runes see Egil's Saga in the translation by E. R. Eddison (Cambridge University Press, 1930), p. 174.

NOTES TO CHAPTER

3

There is a good brief survey of the world's languages, with an illustrative map, in Willem L. Graff's Language and Languages (New York, 1932), chapters 10 and 11. An elaborate survey is given by a group of specialists in Les Langues du Monde, edited by Antoine Meillet and Marcel Cohen (Paris, 1923). The maps in the appendix are most instructive. Much of the general information in this chapter is based on articles in this reference book. Father Wilhelm Schmidt's Sprachfamilien und Sprachenkreise der Erde (Heidelberg, 1926) is very informing, but some of the statements concerning wider relationships among groups must be regarded with extreme caution. The author avows his theological bias in the introduction and frankly reaffirms the validity of the story of the Garden of Eden as an explanation of human speech; therefore it is

Notes

301

easy to understand his zeal to establish unities wherever possible, in order to facilitate a

conclusion that

all

languages had a single origin.

The standard work on the culture of the parent Indo-European tribe is Hermann Hirt's Die Indogermanen (Strassburg, 1905). There is a brief discusDwight Whitney, Language and the Study of Language (New York, 7th edition, 1910), lecture 5. Much has been written since these two books appeared, but the general outlines of the problem remain the same. For the place of Indo-European among other cultures, see V. Gordon Childe, The Dawn of European Civilization (New York, 1925) and The Aryans sion of the subject by William

(New York,

The

1926).

on Finno-Ugric by A. Sauvageot in Les Langues du Monde uses which are now out of date (the last census under the Tsar, in 1897).

article

statistics

For more recent information concerning the populations of various ethnic groups in Soviet territory, see a report by the Scientific Research Institute in

Moscow: Nationalities in the U.S.S.R., Results of the Solution of the National Question in the U.S.S.R. (1936; published by "Vlast* Sovietov"), pp. 7 ff. It gives a table of some 168 items concerning language, nationality and literacy taken from the 1929 census. The Russian title is: Natsional'nostei SSSR: Itogi Razresheniia natsional'nogo Voprosa v SSSR, prepared by the Nauchno-Issledovatel'skii

Institut.

There

is

a special article on the Nentsy (Samoyeds) in the

Bol'shaia Sovietskaia Entsiklopediia,

volume XLI. The examples of Hungarian

vowel harmony are taken from Robert

J.

Hall,

An

Analytical

Grammar

of the

Hungarian Language (Language Monograph no. XVIII, Linguistic Society of America, Baltimore, 1940), which gives a clear exposition of the principles. The Semitic variations of the root of qtl come from Marcel Cohen's article in Les Langues du Monde; for the consonant change known as "lenition," exemplified in the root mix, see ^ ar ^ Brockelmann, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen, I (Berlin, 1908), p. 204. The Osmali examples come from J. Deny on Turkic, in Meillet and Cohen. For Bantu, see Sir Harry H. Johnston, A Comparative Study of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu Languages (Oxford, 1919), 2 vols. For American Indian languages the prime book of reference is by Franz Boas: Handbook of American Indian Languages (Washington, 1911 and 1922). Friedrich Miiller's arguments for polygenesis appear in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft, I (Vienna, 1876), p. 50 ff. Trombetti's arguments in refutation are presented in his Elementi di Glottologia (Bologna, 1922-23). The controversy is briefly surveyed by M. Schlauch, Science

and

Society,

I

(1936), 18-44.

NOTES TO CHAPTER

4

Any

etymological dictionary of English will give information about the separate elements of our compound words and their original meanings. To get further information on Latin

compounds taken over by

us consult Alois Walde,

Lateinisches etymologisches Wdrterbuch (Heidelberg, 2nd ed., 1910). Otto Jespersen discusses Pidgin English in Language (New York, 1925), ch. 12. The

examples of it— probably deliberately chosen if not edited for humorous —come from Charles G. Leland's Pidgin-English Sing-Song (London,

effect

1900).

Appendix

302 The humorous

paraphrase by William James of a sentence in Herbert Spencer quoted by Kenneth Burke, Attitudes to History (New York, 1937), I, p. 11 f. The quotation from Hegel will be found in his Samtliche Werke (Leipzig, 1937), II, p. 68 and 71; the translation is the one by J. B. Baillie of the Phenomeis

nology of Mind (New York, 1931), p. 137 and 140. For loan words see Mary S. Serjeantson, A History of Foreign Words in English (New York, 1936) and the special studies listed in her bibliography (p. 301 f.). Especially interesting in connection with the linguistic situation in North America is H. W. Bentley's A Dictionary of Spanish Terms in English (New York and Oxford, 1932). The mystery story cited for Hawaiian loan words is Biggers's House Without a Key, ch. 11, init. The Finnish compounds have been lifted from M. Willewill, Praktische Grammatik der Finnischen Sprache (Vienna, 1906). For a systematic account of derivations see Knut Kannelin, Finska Spraaket (Helsingfors, 1932). The Malay compounds will be found in R. O. Winstedt's Malay Grammar (Oxford, 1927), p. 51 ff. The Chinese examples come from Georg von der Gabelentz, Chinesische Grammatik (Leipzig, 1881), p. 358. For the Cakchiquel, see the Diccionario by Saenz de Santa Maria

(Guatemala, 1940).

NOTES TO CHAPTER Semantic

shift

by way of metaphor

is

discussed by

5

Hermann

Paul, Prinzipien,

See also von der Gabelentz, p. 232 ff. The chief types of semantic change are presented in Bloomfield's Language, ch. 24. Jost Trier propounds his p. 94

ff.

theory of semantic fields in the introduction to Der deutsche Wortschatz

Sinnbezirk des Verstandes,

I

(Heidelberg, 1931). p. 1-26.

Hans Sperber

im

gives a

general introduction in his Einfiihrung in die Bedeutungslehre (Bonn and Leipzig, 1930).

A

very useful survey and critique of recent semantic (linguistic)

furnished by Otto Springer, "Probleme der Bedeutungslehre," Germanic Review, XIII (1938), 159 ff. For a simple introduction see Hugh Walpole,

studies

is

Semantics:

The Nature

elaborate discussion

is

of

Words and Their Meanings (New York, 1941). An Meaning and Change of Meaning

given by Gustaf Stern,

(Goteborg, 1931). P. W. Bridgman's Logic of Modern Physics appeared some years ago (New York, 1933); The Intelligent Individual and Society, more recently (New York, 1938). Alfred Korzybski's ambitious work is Science and Sanity (Lancaster, Pa., n.d.). The full diagram of "levels" and "labels" appears on p. 471. For brief popular statements of Korzybski's principles, with examples, see S. I. Hayakawa, Language in Action (New York, 1940) and Irving J. Lee, Language Habits in Human Affairs (New York, 1941). Thurman W. Arnold's analysis The Symbols

Government (New Haven, 1935) was followed by the more inclusive Folklore (New Haven, 1937). Stuart Chase, The Tyranny of Words (New York, 1938), embodies much of Bridgman, Korzybski, and Arnold. of

of Capitalism

NOTES TO CHAPTER

6

Charles Carpenter Fries has written a scientific, strictly inductive account of our speech in his American English Grammar (New York, 1940). See Chapter 5

Notes our two living

for the discussion of

303

inflections.

Rankin Aiken record examples of

illogical

Margaret M. Bryant and Janet syntax in their Psychology of

(New York, 1940). For the point of view of the logical positivist, see Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language (New York, 1937). On presentative sentences see Josephine M. Burnham, University of Kansas PublicaEnglish

tions (Humanistic Studies), VI, no. 4.

Hermann Hirt's discussion of gender inflections is quoted from his Indogermanische Grammatik, III: Das Nomen (Heidelberg, 1927), p. 85. The older theory about verbal endings and pronouns in Indo-European will be found in William Dwight Whitney, Language, ch. 7. The more recent theories and explanations will be found in H. Hirt, op. cit., IV, Das Verhum (Heidelberg, 1928), p. 148, 153 et passim.

Ewe language were made in his Elemente der For grammars see Diedrich Westermann, A Study of the Ewe Language (Oxford, 1930) and Die Ewe-Sprache in Togo (Berlin, 1939). The Malay examples come from the opus of R. O. Winstedt, previously Wundt's claims

in behalf of the

Volkerpsychologie, p. 68

cited.

ff.

Mende, likewise referred

aspect of pronouns

is

to earlier,

explained on

is

p. 21

analyzed by E. Aginsky; the tense

and

33.

Von

der Gabelentz, Die

Sprachwissenschaft, has been cited for the syntactic function of Chinese word

order

teum)

(p. 117), (p. 151).

and

The

for the tense inflection of

pronouns in Melanesian (Anei-

"possessive" conjugation of Nenets (Samoyed) verbs

is

ex-

plained by A. Sauvageot in his article on Finno-Ugric, in A. Meillet and M.

Cohen, Les Langues du Monde. For further examples of such usage see Louis H. Gray, Foundations of Language (New York, 1939), p. 152. Vestiges of it are to be found in Quiche^ See Schultze-Jena, Indiana, I, p. 294 and 304 f. On the Manchu verb see Lucien Adam, Grammaire de la Langue Mandchou (Paris, 1873). The Nahuatl verbs are cited from Mariano Jacobo Rojas, Estudios gramaticales del Idioma Mexicano (Mexico, 1935). For Dravidian, see Robert Caldwell, A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages (London, 1913 ed.), p. 451.

The

complicated categories of noun classes in Chichewa are exin his grammar before mentioned, p. 52 ff. On the

pounded by M. H. Watkins

relation of pitch, vowel position,

and

E. Prokosch,

and tense

relations see

A Comparative Germanic Grammar

Wundt,

op.

cit.,

p. 67

f.

(Philadelphia, 1939), p.

and the references quoted. (D. Westermann gives interesting illustrations and grammatical functions of pitch in his Ewe grammar.) Prokosch discusses theories on origin of gender, op. cit., p. 228-30. Gender in Potawatomi syntax is treated by Charles Hockett in Language, XV (1939), 235-48. Various theories of gender (comparing Indo-European and Algonquian dialects) are surveyed by J. P. B. de J. de Jong, De Waarderingsonderscheiding van "Levend" en "Levenlos" (Leiden, 1913). The Hawaiian examples are taken from Edward Tregear's dictionary. For the inclusive-exclusive forms of plural pronouns in Santal, see Wilhelm von Hevesy, Finnisch-Ugrisches aus Indien (Vienna, 1932). 121

ff.

of semantic

NOTES TO CHAPTER A

trained ear

much

and

7

close attention to living speech are of greater aid than

reading of books

when one

is

mastering the general types of sound

Appendix

304 Some

change.

technical books

make valuable

use of the phonetic approach in

dealing with Indo-European philology: for instance, Joseph Schrijnen in his

Einfiihrung in das Studium der indogermanischen Sprachwissenschaft (translated from the Dutch, Heidelberg, 1921).

Most of the examples in

this chapter

The illustrations of Grimm's law may be augmented by referring to Hermann Hirt's Handbuch des Urgermanischen, I (Heidelberg, 1931), p. 80, and E. Prokosch, A Comparative Germanic Grammar, p. 47 ff. The examples of the Armenian consonant

are taken from familiar words in familiar languages.

shift are

menien

taken from A. Meillet, Esquisse d'une Grammaire Comparee de I'Ar-

2nd ed., 1936), p. 24 ff. There is a clear and exhaustive account of ablaut (vowel gradation) in another of Meillet's books, Introduction classique (Vienna,

Langues indoeuropiennes (Paris, 3rd ed., 1912), ch. 4. volume of Hirt's Indogerm. Gram, is devoted to the intricacies of ablaut. For abundant illustrations of palatalization in the Romance languages, see any comparative study of them. Readily and cheaply accessible is Adolf Zauner's Romanische Sprachwissenschaft (Sammlung G6schen, nos. 128 and 250). See also E. Bourciez, Elements de Linguistique Romane a I'Etude comparative des

The

greater part of the second

(Paris, 1930).

NOTES TO CHAPTER

8

For elaborate information on the Anglo-Saxons in England see Charles Oman, England before the Norman Conquest (London, 1910) and R. H. Hodgkin, History of the Anglo-Saxons (2 vols., Oxford, 1935). The literature is described by E. E. Wardale, Chapters on Old English Literature (London, 1935). To gain

Old English grammar with simple readings, look at A. J. of Anglo-Saxon (New York, 1926). It presents the irreducible minimum of paradigms in 12 pages. There are more elaborate grammars by Milton Haight Turk, Marjorie Anderson and Blanche Coulton Williams, George T. Flom, Joseph Wright; the authoritative reference grammar is by Sievers, translated by A. S. Cook. Thomas Jefferson, who was interested in the study of Old English, drafted a simplified grammar based on modern English for practical purposes only. It has been used by Seltzer and Seltzer in their Jefferson Anglo-Saxon Reader (New York, 1938)— a practical short-cut not intended for specialists. The quotation from King Alfred is from his preface to Gregory's Pastoral Care, quoted by Charles Plummer in The Life and Times of Alfred the Great (Oxford, 1902). The passage about Moses in the bullrushes will be found in Wyatt's Threshold. On the Danes in England, see Otto Jespersen, Growth and Structure of the English Language (Leipzig, 1919). For samples of Middle English, consult O. F. Emerson, A Middle English Reader (New York, 1915). For reading Chaucer— in the original, by all means!— use F. N. Robinson's Cambridge Edition (Boston, 1933). The quotation from "Poema Morale"— "Ich aem elder hen ic wes"— is from Emerson's Reader; "Wynter wakeneth al my care" is reprinted in The Oxford Book of English Verse, ed. Quiller-Couch (Oxford, 1939), p. 9. Quotations from Pecock and Sidney are taken from George Philip Krapp's valuable Rise of English Literary Prose (New York, 1915). The passage from a quick insight into

Wyatt's primer,

The Threshold

Jonson's Poetaster occurs in Act V, Scene

iii,

ed. Herbert

S.

Mallory (Yale

Notes

305

Studies in English, 1905), but the spelling has been modernized in this as in other citations from the Elizabethans.

General studies of English since the Renaissance are to be found in George H. McKnight, Modern English in the Making (New York, 1930) and Stuart Robertson, The Development of Modern English (New York, 1938). For the general history of the language, in all periods, consult Albert C. Baugh, A History of the English Language (New York, 1935). The bibliographies at the ends of chapters suggest additional reading in all periods. The importance of Sanskrit for comparative philology is explained in Holger Pedersen's Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century as translated by John 1. Some of the examples of freer H. G. Grattan and P. Gurrey, Our Living Language (New York and London, 1925). Reference grammars of modern English are fairly numerous. For the non-specialist Henry Sweet's New English Grammar (Oxford, 1899) is still one of the most useful. See also Hans Kurath and G. O. Curme, A Grammar of the English Language (Boston, 1931). On Basic English, consult C. K. Ogden, The System of Basic English (New York, 1934). (The over-sanguine claims for international speech as an antidote to war appear on p. 18.)

Spargo (Harvard University

Press, 1931), ch.

grammatical usage today are taken from

J.

NOTES TO CHAPTER The

9

quotations and allusions in this chapter are to the following authors, in

the order in which they have been cited: Cleanth Brooks,

Modern Poetry and Wake (New York:

the Tradition (Chapel Hill, 1939); James Joyce, Finnegans

Press, 1939); T. S. Eliot, Poems, 1909-192 5 (New York: Harcourt Brace, Hart Crane, Collected Poems (New York: Liveright Publishing Corp., 1933); James Joyce, Ulysses (New York: Random House, ed., 1934); Gertrude Stein, Lectures in America (New York: Random House, 1935); Stein, Ida (New York: Random House, 1941); Stein, Four Saints in Three Acts (New York: Random House, 1934); W. H. Auden, Poems (New York: Random House,

Viking n.d.);

Auden, The Double Man (New York: Random House, 1941); E. E. Cum(Viva) (New is 5 (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1926); Cummings, York: Horace Liveright Inc., 1931); J onn Weaver, In American (New York: Knopf, 1926); Henri Delacroix, Le Langage et la Pensee (Paris, 1924) especially p. 384 ff.; Ferdinand Brunot, La Pensee et la Langue (Paris,i 936)— Book I for "presentations" and "propositions"; Charles Bally, Linguistique generale et Linguistique francaise (Paris, 1932), p. 65 ff. Some of the poems cited will also be found in contemporary anthologies such as George K. Anderson and Eda Lou Walton, This Generation (New York: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1939) and the Faber Book of Modern Verse, edited by Michael Roberts (London: Faber and Faber, 1936). In discussing James Joyce the author has made use of an earlier study, "The Language of James Joyce," published by her in Science and Society, III (1939), 482 ff. 1936);

W

mings,

NOTES TO CHAPTER The tus,

entertaining passage about clothes

Book

I,

ch. 9.

is

10

taken from Carlyle's Sartor Resar-

"Captain Brassbound's Conversion" appears in Shaw's Three

Appendix

go6

(New York, 1912). The notes to the The Divine Fire was published by Henry Holt (New York, 1904). The animadversions of Thomas Wolfe on British English are to be found in Of Time and the River (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1935), Book V, ch. 48, p. 603 f.; those of Aldous Huxley in Point Plays for Puritans, published by Brentano's

May

play are also interesting.

Sinclair's

Counter-Point (Garden City, N. Y. Doubleday, Doran, 1928) ch. 20. On hypercorrect forms see Otto Jespersen, Language, p. 293 f. The most perti:

nent chapters of Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1918) are "Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture"

and "The Conservation of Archaic Traits." The famous butler of P. G. Wodehouse— who so well illustrates Veblen's theories— is to be found in Jeeves, now readily available in an edition by Pocket Books, Inc. The quotations are taken from ch. 9, pages 80 and 87. The examples of French argot were taken from articles by Galtier-Boissiere and Pierre Devaux in Crapouillot (1939). The table of Malay pronouns comes from R. O. Winstedt's grammar, p. 108. On Japanese forms of politeness see von der Gabelentz, Sprachwissenschaft, p. 246. Class dialects are discussed by Henry Cecil Wyld, A Short History of English (New York, 1929), p. 148 f. See also Daniel Jones, English Pronouncing Dictionary (New York, 1926), Introduction, especially p. vi f. The works to consult first on American English are George Philip Krapp, The English Language in America (New York, 1925) and H. L. Mencken. The American Language (New York, 1936). For Krapp's statement on Negro pronunciation, see II, p. 34 f. Most of the American idioms and phrases quoted are taken from John Russell Bartlett's A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States (New York, 1848). For others I am indebted to a course paper by one of my students, Miss Dorothy Hector. Greene's language of cony-catching

Cosenage (published 1591).

The

is

contained in his Notable Discovery of

seventeenth century underworld slang

is

pre-

A New

Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew (London, n.d.) by a certain "B. E., Gent." The slang of lunch rooms is

served in

excerpted from Harold

American Speech, XI Verbal Taboos,"

W.

Bentley, "Linguistic Concoctions of the Soda Jerker,"

M. Steadman, Jr., "A Study Mencken discusses taboos, op. cit.,

(1936), 37-45. See also J.

ibid.,

X

(1935),

93.

of p.

300-18.

On and don,

race and language in relation to politics, see

Politics

We

(New York: Modern Age,

(New York,

1911) it

is still

Ruth

Benedict, Race: Science

and Julian Huxley and A.

C.

Had-

Franz Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man very valuable— and more important today than ever

Europeans (London,

before since

1940)

was written.

1935).

2.

DIVERSIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

(These are offered as suggestions merely. The number could be indefinitely increased.)

Chapter

i

1.

To

2.

spoken word, make a collection of fairy tales in which the fate of the hero or heroine depends on knowledge of a name or a special word, or the asking of a question, or the solving of a riddle. In what stories must the hero or heroine remain nameless? In which stories is a wish like the building of a castle no sooner expressed than accomplished? You will find help in Mary Huse Eastman's Index to Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends (Boston, 1926; Supplement, 1937). Observe the gestures of someone who speaks a foreign lan-

illustrate

the

power

traditionally associated with

the

guage. Note down the ones often repeated and define their conventional meaning. 3.

By what terms do

children refer to the persons or things they

fear? 4.

your school or place of work which convey messages without words. What verbal commands are most often used? How, if at all, could they be conveyed by List the signals used in

gesture? 5.

What

6.

Take

your cat or dog understand? hundred consecutive words at random in a dictionary which gives etymologies (e.g., the Concise Oxford Dictionary). How many of them are marked "imitative" or "onomatopoetic"?

7.

signals does

a

Compare your

results

with those of others trying the

same experiment. What is the average percentage? Do the words "hollow" and "horror" seem descriptive to you? Look them up in W. W. Skeat's Etymological Dictionary of the English Language and find out what they meant in earlier 307

Appendix

308 times.

8.

9.

10.

11.

Were

they

more or

less

descriptive then, according to

your feeling for sounds? Make a list of onomatopoetic words in English. Give equivalent words in French, German, or any other language you know. How do they compare in sound effects?

What are the learned terms for the following living creatures: whippoorwill, cricket, rattlesnake, hummingbird, wasp, bumblebee? What are the advantages of the popular terms over the learned? The learned over the popular? Engage a group of children in pantomime games designed to express various types of statement. Begin with simple ones like "We want your toys," but include more abstract ones like "Our country has been insulted." Report how they expressed these ideas without words. What was meant in ancient times by an "oracle"? Look up examples in Plutarch's Lives of Greek and Roman heroes. What circumstances enhanced the power of the spoken word in these situations?

Chapter 1.

2

Make

a record of the sounds substituted for the "correct" ones by a small child learning to talk. Present them systematically according to placement in the mouth: the sounds replacing labials, dentals, gutturals, etc.

2.

Why

are these substitutions

made? Explain in terms of pho-

netics. 3.

4.

5.

Make What

a record of the speech of a foreigner talking English. sounds gave him trouble? If you know what sounds are present and which absent from his native tongue, explain his difficulty by comparison with the range of English sounds. Record some sentences spoken by a person very tired or somewhat inebriated. What has happened to the standard sounds?

Why? Make

a

list

of tongue-twisters like "She sells sea shells

on the At

seashore." Introduce extra words to diversify the sounds.

what point do the sentences become readily pronounceable? (or German, Spanish, Danish, Russian, etc.) are not represented in English? How would you explain

6.

What sounds in French

7.

What

their nature to a student?

sounds in these languages resemble ours but are made with slight differences in position of the speech organs? Explain.

Diversions and Illustrations 8.

9.

How are the normal sounds of your speech affected when you have a cold? Why? Pronounce the following: [gAn, gun, gu:n], [ti:n, tin, tain], kau], [ku:,

[ki:, ci:], [ku:,

a^,],

[kirk, t/artj],

sem], [Gen, fen], 10.

11.

12. 13.

309

[sel,

ci:], [kin, cin, tjin],

J*el],

[in, ip, in],

[vaet, faet], [jes, d3est],

[ic,,

i^], [ay,

[b:, lou], [Gem,

[gou, yo:].

How would you

explain to an eighth-grade child the pronunciation of "singing": [sirjirj] rather than [sirjin] or [sirjirjg]? Prepare a list of other variations from standard pronunciation like this one, and describe them in phonetic terms.

How

would you

correct

them?

What myths and fables do you know about the origins of the alphabet among various peoples? What attitudes do they reconcerning the art of writing? the etymology of the following for the information implied concerning earlier forms of writing: "write, rune, alphabet, hieroglyph, pen, cuneiform." Look up schreiben and Buchstabe in Friedrich Kluge's Etymologisches Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache, if you are interested in German. What technical words do you know connected with the art of printing (e.g., "folio, quarto, colophon, incunabulum")? Find out their origin. Were the quipus— knotted cords— of the Peruvian Indians a form of alphabet? See E. Nordenskiold, The Secret of the Peruvian Quipus (Goteborg, 1925). Translate the following sentences into picture writing: flect

14.

15.

16.

17.

Look up

The hero killed the villain. The villain was killed by the The enemy attacked us.

We defended ourselves We kindled a fire. A fire broke loose. Which

shifts in

hero.

from the enemy.

grammatical relationship are most

difficult to

express by this method? 18.

19.

Study the examples of picture alphabets in Hans Jensen, Geschichte der Schrift (Hannover, 1925), and comment on their advantages and disadvantages. Using a single unit of writing like a stylized man's figure walking for "to go," make up picture modifiers to change this into other verbs like "to hasten, to enter, to climb, to descend, to retreat," etc.

20.

What similarities in sound caused students to make the lowing mistakes? Use phonetic symbols to explain.

fol-

Appendix

3io

Often when people are drowned you can revise them by punching their sides but not too hard.

In Christianity a

The bottom

man

of the sea

can have only one wife. This is

composed

of clay

and

is

called

monotony.

fine sentiments.

Geometry teaches us to bisex angels. "Land where our fathers died, Land where the pilgrims pried The dog came bounding down the path emitting whelps bound.

A Soviet

is

of Boners,

Chapter

2.

3.

4.

5.

Make

.

."

at every

a cloth used by waiters in hotels.

(From The Pocket Book

1.

.

New

York, 1941.)

3

numbers one to ten in several languages you know to be related. Try the same experiment with languages in a group you have never studied, such as the Polynesian languages. (Use Edward Tregear's Maori-Polynesian lists

of the words for

Comparative Dictionary.) How close are the words for the same numbers? Read Sir Harry Johnston's description of Parent Bantu (including reconstructed forms for numbers, pronouns, etc.) in his Comparative Study of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu Languages (Oxford, 1919), I, p. 2gff. Can you perceive the method he used to arrive at his description of the lost ancestorlanguage? Explain the differences between the Polynesian forms in phonetic terms. How close are the resemblances? Which forms appear to be most archaic and which the most developed? Look up population tables for the world in the World's Almanac. Estimate what proportionate part is composed of persons speaking languages of the major groups such as Indo-European, Semitic, Hamitic, etc. Study the linguistic maps of the world in the appendix to Meillet and Cohen's Les Langues du Monde. What are the chief territorial shifts in language groups that have occurred since 1500?

6.

7.

Find out the importance of the following for our knowledge of languages and their relations: Rosetta Stone, OscanUmbrian, Ogham script, Darius the Great and his inscriptions, Hittite, Old Turkish runes, Dvenos inscription. (You will find most of the information in Holger Pedersen's Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Spargo.) What did the Greeks have to say about the relation of their language to others? The ancient Hebrews?

Diversions and Illustrations 8.

9.

3

1

Study the place-names in your locality. How many are Indian? After a conquest, are the terms borrowed from a conquered people more apt to be common or proper nouns? Why? If you have lived in a bilingual or trilingual country like Bel-

gium or Switzerland,

10.

try to recall which types of words were most likely to be borrowed from one language to another. Do you know of any similar contact of languages in America? Here is the opening sentence of the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name," in several Indo-European languages. Can you detect resemblances which would lead you to deduce that they are related? Latin: Pater noster qui es in coelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Greek: Pater hemon ho en tots ouranois, hagiasthSto td dnoma

Old

sotl.

Ar

n-athair a>ta air neamh, gu naomhaichear t'ainm. Slavic: Otice nasi, He jesi na nebesexu, da svetiti se ime tvoje.

Irish:

Gothic: Atta unsar,

(From Hermann

hu

in

himinam, weihnai namo hein.

Hirt, Indogermanische

Grammatik,

I,

p. 71

f.)

Chapter 4 1.

Make

a study of the headlines in your

consecutive days.

2.

What words

newspaper for several

are used in place of others in

order to save space? To what extent is this technological necessity affecting ordinary speech? Where in journalistic writing do you find an approximation to clipped style of telegrams? Look up the following words in an etymological dictionary.

What metaphors do you transcendent

find in

them?

312 7. What is by Edna 8.

Appendix the stylistic effect of the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary used

Vincent Millay in her opera

St.

Henchman? Jot down in formations.

libretto,

The

King's

a notebook any words you see that look like new of them have been registered in dic-

How many

tionaries? 9.

10.

By what

process did these words originate:

burgle (vb.) outrage

gas

chowder

simony

Blitzkrieg

gargle

mob

knockout

interloper

paranoia bus

What is the relationship between

the following pairs of words: alms: eleemosynary

treasury: thesaurus frail:

aid: adjutant

fragile

gym: gymnasium

intrigue: intricate

11.

Make a study of the technical vocabulary of one of the fine What does it reveal about the indebtedness of English to

arts.

12.

13.

other cultures? Examine the use of classical compounds in the vocabulary of one of the sciences. (Special word-lists exist for some: e.g., Frank Fenner, Jr., A Glossary for Photography, Chicago, 1939; A. L. Melander, Source Book of Biological Terms, New York,

1937) Every language has words which are difficult to render in another. German gemiitlich is an example. What words of this sort have you encountered in the foreign languages you have studied? How do you convey the sense of them in English explanations?

14.

What types of English words have you noticed being borrowed into other

European languages?

To what

extent have they

been modified in being transferred? 15.

Here are some noun phrases used

16.

"bus stop, beauty parlor, flying field, box office, race track." Extend the list, including slang expressions such as "clip joint, hot-dog stand, spaghetti joint." Can you create single words out of learned classical elements to designate the same places? Explain how these compounds came to be misunderstood by

to designate familiar places:

young students: The

plural of monocle is binnacle. Amphibia lead a double life. Parallelepipeds are animals with parallel feet.

Diversions and Illustrations A

philanderer

needy

An An

18.

a person

who

gives

money

freely to charitable

and

institutions.

octogenarian optimist is a

your feet. Polycarp 17.

is

313

is

is

an animal which has eight young at a birth. looks after your eyes, a pessimist looks

man who

a rare, many-sided

fish.

Book

(Pocket

after

of Boners.)

How does W.

H. Auden achieve satiric effect by bizarre use of loan words? (See especially his Double Man, New York, 1941.) Compare Heine's use of the same device in poems like Sie sassen und tranken am Teetisch, from Das Buch der Lieder.

Can you

cite

an example from literature where excessive use

of loan words gives an effect of snobbishness or artificiality? 19.

Look up

the examples of English with

compounds in Basic English (New York, 1934), polysyllabic fused

and without the use of

C. K. Ogden's p. 142

ff.

The System

of

Does the simplified

version limit the sense? 20.

Next time you undertake to answer a child's question like "Why do things fall down instead of up?" notice what simple words you substitute for terms like "gravitation."

Chapter 1.

2.

3.

5

What

changes of meaning occur in the use of "book" in these phrases: "to bring to book, bookkeeping, booking office [British], Book of Books, Book of Fate"? Jot down as rapidly as you can the words associated in your mind with these: "recess, monitor, fire-drill, assembly, blackboard, chalk." What words do you know, otherwise colorless, which take on an unpleasant connotation in certain special uses? An example is "detention" in "detention room." Military and legal vocabulary will furnish others.

4.

What

is the literal meaning of "protective custody"? What are connotations? What theological terms have arisen by giving august significance to simple words? Single out the key words of newspaper editorials which cause semantic difficulty, and explain why. Here is a specimen for

its

5.

6.

analysis:

We would probably be exceeding the duties and functions of the United States were we trying to AMERICANIZE the world. But the New Deal is NOT trying to Americanize the world. COMMUNIZE the world. not trying to sow the seeds of American individualism and consti-

It is trying to It is

Appendix

314 tutional liberty,

and freedom of thought and speech and publication, and and opportunity for all men throughout the world.

equality before the law,

Most assuredly NOT, since the New Deal has discarded these essential and elemental freedoms here at home. Have not our most distinguished New Deal leaders repudiated the Constitution as belonging to the ox-cart era?

Have they not rejected the Bill of Rights as an outmoded survival of the horse and buggy period? Have they not substituted for American independence and rugged individualism the regimentation and confiscatory taxation of Communism?

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

This is an editorial from the New York Journal-American, August 15, 1941. Make a list of political terms which need clarification in ordinary discourse. Ask non-specialists to give you definitions on the spur of the moment. Then consult books of reference like the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences for explanations. Can you construct simple, workable definitions which will facilitate coherent and good-natured discussion? Try the same procedure with a list of religious terms. Use Hastings, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics for reference. J. What tools do you know which are named from their resem-

blance to other objects? From their function alone? From the sound they make? Arrange the following words in the order of their ambiguity, from most clear to most doubtful in meaning: gravity

kilogram

pound

seriousness

specific gravity

heaviness

weight

frivolity

Mention some words whose meaning has become more solemn became more archaic. More narrow. More extended. (You will find examples of all tendencies in the King James

as they

translation of the Bible.) 1

2.

Consult the

New English Dictionary for an historical record of

the uses of these words, and point out

meaning

commonwealth juror wit non-resistance leveller

13.

how

they have changed

since 1600: evolution fancy

communism democracy (third) estate

Suggest situations in which each of these sentences might have various meanings:

Diversions and Illustrations How

very sweet

315

it is!

He

advocated communism.

We

got rid of the louse.

was a womanly thing to do. This race is superior to that. It

It's

a tragedy.

We

are blood-brothers.

This It's

14.

will

undermine American

institutions.

a question of relativity.

Find out how "definition"

is

defined in textbooks of logic.

Read the chapter on "Definition" in Hugh Walpole's Semantics (New York, 1941), and try to apply the 25 "routes" to some of the key

words in the quotation under question

15.

Compare Walpole's

16.

What does

6.

"routes" to the Categories of Aristotle.

"invaluable" mean: value-less or precious? Explain

the shift.

19.

Analyze the key words and phrases in famous political speeches of the past, such as the funeral oration of Pericles (Thucydides, Book II) and Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address." Study the examples of semantic nonsense in the appendix to Stuart Chase's Tyranny of Words. Collect further examples of your own. How would you undertake to clarify them? What names of animals are used as epithets of abuse? Why

20.

Look up

17.

18.

the pejorative transfer? the analysis of propaganda, with examples, given in

Group Leaders' Guide

to Propaganda AnalyPropaganda Analysis, 130 Morningside Drive, 1938). Work out some of the group projects suggested together with some of your friends. Comment on the

Violet Edwards's

sis

21.

(New York:

Institute of

semantic aspects of the language problem. Read "The Disorderly Conduct of Words" by Zechariah Chaffee, Jr., in Columbia Law Review, XLI (1941), pp. 381-404. List cases of

comparable ambiguity in the language of other pro-

fessions.

Chapter 1.

Compose

as a verb; "pretty" as a verb; as a 2.

is

"mass"

as a noun; "book" an adjective; "drive"

used as

noun.

By what means do we sides

3.

6

sentences in which "it"

adding

What

-5

indicate plurality in English nouns be-

to the singular?

verbal forms resemble nouns in their use in a sentence?

Adjectives?

Appendix

3i6 4.

5.

Do you consider help? Why?

the use of apostrophes in possessive forms a

Which verb forms would you choose

in these sentences:

The United States (is) (are) a strong nation. The government (is) (are) of divided opinion concerning The committee (is) (are) unanimous in the decision. One-half of the men (has) (have) been lost. (See Otto Jespersen, 1928, Part II, Vol.

6.

7.

A Modern

the proposal.

English Grammar, London,

chapters 5-7.) How do we indicate that an adjective once applied to a person or thing, but does so no longer? Can you imagine doing this by an inflection of the adjective itself? How do you explain the relation of the italicized words to the I,

rest of the sentence in

To be frank with

you, I don't like it. be frank with you. He knew it to be him. To continue: the cause of the present situation We are beginning to understand. I

8.

9.

10.

1 1

1

3.

to

is

clear.

In an inflected language like German or Russian, word order permits almost any part of the sentence to be placed first for emphasis. In spoken English we sometimes break the construction for the same purpose: for instance, "This brother of yours— I don't like him!" What other methods are used to shift sentence structure for emphasis? Which do you say: "I couldn't think of him being there alone" or "I couldn't think of his being there alone"? Consult a reference grammar to find out the usage of recognized writers in this matter. How do you interpret the function of "being"? Compare the English tense system with that of Russian or Greek (or some other showing differences from ours). What relations are present in one but lacking in the other? Try using English prepositions as if they were inflectional endings of nouns: "I sat the house-in, gave him a piece bread-of, butter-with." Does this usage help you to understand how to handle the endings of highly inflected languages? Would you prefer

12.

want

it

to prepositions?

In Danish, definite articles are placed after nouns, as if one were to say "house-the," except in cases where an adjective precedes ("the big house"). Try the effect in English. If English had a feminine suffix for all nouns denoting feminine creatures, what ending would be practicable for all nouns?

Diversions and Illustrations

14.

15.

Could

it

effect.)

Would

be suffixed to verbs with "she" as subject? (Try the the sentences be clearer with such suffixes? It is possible to express plurality by reduplication. That is, if "house" is singular, "house-house" would be a reduplicated plural. What other grammatical categories can you suggest that might be expressed in this way? Try the effect of showing change in tense merely by a change in musical pitch: "I eat" (high) for present, for past.

present 16.

Do you

and high

find

it

more

for past?

and

"I eat" (low)

satisfactory to use the

Which seems most

lowest pitch: "I can" or "I could" or "I could have these sentences mean what the verb forms imply I

do not doubt but that you would do

He

is

low for

appropriate for

Do

Sorry, but

.

.

."?

?

it.

couldn't say. sure to turn up missing. I

Who's ringing?— That will be the postman, This would be the eminent critic Mr. X. I admit having done it. 17.

317

Sir.

Are there any advantages in having a verb agree with its subperson and number? Disadvantages? Look up Otto Jespersen's presentation of the verb as an "adjunct" of the subject in a sentence (Modern English Grammar, ject in

18.

19.

20.

Part II, Vol. I, chapter 1, par. 4 iff.). How does sentence stress bear out the assumption that the subject is primary and the verb secondary? What does Jespersen mean by "verbids"? What does Jespersen mean by "principal," "adjunct" and "subjunct" as the three ranks in grammar (ibid., par. 21)? Make a clear statement on English conventions on the sequence of tenses. (Consult Henry Sweet, A New English Grammar, Oxford, 1892-98.)

Chapter 1.

What

7

general tendencies in sound change explain these occasional slips in pronunciation? sec'etary for

3

i

Appendix

8

Sanskrit grammar. Look it up in an unabridged dictionary.) Explain how the sounds are affected in sandhi position when these words are spoken rapidly saved today forget

go

let

3.

4.

5.

me

long curtains breeze sank

win

prizes

Notice how words that end with a written r are pronounced in the speech around you (a) before words beginning with a vowel (b) before words beginning with a consonant. Is the [j] ever heard? Always? Never? Make a list of words that exist in two forms, stressed and unstressed, like "the." Transcribe the two pronunciations in phonetic characters. Explain the following sound changes taken from the history of other languages: Vulgar Latin *fixare became Italian fissare, "to fix." Vulgar Latin *ausare became French oser, "to dare." English "beefsteak" (loan word) became French biftek. English "euphuism" (loan word) became Russian evfuizm Vulgar Latin *vita(rn) became Spanish vida, "life." Vulgar Latin *forte(m) became Spanish juerte, "strong." Vulgar Latin *periculo became Spanish peligro, "danger." Germanic *domjan became English "deem."

6.

Using phonetic characters, explain what happens to the vowels which show moving accent:

in the following pairs of words

"finite, infinite; fragile, fragility; injure, injurious." 7.

Explain what happens to the stressed vowels when dissyllables are made into polysyllables without shift of accent in pairs like: "severe, severity; austere, austerity; serene, serenity;

8.

9.

opaque, opacity." Why are the vowels shortened in the second of each of these pairs of words: "keep, kept; clean, cleanly; dream, dreamt"? Compare your pronunciation of the vowels in "me, mead, meet." Describe the differences in quantity. What changes of quality (specifically, in tenseness) accompany the changes in length?

10.

11.

Do you

tend to lengthen accented vowels more readily in final open position or in a closed syllable? Do you notice a tendency to diphthongize when you lengthen these vowels? According to a theory of sounds put forward by Sir Richard

Paget in Human Speech (London, 1930), certain sounds are used to designate certain acts because the tongue, lips, etc.,

Diversions and Illustrations

12.

13.

319

behave in an imitative way when making them. Read the discussion for yourself (p. 1 3gff.). Test it by commonly used words, in relation to their meanings. Do you find such a correlation? What exclamations do you prefer when you are in a state of excitement? Of lassitude? Do you vary the same exclamations according to your mood? How? Can you explain how these sound changes have occurred: Modern German Wasser.

Early Germanic water became

Latin pipa, borrowed in Early Germanic, became Modern

German

Pfeife [pfaif 3 ].

Early Germanic to became 14.

What

Modern German zu

[tsu:].

known to you has the greatest variety The least? Modern Italian pronounce c before e, as [tj],

foreign language

of vowel sounds? 15.

Why

does

i

and only before

u, a, o as [k]?

(The

/t-sound

was original in

all positions.)

1.

Paraphrase

this

Chapter 8 comment by Chaucer on changes

in language:

Ye knowe ek 1 that in form of speche is chaunge Withinne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho 2 That hadden pris 3, now wonder nyce and straunge Us thinketh hem, and yet thei spake hem so,

And spedde

as wel in love as

men now

also

then 3 value [

do.

Troilus and Cressida, 2.

p [2

II, 22ff.

Study the selections from Middle English given in the appendix to Baugh's History of the English Language. Translations are given also. Can you see evidence that they represent different regional dialects?

3.

What

is

the

meaning

of these archaic words: "fain, eftsoons,

forlorn, tarn, scathe, lea, glaive, quoth, wot"? 4.

5.

What

did these words mean in Old English contexts: "thrall, brand, byrnie, thane, earl, churl, knight, wight, scop, moot"? Compare these translations of a line (Mark 10: 14) from the Gospels, in respect to vocabulary.

Gothic and German

Can you

see similarities of

to the English versions?

Gothic: Letib po barna gaggan du mis, yah ni waryip po, ante pize ist biudan-gardi Gups.

German: Lasset die Kindlein zu mir kommen, und wehret ihnen nicht, denn solcher ist das Reich Gottes. Old Eng.: Lcetap da lytlingas to me cuman, and ne forbeode ge him, soplice swylcera

is

heofona

rice.

Appendix

320 Wycliffe: Suffre 3c

bede 3c

litle

children for to

come

to

me, and

for-

hem not, forsoth of such is the kyngdom of God.

Tyndale: Suffre the children to come vnto me, and forbid them not, for vnto suche belongeth the kingdom of God. King James: Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Modern English: Allow the little children to come to me, and do not prevent them; for of such is the Kingdom of God. 6.

For a study of the treatment of abstract words at various periup John, 17: 1; for the treatment of an absolute construction, see Mark 8:23. The texts may be found in: Joseph Bosworth, The Gothic and Anglo-Saxon Gospels in Parallel Columns with the Versions of Wycliffe and Tyndale (London,

ods, look

1888); Ferrar Fenton, The Holy Bible in Modern English (London, 1913), and the widely used Lutheran and King James translations, most familiar in German and English

respectively. 7.

Compare

this

example of sixteenth-century English with the same period cited in

instances of Latinized English of the

chapter

8:

This last summer, I was in a gentleman's house where a young child, somewhat past four year old, could in no wise frame his tongue to say a little short grace; and yet he could roundly rap out so many ugly oaths, and those of the newest fashion, as some good man of fourscore year old hath never heard name before: and that which was most detestable of all, his father and mother would laugh at it— Roger Ascham, The Schoolmaster (spelling modernized). 8.

William Bullokar, an Elizabethan,

tried to lay

down

a scien-

orthography for English. Look up his Book at Large for the Amendment of Orthography for English Speech and make a criticism of his system from the point of view of consistency tific

and 9.

practicability.

What were

the historical circumstances under which the following words were borrowed into English: "trek, gnu, punch [a drink],

tamales, luftwaffe, dungarees, kindergarten, po-

grom, material, materiel, boudoir, divan, sult the 10.

New

kosher?" (Con-

How have these words changed in meaning since Anglo-Saxon "wench, buxom, quean, with, speedy, dizzy, starve, shall, bury"? Make a list of legal phrases like "notary public" and "fee simple" which preserve French word order. times:

knave, owe,

11.

vezir,

English Dictionary.)

Diversions and Illustrations

321

12.

What do you

13.

Language, p. 401. Study the list of American English words which have different equivalents in British English. H. L. Mencken, The American

think of modified English spelling known as "Anglic," proposed by R. E. Zachrisson (Anglic, Uppsala, 1932)? There is a specimen in Baugh's History of the English

Language

(ed.

What

1936), p. 233ft.

types of difference are

involved? 14.

Make lish,

a similar study of some other regional variation of Engoutside the United States (e.g., C. Pettman's Africander-

isms). 15.

Which to

surviving inflections in English seem to you most likely

be eliminated in the future?

Why?

Chapter 1.

9

In his Seven Types of Ambiguity (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1921) William Empson quotes examples of verse in which the effect of emotional intensity is heightened by doubt as to the exact meaning or grammatical construction. An example (used on p. 66) is Shakespeare's Sonnet 42:

Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love And for my sake even so doth she abuse me, Suffering

my

my sake to approve my loss is my love's gain, her, my friend hath found that friend for

her;

her.

If I lose thee,

And

The meaning

losing

loss.

.

.

.

changes according to the construction of "suffer-

which might be read with what follows instead of what precedes. Can you cite other examples in which syntactic ambiguity heightens emotional effect? (Robert Browning used ing,"

the device deliberately.) 2.

Cite examples of startling juxtapositions from

W. H. Auden's

The Double Man. 3.

4. 5.

Collect examples of assonance in Emily Dickinson. Of experimentation in compounding words in Thomas Hardy, The

Dynasts. Collect examples of alliteration in Swinburne. Quote lines in Shakespeare using simple Germanic words; polysyllabic Latin ones.

6.

What words as

in William Butler Yeats are used most frequently symbols implying more than the ordinary word-symbolism

of prose?

Appendix

322

What usages in these lines of verse differentiate them from ordinary prose? everyone been there knows what i mean a god damned lot of people don't and never that's

never will know they don't want to

no E. E.

Cummings,

is

5

Maculate speculations of personal prowess Are forgotten in foyers of Moscow: the drama too absorbing,

The

protagonists real.

Norman Macleod, "A Russian

Letter"

And

twelve o'clock arrived just once too often, same he wore one grey tweed suit, bought one straw hat, drank one straight Scotch, walked one short step, took one long look, drew one deep breath,

just the

just

one too many.

Kenneth Fearing, "Dirge" Tell me not in mournful numbers Life is but an empty dream, For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. H. W. Longfellow,

Now

do

I

grow indignant

"The Psalm

of Life"

at the fate

Which made me so imperfect to compare With your degree of noble and of fair; Our elements are the farthest skies apart;

And I enjoin you, ere it is too late, To stamp your superscription on my Elinor Wylie,

heart.

"One

Person,"

Forget not yet the tried intent Of such a truth as I have meant;

My

great travail so gladly spent,

Forget not yet! Forget not yet

when

first

began

The weary life ye know, since whan The suit, the service none tell can, Forget not yetl Sir

Thomas Wyatt

(1503-42)

V

Diversions and Illustrations Presentiment

that long

is

323

shadow on the lawn

Indicative that suns go down; The notice to the startled grass

That darkness

is

about to pass. Emily Dickinson

You also, laughing one, Tosser of balls in the sun, Will pillow your bright head By the incurious dead. Babette Deutsch, "A Girl"

With little here to do or see Of things that in the great world

be,

Sweet Daisy! Oft I think of thee, For thou art worthy.

W. Wordsworth, "To

the Daisy"

'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, it ever so humble, there's no place like home

Be

.

J.

doubt

8.

Paraphrase these quotations. If there point to the cause of ambiguity.

9.

Criticize the appropriateness of deviations

is

.

.

Howard Payne as to the sense,

from prose vocabu-

lary. 10.

What

archaic words are associated with "poetic diction"? Quote examples. What do you think of the use of such words

by contemporary writers?

Chapter 1.

10

Why

are a considerable number of French loan words employed in connection with dressmaking, restaurant dining,

cosmetics? 2.

Look up

the etymologies of "boycott, strike, exploit, proleta-

propaganda." Which of these were used before the industrial era with other meanings? Look up the following words in Helen Eaton's Semantic Frequency List for English, French, German and Spanish (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940): "strike, bath, sin, virgin, democracy, business, examination." Does the comparative frequency of usage throw any light on the cultures repreriat,

3.

sented? 4.

Make up (b)

a

list

in politics

of terms of reproach used (a) in labor struggles (c)

among

pejorative significance?

students.

Can you explain

their

Appendix

324 5.

6.

7.

8.

Make a list of slogans for which men have died, like Senatus populusque Romanus, Liberte egalite fraternite, Volk und Vaterland, "Democracy," "Freedom of the Seas." What semantic problems do they represent? Can you cite instances in literature where a character impersonating someone from another rank of society was betrayed by his speech? Instances of successful impersonation? Using Eric Partridge's Slang Today and Yesterday (London, 1935), investigate the expressions connected with modern equivalents of cony-catching. Augment the list from your own recording of such phrases. Study the use of Negro dialect in Carson McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941). What characteristics— phonological and syntactical— point to regional dialect merely? Which indicate class dialect as well? Here is a sample: "It don't take words to make a quarrel. It look to me like us is always arguing even when we sitting perfectly quiet like this. It just this here feeling I haves. I tell you the truth— ever time I come to see you it mighty near wears me out. So less try not to quarrel in any way no more. "Take Willie and me. Us aren't all the way colored. Our mama was real light and both of us haves a good deal of white folks' blood in us. And Highboy— he Indian. He got a good part Indian in him. None of us is pure colored and the word you all the time using haves a way of hurting peoples' feelings. Everybody haves feelings— no matter who they is— and nobody is going to walk in no house where they certain their feelings will be hurt. You the same way. I seen your feelings injured too many times by white peoples not to know that" (p. 74 and 77). .

.

9.

.

.

.

.

Compare

the preceding treatment of Negro dialect with the one by Richard Wright in Native Son (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940), especially in the character of the preacher. is emphasized. How consistent is the recording in the following extract?

Here phonology

"Son, yuh know whut tha' tree wuz? It wuz the tree of knowledge. It wuzn't enuff fer man t' be like Gawd, he wanted t' know why. 'N* all Gawd wanted 'im t' do wuz bloom like the flowers in the fiel's, live as chillun.

Man wanted t' know why 'n' he fell from light t' darkness, from love t' damnation, from blessedness t' shame. *N' Gawd cast 'em outa the garden 'n' tol' the man he had t' git his bread by the sweat of his brow 'n' toF the woman she had t' bring fo'th her chillun in pain 'n' sorrow. The worl' ." turned ergin 'em 'n' they had t' fight the worl' fer life (p. 242). .

10.

Point out the peculiarities of dialect. Is

it

in any

this

.

poem which mark

way humorous?

it

as Scots

Diversions and Illustrations An' noo ance mair the Lomon' Has donn'd his mantle green, An' we may gang a-roarain'

Thro' the

fields at e'en.

.

.

An'

325 were seen a sicht, man!)

Dancin' on the green.

.

The auld mune

Sae mild's the weather, Dauvit, That was but late sae bauld, We gang withoot a grauvit Careless o' the cauld.

man,

juist the ither nicht,

Twa barefit Mays (It maun hae been

.

.

.

to her ruin

Gangs rowin' doon the sky, swith, a braw bran new ane Cocks her horn on high!

When,

.

.

.

This is taken from James Logie Robertson's "Hughie's Advice to Dauvit to Enjoy the Fine Weather," as quoted in A Book of Scottish Verse (The World's Classics, Oxford University Press). For words unfamiliar to you, consult Joseph Wright, 11.

English Dialect Dictionary. Contrast the effect of this use of regional dialect by James Russell Lowell. To what extent is it produced by purely orthographic and linguistic means, and to what extent by subject matter and treatment?

We were gittin' on With good old

We kind o*

nicely

up here

to

our

idees o' wilt's right an'

village,

wut

ain't.

thought Christ went agin war an' pillage,

An' that eppyletts worn't the best mark of a But John P. Robinson he Sez this kind o' thing's an exploded idee. .

.

saint.

.

The

12.

stanza comes from "What Mr. Robinson Thinks." Read George Philip Krapp's discussion of regional dialect as opposed to general colloquial speech, in his The English Lanin America (New York, 1925), I, p. 229 ff. Apply the distinction to the quotations given above under questions 8 and 9. In the following passage, make separate lists of the dialect

guage 13.

which fall under: sound (phonology), vocabugrammatical usage (syntax):

characteristics lary,

"Yas, suh! dere warn't no stoppin' dem bones. Dey jus' gone whoopin' right t'rough dat jail, a-pullin' me after 'era. And den, on de las' day, de big buckra guard hear 'bout it, an' he come an' say I gots to gib up de bones. But I been seein' roll wid de jailer in de watch house, an' I

um

know he

weakness. I ask dat buckra if he ain't likes me to teach um how to sing lucky to de bones 'fore I gib' dem up, an' 'fore he get 'way I done gone t'rough um for t'ree dollar an' seben cent an' dis shirt."

The selection is from Porgy by Dorothy and Dubose Heyward (New York: published for the Theater Guild by Double14.

day, Page, 1927), Act IV. When you next see a "gangster" film at the movies, jot down on slips of paper the slang expressions of the underworld used

Appendix

326

18.

in it. Can you judge of the accuracy and inclusiveness of the vocabulary? What designations for articles of clothing appear to you to arise from false modesty? From a form of provocativeness? From a desire to imply associations of luxury and refinement? Find out the equivalents for these objects in French, German, or any other foreign language you may know: brassieres, panties, dress shields, water closets, menstruation, venereal diseases. Which are the most factual designations? Which the most delicate? (Some of the terms are not registered in dictionaries. You may have to consult a native speaker.) How many popular terms do you know for a state of inebriation? What metaphors are involved in them? Make a vocabulary of special terms used in a boys' or girls'

19.

What

15.

16.

17.

club.

would you expect

types of persons

to use these sen-

tences? "Certainly,

Madam. May I suggest

that, as his lordship

he would be better able to assist you Lord Peter Views the Body.

"Depend upon

it, it is

after

is

greatly fatigued,

he has slept."— Dorothy Sayers,

me."—Jane Austen, Mansfield Park.

"Mr. James MacPherson:

I

received your foolish and

impudent

letter.

violence offered me I shall do my best to repel; and what I cannot do for myself the law shall do for me. I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think is a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian."— Samuel Johnson, Letter of 1775.

Any

"They was the time when we was on the us then.

OV

They was a boundary to we was always one clear. An' now we ain't clear

Ian'.

folks died off, an' little fellas come, an'

thing— we was the fambly— kinda whole an' no more. I can't get straight. They ain't nothin' keeps us clear. ain't no fambly now."— John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath.

.

.

.

There

"Nothing's what it used to be. It's the restlessness after the war. It's going to take quite a while before we get over the dislocations. Take the income tax. I never imagined that I should live to see the day when some Government whippersnapper could walk into my office and pry into my private affairs. I never thought I should live to see the time when radicals were organizing labor or when a sentimentalist in the White House could almost get us into a League of Nations. I suppose war is disturbing."— John P. Marquand, H. M. Pulham, Esquire.

"Wot aggrawates me,

Samivel, is to see 'em a-wastin' all their time and making clothes for copper-colored people as don't want 'em, and takin' no notice of the flesh-colored Christians as do. If I'd my vay, Samivel, I'd just stick some o' these here lazy shepherds behind a heavy wheel-barrow, and run 'em up and down a fourteen-inch-wide plank all day. That 'ud shake the nonsense out of 'em, if anythin' vould."— Charles

labor in

Dickens, Pickwick Papers.

English

Words

327

"The divisions into classes, my lord, are not artificial. They are the natural outcome of a civilised society. There must always be a master and servants in civilised communities, my lady, for it is natural, and whatever My lady, I am the son of a butler and a lady's is natural is right. maid— perhaps the happiest of all combinations; and to me the most beautiful thing in the world is a haughty, aristocratic English house, with every one kept in his place. Though I were equal to your ladyship, where would be the pleasure to me? It would be counter-balanced by the pain of feeling that Thomas and John were equal to me."— J. M. Barrie, The .

.

.

Admirable Crichton, Act 20.

Comment on

I.

the linguistic methods used by these authors to

indicate social levels of speech.

3.

ENGLISH WORDS DISCUSSED IN THIS BOOK any, 27, 135

because, 75

abattoir, 118

appendectomy, 105

bee, 38

a,

180

f.

abbot, 201

apply, 87

beech, 46, 124

able, 180

apprehend, 86

before, 112

about, 136

apricot, 98 arch, 112

beforehand, 82

absolute, 89 absolutely, 31

benison, 96

arm, 27, 182 armada, 97, 170 armipotent, 215

betel, 100

address, 189 adjuvate, 215

ascertain, 86

bio, 102

asparagus, 103

bishop, 119

admiration, 231 agenda, 149 alchemy, 97

aspect, 89 assassin, 98

bitter, 113

alcohol, 98

athletic, 182

alembic, 97 algebra, 97

attain, 90

accident, 85 achieve, 85, 88

alkali,

97

alliance, 289 alligator, 97

assume, 233 f.

attention, 91

autointoxication, 105

awful, 27 awfully, 121

beside, 75

f.

bind, 198

blacks, 135 blind, 180

f.

blood royal, 219 body politic, 219 bone, 199 book, 46, 124 boomerang, 100 bough, 178 bourgeois, 96,

almagest, 98 almanac, 98 altar, 177, 201

axle,

bacillus, 189

bow-wow, 9

amber, 98

backwards, 78

ambition, 86, 88

bandit, 99

box, 121 bravado, 97

amok, 100

banishment, 96 bantam, 100

breakfast, 179 breeches, 118

barn, 121 baron, 96 bastinado, 97

bridge, 112

ampere, 282 amputate, 88 amuse, 27 anaconda, 100 and, 136 angel, 119, 201

anguish, 113 anvil, 112

1 1

bow, 112

battalion, 99 be, 38, 138 n., 213

brow, 111 brunch, 103 bumblebee, 9 burp, 104

beak, 112 bean, 54

but, 136 butter, 176

n£

Appendix

32 8

clipper, 84

daisy, 108

cadet, 96

clop-clop, 104 club, 112

Caesar, 185

cock, 112

cab, 102

damned, 183

caliber, 98

cockroach, 103

danceathon, 102 darling, 288 daughter, 200

calico, 100

coffee,

dawn, 178

call,

203 cameo, 98

coincidence, 85 collaborator, 202

day, 178 n. deacon, 201

camphor, 98

decadence, 85 deception, 85 deem, 174, 198 define, 189 dental, 189

99

carat, 98

combination, 118 commiserate, 202 commission, 173 committee, 176 complete, 191 complicated, 86 comply, 87 composition, 87

card, 185 carnival, 98

comprehend, compute, 88

case,

concept, 85 confidence man, 107

can, 137 n. canal, 112

candle, 201

canoe, 97 canto, 98 car, 184

cat,

85 27

cathedral, 119 catspaw, 112

86, 92

deposition, 87 deracinate, 232 derelict, 233

dervish, 99 despicable, 90 desultory, 122 dictatorship, 128

confine, 31

ding-dong, 9

conjugate, 233 consequence, 88

discern, 86

contact, 90

dish, 201 dissolve, 89

certain, 86

contend, 91 contingency, 90 contrition, 209

chamber, 186 chamberlain, 96

co-operate, 178 co-ordinate, 122

chapter, 85 chart, 185

copper, 201

divan, 99 dive, 138 divine, 288 do, 122, 212

cord, 112

domination, 209

chattel, 185

core, 111

check-off, 83 cheese, 186, 201

cornice, 98 corpse, 120

dreary, 113 drink, 138, 161, 191, 198 droshki, 99

chemise, 117 cherubim, 100

corrupted, 183

drum, 112

cotton, 97

Chester, 185 chief, 85

cough, 28

ducky, 288 due, 186

cattle, 185 cavalcade, 99

caviar, 99 celibate, 289

could, 137

chimney, 175

n.,

chivalry, 127 chocolate, 97

countess, 96 court martial, 219

chortle, 103

creamer, 84

church, 199 churl, 186

create, 248

cipher, 98

creep, 179 crescent, 231

circumspect, 89 circumstances, 92

289

f.,

99

cup, 112

cleave, 212

climb, 180

crest, 112

cruise,

citadel, 99 city, 120, 176 civic guard,

182

coulomb, 282

212

discreet, 86

dispute, 88, 180

duel, 99 duke, 96

duma, 99 dunce, 121 duplicate, 87 ear,

in

easel,

99

eat, 138, 198 edit, 101 eel,

59

egg, 111

cupola, 98

egregious, 122

curry, 100

eke, 199 elbow, 111

curtain, 265

English

Words

329

electromagnetic, 105

galleon, 97

illogical, 175

elixir,

galumphing, 103

immaculate, 233

galvothermic, 234 gangster, 269 garage, 120 garden, 265

97

embargo, 97

estates general, 219

gate, 203

impi, 100 implication, 87 impossible, 173 inamorata, 98 inch, 201 incidence, 85

evolution, 92 execute, 88 expel, 202

gazette, 289

income, 82

generic, 189 gibbet, 96

incommunicado, 170 incontrovertible, 191

empties, 135

enormously, 121 enthuse, 101 envy, 92

gargoyle, 103

glamour

exponent, 87 exposure, 87

girl,

107

independent, 92 induna, 100

gnu, 100 gondola, 98 goose-neck, 111 grandee, 97

infusion, 86

faction, 120

gray, 29

insidious, 232

faculty, 120

grenade, 97

fade-out, 83 family, 175

gym, 102

insurrection, 90 intent, 232

fang, 111

hamburgers, 101

farad, 282

hammer,

express, 231 eye, 110, 179

fate,

father, 189 n. fats,

112

hand, 111 hand-out, 83

180

infanta, 97 inflate,

216

intention, 91 introspective, 90 invidious, 92 irrepressible, 175 itch, 10

have, 111

135

fatuate, 216

harem, 98

jelly fish, 154

fault, 177 fealty, 96

hart, 236

jeopardy, 96 jib,

feather, 191 n.

hashish, 98 head, 54, 111

feeble, 175 fellow, 203

headlong, 78 heap, 199

judge, 186

fez,

heart, 236

99

henna, 98

fish, 61,

here, 147 heritage, 96 hidalgo, 97

187

154

five-o'-clockish, flat,

84

113

flip-flop, 104

foot, 111, 137

judgment, 96 juggernaut, 99 96

film, 182, 191

fish jelly,

99

joss-pidgin, 80

justice,

history, 189

hold-up, 83

homage, 96

kaftan, 99 keen, 119 key, 112

khaki, 99 kick-back, 83

horse, 111

kin, 187 n.

hostages, 96

kiosk, 99

frankfurters, 101

hot ice, 269 house, 137, 205

kitchen, 201

freebooter, 99

humming

fresco,

hurricane, 97

knight, 28

husband, 179, 203 hush-hush, 104

knout, 99

full, 191

hymn,

lady, 118

fume, 233

hypocrisy, 289

foresee, 91 fork, 112

98

from, 136 fruit, 120

bird, 9

201

funeral director, 118

furibund, 216 furlough, 99

269 80 f.,

kleptomaniac, 188

landed, 138 lavatory, 118 law, 182, 203

ice, if,

kismet, 99

13ft

lay-out, 83

33°

Appendix

leans, 135

misfit,

leap, 138, 174, 199 leg, 111

mistress, 163

legal, 178

monkey wrench,

leviathan, 100

more, 122 ff. moreover, 75 motto, 98

lid,

112

light, 181

lightolier, 102 like, 77 likelihood, 75, 82 lip, 111

overlook, 92 overplay, 84

84

mob, 102

oxen, 137

oxymoron, 107

112

ff.

pale, 177

palm, 177 pampas, 97

mouth, 111 moviedom, 84 murder, 248

lippings, 234 lock-out, 83

must, 137 n.

pantaloons, 118 papa, 34 paper, 46, 125 papyrus, 46

look, 198 look-out, 83 lords appellants, 219 lounge, 118

nadir, 98

paschal, 100

name, 200

patchouli, 100

Nazi, 192

paternal, 188

nazidom, 84

lousy, 121

neck, 111

pay-off, 83 pecadillo, 97

murmur, 9

participation, 85

loyal, 178

nevertheless, 75

lubritorium, 102 lute, 98

nimble, 119 noon, 201

lynch, 121

nose, 109

maculate, 233 maculation, 231 madrigal, 98 major, 164, 179

f.,

82

notary public, 219 notwithstanding, 75

peep, 187 peewee, 9

Pemberton, 173

f.

pen, 125 penance, 209 perception, 85

now, 147 nun, 201

perish, 86

nut, 112

perk, 102

perfection, 217, 289

make-up, 83 man, 174

obituary, 86

perverted, 183

manna, 100

oblatrant, 216

phenomena, 149

manufacture, 125 manuscript, 121, 125 marble, 124, 175 marked-downs, 135 marshal, 119

obligation, 209 obscurity, 170

piano, 102

persecute, 88

obstupefact, 216

pin, 112, 125 place, 185

obtestate, 215

plate, 248

off-print, 84

please, 187 pliant, 87

martyr, 201 masher, 84 mass, 201 Massachusetts, 173 master, 163 maturity, 215 matutine, 215

off -size,

may, 137

orangutan, 100 organ, 201

n.

meat, 122 melancholy, 175

memoranda, 149 memory, 189

84 ohm, 282

poetic, 178

once, 183 only, 75. 77

pogrom, 99 pope, 201

onslaught, 99 oppose, 202

positively, 31 possession, 88

or, 136

potato, 97 pound, 201

otiose, 122

powder room,

outgo, 82

precipitate, 85

outlay, 83 outlook, 83

preface, 202

prison, 96

milk, 181

outpouring, 82 output, 82

mint, 201

overact, 84

miscast, 84

overemphasize, 84

merchant, 96 might, 137 n.

1 1

precept, 85

priest, 201

propose, 232 proposition, 87 prorumped, 216

English protection, 239 ff. protective custody, 122

Words

ruin, 265 rump, 111

33 smooth, 113 snow, 269

providence, 91 provident, 91 psalm, 201 psychotherapy, 105

samovar, 99 saraband, 98

pterodactyl,

sarong, 100

some, 135 son, 200

punch, 99

scanties, 118

soviet,

punctilio, 97

schizoprenetic, 105 sedentary, 88

space, 129

191

punster, 84

puny, 96 pushover, 83 putative, 88

sail,

socialite, 103

124

(n.),

1

19

putrid, 121

quean,

sergeant, 96

question, 248 quiddity, 286 rain, 228

ransack, 203 rat, 112

99

sparrow grass, 103 specimen, 89 specious, 90 speculation, 90, 231 speculator, 90

f.

seem, 174, 198 sequent, 231 seraphim, 100

10, 127

solve, 89

sediment, 88 see

spider, 115

f.

splendidous, 215 spoor, 100

service, 96

set-up, 63

squadron, 99 Stamford, 173

shah, 99 shaken, 180

stand, 183 stanza, 98

session, 88

shale, 222

stem, 112

rather, 75, 77 record, 31

sharp, 113 sherbet, 98

step-in, 118

reefers,

shibboleth, 100

stinking, 121

re-enter, 29

shield, 184

stardom, 84

reflect,

shirt, 117

stone, 196, 199

reform, 180

shorts, 118

store, 203

regal, 178

should, 137 n., 184 shoulder, 111

street, 137, 201

shrewd, 183

suffuse, 86

shrill, 113 shrine, 201

suite, 89

269

90

regeneration, 289 relic, 201

remainder, 175 rent, 96

repose, 87 repute, 88, 180 reside, 88

1

smart, 119

stiff,

120

such, 75 sugar, 184

shrive, 201

superficial, 93

shut-in, 83 siege apostolic-219

resolution, 89 respect, 90

simplicity, 87

resurrection, 90 rest-room, 118

sir,

retrospect, 89

sixtyish, 84

sing, 191

superheterodyne, 105 supersede, 88 supplant, 232 surge, 90 suspension, 234 sweet, 288 synod, 201 syrup, 98

118

sit-down, 82

reverence, 209

skeptical, 90

revision, 248

skill, 86,

revolution, 289

skirt, 184 n.

ride, 198

skull, 184 n., 203

table, 112, 188, 191 take, 203

road, 38 roadster, 84 rode, 38

sky, 184 n., 203

tambour, 98

slaughter-house, 118

tapioca, 97 temple, 201

184

n.,

203

roof, 112

sleep, 174 sheer, 84

root, 83, 112

slicks,

rouge, 186

slip-slap, 104

tendency, 91 tendentious, 91

royal, 178

sloop, 99

tender, 175

135

tenable, 231

Appendix

332 tense, 91, 146

tension, 91

tremendously, isi tribunal, 289

testimony, 175 than, 136

trig,

102

triune, 188

n8

that, 135

trousers,

the, 180

truage, 96

then, 147

tsar,

there, 147, 178

100 turban, 99 turgidous, 216

thermodynamic, 105 they, 137, 203 thin, 10

think, 198 this,

135

visible, 91

vision, 91 vista, 91 vitaminful, 84 volt, 282

voodoo, 100

99

tsetse,

turtle, 175 twelve, 198 twitch, 10

walk, 182

walkathon, 102 walk-away, 83

ward

heeler,

m

warrants, 96 wash-out, 83 watt, 282

three, 54, 189 n. thrive, 138, 203

ukaz, 99

throw-away, 83

unbe, 234

tile, 201 timber, 175 time, 129

unbloom, 234

whippoorwill, 9

underprivileged, 84 undertaken, 180 undertaker, 118, 120

white, 113 whites, 135 whitish, 84

undoubtedly, 76

wicked, 183 wild, 180 f.

to,

266

118 tomato, 97 tomtom, 34 tongue, 111 toilet,

too,

266

tooth, 137 torn, 9

tornado, 97

touch-down, 83 trainman, 107 transfer, 202

unease, 234 unillude, 234 unlikely, 191

unlocked, 83 uphold, 83 upkeep, 82

222 wind, 126 wing, 111 wisdom, 179 will,

uprising, 82 upset, 83

witch, 10 without, 75, 77 would, 137 n., 182

vack, 102

write-in, 83

write, 46

transformation, 234

veldt, 100

transfusion, 86 transition, 86

veto, 170 victrola, 121

transmemberment, 234

victuals, 216

transubstantiation, 209

viola

tree, 112

viper, 269 visage, 91

trek, 100

well, 177

when, 136

da gamba, 98

yacht, 99 yawl, 99 yellow, 113 zebra, 100 zenith, 98 zero, 98

Index ablaut, see vowel gradation

animals,

names

,

speech

absolute constructions, 217, 253, 268 absolutism, 222

animate forms,

abstractions, 5, 78, 93, 149, 209, 230

antithesis, 218

ff.,

apes, 6

239 ff., 285 ff. academies, 222 accent, 30,

209

189

183,

f.,

ff.,

Adam, Lucien, Adams, H.

ff.

f.

Aramaic, 65

97

f.,

f.,

argot, see

158, 303

Armenian,

underworld speech 56, 58, 187 n.

299 f. addition of sounds, 182

Arnold, Thurman, 129

adjectival verbs, 159

Arntz, Helmut, 300

B.,

adjectives, 135, 150, 167, 197, 206, 219 ,

,

,

comparison

of,

266

languages, 293

European Ascham, Roger, 320 aspects of verbs, 161

ff.

Afar, 67

f.

aspirates, 25

Aginsky,

E., 33, 300, 303 agreement, 138, 143, 167 Aiken, Janet R., 303 Albanian, 56

Alcuin, 195 Alfred, King, 42, 181

Algonquian,

aspiration, 187 f.,

220

association, 115

assonance, 256

196, 200

f.,

Auden, W. H., ff.,

31

176, 182, 184

ff.

Austen, Jane, 225, 326 Australian languages, 71, 100

Indian

lan-

guages (American)

American regional

dialect,

f.

Anatolian, 68

Anderson, George

K., 304 Anderson, Marjorie, 304 Aneiteum, 157

f.

233, 245, 252, 256

35>

ameliorative change, 119, 127 see

C, 300

3*3 aureate English, 216

f.

ff.

284

ff.,

228

Attic Greek, 56, 273

Altaic, 64, 68

ff.,

ff.,

f.

Atkinson, B. F.

ff.

Indian,

263

Assyrian, 45, 65

alphabet, phonetic, 25 alphabets, 35

f.,

assimilation, 86, 172

f.

71, 164, 272

alliteration, 218

256, 272

302

f.,

f., 296 Aryan, 58, 61, 146, 285. See also Indo-

adverbs, 136, 151 aesthetic values, 226

articles, 197, artificial

137

demonstrative, 135 strong and weak, 197

American

99

f.

archaisms, 289

227

ff.,

of, 3

159, 164

f.

Arabic, 57, 65

179

176,

of, 111

30,

Austro-Asiatic, 71, 73 Aztec, see Nahuatl

127,

Babylonian, 45, 65 back formation, 101 Bacon, Sir Francis, 219 Baillie, J. B., 302

balance, 229

Anglo-Saxon, see Old English

Bally, Ch., 253, 282. 305

Anglo-Saxons, 194

Baltic, 56

ff.

353

f.,

Index

334 Bantu, 67

73, 100, 167

f.,

f.

Carochi, H., 300 carving, 45

Barrie, J. M., 273, 327 Bartlett, John R., 306

case, 153, 166, 196

Basic English, 226

,

Basque, 64 f. Baugh, A. C, 305, 319, 321 Bede, 195, 200 f. Bedja, 67

Ben, 245 Benedict, R., 306

Belitt,

Bengali, 57 Bentley, H. W., 302, 306

203, 206, 220, 265

f.,

ablative, 146, 166, 200

,

accusative, 139, 145

,

adessive, 166

,

allative,

,

dative,

,

elative, 166

166 145, 200, 212

139,

,

genitive, 145

,

illative,

f.,

212

166 166

,

inessive,

Beowulf, 195

,

locative, 146

Berber, 67

,

nominative, 139, 145

Biggers, E. D., 302

,

objective, 139

Bloomfield, L., 302

,

possessive,

Boas, Franz, 286, 301, 306

,

vocative, 146

Boer War, 223

caste, 164

Boethius, 200

categories of

grammar: see animate and inanimate; caste; living and non-living; major and minor; nearness and distance; shape; size

Bopp, Franz, 225 Bosworth, Bourciez,

320

J.,

E.,

304

breaking, 181

Catullus, 263

Breal, M., 121, 126

Caucasian, 71 Caucasian Turkic, 68

Breton, 56

Bridgman,

P.

W., 128

ff.,

302

Caxton,

27,

213

Britton, Karl, 299

Celtic, 56, 193

Brockelmann, C, 301

cephalic

size,

Brooks, Cleanth, 254, 305

Chaffee,

Z.,

Browne, Brunot,

Sir

Thomas, 215

F., 253, 282,

f.

Chase, Stuart, 130

302, 315

f.,

Chaucer, 127, 209 chauvinism, 283

Bullokar, W., 320

Burgundians, 194 Burke, Edmund, 267 Burke, Kenneth, 302

284

315

Chanson de Roland, 256 charms, 12

305

Bryant, Margaret, 303 Bulgarian, 55

ff.,

273

Cheremiss, 62

Chichewa,

f.

161, 168

Childe, V. Gordon, 301

Burnham, Josephine, 303

chimpanzees, 6

f.

Chinese, 24, 32, 45, 68

Caedmon,

Chinese characters, 45

Caldwell, Robert, 303 Canterbury Tales, 211

Cicero, 53

Canute, King, 202

class

Christianity, 41, 194

Carelian, 62

f.,

Thomas, 260

Carnap, R.,

144, 303

ff.,

79

f.,

107,

i55» l8 5

195, 201

Cakchiquel, 108

Carlyle,

158

139,

f.,

305

and language,

ff.

45, 47, 117

214, 221, 249, 261

classicism, 214

ff.,

clipped forms, 102

221

ff.,

ff.,

204

266, 269

ff.

Index

335

closed syllables, 180

demagogy, 285

Cockney English, 29, 261 ff. Cohen, Marcel, 300 f., 303, 310

denotation, 246

collective nouns, 149

Deny,

colloquial English, 172, 221 colonization, 223

dentals, 20

words, 81

209, 230

ff.,

f.

323

dialects, class, see class ,

ff.

compounding, 78 f., 105 ff., 202 compounds, Latin, 84 ff. concord, grammatical, see agreement concretization, 120

B.,

Devaux, Pierre, 306

f.

communication, 1 ff., 113 ff., 133, 282 compensatory lengthening, 180

compound

301

J.,

Deutsch,

f.

f.

26

f.,

239 ff. congruence, grammatical, see agreef.,

ment

and language

regional, 205, 219

f.,

224, 256,

295 Dickens, Charles, 225, 326 Dickinson, E., 231, 244 diphthongization, 181

f.

diphthongs, 29, 177, 188, 190, 207 disease, 17, 279

dissimilation, 175, 182, 186

conjunctions, 134, 136 connotation, 116, 246 ff.

distance, 162

distortion of words

consonant

clusters, 34, 35, 172

consonant

shift, 61, 187, f.

consonants, 19

ff.,

171

179

f.

S.,

Dravidian, 71, 73, 100, 160, 164 Duala dialect, 68

304

Coptic script, 44 courtly forms, 269 ff. Crane, Hart, 219, 233

Dujardin, 234

Dutch, 51 f.,

246

E. E., 247, 249

f.,

252, 305,

ff.,

f.,

61, 78 n., 99

175, 183,

f.,

305

dynamics, 229

322

cuneiform alphabet, 44

Curme,

f.,

East Indian, 57, 99, 224, 285

57

Eastman, M. H., 307 Eaton, Helen, 323

E. O., 305

curses, 12

f.

curtailment, see shortening

Edda

Cushite, 67

Eddison, E. R., 300

Cynewulf, 195

Edward

Cyril,

Edwards, Violet, 315 Egils Saga, 43 f., 300 Egyptian, 66 f.

St.,

41, 55

Cyrillic alphabet, 41

Czechish, 35, 55, 295

Eliot,

Dakota, 73 Danish, 50 f., 176, 184 Dante, 210, 248 Darwin, C, 4, 72 f. death, fear

of, 17,

declensions, 145

233,

Donne, J., 232 Dos Passos, John, 249

Coptic, 67

Cummings,

and phrases,

ff.

Doblin, A., 249 227

continuants, 22, 26, 178

Cook, A.

237

diversity, 229

189 n.

consonantization, 178 ff.,

f.,

196

T.

f.,

43, 299

f.

the Confessor, 203

S.,

232, 247

f.,

303

elision, n.,

202

f.,

270

207 Elizabethan English, 214

ff.

Emerson, O. F., 304 emotive values, 115 ff., 229 Empson, W., 321

278

ff.,

(Poetic), 16

f.,

206

ff.

English regional dialect, 273

deictic particles, 147, 162, 166

Eskimo, 71

Delacroix, H., 305

Esperanto, 293

f.

Index

33^ Estonian, 62

masculine, 148, 163, 165, 167 neuter, 148 f., 163

,

Ethiopian, 65

f.

Etruscan, 42 etymology, 84

ff.,

,

Genesis,

232

72

4, 65,

Georgian, 71, 73

ff.

German,

euphemism, 118, 279 Euphuism, 218 f.

28, 46, 51, 92

113, 119, 122, 125

f.,

ff.,

102,

Euripides, 255

151, 174, 177, 180, 185, 196

evil eye, 17

206, 244, 253

Germanic,

Ewe, 150 ff., 156 Exodus, 199

186

expansion, 121, 123

gesture, 2

61

f.

gradation, 189

see also vowel grada-

ff.,

Flemish, 51

204

118,

f.,

276

qualitative, 190 n.

Graff, W., 299

grammar, 122 69, 71,

ff.,

Flom, G. T., 304 ff.,

folk migrations, 194

163, 286 ff.,

,

Elizabethan, 219

ff.

,

Latin, 144

ff.,

168

f.

166, 200, 216

268

Grattan,

Frederick, 175

French, 46, 91 211

Gray, f.,

ff.,

124, 150, 167, 177

253

French Revolution,

f.,

270, 282

f.,

f.,

285

46, 223, 265, 288

f.

136, 302

frontier phrases, 274

fused compounds, 82

Greene, Robert, 276, 306 Gregory, St., 200

ff.

futhark, 42

Grein, C.

future of English, 226

Grimm,

Gabelentz, Georg von der, 107, 155, f.,

M., 300

225 61, 187, 189 n., 191

P.,

305 gutturals, 20 f., 26, 178, 184, 255

Gaelic, 280, 295

Gallehus horn, 44, 52 Galtier-Boissiere, 306 Gardiner, A. H., 300 L., 5,

W.

J.,

Grimm's law, Gurrey,

306

gender, 70, 148

L., 303 Greek, 58, 61, 90, 92, 105, 107, 119, 126, 147 f., 190 n., 191, 216, 225, 263 n.

Greek alphabet, 39 ff. Greek regional dialect, 273

f.

functional words, 136

Haddon, A.

299 ff.,

C.,

Haitian, 97 Hall, Robert 156,

163

f.,

165,

197, 220 ,

ff.,

comparative, 150

grammatical category, 251 J. H. G., 305 Graves, Robert, 245

Franks, 194

Garner, R.

310 133

f.

Frazer, Sir James, 299

271, 302

f.,

f.,

,

295

f.,

ff.;

tion

Finnish, 62, 106, 295 Finno-Ugric languages, 62

C,

134, 150, 162

ff.,

government, 243

,

feudalism, 96

Fries, C.

199

Gothic, 187

Fenner, Frank, 312 Fenton, F., 320

f.,

58, 174, 176,

f.,

n., 191, 195,

glides, 25, 29, 179, 181, 184

Fearing, Kenneth, 249, 322

185

198,

ff.

fascism, 285

S.,

ff.,

ff.

gerunds, 149

f.

families of languages, 48

Feist,

44, 51, 55

189

f.,

270, 281

f.,

106,

135, 140, 144,

feminine, 148

f.,

163, 165, 167

Hamitic, 66

J.,

f.,

306 301

73, 283

Hamlet, 213, 220, 228, 231 Handler, Beulah, 300

Index

337

Hardy, Thomas, 234 Hartland, E.

Hawaiian,

-,

ink-horn terms, 216

299

S.,

origin of, 147

Hayakawa, S. I., 131, 302 Hebrew, 39 f., 65 f., 100,

Propaganda Analysis, 289

Institute of

34, 70, 100, 165

internationalism, 282 159, 187 n.,

intonation, 32

281

Hegel, 94

Hellenic, 56, 61

Iranian, 57

Heraucourt, W., 127 Hevesy, W. von, 303

Irish,

D., 325 hieroglyphs, 37 ff.

Italian, 28, 52

Hindi, 57, 99 Hindustani, 57

177

f.,

Italic,

Hirt, H., 59, 148, 301, 303

f..

38, 235

98

f.,

107, 165, 173,

f.,

186

58

James, William, 302 Japanese, 64, 71, 271

Hockett, Ch., 303 Hodgkin, R. H., 304

Jefferson, Thomas, 304 Jensen, Hans, 300, 309

f.

Hopkins, G. M., 239, 251 f. forms for verbs, 159

Jespersen, O., 80, 299, 301, 304, 306,

human

316 f. Johnson, Samuel, 267, 326 Johnston, Sir Harry, 301, 310

f.

ff.

Hungarian, see Magyar Huxley, Aldous, 264, 306 Huxley, J., 306

Jones, Daniel, 273, 300, 306

hyperbole, 121

Jong,

hypercorrect forms, 265

Jonson, Ben, 215

Jones, Sir William, 224 B. de

J. P.

J. de,

f.,

58

f.,

juxtaposition of words, 243, 246

Kirghiz, 68 2, 70, 73,

97, 281

Kluge,

Fr., 309 Korean, 71, 271

Korzybski, A., 130

Indo-Chinese, 73

Indo-European, 55

ff.,

67, 70

f.,

146

f.,

!49, 162, 167, 188, 199

f., 224, 283 vowels and consonants, 188 ff.,

198

ff.,

302

Krapp, G. P., 285, 304, 306, 325 Krause, Wolfgang, 300 labials, 20

f.,

26

Langobards, 194 Lappish, 62, 64

infinitives, 134, 149

70

inflections, 52, 134, 136

ff.

Kant, Immanuel, 299 Kannelin, K., 302

293

f.,

inanimate forms, 159, 164 Indian languages, American.

*20, 283

258,

Jutes, 194

imbalance, 229 imitation by gesture, 3 imperialism, 221, 223 f., 280

infix,

252

Julius Caesar, 31, 235 ff.

Ido, 293

,

ff.,

305

identity, 129

ideographs, 37

303

f.

Joyce, James, 232, 234 Icelandic, 51

272

f.,

311

Hittite, 45, 57

humanism, 214

70, 157 n., 227

56 Iroquoian, 71 irrational nouns, 164

Heyward,

homonyms,

ff.,

Ionian Greek, 273

302

f.,

f.

intervocalic consonants, 51

ff.,

152

ff.,

203,

Latin, 105

15, 35, f.,

53

113, 119

f.,

f.,

58,

60

f.,

63, 84

ff.,

126, 141, 144, 146,

Index

338 148,

196

150, f.,

165,

153,

200

173

211, 215

ff.,

193

ff.,

250

ff.,

f.,

Meillet, A., 300

f.,

303

310

f.,

Melander, A. L., 312 Melanesian, 157, 165

f.

Latin alphabet, 40 ff. Latin syntax in English, 200 learned words, 105

Mencken, H. L., 306, 321 Mende, 32 f., 156 f.

Lee, Irving

metaphors, 108

J., 131, 302 Leland, C. W., 80, 301 lengthened consonant, 173

ff.,

230

Mexican

Lettish, 56 levels of discourse,

codices, 36

f.

249

264

f.,

Middle English, 95

f.

Millay,

Edna

Milton, John, 247, 254

minor nouns, 164 misunderstanding, 113

f.

loan words, 28, 95 224 f., 286

f.,

201, 203, 208

English, 225

Mongol, 68

logic and grammar, 142 London, dialect of, 213, Longfellow, H. W., 322

f.

219, 261

f.

Macbeth, 31 MacLeish, A., 249, 254 ff.,

288

Magyar, 3, 62, 64, 174 major nouns, 164 Malay, 100, 106

ff.,

153

73, 166

Murry, Middleton, 225 musical pitch, see intonation

Muskogean, ff.,

270

71

f.

Nahuatl,

Malay-Polynesian, 70 Mallory, H. S., 304

12, 24, 26,

46

f.,

Malory, Sir Thomas, 212

nasals, 22

National Socialism, 285 nationalism, 280 ff., 294

68, 158, 164, 166

E.,

f.,

26, 175, 180, 188, 191, 255

f.

nearness, 162

299

near-rhyme, see assonance

Marathi, 57

Marquand,

97, 159, 163

narrowing, 120

Manchu,

Mangarevan, 165 Mannhardt, J. W.

f.

Miiller, Fr., 73, 301

Munda-Khmer,

278

ff.,

monogenesis, 73 f. monophthongization, 181

Mordvian, 62 Mornet, D., 282 morphology, see inflections motion pictures, 295

slang, 278

41

ff.

f.

mood, 222

consonant, 180, 183

Lyly, John, 218

ff.

f.

Moabite stone, 39

Modern

location, 162

ff.,

f.,

219

ff:,

312

liquids, 24, 26, 175, 180, 188, 191, 255

magic, 13

182, 205

ff.,

St. V.,

Lithuanian, 56, 58, 146

loss of

ff.,

Micronesian, 165

Lewis, C. D., 233

lunchroom

269, 276

metaphysical poets, 232, 246 Methodius, St., 41, 55

lengthening, 29, 180, 189, 191 Leskien, A., 225

litotes, 121

ff.,

288

J. P.,

negative forms, 142

326

Marston, 215 f. Mason, George, 222

f.,

157, 212, 251

Masters, E. L., 249 McCullers, C, 324

f., 71, 157 f. neolithic races, 65 neologisms, 100 f., 216

McKnight, G. H., 305 meaning, 10 ff.

non-human verb

forms, 159

Nordenskiold,

309

meaning and grammar,

f.,

273 Nenets, 63

nominal elements, 122

f.

E.,

135,

140,

149, f.

158

Index Norman Conquest, 95 f., 203 Norman French, 203 f., 208, Norwegian, 50

noun

classes,

nouns, 134

parts of the body, 111

f.,

153, 163

ff.,

Paul, H., 302

Payne,

f.

146,

137,

70,

parts of speech, 134, 150

168

f.,

137, 150

167, 197, 212, 251

number,

Partridge, E., 324

276

f.

67

f.,

339

particles, 149, 158, 160, 201

f.

182,

165,

197,

J. H., 323 Pecock, Sir Reginald, 218, 220

Pedersen, Holger, 300, 305, 310

203, 220

pejorative change, 117 obscenity, 279

occupations, 208, 276

Persian, 57, 99

Ogden, C.

person, 146, 149, 160, 269

K., 128, 226, 299, 305, 313

Ogham

alphabet, 45 Old Bulgarian, 41, 55

Old English,

Pettman, C, 321

42, 95, 181, 184

ff.,

194

ff.,

Phoenician, 65

phoneme, 27

Old English runes, 42, 126 Old French, 85, 95 ff., 177, 183

phonetic alphabet, 25 f„ 185

f.,

phonetics, 20

High German,

picture writing, 35 Pidgin English, 79

Irish, 176, 195

plants, 112

Norse, 50 Prussian, 56 Oman, Charles, 304

255

104, 150, 235, 255

syllables, 180

poetry, 227

198, 206

f.,

207, 213

f.,

216,

politics, 222

ff.,

polygenesis, 73

f. f.

ff.

274, 280

288

ff.,

f.

f.

Osmanli, 69

Polynesian, 34, 73, 100, 165

Ostrogoths, 194 Ovid, 200, 214

polyphonic sentences, 238

f.

polysyllables, 240

Oxford Dictionary,

307, 320

ff.,

popular etymology, 103 portmanteau words, 103 Portuguese, 52

Paget, Sir Richard, 318

f.,

272

Polish, 55, 280, 295

f-

palatals, 20

f.,

ff.

ff.

291

ff.,

polite forms, 269

palatalization, 184

f.

ff.

Plummer, C, 304 Poema Morale, 207

ff.,

26, 27

31

play, 27

Orosius, 200

orthography,

ff.,

phrasal compounds, 82

127

Indian, 57, 188 Iranian, 285

onomatopoeia, 8

ff.,

ff.

phonology, 52, 170

208, 256

open

ff.

Peruvian, 97

210, 276

Old Old Old Old Old Old

127

ff.,

Permian, 62

f.

192

25, 26, 184

f.,

70, 97

Potawatomi, 164 prayer, 12

f.

paper, 45 paradigms, see inflections

predicate, 140

parasitic vowels, 182

prefixes, 70, 83, 105, 160

,

f.,

206, 252

psychological, 141

f.

parchment, 45

prepositions, 134, 136, 151, 201, 265

Paredes, Ignacio de, 300

presentations, 253

Paris, dialect of, 185

Primitive Germanic, 51

Parliament, 208, 211

printing, 46, 213

participles, 134, 143, 149, 167, 265

Prokosch,

E.,

303

f.

f.

f.,

55

f.

Index

340

Sanskrit alphabet, 39

pronouns, demonstrative, 135 ,

,

inclusive, 166

,

personal,

149, 156

Sappho, 248

12,

135,

137,

158, 167, 203, 220,

f.,

pronouns with

139,

269

ff.

tense, 156

f., 279 puns, 235 ff., 243 purism, 282 f.

Sauvageot, A., 301, 303 Sayres, D., 103, 326

Scandinavian, 51

61, 86, 176, 184 n.,

f.,

203 Schlauch, M., 301, 305 Schmidt, Wilhelm, 299

provincialism, 264

prudery, 118

f.

Santal, 166

exclusive, 166

f.

f.

Schrijnen, Joseph, 304

Schultze-Jena, L., 15, 299, 303 scientific terms,

quantity, 179, 207

Quiche,

282

f.

Scott, Sir Walter, 205

158

15, 74, 97,

Scottish, 56, 273

Quiller-Couch, 304

segmentation of sentences, 253 Seltzer

race, 284

racism, 283

and

Rask, R., 225 rational nouns, 164 reduplication, 34, 106, 165 reference, 114

233 f., 243 ff. semantic shift, 111, 122

f.

semantics, 32

228

Renaissance, 177, 251

Richards,

A., 128, 299

Ripman, W., 300

F. N.,

Romans

185, 210 f.

ff.,

ff.,

272, 286

f.,

Rothman and Teuber,

Serjeantson, sex, 117

M.

148

f.,

302

S., f.,

163

Shakespeare, 31, 213

299

f.,

287

f.,

219

305

f.

f. f.,

231

shape, 164

Shaw, G.

f.

B.,

262

f.,

runes, 41, 47, 52, 125

shortening, 30, 100

Russian, 26, 30, 34, 35, 55, 92, 99, 102

sibilants, 23, 26, 255

113, 120, 146, 148, 172, 177, 179,

Russian alphabet, 40

f.,

179, 189, 191

Sidney, Sir Philip, 217 Sievers, E., 304

185, 192, 213 f.,

46

signals, 7 signs, 6

f.

ff.

Saenz de Santa Maria, 302 Saho, 67

Sinaitic script, 39 Sinclair, May, 225, 263, 306

Samoyed, see Nenets

Sino-Tibetan, 69 Siouan, 71

Sanskrit, 57, 71, 121, 126, 146, 165, 188,

224

228, 253

Serbian, 41

235* 251

root, 70, 105

f.,

ff.

140, 153

presentative, 140

,

f.,

in, 127

Semitic alphabet, 39 semi-vowels, 25, 26, 188

304

in Britain, 193

Rumanian, 52

ff.,

ff. ff.,

73, 283

ff.,

sentences, 133

Rojas, Mariano Jacobo, 303 Romance languages, 52 ff., 55, 58, 61, 124, 135, 149, 181

109

sentence structure, 217

Roberts, Michael, 305 Robertson, S., 305

Robinson,

f.,

popular studies

,

Semitic, 65

f.

I.

f.

304

semantic archaisms, 124 ff. semantic change, 82, 108, 117, 124 semantic rejuvenation, 216, 230

ff.

radio, 295

rhyme, 255

Seltzer,

size,

165

ff.,

Index W.

Skeat,

Tamil,

W., 307

slang, 276

160, 164

taste, 221

ff.

Slavic alphabet, 40

f.

Tatar, 68

f.

Slavic languages, 35, 54

slogans, 288

34i

58, 61

ff.,

technology, 282

technology and script, 44

f.

Somali, 67

Telugu, 164 tempo, 201 temporal relations,

song, 12

Tennyson, 251

sound change, 19

tense, 138

snobbishness, 264, 266 society

and language,

11

f.

Soviet Encyclopedia, 63

185

f.,

ff.,

ff.,

70, 97, 103,

,

cohortative, 153

f.,

178, 183,

,

future,

,

habitual, 152

,

ingressive,

,

intentional, 153

270, 281, 285

Spargo, John, 305, 310 speech, origin of, 5, 72, 150

speech habits, 34 Spencer, Herbert, 30a Sperber, H., 126

Spinden, H.

J.,

302

f.,

36,

300

perfect,

,

present, 161

167

progressive, 156, 213

Springer, Otto, 302

Thracian, 42

standard English, 264

Tibeto-Burman, 69 Tocharian, 57

M., 306

Stein, Gertrude, 240

f.

161

past,

,

tenseless verbs, 156

J.

ff.,

tools,

305

112

Steinbeck, John, 326

trade, 45, 282

Stern, Gustaf, 299, 302

Treaty of Versailles, 294 Tregear, E., 310

Stolz, Fr.,

299 stop sounds, 22, 26, 175 stress, see accent

Trevisa, 211 Trier,

140

f.,

148,

155

167, 206,

f.,

217, 252 ,

psychological, 141

ff.

substandard, 269 Sudanese, 67 f., 73, 161 suffixes, 70, 83, 105, 147, 149, 157, 160,

2, 50,

122, 127, 302

triphthongs, 29

66

f.

177 Troilus and Cressida, 210

Trombetti,

f.,

A., 73

f.,

301

Tunguz, 68 f. Turcoman, 68 Turk, M. H., 304 Turkic, 68 f. Turkish, 68, 99

198

Sumerian, 65 Swedish,

J.,

triliteral roots,

student speech, 102 subject,

ff.

153

,

,

161

152

149,

spirants, see continuants

Steadman,

ff.,

152

175

Spanish, 26, 28, 46, 52 124, 127, 166, 170

aorist,

214

156, 162

149, 155

f.,

,

ff.,

f.

184 n.

Sweet, Henry, 305, 317 symbols, 228 ff.

Ukrainian, 55 umlaut, see vowel assimilation

sympathetic magic, 13

underworld speech, 269, 276 f. undeveloped languages, 285 f. unemphatic forms, 266

Syriac, 65

taboo, 17, 117

Tai, 69

f.,

278

ff.,

288

unity, 229

unsaid words evoked, 250

Index

342 unvoicing, 172, 176

vowels, 27, 199, 207, 227

f.

upper-class English, 264 Uralic, 63

,

181

71

Vandals, 194 Veblen, Thorstein, 266 verbal elements, 135 verbal inflection, 206

f.,

140, 149

f.

verbal nouns, 134, 162

197

f., ,

,

,

,

,

137

f.,

152

155

f.,

206, 212, 220, 251

ff.,

f.,

167,

271

auxiliary, 136, 139, 212

f.

f.

impersonal, 212, 219 intransitive, 160

Old English, 197 preterite present,

,

transitive, 158, 160

,

f.,

f.,

212

212

Virgil, 200, 214, 255

Visigoths, 194 vocalic consonants, 191 f.,

182

voice, active, 136, 146, 148, 162, 271 ,

causative, 271

,

passive, 135

voiced consonants, 21

178

f.,

146, 148

f.,

26, 172, 174

f.,

24, 26, 160

voicing, 176

W.

n., 152,

D., 301, 303

Williams, B. C, 304 Winstedt, R. O., 153, 302 f., 306 Wodehouse, P. G., 267 f., 306 Wolfe, Thomas, 264, 306

Wright, Joseph, 304, 325 Wright, Richard, 324 ff.

Wundt, W.,

150, 162, 303

Wyatt, A.

J.,

Wyld, H.

C., 272,

364 Wyatt, Sir T., 322 E.,

306

322

Yakut, 68

Votiak, 62

vowel assimilation, 174 vowel gradation, 138, 161

Yerkes, R. M., 6, 299 f.,

164, 189

212; see also gradation f.,

303

William the Conqueror, 203

Wylie,

Volapiik, 293 Voltaire, 223

vowel harmony, 63 vowel shift, 225

Welsh, 56, 173, 183, 193

writing, 35

voiceless consonants, 21

f.,

n., 127,

194

women's language, 14 word creation, 234 ff. word order, 140, 154, 206, 213, 252 Wordsworth, 255, 257, 322 work and language, 11, 18

Verner's law, 176

197

78

f.,

West Saxon, 196 Westermann, D., 151 Whitman, Walt, 254 Whitney,

137 n.

strong, 138, 197

weak, 138, 197 verbs with cases, 157 f. verbs with gender, 159

ff.,

ff.,

Willewill, M., 302

f.

,

vocalization, 177

183, 185

Wells, H. G., 296

verbal classes, 68 f.,

f.,

Walde, Alois, 301 Walpole, Hugh, 302, 315 Walton, Eda Lou, 305 Wardale, E. E., 304 Watkins, M. H., 303 Weaver, John, 249, 305

306

f.,

Vendryes, 61

verbs, 134

rounded and unrounded, 28

Vulgar Latin, 53

71, 73

f.,

U to -Aztec,

285

ff.,

69, 174

Zachrisson, R. E., 321

Zauner, A., 304 Zoroastrian hymns, 57 Zyrian, 62

f.,

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS

Language Books and Records GERMAN: HOW TO SPEAK AND WRITE

IT.

AN INFORMAL CONVERSATIONAL METHOD FOR SELF

Joseph Rosenberg. Eminently useful for self study because of concentration on elementary stages "of learning. Also provides teachers with remarkable variety of aids: 28 full- and double-page sketches with pertinent items numbered and identified in German and English; German proverbs, jokes; grammar, idiom studies; extensive practice exercises. The most interesting introduction to German available, full of amusing illustrations, photographs of cities and landmarks in German-speaking cities, cultural information subtly woven into conversational material. Includes summary of grammar, guide to letter writing, study guide to German literature by Dr. Richard Friedenthal. Index. 400 illustrations. 384pp. 53/s x 8V2. T271 Paperbound $2.00

STUDY,

FRENCH:

HOW TO SPEAK AND WRITE

IT.

AN INFORMAL CONVERSATIONAL METHOD FOR SELF

STUDY, Joseph Lemaitre. Even the absolute beginner can acquire a solid foundation for further study from this delightful elementary course. Photographs, sketches and drawings, sparkling colloquial conversations on a wide variety of topics (including French culture and custom), French sayings and quips, are some of aids used to demonstrate rather than merely describe the language. Thorough yet surprisingly entertaining approach, excellent for teaching and for self study. Comprehensive analysis of pronunciation, practice exercises and appendices of verb tables, additional vocabulary, other useful material. Index. Appendix. x 8V2. T268 Paperbound $2.00 400 illustrations. 416pp.

5%

DICTIONARY OF SPOKEN SPANISH, Spanish-English,

English-Spanish. Compiled from spoken Spanish, emphasizing idiom and colloquial usage in both Castilian and Latin-American. More than 16,000 entries containing over 25,000 idioms the largest list of idiomatic constructions Complete sentences given, indexed under single words language in ever published. immediately useable form, for travellers, businessmen, students, etc. 25 page introduction provides rapid survey of sounds, grammar, syntax, with full consideration of irregular verbs. Especially apt in modern treatment of phrases and structure. 17 page glossary gives translations of geographical names, money values, numbers, national holidays, important street signs, useful expressions of high frequency, plus unique 7 page glossary of Spanish and Spanish-American foods and dishes. Originally published as War Department Technical Manual T495 Paperbound $1.75 TM 30-900. iv 513pp. 53/8 x 8.

—

—

+

SPEAK MY LANGUAGE: SPANISH FOR YOUNG BEGINNERS, M. Ahlman, Z. Gilbert. Records provide one of the best, and most entertaining, methods of introducing a foreign language to children. Within the framework of a train trip from Portugal to Spain, an English-speaking child is introduced to Spanish by a native companion. (Adapted from a successful radio program of the N. Y. State Educational Department.) Though a continuous story, there are a dozen specific categories of expressions, including greetings, numbers, time, weather, food, clothes, family members, etc. Drill is combined with poetry and contextual use. Authentic background music is heard. An accompanying book enables a reader to follow the records, and includes a vocabulary of over 350 recorded expressions. Two 10" 33V3 records, total of 40 minutes. Book. 40 T890 The set $4.95 illustrations. 69pp. 5V4 x IOV2.

AN ENGLISH-FRENCH-GERMAN-SPANISH WORD FREQUENCY DICTIONARY,

H.

S.

Eaton.

An

in-

dispensable language study aid, this is a semantic frequency list of the 6000 most frequently used words in 4 languages— 24,000 words in all. The lists, based on concepts rather than words alone, and containing all modern, exact, and idiomatic vocabulary, are arranged side by side to form a unique 4-language dictionary. A simple key indicates the importance of the individual words within each language. Over 200 pages of separate indexes for each language enable you to locate individual words at a glance. Will help language teachers and students, authors of textbooks, grammars, and language tests to compare concepts in the various languages and to concentrate on basic vocabulary, avoiding uncommon and obsolete words. 2 Appendixes, xxi 441pp. 6V2 x 9V4. T738 Paperbound $2.45

+

NEW RUSSIAN-ENGLISH AND

ENGLISH-RUSSIAN DICTIONARY, M. A. O'Brien. Over 70,000 new orthography! Many idiomatic uses and colloquialisms which form the basis speech. Irregular verbs, perfective and imperfective aspects, regular and irregular sound changes, and other features. One of the few dictionaries where accent changes within the conjugation of verbs and the declension of nouns are fully indicated. "One of the best," Prof. E. J. Simmons, Cornell. First names, geographical terms, bibliography, etc. 738pp. 4V2 x 6Va. T208 Paperbound $2.00 entries in the

of actual

96 MOST USEFUL PHRASES FOR TOURISTS AND STUDENTS in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian. A handy folder you'll want to carry with you. How to say "Excuse me," "How much is it?", "Write it down, please," etc., in four foreign languages. Copies limited, FREE no more than 1 to a customer.

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS Say

language phrase books

It

These handy phrase books (128 to 196 pages each) make grammatical drills unnecessary for an elementary knowledge of a spoken foreign language. Covering most matters of travel and everyday life each volume contains: Over 1000 phrases and sentences

immediately useful forms

in

— foreign

language

plus English.

Modern usage designed for Americans. Specific phrases and "Please call a taxi."

like,

"Give

me

small change,"

Simplified phonetic transcription you will be able to read at sight.

The only completely indexed phrase books on the market. Covers scores of important situations:

— Greetings,

sightseeing,

restaurants,

useful

expressions, etc.

These books are prepared by native linguists who are professors at Columbia, N.Y.U., Fordham and other great universities. Use them independently or with any other book or record course. They provide a supplementary living element that most other courses lack. Individual volumes in:

Spanish 750 German 750 Swedish 750 Japanese 750 Modern Greek 750 Portuguese 750 Yiddish 750 French 750 English for German-speaking people 750 English for Spanish-speaking people 750

Italian 750 Danish 750 Esperanto 750 Polish 750

Russian 750 Hebrew 750 Dutch 750

Norwegian 750 Turkish 750

English for Italian-speaking people 750

Large clear type. 128-196 pages each. 3V2 x 5V4. Sturdy paper binding.

Listen and Learn language records LISTEN & LEARN is the only language record course designed especially to meet your travel and everyday needs. It is available in separate sets for FRENCH, SPANISH, GERMAN, JAPANESE, RUSSIAN, MODERN GREEK, PORTUGUESE, ITALIAN and HEBREW, and each set contains three 33V3 rpm long-playing records IV2 hours of recorded speech by eminent native speakers who are professors at Columbia, New York University, Queens College.

—

Check the following special features found only in LISTEN & LEARN: • Dual-language recording. 812 selected phrases and sentences, over 3200 words, spoken first in English, then in their foreign language equivalents. A suitable pause follows each foreign phrase, allowing you time to repeat the expression. You learn by unconscious assimilation. • 128 to 206-page manual contains everything on the records, plus a simple phonetic pronunciation guide.

•

Indexed for convenience. The only set on the market that is completely indexed. No more puzzling over where to find the phrase you need. Just look in the rear of the manual.

•

Practical. No time wasted on material you can find in any grammar. LISTEN 81 LEARN covers central core material with phrase approach. Ideal for the person with limited learning time.

•

Living,

•

Limited

•

High-fidelity recording.

modern expressions, not found

equipment, shopping

— expressions

in

other

used every day,

courses. like

Hygienic

products,

modern

"nylon" and "air ; conditioned."

Everything you learn, no matter where you stop, is immediately useful. You have to finish other courses, wade through grammar and vocabulary drill, before they help you. objective.

LISTEN & LEARN records equal any record on the market costing up to $6.

in

clarity

and surface-silence

"Excellent ... the spoken records impress me as being among the very best on the market," Prof. Mario Pei, Dept. of Romance Languages, Columbia University. "Inexpensive and well-done ... it would make an ideal present," CHICAGO SUNDAY TRIBUNE. "More have previously encountered," Sidney Clark, genuinely helpful than anything of its kind which well-known author of "ALL THE BEST" travel books. .

.

.

I

UNCONDITIONAL GUARANTEE. refund

if

you

are

not

Try

LISTEN &

LEARN, then

return

it

within

10 days

for

full

satisfied.

Each set contains three twelve-inch 33V3 records, manual, and album. GERMAN the set $5.95 SPANISH ITALIAN the set $5.95 FRENCH JAPANESE the set $5.95 RUSSIAN MODERN GREEK the set $5.95 PORTUGUESE the set $5.95 MODERN HEBREW

the the the the

set set set set

$5.95 $5.95 $5.95 $5.95

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS Trubner Colloquial Manuals These unusual books are members of the famous Trubner series of colloquial manuals. They have been written to provide adults with a sound colloquial knowledge of a foreign language, and are suited for either class use or self-study. Each book is a complete course in itself, with progressive, easy to follow lessons. Phonetics, grammar, and syntax are covered, while hundreds of phrases and idioms, reading texts, exercises, and vocabulary are included. These books are unusual in being neither skimpy nor overdetailed in grammatical matters, and in presenting up-to-date, colloquial, and practical phrase material. Bilingual presentation is stressed, to make thorough self-study easier for the reader.

COLLOQUIAL HINDUSTANI, A. H. Harley, formerly Nizam's Reader in Urdu, U. of London. 30 pages on phonetics and scripts (devanagari & Arabic-Persian) are followed by 29 lessons, including material on English and Arabic-Persian influences. Key to all exercises. Vocabulary. 5 x 7y2 . 147pp. Clothbound $1.75 COLLOQUIAL PERSIAN, L. P. Elwell-Sutton. Best introduction to modern Persian, with 90 page grammatical section followed by conversations, 35-page vocabulary. 139pp. Clothbound $1.75

COLLOQUIAL ARABIC, DeLacy O'Leary. Foremost Islamic scholar covers language of Egypt, Syria, Palestine, & Northern Arabia. Extremely clear coverage of complex Arabic verbs & noun plurals; also cultural aspects of language. Vocabulary, xviii

+

192pp. 5 x 7V2. Clothbound $2.50

COLLOQUIAL GERMAN, P. F. Doring. Intensive thorough coverage of grammar in easily-followed form. Excellent for brush-up, with hundreds of colloquial phrases. 34 pages of bilingual texts. 224pp. 5 x 7y2 Clothbound $1.75 .

COLLOQUIAL SPANISH, W. bilingual

R. Patterson. Castilian grammar and colloquial language, loaded with phrases and colloquialisms. Excellent for review or self-study. 164pp. 5 x 7V2. Clothbound $1.75

COLLOQUIAL FRENCH, W. R. Patterson. 16th revision of this extremely popular manual. Grammar explained with model clarity, and hundreds of useful expressions and phrases; exercises, reading texts, etc. Appendixes of new and useful words and phrases. 223pp. 5 x 7V2. Clothbound $1.75

COLLOQUIAL CZECH,

Schwarz, former headmaster of Lingua Institute, Prague. Full easily followed coverage of grammar, hundreds of immediately useable phrases, texts. Perhaps the best Czech grammar in print. "An absolutely successful textbook," JOURNAL OF CZECHOSLOVAK FORCES IN GREAT BRITAIN. 252pp. 5 x 7y2 Clothbound $3.00 J.

.

COLLOQUIAL RUMANIAN,

Nandris, Professor of University of London. Extremely thorough coverage of phonetics, grammar, syntax; also included 70-page reader, and 70-page vocabulary. Probably the best grammar for this increasingly important language. 340pp. 5 x IVi. G.

Clothbound $2.50

COLLOQUIAL

Excellent self-study course in grammar, vocabulary, idioms, and reading. Easy progressive lessons will give a good working knowledge of Italian in the shortest possible time. 5 x 7V2. Clothbound $1.75

ITALIAN,

A.

L.

Hayward.

COLLOQUIAL TURKISH, Yusuf Mardin. Very clear, thorough introduction to leading cultural and economic language of Near East. Begins with pronunciation and statement of vowel harmony, then 36 lessons present grammar, graded vocabulary, useful phrases, dialogues, reading, exercises. Key to exercises at rear. Turkish-English vocabulary. All in Roman alphabet. x + 288pp. 4% x 7V4. Clothbound $4.00

DUTCH-ENGLISH AND ENGLISH-DUTCH DICTIONARY, F. G. Renier. For travel, literary, scientific or business Dutch, you will find this the most convenient, practical and comprehensive dictionary on the market. More than 60,000 entries, shades of meaning, colloquialisms, idioms, compounds and technical terms. Dutch and English strong and irregular verbs. This is the only dictionary in its size and price range that indicates the gender of nouns. New orthography, xvii 571pp. 5y2 x 6i/4. T224 Clothbound $2.75

+

LEARN DUTCH, F. G. Renier. This book is the most satisfactory and most easily used grammar of modern Dutch. The student is gradually led from simple lessons in pronunciation, through from and into Dutch, and finally to a mastery of spoken and written Dutch. Grammatical principles are clearly explained while a useful, practical vocabulary is introduced in easy exercises and readings. It is used and recommended by the Fulbright Committee in the Netherlands. Phonetic appendices. Over 1200 exercises; Dutch-English, English-Dutch vocabularies. 181pp. 4y4 x IV*,. T441 Clothbound $2.25 translation

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS The more

difficult

books are indicated by an asterisk

(*)

Books Explaining Science and Mathematics WHAT

IS SCIENCE?, N. Campbell. The role of experiment and measurement, the function of the nature of scientific laws, the difference between laws and theories, many similarly provocative topics are treated clearly limitations of science, and eminent scientist. "Still an excellent introtechnicalities an by without and duction to scientific philosophy," H. Margenau in PHYSICS TODAY. "A first-rate primer

mathematics,

the

.

deserves a wide audience," SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. 192pp.

5%

x

8.

.

.

S43 Paperbound $1.25

THE NATURE OF PHYSICAL THEORY,

P. W. Bridgman. A Nobel Laureate's clear, non-technical lectures on difficulties and paradoxes connected with frontier research on the physical sciences. Concerned with such central concepts as thought, logic, mathematics, relativity, probability, wave mechanics, etc. he analyzes the contributions of such men as Newton, recommended to Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, and many others. "Lucid and entertaining anyone who wants to get some insight into current philosophies of science," THE NEW PHILOSOPHY. Index, xi S33 Paperbound $1.25 138pp. 53/a x 8. .

.

.

+

EXPERIMENT AND THEORY

IN PHYSICS, Max Born. A Nobel Laureate examines the nature of in theoretical physics and analyzes the advances made by the great our day: Heisenberg, Einstein, Bohr, Planck, Dirac, and others. The actual process of creation is detailed step-by-step by one who participated. A fine examination of the S308 Paperbound 75$ scientific method at work. 44pp. x 8.

experiment and theory physicists

of

5%

IN THE MATHEMATICAL FIELD, J. Hadamard. The reports of such men as Descartes, Pascal, Einstein, Poincare\ and others are considered in this investigation of the method of idea-creation in mathematics and other sciences and the thinking process in general. How do ideas originate? What is the role of the unconscious? What is Poincare's forgetting hypothesis? are some of the fascinating questions treated. A penetrating analysis of Einstein's thought processes concludes the book, xiii 145pp. 5 3/8 x 8.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INVENTION

+

T107 Paperbound $1.25

THE NATURE OF LIGHT AND COLOUR IN THE OPEN AIR, M. Minnaert. Why are shadows sometimes blue, sometimes green, or other colors depending on the light and surroundings? What causes mirages? Why do multiple suns and moons appear in the sky? Professor Minnaert explains these unusual phenomena and hundreds of others in simple, easy-to-understand terms based on optical laws and the properties of light and scientists, students, and everyone fascinated thousands of useful and amazing pieces of information. are suggested which require no special equipment. 200 artists,

5%

No mathematics

is required but "tricks" of nature will find of observational experiments illustrations; 42 photos, xvi 362pp.

color.

by these

Hundreds

+

T196 Paperbound

x 8.

$2.00

0. G. Sutton. Everyone with a command of high school algebra will finest possible introductions to the application of mathematics to numerical analysis, waves and wavelike phenomena, Fourier series, and aerodynamics, statistical measures, and meteorology are discussed with unusual clarity. Some calculus and differential equations theory is developed by the author for the reader's help in the more difficult sections. 88 figures. Index, viii 236pp. x 8. T440 Clothbound $3.50

*MATHEMATICS

IN ACTION, find this book one of the physical theory. Ballistics, group concepts, fluid flow

+

5%

SOAP-BUBBLES: THEIR COLOURS AND THE FORCES THAT MOULD THEM, C. popularity and validity as scientific primer, few books can match

V. Boys. For continuing this volume of easily-

followed experiments, explanations. Lucid exposition of complexities of liquid films, surface tension and related phenot.iena, bubbles' reaction to heat, motion, music, magnetic fields. Experiments with capillary attraction, soap bubbles on frames, composite bubbles, liquid introduction to scientific cylinders and jets, bubbles other than soap, etc. Wonderful method, natural laws that have many ramifications in areas of modern physics. Only complete edition in print. New Introduction by S. Z. Lewin, New York University. 83 illustraT542 Paperbound 950 x 8V2. tions; 1 full-page color plate, xii + 190pp.

5%

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS A. R. Bleich, M.D. This book, by a member of the American College of Radiology, gives the scientific explanation of x-rays, their applications in medicine, industry and art, and their danger (and that of atmospheric radiation) to the individual and the species. You learn how radiation therapy is applied against cancer, how x-rays diagnose heart disease and other ailments, how they are used to examine mummies for information on diseases of early societies, and industrial materials for hidden weaknesses. 54 illustrations show x-rays of flowers, bones, stomach, gears with flaws, etc. T622 Paperbound $1.35 1st publication. Index, xix 186pp. 53/8 x 8.

THE STORY OF X-RAYS FROM RONTGEN TO ISOTOPES,

+

SPINNING TOPS AND

GYROSCOPIC MOTION, John Perry. A classic elementary text of the the behavior and use of rotating bodies such as gyroscopes and tops. everyday English you are shown how quasi-rigidity is induced in discs of paper, smoke rings, chains, etc., by rapid motions; why a gyrostat falls and why a top rises; precession; how the earth's motion affects climate; and many other phenomena. Appendix on practical use of gyroscopes. 62 figures. 128pp. 53/8 x 8. T416 Paperbound $1.00 dynamics of rotation In

—

simple,

SNOW CRYSTALS, W.

A. Bentley, M. J. Humphreys. For almost 50 years W. A. Bentley photographed snow flakes in his laboratory in Jericho, Vermont; in 1931 the American Meteorological Society gathered together the best of his work, some 2400 photographs of snow flakes, plus a few ice flowers, windowpane frosts, dew, frozen rain, and other ice formations. Pictures were selected for beauty and scientific value. A very valuable work to anyone in meteorology, cryology; most interesting to layman; extremely useful for artist who wants beautiful, crystalline designs. All copyright free. Unabridged reprint of 1931 edition. 2453 illustrations. 227pp. 8 x IOV2. T287 Paperbound $3.00

A DOVER SCIENCE SAMPLER, edited by George Barkin. A collection of brief, non-technical passages from 44 Dover Books Explaining Science for the enjoyment of the science-minded browser. Includes work of Bertrand Russell, Poincare, Laplace, Max Born, Galileo, Newton; material on physics, mathematics, metallurgy, anatomy, astronomy, chemistry, etc. You will be fascinated by Martin Gardner's analysis of the sincere pseudo-scientist, Moritz's account of Newton's absentmindedness, Bernard's examples of human vivisection, etc. Illustrations FREE from the Diderot Pictorial Encyclopedia and De Re Metallica. 64 pages.

THE STORY OF ATOMIC THEORY AND ATOMIC ENERGY,

J. G. Feinberg. A broader approach to subject of nuclear energy and its cultural implications than any other similar source. Very readable, informal, completely non-technical text. Begins with first atomic theory, 600 B.C. and carries you through the work of Mendelejeff, Rontgen, Madame Curie, to Einstein's equation and the A-bomb. New chapter goes through thermonuclear fission, binding energy, other events up to 1959. Radioactive decay and radiation hazards, future benefits, work of Bohr, moderns, hundreds more topics. "Deserves special mention ... not only authoritative but thoroughly popular in the best sense of the word," Saturday Review. Formerly, "The Atom Story." Expanded with new chapter. Three appendixes. Index. 34 illustrations, vii

+

243pp.

53/s

x 8.

T625 Paperbound $1.6"0

THE STRANGE STORY OF THE QUANTUM, AN ACCOUNT FOR THE GENERAL READER OF THE GROWTH OF IDEAS UNDERLYING OUR PRESENT ATOMIC KNOWLEDGE, B. Hoffmann. Presents lucidly and expertly, with barest amount of mathematics, the problems and theories which led to modern quantum physics. Dr. Hoffmann begins with the closing years of the 19th century, when certain trifling discrepancies were noticed, and with illuminating analogies and examples takes you through the brilliant concepts of Planck, Einstein, Pauli, Broglie, Bohr, Schroedinger, Heisenberg, Dirac, Sommerfeld, Feynman, etc. This edition includes a new, long postscript carrying the story through 1958. "Of the books attempting an account of the history and contents of our modern atomic physics which have come to my attention, this is the best," H. Margenau, Yale University, in "American Journal of Physics." 32 tables and line illustrations. Index. 275pp. 5 3/8 x 8. T518 Paperbound $1.50

SPACE AND TIME,

E. Borel. Written by a versatile mathematician of world renown with his customary lucidity and precision, this introduction to relativity for the layman presents scores of examples, analogies, and illustrations that open up new ways of thinking about space and

time. It covers abstract geometry and geographical maps, continuity and topology, the propagation of light, the special theory of relativity, the general theory of relativity, theoretical researches, and much more. Mathematical notes. 2 Indexes. 4 Appendices. 15 figures. xvi

+

243pp.

53/e x 8.

T592 Paperbound $1.45

FROM EUCLID TO EDDINGTON: A STUDY OF THE CONCEPTIONS OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD, Edmund Whittaker. A foremost

Sir

British scientist traces the development of theories of natural philosophy from the western rediscovery of Euclid to Eddington, Einstein,' Dirac, etc. The inadequacy of classical physics is contrasted with present day attempts to understand the physical world through relativity, non-Euclidean geometry, space curvature, wave mechanics, etc. 5 major divisions of examination: Space; Time and Movement; the Concepts of Classical Physics; the Concepts of Quantum Mechanics; the Eddington Universe. 212pp. 5^/e x 8. T491 Paperbound $1.35

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS •THE EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT FROM NEWTON TO EINSTEIN, A. d'Abro. A detailed account of the evolution of classical physics into modern relativistic theory and the concommitant changes in scientific methodology. The breakdown of classical physics in the face of non-Euclidean geometry and the electromagnetic equations is carefully discussed and then an exhaustive analysis of Einstein's special and general theories of relativity and their implications is given. Newton, Riemann, Weyl, Lorentz, Planck, Maxwell, and many others are considered. A non-technical explanation of space, time, electromagnetic waves, etc. as understood today. "Model of semi-popular exposition," NEW REPUBLIC. 21 diagrams. 482pp. 5% x 8. T2 Paperbound $2.25 EINSTEIN'S THEORY OF RELATIVITY, Max Born. Nobel Laureate explains Einstein's special and general theories of relativity, beginning with a thorough review of classical physics in simple, non-technical language. Exposition of Einstein's work discusses concept of simultaneity, kinematics, relativity of arbitrary motions, the space-time continuum, geometry of curved surfaces, etc., steering middle course between vague popularizations and complex scientific presentations. 1962 edition revised by author takes into account latest findings, predictions of theory and implications for cosmology, indicates what is being sought in unified field theory. Mathematics very elementary, illustrative diagrams and experiments informative but simple. Revised 1962 edition. Revised by Max Born, assisted by Gunther Leibfried and Walter Biem. Index. 143 illustrations, vii + 376pp. 5% x 8. S769 Paperbound $2.00 PHILOSOPHY AND THE PHYSICISTS, L. Susan Stebbing. A philosopher examines the philosophical aspects of modern science, in terms of a lively critical attack on the ideas of Jeans and Eddington. Such basic questions are treated as the task of science, causality, determinism, probability, consciousness, the relation of the world of physics to the world of everyday experience. The author probes the concepts of man's smallness before an inscrutable universe, the tendency to idealize mathematical construction, unpredictability theorems and human freedom, the supposed opposition between 19th century determinism and modern science, and many others. Introduces many thought-stimulating ideas about the implications of modern physical concepts, xvi + 295pp. 5% x 8. T480 Paperbound $1.65

THE RESTLESS UNIVERSE, Max Born. A remarkably lucid account by theories of wave mechanics, behavior of gases, electrons and

a Nobel Laureate of recent ions, waves and particles,

electronic structure of the atom, nuclear physics, and similar topics. "Much more thorough and deeper than most attempts easy and delightful," CHEMICAL AND ENGINEERING NEWS. Special feature: 7 animated sequences of 60 figures each showing such phenomena as gas molecules in motion, the scattering of alpha particles, etc. 11 full-page plates of photographs. Total of nearly 600 illustrations. 351pp. 6Vs x 9V4. T412 Paperbound $2.00 .

.

.

COMMON SENSE OF THE EXACT SCIENCES, W. X. Clifford. For 70 years a guide to the basic concepts of scientific and mathematical thought. Acclaimed by scientists and laymen alike, offers a wonderful insight into concepts such as the extension of meaning of symbols, it characteristics of surface boundaries, properties of plane figures, measurement of quantities, vectors, the nature of position, bending of space, motion, mass and force, and many others. Prefaces by Bertrand Russell and Karl Pearson. Critical introduction by James Newman. 130 figures. 249pp. 53/8 x 8. T61 Paperbound $1.60 THE

MATTER AND LIGHT, THE NEW PHYSICS,

Louis de Broglie. Non-technical explanations by a Nobel

Laureate of electro-magnetic theory, relativity, matter, light and radiation, wave mechanics, quantum physics, philosophy of science, and similar topics. This is one of the simplest yet most accurate introductions to the work of men like Planck, Einstein, Bohr, and others. Only 2 of the 21 chapters require a knowledge of mathematics. 300pp. 5 3/8 x 8. T35 Paperbound $1.85

SCIENCE, THEORY AND MAN, Erwin Schrbdinger. This

is a complete and unabridged reissue of Is an Elementary Particle?" Nobel Laureate Schrbdinger discusses such topics as nature of scientific method, tne nature of science, chance and determinism, science and society, conceptual models for physical entities, elementary particles and wave mechanics. Presentation is popular and may be followed by most people with little or no scientific training. "Fine practical preparation for a time when laws of nature, human institutions ... are undergoing a critical examination without parallel," Waldemar Kaempffert, N. Y. TIMES. 192pp. 53/8 x 8.

SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN TEMPERAMENT plus an additional essay: "What

T428 Paperbound $1.35

CONCERNING THE NATURE OF THINGS,

William Bragg. The Nobel Laureate physicist in his Royal Institute Christmas Lectures explains such diverse phenomena as the formation of crystals, how uranium is transmuted to lead, the way X-rays work, why a spinning ball travels in a curved path, the reason why bubbles bounce from each other, and many other scientific topics that are seldom explained in simple terms. No scientific background needed— book is easy enough that any intelligent adult or youngster can understand it. Unabridged. 32pp. of photos; 57 figures, xii + 232pp. 53/e x 8. T31 Paperbound $1.35 Sir

•THE RISE OF THE NEW PHYSICS (formerly THE DECLINE OF MECHANISM), A. d'Abro. This authoritative and comprehensive 2 volume exposition is unique in scientific publishing. Written for intelligent readers not familiar with higher mathematics, it is the only thorough explanation in non-technical language of modern mathematical-physical theory. Combining both history and exposition, it ranges from classical Newtonian concepts up through the electronic theories of Dirac and Heisenberg, the statistical mechanics of Fermi, and Einstein's relativity theories. "A must for anyone doing serious study in the physical sciences," J. OF FRANKLIN INST. 97 illustrations. 991pp. 2 volumes. T3 Vol. 1, Paperbound $2.25 T4 Vol.

2,

Paperbound $2.25

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS SCIENCE AND HYPOTHESIS, Henri Poincar§. Creative psychology in science. How such concepts as number, magnitude, space, force, classical mechanics were developed and how the modern scientist uses them in his thought. Hypothesis in physics, theories of modern physics. Introduction by Sir James Larmor. "Few mathematicians have had the breadth of vision of Poincare\ and none is his superior in the gift of clear exposition," E. T. Bell. Index. 272pp. x 8.

5%

S221 Paperbound $1.35

THE VALUE OF SCIENCE, Henri

Poincare". Many of the most mature ideas of the "last scientific universalist" conveyed with charm and vigor for both the beginning student and the advanced worker. Discusses the nature of scientific truth, whether order is innate in the universe or imposed upon it by man, logical thought versus intuition (relating to mathematics through the works of Weierstrass, Lie. Klein, Riemann), time and space (relativity, psychological time, simultaneity), Hertz's concept of force, interrelationship of mathematical physics to pure math, values within disciplines of Maxwell, Carnot, Mayer, Newton, Lorentz, etc. Index. Hi

+

147pp.

5%

S469 Paperbound $1.35

x 8.

THE SKY AND

ITS MYSTERIES, E. A. Beet. One of the most lucid books on the mysteries of the universe; covers history of astronomy from earliest observations to modern theories of expanding universe, source of stellar energy, birth of planets, origin of moon craters, possibilities of life on other planets. Discusses effects of sunspots on weather; distance, age of stars; methods and tools of astronomers; much more. Expert and fascinating. "Eminently readable book," London Times. Bibliography. Over 50 diagrams, 12 full-page plates. Fold-out star map. Introduction. Index. 238pp. 5V4 x IVi. T627 Clothbound $3.50

OUT OF THE SKY: AN INTRODUCTION TO METEORITICS,

H. H. Nininger. A non-technical yet comprehensive introduction to the young science of meteoritics: all aspects of the arrival of cosmic matter on our planet from outer space and the reaction and alteration of this matter in the terrestrial environment. Essential facts and major theories presented by one of the world's leading experts. Covers ancient reports of meteors; modern systematic investigations; fireball clusters; meteorite showers; tektites; planetoidal encounters; etc. 52 full-page plates with over 175 photographs. 22 figures. Bibliography and references. Index, viii + 336pp. 53/8 x 8. T519 Paperbound $1.85

THE REALM OF THE NEBULAE,

E. Hubble. One of great astronomers of our day records his of concept of "island universes." Covers velocity-distance relationship; classification, nature, distances, general types of nebulae; cosmological theories. A fine introduction to modern theories for layman. No math needed. New introduction by A. Sandage. 55 illustrations, photos. Index, iv 201pp. 53/8 x 8. S455 Paperbound $1.50

formulation

+

AN ELEMENTARY SURVEY OF CELESTIAL MECHANICS,

Y. Ryabov. Elementary exposition of gravitational theory and celestial mechanics. Historical introduction and coverage of basic principles, including: the ecliptic, the orbital plane, the 2- and 3-body problems, the discovery of Neptune, planetary rotation, the length of the day, the shapes of galaxies, satellites (detailed treatment of Sputnik I), etc. First American reprinting of successful Russian popular exposition. Follow actual methods of astrophysicists with only high school math! Appendix. T756 Paperbound $1.25 58 figures. 165pp. 53/8 x 8.

GREAT IDEAS AND THEORIES OF MODERN COSMOLOGY, Jagjit Singh. Companion volume to author's popular "Great Ideas of Modern Mathematics" (Dover, $1.55). The best nontechnical survey of post-Einstein attempts to answer perhaps unanswerable questions of origin, age of Universe, possibility of life on other worlds, etc. Fundamental theories of cosmology and cosmogony recounted, explained, evaluated in light of most recent data: Einstein's concepts of relativity, space-time; Milne's a priori world-system; astrophysical theories of Jeans, Eddington; Hoyle's "continuous creation;" contributions of dozens more scientists. A faithful, comprehensive critical summary of complex material presented in an extremely well-written text intended for laymen. Original publication. Index, xii 276pp. T925 Paperbound $1.85 53/e x 8V2.

+

BASIC ELECTRICITY, Bureau of Naval Personnel. Very thorough, easily followed course in electricity for beginner, layman, or intermediate student. Begins with simplest definitions, presents coordinated, systematic coverage of basic theory and application: conductors, insulators, static electricity, magnetism, production of voltage, Ohm's law, direct current series and parallel circuits, wiring techniques, electromagnetism, alternating current, capacitance and inductance, measuring instruments, etc.; application to electrical machines such as alternating and direct current generators, motors, transformers, magnetic magnifiers, etc. Each chapter contains problems to test progress; answers at rear. No math needed beyond algebra. Appendices on signs, formulas, etc. 345 illustrations. 448pp. 7V2 x 10. basic

S973 Paperbound $3.00

ELEMENTARY METALLURGY AND METALLOGRAPHY,

A. M. Shrager. An introduction to common metals and alloys; stress is upon steel and iron, but other metals and alloys also covered. aspects of production, processing, working of metals. Designed for student who wishes to enter metallurgy, for bright high school or college beginner, layman who wants background on extremely important industry. Questions, at ends of chapters, many microphotographs, glossary. Greatly revised 1961 edition. 195 illustrations, tables, ix + 389pp. 53/s x 8. S138 Paperbound $2.25

All

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS BRIDGES AND THEIR BUILDERS, D. B. Steinman & S. R. Watson. Engineers, historians, and every person who has ever been fascinated by great spans will find this book an endless source of information and interest. Greek and Roman structures, Medieval bridges, modern classics such as the Brooklyn Bridge, and the latest developments in the science are retold by one of the world's leading authorities on bridge design and construction. BRIDGES AND THEIR BUILDERS is the only comprehensive and accurate semi-popular history of tnese important measures of progress in print. New, greatly revised, enlarged edition. 23 photos; 26 line-drawings. Index, xvii 4- 401pp. x 8. T431 Paperbound $2.00

5%

FAMOUS BRIDGES OF THE WORLD,

B. Steinman. An up-to-the-minute new edition of a book that explains the fascinating drama of how the world's great bridges came to be built. The author, designer of the famed Mackinac bridge, discusses bridges from all periods and all parts of the world, explaining their various types of construction, and describing the problems their builders faced. Although primarily for youngsters, this cannot fail to interest readers of all ages. 48 illustrations in the text. 23 photographs. 99pp. 6Va x 9V4. T161 Paperbound $1.00 D.

HOW DO YOU USE A SLIDE RULE? by A. A. Merrill. A step-by-step explanation of the slide rule that presents the fundamental rules clearly enough for the non-mathematician to understand. Unlike most instruction manuals, this work concentrates on the two most important operations: multiplication and division. 10 easy lessons, each with a clear drawing, for the reader who has difficulty following other expositions. 1st publication. Index. 2 Appendices. 10 illustrations. 78 problems, all with answers, vi 36 pp. 6Vs x 9V4. T62 Paperbound 60$

+

HOW TO CALCULATE

QUICKLY, H. Sticker. A tried and true method for increasing your "numthe ability to see relationships between numbers and groups of numbers. Addisubtraction, multiplication, tion, division, fractions, and other topics are treated through techniques not generally taught in schools: left to right multiplication, division by inspection, etc. This is not a collection of tricks which work only on special numbers, but a detailed well-planned course, consisting of over 9,000 problems that you can work in spare moments. It excellent for anyone who is inconvenienced by slow computational skills. 5 or 10 is minutes of this book daily will double or triple your calculation speed. 9,000 problems, answers. 256pp. 53/8 x 8. T295 Paperbound $1.00 ber sense"

—

MATHEMATICAL FUN, GAMES AND PUZZLES, Jack Frohlichstein. A children who have trouble with math, for teachers in need

valuable service for parents

of a supplement to regular upper elementary and junior high math texts (each section is graded easy, average, difficult for ready adaptation to different levels of ability), and for just anyone who would like to develop basic skills in an informal and entertaining manner. The author combines ten years of experience as a junior high school math teacher with a method that uses puzzles and games to introduce the basic ideas and operations of arithmetic. Stress on everyday uses of math: banking, stock market, personal budgets, insurance, taxes. Intellectually stimulating and practical, too. 418 problems and diversions with answers. Bibliography. 120 illustrations, xix + 306pp. 5% x 8y2 T789 Paperbound $1.75 of

—

—

.

GREAT IDEAS OF MODERN MATHEMATICS: THEIR NATURE AND USE, Jagjit Singh. Reader with only high school math will understand main mathematical ideas of modern physics, astronomy, genetics, psychology, evolution, etc. better than many who use them as tools, but comprehend little of their basic structure. Author uses his wide knowledge of non-mathematical fields in brilliant exposition of differential equations, matrices, group theory, logic, statistics, problems of mathematical foundations, imaginary numbers, vectors, etc. Original publication. 2 appendixes. 2 indexes. 65 illustr. 322pp. 53/8 x 8. S587 Paperbound $1.75

THE UNIVERSE OF LIGHT, W. Bragg. Sir William Bragg, Nobel Laureate and great modern physiis also well known for his powers of clear exposition. Here he analyzes all aspects of

cist,

for the layman: lenses, reflection, refraction, the optics of vision, x-rays, the photoelectric effect, etc. He tells you what causes the color of spectra, rainbows, and soap bubbles, light

how magic mirrors work, and much more. Dozens Index.

199

line

drawings and photographs,

of simple

including 2

5%x8.

experiments are described. Preface. color plates, x + 283pp. T538 Paperbound $1.85

full-page

•INTRODUCTION TO SYMBOLIC LOGIC AND ITS APPLICATIONS, Rudolph Carnap. One of the clearest, most comprehensive, and rigorous introductions to modern symbolic logic, by perhaps its greatest living master. Not merely elementary theory, but demonstrated applications in mathematics, physics, and biology. Symbolic languages of various degrees of complexity are analyzed, and one constructed. "A creation of the rank of a masterpiece," Zentralblatt fur Mathematik und Ihre Grenzgebiete. Over 300 exercises. 5 figures. Bibliography. Index, xvi + 241pp. 53/s x 8. S453 Paperbound $1.85 •HIGHER MATHEMATICS FOR STUDENTS OF CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS, J. W. Mellor. Not abstract, but practical, drawing its problems from familiar laboratory material, this book covers theory and application of differential calculus, analytic geometry, functions with singularities, integral calculus, infinite series, solution of numerical equations, differential equations, Fourier's theorem and extensions, probability and the theory of errors, calculus of variations, determinants, etc. "If the reader is not familiar with this book, it will repay him to examine it," CHEM. & ENGINEERING NEWS. 800 problems. 189 figures. 2 appendices; 30 tables of integrals, probability functions, etc. Bibliography, xxi x 8. 641pp.

+

5%

S193 Paperbound $2.50

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS THE FOURTH DIMENSION SIMPLY EXPLAINED, edited by Henry

P. Manning. Originally written as entries in contest sponsored by "Scientific American," then published in book form, these 22 essays present easily understood explanations of how the fourth dimension may be studied, the relationship of non-Euclidean geometry to the fourth dimension, analogies to three-dimensional space, some fourth-dimensional absurdities and curiosities, possible measurements and forms in the fourth dimension. In general, a thorough coverage of many of the simpler properties of fourth-dimensional space. Multi-points of view on many of the most important aspects are valuable aid to comprehension. Introduction by Dr. Henry P. Manning gives proper emphasis to points in essays, more advanced account of fourthdimensional geometry. 82 figures. 251pp. 53/8 x 8. T711 Paperbound $1.35

TRIGONOMETRY REFRESHER FOR TECHNICAL MEN, A. A. Klaf. A modern question and answer covers plane trigonometry: angles, quadrants, text on plane and spherical trigonometry. Part trigonometrical functions, graphical representation, interpolation, equations, logarithms, solution of triangles, slide rules, etc. Part II discusses applications to navigation, surveying, periodic functions, vectors, polar elasticity, architecture, and engineering. Small angles, coordinates, De Moivre's theorem, fully covered. Part III is devoted to spherical trigonometry and the solution of spherical triangles, with applications to terrestrial and astronomical problems. Special time-savers for numerical calculation. 913 questions answered for you! 1738 problems; answers to odd numbers. 494 figures. 14 pages of functions, formulae. Index, x I

+

629pp. 53/s x

T371 Paperbound $2.00

8.

CALCULUS REFRESHER FOR TECHNICAL MEN. A. A. Klaf. Not an ordinary textbook but a unique refresher for engineers, technicians, and students. An examination of the most important aspects of differential and integral calculus by means of 756 key questions. Part covers simple differential calculus: constants, variables, functions, increments, derivatives, logarithms, curvature, etc. Part II treats fundamental concepts of integration: inspection, substitution, transformation, reduction, areas and volumes, mean value, successive and partial integration, double and triple integration. Stresses practical aspects! A 50 page section gives applications to civil and nautical engineering, electricity, stress and strain, elasticity, industrial engineering, and similar fields. 756 questions answered. 556 problems; solutions to odd numbers. 36 pages of constants, formulae. Index, v 431pp. 5% x 8. T370 Paperbound $2.00 I

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PROBABILITIES AND LIFE, Emile Borel. One of the leading French mathematicians of the 100 years makes use of certain results of mathematics of probabilities and explains a of problems that for the most part, are related to everyday living or to illness and death: computation of life expectancy tables, chances of recovery from various diseases, probabilities of job accidents, weather predictions, games of chance, and so on. Emphasis last

number

results not processes, though some indication is made of mathematical proofs. Simple free of technical terminology, limited in scope to everyday situations, it is comto laymen, fine reading for beginning students of probability. New English translation. Index. Appendix, vi x 8V2. T121 Paperbound $1.00 87pp.

on

style,

in

prehensible

+

5%

POPULAR SCIENTIFIC LECTURES, Hermann von Helmholtz. 7 lucid expositions by a preeminent scientific mind: "The Physiological Causes of Harmony in Music," "On the Relation of Optics to Painting," "On the Conservation of Force," "On the Interaction of Natural Forces," "On Goethe's Scientific Researches" into theory of color, "On the Origin and Significance of Geometric Axioms," "On Recent Progress in the Theory of Vision." Written with simplicity of expression, stripped of technicalities, these are easy to understand and delightful reading for anyone interested in science or looking for an introduction to serious study of acoustics or optics. Introduction by Professor Morris Kline, Director, Division of Electromagnetic Research, New York University, contains astute, impartial evaluations. Selected from "Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects," 1st and 2nd series, xii 286pp. x 8V2. T799 Paperbound $1.45

5%

+

SCIENCE AND METHOD, Henri Poincare. Procedure of scientific discovery, methodology, experiment, idea-germination— the intellectual processes by which discoveries come into being. Most significant and most interesting aspects of development, application of ideas. Chapters cover selection of facts, chance, mathematical reasoning, mathematics, and logic; Whitehead Russell, Cantor; the new mechanics, etc. 288pp. 5% x 8. S222 Paperbound $1 50

HEAT AND

ITS WORKINGS, Morton Mott-Smith, Ph.D. An unusual book; to our knowledge the only middle-level survey of this important area of science. Explains clearly such important concepts as physiological sensation of heat and Weber's law, measurement of heat, evolution of thermometer, nature of heat, expansion and contraction of solids, Boyle's law, specific heat. BTU's and calories, evaporation, Andrews's isothermals, radiation, the relation of heat to light, many more topics inseparable from other aspects of physics. A wide, nonmathematical yet thorough explanation of basic ideas, theories, phenomena for laymen and beginning scientists illustrated by experiences of daily life. Bibliography. 50 illustrations. x 165pp. 53/8 x 8V2. T978 Paperbound $1.00

+

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS Literature, History of Literature ARISTOTLE'S THEORY OF POETRY AND THE FINE ARTS, edited by S. H. Butcher. The celebrated Butcher translation of this great classic faced, page by page, with the complete Greek text. A 300 page introduction discussing Aristotle's ideas and their influence in the history of thought and literature, and covering art and nature, imitation as an aesthetic form, poetic art and morality, tragedy, comedy, and similar topics. Modern Aristotelian criticism truth T42 Paperbound $2.00 discussed by John Gassner. Ixxvi + 421pp. 5ft x 8.

INTRODUCTIONS TO ENGLISH LITERATURE, edited by B. Dqbree. Goes far beyond ordinary histories, ranging from the 7th century up to 1914 (to the 1940's in some cases.) The first half of each volume is a specific detailed study of historical and economic background of the period and a general survey of poetry and prose, including trends of thought, influences, etc. The second and larger half is devoted to a detailed study of more than 5000 poets, novelists, dramatists; also economists, historians, biographers, religious writers, philosophers, travellers, and scientists of literary stature, with dates, lists of major works and their dates, keypoint critical bibliography, and evaluating comments. The most compendious bibliographic literary aid within its price range.

and

Vol.

I.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE TO SKELTON,

Orton. 450pp. 5Vs x Vol.

II.

W. L. Renwick, H. T75 Clothbound $4.50

(1509),

7%.

THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE, 1510-1688,

V.

de Sola Pinto. 381pp. 5Vs

x

77/8

.

T76 Clothbound $4.50 Vol.

Vol.

AUGUSTANS AND ROMANTICS, 1689-1830,

III.

IV.

THE VICTORIANS AND AFTER, 1830-1940's,

H.

E.

Dyson,

J.

Butt.

320pp. 5Vs x 7%. T77 Clothbound $4.50

Batho, B. DobrSe. 360pp.

5V8

x 77/s.

T78 Clothbound $4.50

AND ROMANCE, W.

P. Ker. Written by one of the foremost authorities on medieval the standard survey of medieval epic and romance. It covers Teutonic epics, Beowulf., French chansons de geste, the Roman de Troie, and many other Icelandic sagas, important works of literature. It is an excellent account for a body of literature whose beauty x 8. and value has only recently come to be recognized. Index, xxiv 398pp.

EPIC

literature, this

is

5%

+

T355 Paperbound $2.00 F. B. Gummere. Most useful factual introduction; fund of descriptive quotes, cites over 260 ballads. Examines, from folkloristic view, structure; choral, elements; meter, diction, fusion; effects of tradition, editors; almost every other aspect of border, riddle, kinship, sea, ribald, supernatural, etc., ballads. Bibliography. T548 Paperbound $1.85 2 indexes. 374pp. 5% x 8.

THE POPULAR BALLAD, material; ritual

MASTERS OF THE DRAMA, John Gassner. The most comprehensive history of the drama in print, covering drama in every important tradition from the Greeks to the Near East, China, Japan, Medieval Europe, England, Russia, Italy, Spain, Germany, and dozens of other drama producing nations. This unsurpassed reading and reference work encompasses more than 800 dramatists and over 2000 plays, with biographical material, plot summaries, theatre history, etc. "Has no competitors in its field," THEATRE ARTS. "Best of its kind in English," NEW REPUBLIC. Exhaustive 35 page bibliography. 77 photographs and drawings. Deluxe edition with reinforced cloth binding, headbands, stained top. xxii + 890pp. T100 Clothbound $6.95 x 8.

5%

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC ART, D. C. drama from primitive beginnings to Eugene

Stuart. The basic work on the growth of Western O'Neill, covering over 2500 years. Not a mere listing or survey, but a thorough analysis of changes, origins of style, and influences in each dramatic conventions, social pressures, choice of material, plot devices, stock period; situations, etc.; secular and religious works of all nations and epochs. "Generous and

thoroughly documented researches," Outlook. "Solid studies and periods," London Times. Index. Bibliography, xi + 679pp.

of

5%

influences x

and

playwrights

8.

T693 Paperbound $2.75 A SOURCE BOOK IN THEATRICAL HISTORY (SOURCES OF THEATRICAL HISTORY), A. M. Nagler. Over 2000 years of actors, directors, designers, critics, and spectators speak for themselves in this potpourri of writings selected from the great and formative periods of western drama. On-the-spot descriptions of masks, costumes, makeup, rehearsals, special effects, acting methods, backstage squabbles, theatres, etc. Contemporary glimpses of Moliere rehearsing his company, an exhortation to a Roman audience to buy refreshments and keep quiet, Goethe's rules for actors, Belasco telling of $6500 he spent building a river, Restoration actors being told to avoid "lewd, obscene, or indecent postures," and much more. Each selection has an introduction by Prof. Nagler. This extraordinary, lively collection is ideal as a source of otherwise difficult to obtain material, as well as a fine book for browsing. T515 Paperbound $3.00 Over 80 illustrations. 10 diagrams, xxiii 611pp. 5 3/s x 8.

+

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS —

WORLD DRAMA,

B. H. Clark. The dramatic creativity of a score of ages and eras all in two handy compact volumes. Over V3 of this material is unavailable in any other current edition! 46 plays from Ancient Greece, Rome, Medieval Europe, France, Germany, Italy, England,

—

Scandinavia; India, China, Japan, etc. including classic authors like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Plautus, Marlowe, Jonson, Farquhar, Goldsmith, Cervantes, Dumas, Goethe, Schiller, Ibsen, and many others. This creative collection avoids hackneyed material and includes only completely first-rate works which are relatively little known or difficult to obtain. "The most comprehensive collection of important plays from all literature available in English," SAT. REV. OF LITERATURE. Introduction. Reading lists. x 8. 2 volumes. 1364pp. Vol. 1, T57 Paperbound $2.50 Vol. 2, T59 Paperbound $2.50 Russia,

Moiiere,

5%

MASTERPIECES OF THE RUSSIAN DRAMA, edited with introduction by G. R. Noyes. This only comprehensive anthology of Russian drama ever published in English offers complete texts, in lst-rate modern translations, of 12 plays covering 200 years. Vol. 1: "The Young Hopeful," Fonvisin; "Wit Works Woe," Griboyedov; "The Inspector General," Gogol; "A Month in the Country," Turgenev; "The Poor Bride," Ostrovsky; "A Bitter Fate," Pisemsky. Vol. 2: "The Death of Ivan the Terrible," Alexey Tolstoy "The Power of Darkness," Lev Tolstoy; "The Lower Depths," Gorky; "The Cherry Orchard," Chekhov; "Professor Storitsyn," Andreyev; "Mystery Bouffe," Mayakovsky. Bibliography. Total of 902pp. 5% x 8. Vol. 1 T647 Paperbound $2.25 Vol. 2 T648 Paperbound $2.00

EUGENE O'NEILL: THE MAN AND HIS PLAYS, B. H. Clark. Introduction to O'Neill's life and work. Clark analyzes each play from the early THE WEB to the recently produced MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN and THE ICEMAN COMETH revealing the environmental and dramatic influences necessary for Appendices. Index, ix

a

+

understanding

complete

5%

182pp.

x

of

these

important

works.

Bibliography.

T379 Paperbound $1.35

8.

THE HEART OF THOREAU'S JOURNALS, edited by 0. Shepard. The best general selection from Thoreau's voluminous (and rare) journals. This intimate record of thoughts and observations reveals the full Thoreau and his intellectual development more accurately than any of his published works: self-conflict between the scientific observer and the poet, reflections on transcendental philosophy, involvement in the tragedies of neighbors and national causes, etc. T741 Paperbound $1.50 New preface, notes, introductions, xii + 228pp. 5% x 8.

THOREAU: A WRITER'S JOURNAL, edited by L. Stapleton. A unique new selection from the concentrating on Thoreau's growth as a conscious literary artist, the ideals and purposes of his art. Most of the material has never before appeared outside of the complete 14-volume edition. Contains vital insights on Thoreau's projected book on Concord, thoughts on the nature of men and government, indignation with slavery, sources of inspiration, goals T678 Paperbound $1.65 in life. Index, xxxiii + 234pp. 53/8 x 8. H. D.

Journals

THE HEART OF EMERSON'S JOURNALS, edited by Bliss Perry. Best of these revealing Journals, originally 10 volumes, presented in a one volume edition. Talks with Channing, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott; impressions of Webster, Everett, John Brown, and Lincoln; records of moments of sudden understanding, vision, and solitary ecstasy. "The essays do not reveal the power of Emerson's mind ... as do these hasty and informal writings," x 8. T477 Paperbound $1.85 N.Y. Times. Preface by Bliss Perry. Index, xiii + 357pp.

5%

Rand. This is the best non-technical discussion of the transformation of Latin pagan culture into medieval civilization. Covering such figures as Augustine, the Neoplatonists, and many other literary Boethius, Jerome, Gregory, Tertullian, men, educators, classicists, and humanists, this book is a storehouse of information prenon-specialist. "Thoughtful, beautifully written," sented clearly and simply for the intelligent AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW. "Extraordinarily accurate," Richard McKeon, THE NATION. T369 Paperbound $2.00 365pp. 5% x 8. ix

FOUNDIRS OF THE MIDDLE AGES,

E.

K.

+

PLAY-MAKING: A MANUAL OF CRAFTSMANSHIP, William Archer. With an extensive, new introduction by John Gassner, Yale Univ. The permanently essential requirements of solid play construction are set down in clear, practical language: theme, obligatory scene, peripety, dialogue, character, psychology, one of the most influential elements in the modern theatre, subject since is contained explicitly or implicitly within its

277pp.

exposition, foreshadowing, tension, other topics. This book has been and almost everything said on the covers. Bibliography. Index, xlii

+

T651 Paperbound $1.75

53/8 x 8.

G. E. Lessing. One of the most brilliant of German playwrights of the eighteenth-century age of criticism analyzes the complex of theory and tradition that of theater. These 104 essays on aesthetic theory helped demolish the the world constitutes regime of French classicism, opening the door to psychological and social realism, romanoriginal functions of tragedy; drama as the rational world; the include the ticism. Subjects meaning of pity and fear, pity and fear as means for purgation and other Aristotelian coninterdependence of poet's language and actor's interpreforce; cepts; genius and creative tation; truth and authenticity; etc. A basic and enlightening study for anyone interested in to the theatergoer. Introduction by Prof. Victor philosopher aesthetics and ideas, from the T32 Paperbound $1.45 . Lange. xxii 265pp. 4V2 x 63/8

HAMBURG DRAMATURGY,

+

.

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS

Americana OF DISCOVERY, J. Bakeless. A vivid reconstruction of how unspoiled America to the first white men. Authentic and enlightening accounts of Hudson's landing York, Coronado's trek through the Southwest; scores of explorers, settlers, trappers, soldiers. America's pristine flora, fauna, and Indians in every region and state in fresh and unusual new aspects. "A fascinating view of what the land was like before the first highway went through," Time. 68 contemporary illustrations, 39 newly added in this edition. Index. Bibliography, x 500pp. 53/e x 8. T761 Paperbound $2.00

THE

EYES

appeared in

New

+

AUDUBON AND

HIS JOURNALS, J. J. Audubon. A collection of fascinating accounts of Europe and the early 1800's through Audubon's own eyes. Includes the Missouri River Journals an eventful trip through America's untouched heartland, the Labrador Journals, the European Journals, the famous "Episodes", and other rare Audubon material, including the descriptive chapters from the original letterpress edition of the "Ornithological Studies", omitted in all later editions. Indispensable for ornithologists, naturalists, and all lovers of Americana and adventure. 70-page biography by Audubon's granddaughter. 38 illustrations. Index. Total of

America

—

in

1106pp.

53/s

T675 Vol T676 Vol

x 8.

I

II

Paperbound $2.25 Paperbound $2.25 The set $4.50

TRAVELS OF WILLIAM BARTRAM, edited by Mark Van Doren. The first inexpensive illustrated edition of one of the 18th century's most delightful books is an excellent source of first-hand material on American geography, anthropology, and natural history. Many descriptions of early Indian tribes are our only source of information on them prior to the infiltration of the white man. "The mind of a scientist with the soul of a poet," John Livingston Lowes. 13 original illustrations and maps. Edited with an introduction by Mark Van Doren. 448pp. 5% x 8. T13 Paperbound $2.00

GARRETS AND PRETENDERS: A HISTORY OF BOHEMIANISM IN AMERICA, A. Parry. The colorful and fantastic history of American Bohemianism from Poe to Kerouac. This is the only complete record of hoboes, cranks, starving poets, and suicides. Here are Pfaff, Whitman, Crane, Bierce, Pound, and many others. New chapters by the author and by H. T. Moore bring this thorough and well-documented history down to the Beatniks. "An excellent account," N. Y. Times. Scores of cartoons, drawings, and caricatures. Bibliography. Index, xxviii + T708 Paperbound $1.95 421pp. 5% x 83/a. THE EXPLORATION OF THE COLORADO RIVER AND

ITS CANYONS, J. W. Powell. The thrilling firstof the expedition that filled in the last white space on the map of the United Rapids, famine, hostile Indians, and mutiny are among the perils encountered as the unknown Colorado Valley reveals its secrets. This is the only uncut version of Major Powell's classic of exploration that has been printed in the last 60 years. Includes later reflections and subsequent expedition. 250 illustrations, new map. 400pp. x 83/8 T94 Paperbound $2.25

hand account States.

5%

.

THE JOURNAL OF HENRY

D. THOREAU, Edited by Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allen. Henry Thoreau is not only one of the most important figures in American literature and social thought; his voluminous journals (from which his books emerged as selections and crystallizations) constitute both the longest, most sensitive record of personal internal development and a most penetrating description of a historical moment in American culture. This present set, which was first issued in fourteen volumes, contains Thoreau's entire journals from 1837 to 1862, with the exception of the lost years which were found only recently. We are reissuing it, complete and unabridged, with a new introduction by Walter Harding, Secretary of the Thoreau Society. Fourteen volumes reissued in two volumes. Foreword by Henry Seidel Canby. Total of 1888pp. 83/% x 12V4. T312-3 Two volume set, Clothbound $20.00

GAMES AND SONGS OF AMERICAN CHILDREN,

collected by William Wells Newell. A remarkable

collection of 190 games with songs that accompany many of them; cross references to show similarities, differences among them; variations; musical notation for 38 songs. Textual discussions show relations with folk-drama and other aspects of folk tradition. Grouped into categories for ready comparative study: Love-games, histories, playing at work, human life, bird and beast, mythology, guessing-games, etc. New introduction covers relations of songs and dances to timeless heritage of folklore, biographical sketch of Newell, other pertinent data. A good source of inspiration for those in charge of groups of children and a valuable reference for anthropologists, sociologists, psychiatrists. Introduction by Carl Withers. New indexes of first lines, games. x 8V2. xii 242pp. T354 Paperbound $1.75

5%

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CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS GARDNER'S PHOTOGRAPHIC SKETCH BOOK OF THE CIVIL WAR, Alexander Gardner. The first published collection of Civil War photographs, by one of the two or three most famous of the era, outstandingly reproduced from the original positives. Scenes of battles: Appomattox, Manassas, Mechanicsville, Bull Run, Yorktown, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg immediately after retirement of forces. Battle ruins at Richmond, Petersburg, Gaines'Mill. Prisons, arsenals, a slave pen, fortifications, headquarters, pontoon bridges, soldiers, a field hospital. A unique glimpse into the realities of one of the bloodiest wars in history, with an introductory text to each picture by Gardner himself. Until this edition, there were only five known copies in libraries, and fewer in private hands, one of which sold at auction in 1952 for $425. Introduction by E. F. Bleiler. 100 full page 7 x 10 photographs T476 Clothbound $6.00 (original size). 224pp. 8V2 x 103/4.

photographers

crucial etc.

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF NORTH AMERICAN FOLKLORE AND FOLKSONG, Charles Haywood, Ph.D. The only book that brings together bibliographic information on so wide a range of folklore material. Lists practically everything published about American folksongs, ballads, dances, more than 35,000 titles folk beliefs and practices, popular music, tales, similar material of books, articles, periodicals, monographs, music publications, phonograph records. Each title, and place of publication, arranger and performer of with author, date entry complete particular examples of folk music, many with Dr. Haywood's valuable criticism, evaluation. American People," is complete listing of general and regional studies, titles Volume I, "The of tales and songs of Negro and non-English speaking groups and where to find them,

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Occupational Bibliography including sections listing sources of information, folk material on cowboys, riverboat men, 49ers, American characters like Mike Fink, Frankie and Johnnie, John Henry, many more. Volume II, "The American Indian," tells where to find information on dances, myths, songs, ritual of more than 250 tribes in U.S., Canada. A monumental product of 10 years' labor, carefully classified for easy use. "All students of this subject Stith Thompson, will find themselves in debt to Professor Haywood," in American Anthropologist. "... a most useful and excellent work," Duncan Emrich, Chief Folklore Section, Library of Congress, in "Notes." Corrected, enlarged republication of 1951 edition. New Preface. New index of composers, arrangers, performers. General index of more than T797-798 Clothbound $12.50 15,000 items. Two volumes. Total of 1301pp. 6Vb x 9V4. .

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INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN YUCATAN, John

L. Stephens. One of first white men to penetrate of Yucatan tells the thrilling story of his discoveries of 44 cities, remains of once-powerful Maya civilization. Compelling text combines narrative power with historical significance as it takes you through heat, dust, storms of Yucatan; native festivals with brutal bull fights; great ruined temples atop man-made mounds. Countless idols, sculptures, tombs, examples of Mayan taste for rich ornamentation, from gateways to personal trinkets, accurately illustrated, discussed in text. Will appeal to those interested in ancient civilizaRepublication of tions, and those who like stories of exploration, discovery, adventure. last (1843) edition. 124 illustrations by English artist, F. Catherwood. Appendix on Mayan architecture, chronology. Two volume set. Total of xxviii + 927pp. Vol T926 Paperbound $2.00 Vol II T927 Paperbound $2.00 The set $4.00

interior

I

Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim was known to the public as the inventive genius who created the Maxim gun, automatic sprinkler, and a this is by heavier-than-air plane that got off the ground in 1894. Here, his son reminisces no means a formal biography about the exciting and often downright scandalous private eccentric father. A warm and winning portrait of a prankish, mislife of his brilliant, chievous, impious personality, a genuine character. The style is fresh and direct, the belongs on the effect is unadulterated pleasure. "A book of charm and lasting humor 'must read' list of all fathers," New York Times. "A truly gorgeous affair," New Statesman specially viii x 8V2. for this edition, and Nation. 17 illustrations, 16 108pp.

A GENIUS IN THE FAMILY, Hiram Percy Maxim.

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5%

T948 Paperbound $1.00

HORSELESS CARRIAGE DAYS, Hiram

P. Maxim. The best account of an important technological revolution by one of its leading figures. The delightful and rewarding story of the author's experiments with the exact combustibility of gasoline, stopping and starting mechanisms, carriage design, and engines. Captures remarkably well the flavor of an age of scoffers and rival inventors not above sabotage; of noisy, uncontrollable gasoline vehicles and incredible historic information and light humor are combined to furnish mobile steam kettles. ". highly entertaining reading," New York Times. 56 photographs, 12 specially for this edition. 53/8 x T964 Paperbound $1.35 xi 175pp. 8V2. .

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BODY, BOOTS AND BRITCHES: FOLKTALES, BALLADS AND SPEECH FROM COUNTRY NEW YORK, Harold W. Thompson. A unique collection, discussion of songs, stories, anecdotes, proverbs handed down orally from Scotch-Irish grandfathers, German nurse-maids, Negro workmen, gathered from all over Upper New York State. Tall tales by and about lumbermen and pirates, canalers and injun-fighters, tragic and comic ballads, scores of sayings and proverbs all tied together by an informative, delightful narrative by former president of New York Historical Society. "... a sparkling homespun tapestry that every lover of Americana will want to have around the house," Carl Carmer, New York Times. Republication of 1939 edition. 20 line-drawings. Index. Appendix (Sources of material, bibliography). 530pp. 53/8 x 8V2. T411 Paperbound $2.25 .

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS

Art,

History of Art, Antiques,

Graphic

Arts,

Handcrafts

ART STUDENTS' ANATOMY, E. J. Farris. Outstanding art anatomy that uses chiefly living objects for its illustrations. 71 photos of undraped men, women, children are accompanied by carefully labeled matching sketches to illustrate the skeletal system, articulations and movements, bony landmarks, the muscular system, skin, fasciae, fat, etc. 9 x-ray photos show movement of joints. Undraped models are shown in such actions as serving in tennis, drawing a bow in archery, playing football, dancing, preparing to spring and to dive. Also discussed and illustrated are proportions, age and sex differences, the anatomy of the smile, etc. 8 plates by the great early 18th century anatomic illustrator Siegfried Albinus are also included. Glossary. 158 figures, 7 in color, x x 83/8 T744 Paperbound $1.50 159pp.

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AN ATLAS OF ANATOMY FOR ARTISTS, F Schider. A new 3rd edition of this standard text larged by 52 new illustrations of hands, anatomical studies by Cloquet, and expressive

enlife

studies of the body by Barcsay. 189 clear, detailed plates offer you precise information of impeccable accuracy. 29 plates show all aspects of the skeleton, with closeups of special areas, while 54 full-page plates, mostly in two colors, give human musculature as seen from four different points of view, with cutaways for important portions of the body. 14 fullpage plates provide photographs of hand forms, eyelids, female breasts, and indicate the location of muscles upon models. 59 additional plates show how great artists of the past utilized human anatomy. They reproduce sketches and finished work by such artists as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Goya, and 15 others. This is a lifetime reference work which will be one of the most important books in any artist's library. "The standard reference tool," AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION. "Excellent," AMERICAN ARTIST. Third enlarged edition. 189 plates, 647 illustrations, xxvi T241 Clothbound $6.00 192pp. 77/a x lOVe.

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AN ATLAS OF ANIMAL ANATOMY FOR ARTISTS, W. largest, richest animal anatomy for artists available

Ellenberger, H. Baum, H. Dittrich. The in English. 99 detailed anatomical plates dog, cat, lion, deer, seal, kangaroo, flying squirrel, cow, bull, Surface features are clearly indicated, while progressive beneath-the-skin pictures show musculature, tendons, and bone structure. Rest and action are exhibited in terms of musculature and skeletal structure and detailed cross-sections are given for heads and important features. The animals chosen are representative of specific families so that a study of these anatomies will provide knowledge of hundreds of related species. "Highly recommended as one of the very few books on the subject worthy of being used as an authoritative guide," DESIGN. "Gives a fundamental knowledge," AMERICAN ARTIST. Second revised, enlarged edition with new plates from Cuvier, Stubbs, etc. 288 illustrations. 153pp. 113/8 x 9. T82 Clothbound $6.00 of such animals as the horse, goat, monkey, hare, and bat.

THE HUMAN FIGURE IN MOTION, Eadweard Muybridge. The largest selection in print of Muybridge's famous high-speed action photos of the human figure in motion. 4789 photographs illustrate 162 different actions-, men, women, children mostly undraped are shown walking,

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carrying various objects, sitting, lying down, climbing, throwing, arising, and per150 other actions. Some actions are shown in as many as 150 photographs each. All in all there are more than 500 action strips in this enormous volume, series shots taken at shutter speeds of as high as l/6000th of a second! These are not posed shots, but true stopped motion. They show bone and muscle in situations that the human eye is not fast enough to capture. Earlier, smaller editions of these prints have brought $40 and more on the out-of-print market. "A must for artists," ART IN FOCUS. "An unparalleled dictionary of action for all artists," AMERICAN ARTIST. 390 full-page plates, with 4789 photographs. Printed on heavy glossy stock. Reinforced binding with headbands, xxi 390pp. 7 7/a x 10%. running,

forming over

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T204 Clothbound $10.00

ANIMALS

IN MOTION, Eadweard Muybridge. This is the largest collection of animal action in print. 34 different animals (horses, mules, oxen, goats, camels, pigs, cats, guanacos, gnus, deer, monkeys, eagles and 21 others) in 132 characteristic actions. The horse alone is shown in more than 40 different actions. All 3919 photographs are taken in series at speeds up to l/6000th of a second. The secrets of leg motion, spinal patterns, head movements, strains and contortions shown nowhere else are captured. You will see exactly how and how they differ; a lion sets his foot down; how an elephant's knees are like a human's the position of a kangaroo's legs in mid-leap; how an ostrich's head bobs; details of the flight of birds and thousands of facets of motion only the fastest cameras can catch. Photographed from domestic animals and animals in the Philadelphia zoo, it contains neither semiposed artificial shots nor distorted telephoto shots taken under adverse conditions. Artists, biologists, decorators, cartoonists, will find this book indispensable for understanding animals in motion. "A really marvelous series of plates," NATURE (London). "The dry plate's most spectacular early use was by Eadweard Muybridge," LIFE. 3919 photographs; 380 full pages of plates. 440pp. Printed on heavy glossy paper. Deluxe binding with headbands.

photos

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T203 Clothbound $10.00

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS ART ANATOMY, William Rimmer, M.D. Often called one of America's foremost contributions to art instruction, a work of art in its own right. More than 700 line drawings by the author, anatomist and dissector as well as artist, with a non-technical anatomical text. Impeccably accurate drawings of muscles, skeletal structure, surface features, other aspects males and females, children, adults and aged persons show not only form, size, insertion and articulation but personality and emotion as reflected by physical features usually ignored in modern anatomical works. Complete unabridged reproduction of 1876 edition slightly rearranged. Introduction by Robert Hutchinson. 722 illustrations, xiii + 153pp. 7% x 103/4. T908 Paperbound $2.00 first-rate

of

ANIMAL DRAWING: ANATOMY AND ACTION FOR ARTISTS, C. R. Knight. The author and illustrator of this work was "the most distinguished painter of animal life." This extensive course in animal drawing discusses musculature, bone structure, animal psychology, movements, habits, habitats. Innumerable tips on proportions, light and shadow play, coloring, hair formation, feather arrangement, scales, how animals lie down, animal expressions, etc., from great apes to birds. Pointers on avoiding gracelessness in horses, deer; on introducing proper power and bulk to heavier animals; on giving proper grace and subtle expression to members of the cat family. Originally titled "Animal Anatomy and Psychology for the Artist and Layman." Over 123 illustrations. 149pp. 8V4 x IOV2. T426 Paperbound $2.00 DESIGN FOR ARTISTS AND CRAFTSMEN, L. Wolchonok. The most thorough course ever prepared on the creation of art motifs and designs. It teaches you to create your own designs out of things around you from geometric patterns, plants, birds, animals, humans, landscapes, and man-made objects. It leads you step by step through the creation of more than 1300 designs, and shows you how to create design that is fresh, well-founded, and original. Mr. Wolchonok, whose text is used by scores of art schools, shows you how the same idea can be developed into many different forms, ranging from near representationalism to the most advanced forms of abstraction. The material in this book is entirely new, and combines full awareness of traditional design with the work of such men as Miro, LSger, Picasso, Moore, and others. 113 detailed exercises, with instruction hints, diagrams, and details to enable you to apply Wolchonok's methods to your own work. "A great cont.ibution to the field of design and crafts," N. Y. SOCIETY OF CRAFTSMEN. More than 1300 illustrations, xv 207pp. 77/8 x 103/4. T274 Clothbound $4.95

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HAWTHORNE ON PAINTING. A vivid recreation, from students' notes, of instruction by Charles W. Hawthorne, given for over 31 years at his famous Cape Cod School of Art. Divided into sections on the outdoor model, still life, landscape, the indoor model, and water color, each section begins with a concise essay, followed by epigrammatic comments on color, form, seeing, etc. Not a formal course, but comments of a great teacher-painter on specific student works, which will solve problems in your own painting and understanding of art. "An excellent introduction for laymen and students alike," Time. Introduction. 100pp. 5 3/8 x 8. T653 Paperbound $1.00 THE ENJOYMENT AND USE OF COLOR, Walter Sargent. This book explains fascinating

rela-

among colors, between colors in nature and art; describes experiments that you can perform to understand these relations more thoroughly; points out hundreds of little known facts about color values, intensities, effects of high and low illumination, complementary colors, color harmonies. Practical hints for painters, references to techniques of masters, questions at chapter ends for self-testing all make this a valuable book for artists, professional and amateur, and for general readers interested in world of color. Republication of 1923 edition. 35 illustrations, 6 full-page plates. New color frontispiece. Index, xii + 274pp. 53/8 x 8. T944 Paperbound $2.25 tions

DECORATIVE ALPHABETS AND INITIALS, ed. by Alexander Nesbitt. No payment, no permission needed to reproduce any one of these 3924 different letters, covering 1000 years. Crisp, clear all in line, from Anglo-Saxon mss., Luebeck Cathedral, 15th century Augsburg; the Holbein, Cresci, Beardsley, Rossing Wadsworth, John Moylin, etc. Every of Durer, imaginable style. 91 complete alphabets. 123 full-page plates. 192pp. 73/4 x 103/4 T544 Paperbound $2.25

letters

work

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THREE CLASSICS OF ITALIAN CALLIGRAPHY, edited by Oscar Ogg. Here, combined in a single volume, are complete reproductions of three famous calligraphic works written by the greatest writing masters of the Renaissance: Arrighi's OPERINA and IL MODO, Tagliente's LO PRESENTE LIBRO, and Palatino's LIBRO NUOVO. These books present more than 200 complete alphabets and thousands of lettered specimens. The basic hand is Papal Chancery, but scores of other alphabets are also given: European and Asiatic local alphabets, foliated and art alphabets, scrolls, cartouches, borders, etc. Text is in Italian. Introduction. 245 plates, x 272pp. T212 Paperbound $2.25 6Va x 9V4.

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CALLIGRAPHY, J. G. Schwandner. One of the legendary books in the graphic arts, copies of which brought $500 each on the rare book market, now reprinted for the first time in over 200 years. A beautiful plate book of graceful calligraphy, and an inexhaustible source of first-rate material copyright-free, for artists, and directors, craftsmen, commercial artists, etc. More than 300 ornamental initials forming 12 complete alphabets, over 150 ornate frames and panels, over 200 flourishes, over 75 calligraphic pictures including a temple, cherubs, cocks, dodos, stags, chamois, foliated lions, greyhounds, etc. Thousand of calligraphic elements to be used for suggestions of quality, sophistication, antiquity, and sheer beauty. Historical introduction. 158 full-page plates. 368pp. 9 x 13. T475 Clothbound $10.00

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS HISTORY AND TECHNIQUE OF LETTERING, A. Nesbitt. The only thorough inexpensive history of letter forms from the point of view of the artist. Mr. Nesbitt covers every major development in lettering from the ancient Egyptians to the present and illustrates each development with a complete alphabet. Such masters as Baskerville, Bell, Bodoni, Caslon, Koch, Kilian, Morris, Garamont, Jenson, and dozens of others are analyzed in terms of artistry and historical development. The author also presents a 65-page practical course in lettering, besides the full historical text. 89 complete alphabets; 165 additional lettered specimens. T427 Paperbound $2.00 xvii + 300pp. 53/s x 8.

THE

FOOT-HIGH LETTERS: A GUIDE TO LETTERING (A PRACTICAL SYLLABUS FOR TEACHERS), M. Price. A complete alphabet of Classic Roman letters, each a foot high, each on a separate perfect for use in lettering classes. In 16 x 22 plate addition to an accompanying

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description, each plate also contains 9 two-inch-high forms of letter in various type faces, such as "Caslon," "Empire," "Onyx," and "Neuland," illustrating the many possible derivations from the standard classical forms. One plate contains 21 additional forms of the letter A. The fully illustrated 16-page syllabus by Mr. Price, formerly of the Pratt Institute and the Rhode Island School of Design, contains dozens of useful suggestions for student and teacher alike. An indispensable teaching aid. Extensively revised. 16-page syllabus and 30 plates in T239 Clothbound $6.00 slip cover, 16 x 22.

STYLES OF ORNAMENT, Alexander Speltz. Largest collection of ornaments in print Lombard, Gothic, illustrations of prehistoric, Frank, Romanesque, Mohammedan, Renaissance, Polish, Swiss, Rococo, Sheraton, Empire, U. S. Colonial, etc., ornament. Gargoyles, dragons, columns, necklaces, urns, friezes, furniture, buildings, keyholes, tapestries, fantastic animals, armor, religious objects, much more, all in line. Reproduce any T557 Paperbound $2.50 one free. Index. Bibliography. 400 plates. 656pp. 5% x 8%.

THE

3765

HANDBOOK OF DESIGNS AND DEVICES,

C. P. Hornung. This unique book is indispensable to the designer, commercial artist, and hobbyist. It is not a textbook but a working collection 1836 basic designs and variations, carefully reproduced, which may be used without permission. Variations of circle, line, band, triangle, square, cross, diamond, swastika, pentagon, octagon, hexagon, star, scroll, interlacement, shields, etc. Supplementary notes on the background and symbolism of the figures. "A necessity to every designer who would be original without having to labor heavily," ARTIST AND ADVERTISER. 204 plates. 240pp. 53/8 x 8. of

T125 Paperbound $2.00

UNIVERSAL PENMAN, George Bickham. This beautiful book, which first appeared in 1743, is the largest collection of calligraphic specimens, flourishes, alphabets, and calligraphic illustrations ever published. 212 full-page plates are drawn from the work of such 18th century masters of English roundhand as Dove, Champion, Bland, and 20 others. They contain 22 complete alphabets, over 2,000 flourishes, and 122 illustrations, each drawn with a stylistic grace impossible to describe. This book is invaluable to anyone interested in the beauties of calligraphy, or to any artist, hobbyist, or craftsman who wishes to use the very best ornamental handwriting and flourishes for decorative purposes. Commercial artists, advertising artists, have found it unexcelled as a source of material suggesting quality. "An essential part of any art library, and a book of permanent value," AMERICAN ARTIST. 212 T20 Clothbound $10.00 plates. 224pp. 9 x 13%. THE

WOODCUTS BY THOMAS BEWICK AND HIS SCHOOL. Prepared by Dover's editorial staff, is the largest collection of woodcuts by Bewick and his school ever compiled. Contains complete engravings from all his major works and a wide range of illustrations from lesser-known collections, all photographed from clear copies of the original books and reproduced in line. Carefully and conveniently organized into sections on Nature (animals and birds, scenery and landscapes, plants, insects, etc.), People (love and courtship, social life, school and domestic scenes, misfortunes, costumes, etc.), Business and Trade, and illustrations from primers, fairytales, spelling books, frontispieces, borders, fables and allegories, etc. In addition to technical proficiency and simple beauty, Bewick's work is remarkable as a mode of pictorial symbolism, reflecting rustic tranquility, an atmosphere of rest, siminexhaustible source of illustrative plicity, idyllic contentment. A delight for the eye, an material for art studios, commercial artists, advertising agencies. Individual illustrations (up to 10 for any one use) are copyright free. Classified index. Bibliography and sources. Introduction by Robert Hutchinson. 1800 woodcuts, xiv + 247pp. 9 x 12. T766 Clothbound $10.00 1800

this

the

HANDBOOK OF EARLY ADVERTISING ART, C. P. Hornung. The largest collection of copyrfghtcontains some 2,000 illustrations of agrifree early advertising art ever compiled. Vol. cultural devices, animals, old automobiles, birds, buildings, Christmas decorations (with 7 Santa Clauses by Nast), allegorical figures, fire engines, horses and vehicles, Indians, and 30 other categories! Vol. II, devoted portraits, sailing ships, trains, sports, trade cuts to typography, has over 4000 specimens: 600 different Roman, Gothic, Barnum, Old English faces; 630 ornamental type faces; 1115 initials, hundreds of scrolls, flourishes, etc. This third edition is enlarged by 78 additional plates containing all new material. "A remarkable collection," PRINTERS' INK. "A rich contribution to the history of American design," GRAPHIS. T122 Clothbound $10.00 242pp. 9 x 12. Volume I. Pictorial. Over 2000 illustrations, xiv 312pp. 9 x 12. T123 Clothbound $10.00 Volume II, Typographical. Over 4000 specimens, vii only Clothbound, $18.50 Two volume set, T121 A

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CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS THE 100 GREATEST ADVERTISEMENTS, WHO WROTE THEM AND WHAT THEY DID, J. L. Watkins. 100 (plus 13 added for this edition) of most successful ads ever to appear. "Do You Make sat down," "A Hog Can Cross the These Mistakes in English," "They laughed when Country," "The Man in the Hathaway Shirt," over 100 more ads that changed habits of a nation, gave new expressions to the language, built reputations. Also salient facts behind I

ads, often in words of their creators. "Useful 2nd revised edition. Introduction. Foreword by .

252pp. 73A x

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.

valuable

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enlightening," Printers' Ink.

Raymond Rubicam.

103/4.

130 illustrations. T540 Paperbound $2.50

Index.

THE DIDEROT PICTORIAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF TRADES AND INDUSTRY, MANUFACTURING AND THE TECHNICAL ARTS IN PLATES SELECTED FROM "L'ENCYCLOPEDIE OU DICTIONNAIRE RAISONNE DES SCIENCES, DES ARTS, ET DES METIERS" OF DENIS DIDEROT, edited with text by C. Gillispie. The first modern selection of plates from the high point of 18th century French engraving, Diderot's famous Encyclopedia. Over 2000 illustrations on 485 full-page most of them original size, illustrating the trades and industries of one of the most fascinating periods of modern history, 18th century France. These magnificent engravings provide an invaluable source of fresh, copyright-free material to artists and illustrators, a lively and accurate social document to students of cultures, an outstanding find to the lover of fine engravings. The plates teem with life, with men, women, and children performing all of the thousands of operations necessary to the trades before and during the early stages of the industrial revolution. Plates are in sequence, and show general operations, closeups of difficult operations, and details of complex machinery. Such important and interesting trades and industries are illustrated as sowing, harvesting, beekeeping, cheesemaking, operating plates,

windmills, milling flour, charcoal burning, tobacco processing, indigo, fishing, arts of war, salt extraction, mining, smelting iron, casting iron steel, extracting mercury, zinc, sulphur, copper, etc., slating, tinning, silverplating, gilding, making gunpowder, cannons, bells, shoeing horses, tanning, papermaking, printing, dying, and more than 40 other categories. Besides being a work of remarkable beauty and skill, this is also one of the largest collections T421 Two volume set $18.50 of working figures in print. 920pp. 9 x 12. Heavy library cloth.

THE HANDBOOK OF PLANT AND FLORAL ORNAMENT,

R. G. Hatton. One of the truly great collections of plant drawings for reproduction: 1200 different figures of flowering or fruiting plants line drawings that will reproduce excellently. Selected from superb woodcuts and copperplate engravings appearing mostly in 16th and 17th century herbals including the fabulously rare "Kreuter Biich" (Bock) "Cruijde Boeck" (Dodoens), etc. Plants classified according to botanical groups. Also excellent reading for anyone interested in home gardening or any phase of horticulture. Formerly "The Craftsman's Plant-Book: or Figures of Plants." Introductions. Over 1200 illustrations. Index. 548pp. 6Ve x 9V4. T649 Paperbound $3.00

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HANDBOOK OF ORNAMENT,

F. S. Meyer. One of the largest collections of copyright-free tradiart in print. It contains over 3300 line cuts from Greek, Roman, Medieval, Islamic, Renaissance, Baroque, 18th and 19th century sources. 180 plates illustrate elements of design with networks, Gothic tracery, geometric elements, flower and animal motifs, etc., while 100 plates illustrate decorative objects: chairs, thrones, daises, cabinets, crowns, weapons, utensils, vases, jewelry, armor, heraldry, bottles, altars, and scores of other objects. Indispensable for artists, illustrators, designers, handicrafters, etc. Full text. 3300 illustrations, T302 Paperbound $2.50 xiv 4- 548pp. 53/8 x 8.

tional

COSTUMES OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS, Thomas Hope.

Authentic costumes from

all

walks

of life in Roman, Greek civilizations, including Phrygia, Egypt, Persia, Parthia, Etruria, in finely drawn, detailed engravings by Thomas Hope (1770-1831). Scores of additional engravings of ancient musical instruments, furniture, jewelry, sarcophagi, other adjuncts to ancient life. All carefully copied from ancient vases and statuary. Textual introduction by author. Art and advertising personnel, costume and stage designers, students of fashion design will find these copyright-free engravings a source of ideas and inspiration and a valuable reference. Republication of 1st (1812) edition. 300 full-page plates, over 700 illustrations, xliv T21 Paperbound $2.00 300pp. 55/8 x 83/8

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PRINCIPLES OF ART HISTORY,

H. Wolfflin. Analyzing such terms as "baroque," "classic," "neoclassic," "primitive," "picturesque," and 164 different works by artists like Botticelli, van Cleve, Diirer, Hobbema, Holbein, Hals, Rembrandt, Titian, Brueghel, Vermeer, and many others, the author establishes the classifications of art history and style on a firm, concrete basis. This classic of art criticism shows what really occurred between the 14th century primitives and the sophistication of the 18th century in terms of basic attitudes and philosophies. "A remarkable lesson in the art of seeing," SAT. REV. OF LITERATURE. Translated from T276 Paperbound $2.00 the 7th German edition. 150 illustrations. 254pp. 6Vs x 9V4.

AFRICAN SCULPTURE, Ladislas Segy. First publication of a new book by the author of critically acclaimed AFRICAN SCULPTURE SPEAKS. It contains 163 full-page plates illustrating masks, fertility figures, ceremonial objects, etc., representing the culture of 50 tribes of West and Central Africa. Over 85% of these works of art have never been illustrated before, and each is an authentic and fascinating tribal artifact. A 34-page introduction explains the anthropological, psychological, and artistic values of African sculpture. "Mr. Segy is one of its top authorities," NEW YORKER. 164 full-page photographic plates. Bibliography. 244pp. 6x9. T396 Paperbound $2.00

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS DESIGN MOTIFS OF ANCIENT MEXICO, J. Enciso. This unique collection of pre-Columbian stamps for textiles and pottery contains 766 superb designs from Aztec, Olmec, Totonac, Maya, and Toltec origins. Plumed serpents, calendrical elements, wind gods, animals, flowers, demons, dancers, monsters, abstract ornament, and other designs. More than 90% of these illustrations are completely unobtainable elsewhere. Use this work to bring new barbaric beauty into your crafts or drawing. Originally $17.50. Printed in three colors. 766 illustrations, thousands of motifs. 192pp. 7?/8 x 103/4. T84 Paperbound $1.85

DECORATIVE ART OF THE SOUTHWEST INDIANS, D. S. Sides. A magnificent album of authentic designs (both pre- and post-Conquest) from the pottery, textiles, and basketry of the Navaho, Hopi, Mohave, Santo Domingo, and over 20 other Southwestern groups. Designs include birds, clouds, butterflies, quadrupeds, geometric forms, etc. A valuable book for folklorists, and a treasury for artists, designers, advertisers, and craftsmen, who may use without payment or permission any of the vigorous, colorful, and strongly rhythmic designs. Aesthetic and archeological notes. 50 plates. Bibliography of over 50 items, xviii + 101pp. 5 5/s x 8%. T139 Paperbound $1.00 PAINTING IN THE FAR EAST, Laurence Binyon. Excellent introduction by one of greatest authorities on subject studies 1500 years of oriental art (China, Japan; also Tibet, Persia), over 250 painters. Examines works, schools, influence of Wu Tao-tzu, Kanaoka, Toba Sojo, Masanobu, Okio, etc.; early traditions; Kamakura epoch; the Great Decorators; T'ang Dynasty; Matabei, beginnings of genre; Japanese woodcut, color print; much more, all chronological, in cultural context. 42 photos. Bibliography. 317pp. 6 x 9V4. T520 Paperbound $2.25

ON THE LAWS OF JAPANESE PAINTING,

H. Bowie. This unusual book, based on 9 years of profound study-experience in the Late Kano art of Japan, remains the most authentic guide in English to the spirit and technique of Japanese painting. A wealth of interesting and useful data on control of the brush; practise exercises; manufacture of ink, brushes, colors; the use of various lines and dots to express moods. It is the best possible substitute for a series of lessons from a great oriental master. 66 plates with 220 illustrations. Index, xv + 177pp. 6Vs x 9V4. T30 Paperbound $2.00

THE MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES OF MEDIEVAL PAINTING,

D. V. Thompson. Based on years study of medieval manuscripts and laboratory analysis of medieval paintings, this book discusses carriers and grounds, binding media, pigments, metals used in painting, etc. Considers relative merits of painting al fresco and al secco, the procession of coloring materials, burnishing, and many other matters. Preface by Bernard Berenson. Index. 239pp. x 8. T327 Paperbound $1.85

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THE CRAFTSMAN'S HANDBOOK, Cennino Cennini. This

is considered the finest English translaof IL LIBRO DELL' ARTE, a 15th century Florentine introduction to art technique. It is both fascinating reading and a wonderful mirror of another culture for artists, art students, historians, social scientists, or anyone interested in details of life some 500 years ago. While it is not an exact recipe book, it gives directions for such matters as tinting papers, gilding stone, preparation of various hues of black, and many other useful but nearly forgotten facets of the painter's art. As a human document reflecting the ideas of a practising medieval artist it is particularly important. 4 illustrations, xxvii + 142pp. D. V. Thompson translator. T54 Paperbound $1.35 6M» x 9V4.

tion

VASARI ON TECHNIQUE,

G. Vasari. Pupil of Michelangelo and outstanding biographer of the artists, Vasari also wrote this priceless treatise on the technical methods of the painters, architects, and sculptors of his day. This is the only English translation of this practical, informative, and highly readable work. Scholars, artists, and general readers will welcome these authentic discussions of marble statues, bronze casting, fresco painting, oil painting, engraving, stained glass, rustic fountains and grottoes, etc. Introduction and notes by G. B. Brown. Index. 18 plates, 11 figures, xxiv 32bpp. 53/s x 8.

Renaissance

+

T717 Paperbound $2.25

METHODS AND MATERIALS OF PAINTING OF THE GREAT SCHOOLS AND MASTERS,

C. L. Eastlake. vast, complete, and authentic reconstruction of the secret techniques of the masters of painting, collected from hundreds of forgotten manuscripts by the eminent President of the British Royal Academy: Greek, Roman, and medieval techniques; fresco and tempera; varnishes and encaustics; the secrets of Leonardo, Van Eyck, Raphael, and many others. Art historians, students, teachers, critics, and laymen will gain new insights into the creation of the great masterpieces; while artists and craftsmen will have a treasury of valuable techniques. Index. Two volume set. Total of 1025pp. x 8. T718 Paperbound $2.25

A

5%

T719 Paperbound $2.25 The set $4.50

BYZANTINE ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY, 0. M. Dalton. Still the most thorough work in Englishboth in breadth and in depth on the astounding multiplicity of Byzantine art forms throughout Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia from the 4th to the 15th century. Analyzes hundreds of individual pieces from over 160 public and private museums, libraries, and collections all over the world. Full treatment of Byzantine sculpture, painting, mosaic, jewelry, textiles, etc., including historical development, symbolism, and aesthetics. Chapters on iconography and ornament. Indispensable for study of Christian symbolism and medieval art. 457 illustrations, many full-page. Bibliography of over 2500 references. 4 Indexes, xx + T776 Clothbound $8.50 727pp. 6Vs x 9V4.

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CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS METALWORK AND ENAMELLING, H. Maryon. This is probably the best book ever written on the subject. Prepared by Herbert Maryon, F.S.A., of the British Museum, it tells everything necessary for home manufacture of jewelry, rings, ear pendants, bowls, and dozens of other objects. Clearly written chapters provide precise information on such topics as materials, tools, soldering, filigree, setting stones, raising patterns, spinning metal, repoussg work, hinges and joints, metal inlaying, damascening, overlaying, niello, Japanese alloys, enamelling, cloisonne, painted enamels, casting, polishing, coloring, assaying, and dozens of other techniques. This is the next best thing to apprenticeship to a master metalworker. 363 photographs and figures. 374pp. 5V2 x 8V2. T183 Clothbound $8.50 SCREEN TECHNIQUES, J. I. Biegeleisen, Max A. Conn. A complete-to-the-last-detail copiously illustrated home course in this fast growing modern art form. Full directions for building silk screen out of inexpensive materials; explanations of five basic methods of paper, blockout, tusche, film, photographic stencil preparation and effects possible: light and shade, washes, dry brush, oil paint type impastos, gouaches, pastels. Detailed coverage of multicolor printing, illustrated by proofs showing the stages of a 4 color print. Special section on common difficulties. 149 illustrations, 8 in color. Sources of supply, xiv 187pp. T433 Paperbound $1.75 6Va x 9V4. SILK

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—

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A HANDBOOK OF WEAVES, G. H. Oelsner. Now back in print! Probably the most complete book of weaves ever printed, fully explained, differentiated, and illustrated. Includes plain weaves; irregular, double-stitched, and filling satins; derivative, basket, and rib weaves; steep, undulating, broken, offset, corkscrew, interlocking, herringbone, and fancy twills; honeycomb, lace, and crepe weaves; tricot, matelass6, and montagnac weaves; and much more. Translated and revised by S. S. Dale, with supplement on the analysis of weaves and fabrics. 1875 illustraT209 Clothbound $5.00 tions, vii + 402pp. 6 x 9V4. BASIC BOOKBINDING, A. W. Lewis. Enables the beginner and the expert to apply the latest and most simplified techniques to rebinding old favorites and binding new paperback books. Complete lists of all necessary materials and guides to the selection of proper tools, paper, glue, boards, cloth, leather, or sheepskin covering fabrics, lettering inks and pigments, etc. You are shown how to collate a book, sew it, back it, trim it, make boards and attach them easy step-by-step stages. Author's preface. 261 illustrations with appendix. Index. in T169 Paperbound $1.45 xi + 144pp. 53/8 x 8.

BASKETRY,

F. J. Christopher. Basic introductions cover selection of materials, use and care equipment. Easy-to-follow instructions for preparation of oval, oblong trays, baskets, rush mats, tumbler holders, bicycle baskets, waste paper baskets, many other useful, beautiful articles made of coiled and woven reed, willow, rushes, raffia. Special sections present in clear, simple language and numerous illustrations all the how-to information you could need: linings, skein wire, varieties of stitching, simplified construction of handles, dying processes. For beginner and skilled craftsman alike. Edited by Majorie O'Shaugnessy. Bibliography. Sources of supply. Index. 112 illustrations. 108pp. T903 Paperbound $1.00 5 x 7V4.

of

tools,

lidded

THE ART OF ETCHING,

E. S. Lumsden. Everything you need to know to do etching yourself. First two sections devoted to technique of etching and engraving, covering such essentials relative merits of zinc and copper, cleaning and grounding plates, gravers, acids, arrangement of etching-room, methods of biting, types of inks and oils, mounting,

as

stretching and framing, preserving and restoring plates, size and color of printing papers, much more. A review of the history of the art includes separate chapters on Diirer and Lucas van Leyden, Rembrandt and Van Dyck, Goya, Meryon, Haden and Whistler, British masters of nineteenth century, modern etchers. Final section is a collection of prints by contemporary etchers with comments by the artists. Professional etchers and engravers will find this a highly useful source of examples. Beginners and teachers, students of art and printing will find it a valuable tool. Index. 208 illustrations. 384pp. x 8.

5%

T49 Paperbound $2.50

WHITTLING AND WOODCARVING, E. a moderately handy beginner. One

J. Tangerman. What to make and how to make it for even of the few works that bridge gap between whittling and serious carving. History of the art, background information on selection and use of woods, grips, types of strokes and cuts, handling of tools and chapters on rustic work, flat toys and windmills, puzzles, chains, ships in bottle, nested spheres, fans, more than 100 useful, entertaining objects. Second half covers carving proper: woodcuts, low relief, sculpture in the round, lettering, inlay and marquetry, indoor and outdoor decorations, pierced designs, much more. Final chapter describes finishing, care of tools. Sixth edition. Index. 464 illustrations, x T965 Paperbound $1.75 239pp. 51/2 x 8Ve.

+

THE PRACTICE OF TEMPERA PAINTING, Daniel

V.

Thompson,

Jr.

A careful exposition

of

all

aspects of tempera painting, including sections on many possible modern uses, propensities of various woods, choice of material for panel, making and applying the gesso, pigments and brushes, technique of the actual painting, gilding and so on everything one need know to try a hand at this proven but neglected art. The author is unquestionably the world's leading authority on tempera methods and processes and his treatment is based on exhaustive study of manuscript material. Drawings and diagrams increase clarity of text. No one interested in tempera painting can afford to be without this book. Appendix, "Tempera Practice in Yale A*rt School," by Lewis E. York. 85 illustrations by York; 4 full-page plates, ix x 149pp. 53/8 x 8V2. T343 Paperbound $1.50

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CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS SHAKER FURNITURE, E. D. Andrews and F. Andrews. The most illuminating study on what many scholars consider the best examples of functional furniture ever made. Includes the history of the sect and the development of Shaker style. The 48 magnificent plates show tables, chairs, cupboards, chests, boxes, desks, beds, woodenware, and much more, and are accompanied by detailed commentary. For all antique collectors and dealers, designers and decorators, historians and folklorists. "Distinguished in scholarship, in pictorial illumination, and in all the essentials of fine book making," Antiques. 3 Appendixes. Bibliography. Index. 192pp. 77/e x 10%. T679 Paperbound $2.00 JAPANESE HOMES AND THEIR SURROUNDINGS,

E.

S.

Morse.

Every aspect of the purely tradi-

tional Japanese home, from general plan and major structural features to ceremonial and traditional appointments tatami, hibachi, shoji, tokonoma, etc. The most exhaustive discussion in English, this book is equally honored for its strikingly modern conception of architecture. First published in 1886, before the contamination of the Japanese traditions, it preserves the authentic features of an ideal of construction that is steadily gaining devotees in the Western world. 307 illustrations by the author. Index. Glossary, xxxvi 372pp.

—

+

5%

x

8%.

T746 Paperbound $2.25

COLONIAL LIGHTING, Arthur H. Hayward. The largest selection of antique lamps ever illustrated anywhere, from rush light-holders of earliest settlers to 1880's with main emphasis on Colonial era. Primitive attempts at illumination ("Betty" lamps, variations of open wick design, candle molds, reflectors, etc.), whale oil lamps, painted and japanned hand lamps, Sandwich glass candlesticks, astral lamps, Bennington ware and chandeliers of wood, iron, pewter, brass, crystal, bronze and silver. Hundreds of illustrations, loads of information on colonial life, customs, habits, place of acquisition of lamps illustrated. A unique, thoroughgoing survey of an interesting aspect of Americana. Enlarged (1962) edition. New Introduction by James R. Marsh. Supplement "Colonial Chandeliers," photographs with descriptive notes. 169 illustrations, 647 lamps, xxxi + 312pp. 55/e x 8V4. T975 Paperbound $2.00

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CHINESE HOUSEHOLD FURNITURE, George N. Kates. The first book-length study of authentic Chinese domestic furniture in Western language. Summarises practically everything known about Chinese furniture in pure state, uninfluenced by West. History of style, unusual woods used, craftsmanship, principles of design, specific forms like wardrobes, chests and boxes, beds, chairs, tables, stools, cupboards and other pieces. Based on author's own investigation into scanty Chinese historical sources and surviving pieces in private collections and museums. Will reveal a new dimension of simple, beautiful work to all interior decorators, furniture designers, craftsmen. 123 illustrations; 112 photographs. Bibliography, xiii + 205pp. 5V4 x 7%. T958 Paperbound $1.50 ART AND THE SOCIAL ORDER, Professor D. W. Gotshalk, University of Illinois. One of the most profound and most influential studies of aesthetics written in our generation, this work is unusual in considering art from the relational point of view, as a transaction conof creation-object-apprehension. Discussing material from the fine arts, literature, music, and related disciplines, it analyzes the aesthetic experience, fine art, the creative process, art materials, form, expression, function, art criticism, art and social life and living. Graceful and fluent in expression, it requires no previous background in aesthetics and will be read with considerable enjoyment by anyone interested in the theory of art. "Clear, interesting, the soundest and most penetrating work in recent years," C. J. Ducasse, Brown University. New preface by Professor Gotshalk. xvi 248pp. 5 5/s x 8V2. T294 Paperbound $1.65

sisting

+

FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN ART,

A. Ozenfant. An illuminating discussion by a great artist of interrelationship of all forms of human creativity, from painting to science, writing to religion. The creative process is explored in all facets of art, from paleolithic cave painting to modern French painting and architecture, and the great universals of art are isolated.

the

its countless insights in aphorisms accompanied by carefully selected illustrations, book is itself an embodiment in prose of the creative process. Enlarged by 4 new chap226 illustrations. 368pp. 6Va x SVa. T215 Paperbound $2.00

Expressing this ters.

VITRUVIUS: TEN BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE. Book by 1st century Roman architect, engineer, oldest, most influential work on architecture in existence; for hundreds of years his is specific instructions were followed all over the world, by such men as Bramante, Michelangelo, Palladio, etc., and are reflected in major buildings. He describes classic principles of symmetry, harmony; design of treasury, prison, etc.; methods of durability; much more. He wrote in a fascinating manner, and often digressed to give interesting sidelights, making this volume appealing reading even to the non-professional. Standard English translation, by T645 Paperbound $2.00 Prof. M. H. Morgan, Harvard U. Index. 6 illus. 334pp. 53/s x 8.

THE BROWN DECADES, Lewis Mumford. In this now classic study of the arts in America, Lewis Mumford resurrects the "buried renaissance" of the post-Civil War period. He demonstrates that it contained the seeds of a new integrity and power and documents his study with detailed accounts of the founding of modern architecture in the work of Sullivan, Richardson, Root, Roebling; landscape development of Marsh, Olmstead, and Eliot; the graphic arts of Homer, Eakins, and Ryder. 2nd revised enlarged edition. Bibliography. 12 illustrations. T200 Paperbound $1.75 Index, xiv x 8. 266pp.

+

5%

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS Sullivan. The pioneer architect' whom Frank Lloyd Wright called "the master" reveals an acute sensitivity to social forces and values in this passionately honest account. He records the crystallization of his opinions and theories, the growth of his organic theory of architecture that still influences American designers and architects, contemporary ideas, etc. This volume contains the first appearance of 34 full-page plates of his finest architecture. Unabridged reissue of 1924 edition. New introduction by T281 Paperbound $2.00 R. M. Line. Index, xiv + 335pp. 53/a x 8.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA, Louis

THE DRAWINGS OF HEINRICH KLEY. The

first uncut republication of both of Kley's devastating sketchbooks, which first appeared in pre-World War Germany. One of the greatest cartoonists and social satirists of modern times, his exuberant and iconoclastic fantasy and his extraordinary technique place him in the great tradition of Bosch, Breughel, and Goya, while his subject matter has all the immediacy and tension of our century. 200 drawings, viii 128pp. 73/4 x 103/4. T24 Paperbound $1.85 I

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MORE DRAWINGS BY HEINRICH KLEY. All the sketches from Leut' Und Viecher (1912) and Sammel-Album (1923) not included in the previous Dover edition of Drawings. More of the bizarre, mercilessly iconoclastic sketches that shocked and amused on their original publication. Nothing was too sacred, no one too eminent for satirization by this imaginative, individual and accomplished master cartoonist. A total of 158 illustrations. Iv 104pp. 73/4 x 103/4. T41 Paperbound $1.85

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PINE FURNITURE OF EARLY NEW ENGLAND, R. H. Kettell. A rich understanding of one of America's most original folk arts that collectors of antiques, interior decorators, craftsmen, woodworkers, and everyone interested in American history and art will find fascinating and immensely useful. 413 illustrations of more than 300 chairs, benches, racks, beds, cupboards, mirrors, shelves, tables, and other furniture will show all the simple beauty and character of early New England furniture. 55 detailed drawings carefully analyze outstanding pieces "With its rich store of illustrations, this book emphasizes the individuality and varied design of early American pine furniture. It should be welcomed," ANTIQUES. 413 illustrations and 55 working drawings. 475. 8 x 10 3/4. T145 Clothbound $10.00

THE HUMAN FIGURE,

J. H. Vanderpoel. Every important artistic element of the human figure is pointed out in minutely detailed word descriptions in this classic text and illustrated as well in 430 pencil and charcoal drawings. Thus the text of this book directs your attention to all the characteristic features and subtle differences of the male and female (adults, children, and aged persons), as though a master artist were telling you what to look for at each stage. 2nd edition, revised and enlarged by George Bridgman. Foreword. 430 illustrations. T432 Paperbound $1.50 143pp. 6i/8 x 9V4.

LETTERING AND ALPHABETS,

J. A. Cavanagh. This unabridged reissue of LETTERING offers a styles derived from discussion, analysis, illustration of 89 basic hand lettering styles Caslons, Bodonis, Garamonds, Gothic, Black Letter, Oriental, and many others. Upper and lower cases, numerals and common signs pictured. Hundreds of technical hints on make-up, construction, artistic validity, strokes, pens, brushes, white areas, etc. May be reproduced without permission! 89 complete alphabets; 72 lettered specimens. 121pp. 93/4 x 8.

full

—

T53 Paperbound $1.35

STICKS AND STONES, Lewis Mumford. A survey of the forces that have conditioned American architecture and altered its forms. The author discusses the medieval tradition in early New England villages; the Renaissance influence which developed with the rise of the merchant influence of Jefferson's time; the "Mechanicsvilles" of Poe's generation; the Brown Decades; the philosophy of the Imperial facade; and finally the modern machine age. "A truly remarkable book," SAT. REV. OF LITERATURE. 2nd revised edition. 21 illustraT202 Paperbound $1.65 tions, xvii 228pp. 53/a x 8. class; the classical

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THE STANDARD BOOK OF QUILT MAKING AND COLLECTING, Marguerite Ickis. A complete easyto-follow guide with all the information you need to make beautiful, useful quilts. How to plan, design, cut, sew, appliquS, avoid sewing problems, use rag bag, make borders, tuft, every other aspect. Over 100 traditional quilts shown, including over 40 full-size patterns. At-home hobby for fun, profit. Index. 483 illus. 1 color plate. 287pp. 63/4 x 9V2. T582 Paperbound $2.00

THE BOOK OF SIGNS, Rudolf Koch. Formerly $20 to $25 on the out-of-print market, now only $1.00 in this unabridged new edition! 493 symbols from ancient manuscripts, medieval cathecoins, catacombs, pottery, etc. Crosses, monograms of Roman emperors, astrological,

drals,

chemical, botanical, runes, housemarks, and 7 other categories. Invaluable for handicraft workers, illustrators, scholars, etc., this material may be reproduced without permission. T162 Paperbound $1.00 493 illustrations by Fritz Kredel. 104pp. 6V2 x 9V4.

PRIMITIVE ART, Franz Boas. This authoritative and exhaustive work by a great American anthropologist covers the entire gamut of primitive art. Pottery, leatherwork, metal work, stone work, wood, basketry, are treated in detail. Theories of primitive art, historical depth in art history, technical virtuosity, unconscious levels of patterning, symbolism, styles, literature, music, dance, etc. A must book for the interested layman, the anthropologist, artist, handicrafter (hundreds of unusual motifs), and the historian. Over 900 illustrations (50 T25 Paperbound $2.00 ceramic vessels, 12 totem poles, etc.). 376pp. 5 3/s x 8.

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS

Miscellaneous THE COMPLETE KANO JIU-JITSU (JUDO),

H.

Hancock and

I.

K.

Most comprehensive

Higashi.

guide to judo, referred to as outstanding work by Encyclopaedia Britannica. Complete authentic Japanese system of 160 holds and throws, including the most spectacular, fully illustrated with 487 photos. Full text explains leverage, weight centers, pressure points, special tricks, etc.; shows how to protect yourself from almost any manner of attack though your attacker may have the initial advantage of strength and surprise. This authentic Kano system should x 8. not be confused with the many American imitations, xii 500pp. T639 Paperbound $2.00

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5%

THE MEMOIRS OF JACQUES CASANOVA. Splendid

self-revelation by history's most engaging yet highly intelligent and observant. banishments, thefts, treacheries, and imprisonments all over Europe: a life lived to the fullest and recounted with gusto in one of the greatest autobiographies of all time. What is more, these Memoirs are also one of the most trustworthy and valuable documents we have on the society and culture of the extravagant 18th century. Here are Voltaire, Louis XV, Catherine the Great, cardinals, castrati, an entire glittering civilization unfolding before you with an pimps, and pawnbrokers unparalleled sense of actuality. Translated by Arthur Machen. Edited by F. A. Blossom. Introx 8. duction by Arthur Symons. Illustrated by Rockwell Kent. Total of xlviii 2216pp. T338 Vol Paperbound $2.00 T339 Vol II Paperbound $2.00 T340 Vol III Paperbound $2.00 The set $6.00

scoundrel Here are

— utterly all

the

dishonest

famous

with

duels,

women and money, scandals,

amours,

—

5%

+

I

BARNUM'S OWN STORY, P. T. Barnum. The astonishingly frank and gratifyingly well-written autobiography of the master showman and pioneer publicity man reveals the truth about his early career, his famous hoaxes (such as the Fejee Mermaid and the Woolly Horse), his amazing commercial ventures, his fling in politics, his feuds and friendships, his failures and surprising comebacks. A vast panorama of 19th century America's mores, amusements, and vitality. 66 new illustrations in this edition, xii + 500pp. 5% x 8. T764 Paperbound $1.65 THE STORY OF THE TITANIC AS TOLD BY

ITS SURVIVORS, ed. by Jack Winocour. Most signifiof most overpowering naval disaster of modern times: all 4 authors were Includes 2 full-length, unabridged books: "The Loss of the S.S. Titanic," by Laurence Beesley, "The Truth about the Titanic," by Col. Archibald Gracie; 6 pertinent chapters from "Titanic and Other Ships," autobiography of only officer to survive, Second Officer Charles Lightoller; and a short, dramatic account by the Titanic's wireless operator, Harold Bride. 26 illus. 368pp. 53/s x 8. T610 Paperbound $1.50

cant

accounts

survivors.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF TASTE, Jean Anthelme

Brillat-Savarin.

Humorous,

satirical,

witty,

and

personal classic on joys of food and drink by 18th century French politician, litterateur. Treats the science of gastronomy, erotic value of truffles, Parisian restaurants, drinking contests: gives recipes for tunny omelette, pheasant, Swiss fondue, etc. Only modern translation of original French edition. Introduction. 41 illus. 346pp. x 83/8

5%

.

T591 Paperbound $1.50

THE ART OF THE STORY-TELLER, M.

Shedlock. This classic in the field of effective storyand educators as the finest and most lucid book on the subject. The author considers the nature of the story, the difficulties of communicating stories to children, the artifices used in story-telling, how to obtain and maintain the effect of the story, and, of extreme importance, the elements to seek and those to avoid in selecting material. A 99-page selection of Miss Shedlock's most effective stories and an extensive bibliography of further material by Eulalie Steinmetz enhance the book's usefulness, xxi T635 Paperbound $1.50 320pp. 53/s x 8. telling

is

regarded

by

librarians,

L.

story-tellers,

+

CREATIVE POWER: THE EDUCATION OF YOUTH IN THE CREATIVE ARTS, Hughes Mearns.

In

first

printing considered revolutionary in its dynamic, progressive approach to teaching the creative arts; now accepted as one of the most effective and valuable approaches yet formulated. Based on the belief that every child has something to contribute, it provides in a stimulating manner invaluable and inspired teaching insights, to stimulate children's latent powers of creative expression in drama, poetry, music, writing, etc. Mearns's methods were developed in his famous experimental classes in creative education at the Lincoln School of Teachers College, Columbia Univ. Named one of the 20 foremost books on education in recent times by National Education Association. New enlarged revised 2nd edition. Introduction.

272pp.

53/8

x 8.

T490 Paperbound $1.75

INEXPENSIVE EDUCATIONAL AIDS, T. J. Pepe, Superintendent of Schools, Southbury, Connecticut. An up-to-date listing of over 1500 tooklets, films, charts, etc. 5% costs FREE AND

25C; 1% costs more; 94% is yours for the asking. Use this material privately, or schools from elementary to college, for discussion, vocational guidance, projects. 59 categories include health, trucking, textiles, language, weather, the blood, office practice, wild life, atomic energy, other important topics. Each item described according to contents, number of pages or running time, level. All material is educationally sound, and without x 8. political or company bias. 1st publication. Second, revised edition. Index. 244pp. T663 Paperbound $1.50 less than in

5%

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS THE ROMANCE OF WORDS, E. Weekley. An entertaining collection of unusual word-histories that tracks down for the general reader the origins of more than 2000 common words and phrases in English (including British and American slang): discoveries often surprising, often humorous, that help trace vast chains of commerce in products and ideas. There are Arabic trade words, cowboy words, origins of family names, phonetic accidents, curious wanderings, folk-etymologies, etc. Index, xiii x 8. T710 Paperbound $1.25 210pp.

+

5%

PHRASE AND WORD ORIGINS: A STUDY OF FAMILIAR EXPRESSIONS,

A. H.

Holt.

One

of the

most

entertaining books on the unexpected origins and colorful histories of words and phrases, based on sound scholarship, but written primarily for the layman. Over 1200 phrases and 1000 separate words are covered, with many quotations, and the results of the most modern linguistic and historical researches. "A right jolly book Mr. Holt has made," N. Y. Times, v + 254pp. 53/e x 8. T758 Paperbound $1.35

AMATEUR WINE MAKING,

S. M. Tritton. Now, with only modest equipment and no prior knowledge, you can make your own fine table wines. A practical handbook, this covers every type of grape wine, as well as fruit, flower, herb, vegetable, and cereal wines, and many kinds of mead, cider, and beer. Every question you might have is answered, and there is a valuable discussion of what can go wrong at various stages along the way. Special supplement of yeasts and American sources of supply. 13 tables. 32 illustrations. Glossary. Index. 239pp. T514 Clothbound $4.00 5V2 x 8V2.

SAILING ALONE AROUND THE WORLD. Captain Joshua Slocum. A great modern classic in a convenient inexpensive edition. Captain Slocum's account of his single-handed voyage around the world in a 34 foot boat which he rebuilt himself. A nearly unparalleled feat of seamanship told with vigor, wit, imagination, and great descriptive power. "A nautical equivalent of Thoreau's account," Van Wyck Brooks. 67 illustrations. 308pp. 53/s x 8. T326 Paperbound $1.00 FARES, PLEASE! by J. A. Miller. Authoritative, comprehensive, and entertaining history of local public transit from its inception to its most recent developments: trolleys, horsecars, streetcars, buses, elevateds, subways, along with monorails, "road-railers," and a host of other extraordinary vehicles. Here are all the flamboyant personalities involved, the vehement arguments, the unusual information, and all the nostalgia. "Interesting facts brought into especially vivid life," N. Y. Times. New preface. 152 illustrations, 4 new. Bibliography, xix

+

204pp.

53/s

T671 Paperbound $1.50

x 8.

C. D. MacDougall. Shows how art, science, history, journalism can be perverted for private purposes. Hours of delightful entertainment and a work of scholarly value, this often shocking book tells of the deliberate creation of nonsense news, the Cardiff giant, Shakespeare forgeries, the Loch Ness monster, Biblical frauds, political schemes, literary hoaxers like Chatterton, Ossian, the disumbrationist school of painting, the lady in black at Valentino's tomb, and over 250 others. It will probably reveal the truth about a few things you've believed, and help you spot more readily the editorial "gander" and planted publicity release. "A stupendous collection and shrewd analysis." New Yorker. New revised edition. 54 photographs. Index. 320pp. 5 3/8 x 8. T465 Paperbound $2.00

HOAXES,

.

.

.

A HISTORY OF THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE WITH THEOLOGY IN CHRISTENDOM, A. D. White. Most thorough account ever written of the great religious-scientific battles shows gradual victory of science over ignorant, harmful beliefs. Attacks on theory of evolution; attacks on Galileo; great medieval plagues caused by belief in devil-origin of disease; attacks on Franklin's experiments with electricity; the witches of Salem; scores more that will amaze you. Author, co-founder and first president of Cornell U., writes with vast scholarly background, but in clear, readable prose. Acclaimed as classic effort in America to do away T608 Vol with superstition. Index. Total of 928pp. 5 3/8 x 8. Paperbound $2.00 T609 Vol II Paperbound $2.00 I

THE SHIP OF FOOLS, Sebastian Brant. First printed in 1494 in Basel, this amusing book swept Europe, was translated into almost every important language, and was a best-seller for centuries. That it is still living and vital is shown by recent developments in publishing. This is the only English translation of this work, and it recaptures in lively, modern verse the wit and insights of the original, in satirizations of foibles and vices: greed, adultery, envy, hatred, sloth, profiteering, etc. This will long remain the definitive English edition, for Professor Zeydel has provided biography of Brant, bibliography, publishing history, influences, etc. Complete reprint of 1944 edition. Translated by Professor E. Zeydel, University of Cincinnati. All 114 original woodcut illustrations, viii 399pp. 5V2 x 85/e.

all

+

T266 Paperbound $2.00

ERASMUS, A STUDY OF HIS

IDEALS AND PLACE IN HISTORY, Preserved Smith. This is the standard English biography and evaluation of the great Netherlands humanist Desiderius Erasmus. Written by one of the foremost American historians it covers all aspects of Erasmus's life, his influence in the religious quarrels of the Reformation, his overwhelming role in the field of letters, and his importance in the emergence of the new world view of the Northern Renaissance. This is not only a work of great scholarship, it is also an extremely interesting, vital portrait of a great man. 8 illustrations, xiv + 479pp. 55/s x 8V2. T331 Paperbound $2.00 LIFE,

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS CHRONICLES OF THE HOUSE OF BORGIA, Frederick Baron Corvo (Frederick W. many this is the major work of that strange Edwardian literary

opinion of Corvo." It

Rolfe). figure,

In

the

"Baron

was

Corvo's intention to investigate the notorious Borgias, from their first emergence in Spain to the Borgia saint in the 16th century and discover their true nature, disregarding both their apologists and their enemies. How well Corvo succeeded is questionable in a historical sense, but as a literary achievement and as a stylistic triumph the "Chronicles" has been a treasured favorite for generations. All the fabulous intrigues and devious currents and countercurrents of the Renaissance come vividly to life in Corvo's work, which is peopled with the notorious and notable personages of Italy and packed with fascinating lore. This is the first complete reprinting of this work, with all the appendices T275 Paperbound 52.00 and illustrations, xxi 375pp. 55/e x 8V2.

+

IN HUMAN BELIEF, Joseph Jastrow. A thoroughly enjoyable expose, psychologist, of the ineradicable gullibility of man. Episodes throughout history 1930 that will shock and amuse by revelations of our tendency to fashion belief from desire not reason: the case of "Patience Worth," Ozark woman taking down novels from dictation of 17th-century girl from Devon; "Taxil," perhaps greatest hoaxer of all time; the odic force of Baron Reichenbach; Charles Richet, Nobel Laureate, accepting brazen trickeries of Eusapia Palladino; dozens of other lunacies, crank theories, public tricksters and frauds. For anyone who likes to read about the aberrations of his race. Formerly "Wish and Wisdom." 58 illustrations; 22 full-page plates. Index, xiv 394pp. T986 Paperbound $1.85 x 8V2.

ERROR AND ECCENTRICITY

noted by — 180 a

A.D.

to

—

+

5%

FADS AND FALLACIES IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE, Martin Gardner. Formerly entitled IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE, this is the standard account of various cults, quack systems, and delusions which have masqueraded as science: hollow earth fanatics, Reich and orgone sex energy, dianetics, Atlantis, multiple moons, Forteanism, flying saucers, medical fallacies like iridiagnosis, zone therapy, etc. A new chapter has been added on Bridey Murphy, psionics, and other recent manifestations in this field. This is a fair, reasoned appraisal of eccentric theory which provides excellent inoculation against cleverly masked nonsense. "Should be read by everyone, scientist and non-scientist alike," R. T. Birge, Prof. Emeritus of Physics, Univ. of California; Former President, American Physical Society. Index, x x 8. 365pp.

+

5%

T394 Paperbound $1.75

MONEY CONVERTER AND TIPPING GUIDE FOR EUROPEAN TRAVEL, C. Vomacka. A small, convenient handbook crammed with information on currency regulations and tipping for every European country including the Iron Curtain countries, plus Israel, Egypt, and Turkey. Currency conversion tables for every country from U.S. to foreign and vice versa. The only source of such information as phone rates, postal rates, clothing sizes, what and when to tip, dutyfree imports, and dozens of other valuable topics. Always kept up to date. 128 pp. 3V2 x 5V4. T260 Paperbound 75$

HOW ADVERTISING IS WRITTEN— AND WHY, Aesop Glim. The best material from the famous "Aesop Glim" column in Printer's Ink. Specific, practical, constructive comments and criticisms on such matters as the aims of advertising, importance of copy, art of the headline, adjusting "tone of voice," creating conviction, etc. Timely, effective, useful. Written for the person interested in advertising profession, yet it has few equals as a manual for effective writing of any kind. Revised edition. 150pp. x 8. T782 Paperbound $1.25

5%

THE WORLD'S GREAT SPEECHES, edited by Lewis Copeland and Lawrence Lamm. 255 speeches ranging over scores of topics and moods (including a special section of "Informal Speeches" and a fine collection of historically important speeches of the U.S.A. and other western hemisphere countries), present the greatest speakers of all time from Pericles of Athens to Churchill, Roosevelt, and Dylan Thomas. Invaluable as a guide to speakers, fascinating as history both past and contemporary, much material here is available elsewhere only with great difficulty. 3 indices: Topic, Author, Nation, xx + 745pp. 5% x 8. T468 Paperbound $3*00

Pets CARE AND FEEDING OF BUDGIES (SHELL PARRAKEETS), and supply. Index. 40 illustrations. 93pp. 5 x 71/4.

C.

H.

Rogers. Sources of information

T937 Paperbound 650

THE CARE AND BREEDING OF GOLDFISH, Anthony Evans. Hundreds

of important details about outdoor pools and aquariums; the history, physical features and varieties of selection, care, feeding, health and breeding with a special appendix that shows you how to build your own goldfish pond. Enlarged edition, newly revised. Bibliography. 22 full-page plates; 4 figures. 129pp. 5 x 71/4. T935 Paperbound 750

indoor

and

goldfish;

—

OBEDIENCE TRAINING FOR YOUR DOG, C. Wimhurst. You can teach your dog to heel, retrieve, sit, jump, track, climb, refuse food, etc. Covers house training, developing a watchdog, obedience tests, working trials, police dogs. "Proud to recommend this book to every dog owner who is attempting to train his dog," says Blanche Saunders, noted American trainer, in her Introduction. Index. 34 photographs. 122pp. 5 x 7V4. T938 Paperbound $1.00

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS

New Books 101 PATCHWORK PATTERNS, Ruby Short McKim. With no more ability than the fundamentals of ordinary sewing, you will learn to make over 100 beautiful quilts: flowers, rainbows, Irish chains, fish and bird designs, leaf designs, unusual geometric patterns, many others. Cutting

designs carefully diagrammed and described, suggestions for materials, yardage estimates, step-by-step instructions, plus entertaining stories of origins of quilt names, other folklore. Revised 1962. 101 full-sized patterns. 140 illustrations. Index. 128pp. 7?/8 x 103/4.

T773 Paperbound $1.85 ESSENTIAL GRAMMAR SERIES By concentrating on the essential core of material that constitutes the semantically most important forms and areas of a language and by stressing explanation (often bringing parallel English forms into the discussion) rather than rote memory, this new series of grammar books is among the handiest language aids ever devised. Designed by linguists and teachers for adults with limited learning objectives and learning time, these books omit nothing important, yet they teach more usable language material and do it more quickly and permanently than any other self-study material. Clear and rigidly economical, they concentrate upon immediately usable language material, logically organized so that related material is always presented together. Any reader of typical capability can use them to refresh his grasp of language, to supplement self-study language records or conventional grammars used in schools, or to begin language study on his own. Now available:

ESSENTIAL GERMAN GRAMMAR,

5%

Dr.

Guy Stern &

E.

F.

Bleiler.

Index. Glossary of terms.

128pp.

T422 Paperbound $1.00

x 8.

ESSENTIAL FRENCH

GRAMMAR,

Dr.

Seymour Resnick.

Index.

Cognate

53/8 x 8.

list.

Glossary.

159pp.

T419 Paperbound $1.00

ESSENTIAL ITALIAN GRAMMAR,

Dr.

Olga Ragusa.

Index.

Glossary.

111pp. 53/8 x

8.

T779 Paperbound $1.00

ESSENTIAL SPANISH GRAMMAR, 138pp.

53/s

x 8.

Dr.

Seymour Resnick. Index. 50-page cognate list. Glossary. T780 Paperbound $1.00

PHILOSOPHIES OF MUSIC HISTORY: A Study of General Histories of Music, 1600-1960, Warren D. Allen. Unquestionably one of the most significant documents yet to appear in musicology, this thorough survey covers the entire field of historical research in music. An influential masterpiece of scholarship, it includes early music histories; theories on the ethos of music; lexicons, dictionaries and encyclopedias of music; musical historiography through the centuries; philosophies of music history; scores of related topics. Copiously documented. New preface brings work up to 1960. Index. 317-item bibliography. 9 illustrations; 3 full-page plates. 53/a x 8V2. xxxiv 382pp. T282 Paperbound $2.00

+

MR. DOOLEY ON

IVRYTHING AND IVRYBODY, Finley Peter Dunne. The largest collection in utterances by the irrepressible Irishman of Archey Street, one of the most characters in American fiction. Gathered from the half dozen books that appeared during the height of Mr. Dooley's popularity, these 102 pieces are all unaltered and uncut, and they are all remarkably fresh and pertinent even today. Selected and edited by Robert Hutchinson. 53/8 x 8V2. xii + 244p. T626 Paperbound $1.00 print of hilarious

vital

TREATISE ON PHYSIOLOGICAL OPTICS, Hermann von Helmholtz. Despite new investigations, this important work will probably remain preeminent. Contains everything known about physiological optics up to 1925, covering scores of topics under the general headings of dioptrics of the eye, sensations of vision, and perceptions of vision. Von Helmholtz's voluminous data are all included, as are extensive supplementary matter incorporated into the third German edition, new material prepared for 1925 English edition, and copious textual annotations by J. P. C. Southall. The most exhaustive treatise ever prepared on the subject, it has behind it a list of contributors that will never again be duplicated. Translated and edited by J. P. C. Southall. Bibliography. Indexes. 312 illustrations. 3 volumes bound as 2. Total of 1749pp. 53/8 x 8.

S15-16 Two volume set, Clothbound $15.00

THE ARTISTIC ANATOMY OF TREES, Rex Vicat

Cole. Even the novice with but an elementary of the structure of trees can learn to draw, paint trees from systematic, lucid instruction book. Copiously illustrated with the author's own sketches, diagrams, and 50 paintings from the early Renaissance to today, it covers composition; structure of twigs, boughs, buds, branch systems; outline forms of major species; how leaf is set on twig; flowers and fruit and their arrangement; etc. 500 illustrations. Bibliography. Indexes.

knowledge of drawfng and none

this

347pp.

53/s

x 8.

T1016 Clothbound $4.50

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS HOW PLANTS GET

THEIR NAMES,

L.

H.

Bailey.

In

this

basic

introduction

to

botanical

nomen-

clature, a famed expert on plants and plant life reveals the confusion that can result from misleading common names of plants and points out the fun and advantage of using a sound, scientific approach. Covers every aspect of the subject, including an historical survey beginning before Linnaeus systematized nomenclature, the literal meaning of scores of Latin names, their English equivalents, etc. Enthusiastically written and easy to follow, this handbook for gardeners, amateur horticultural ists, and beginning botany students is knowledgeable, accurate and useful. 11 illustrations. Lists of Latin, English botanical names. 192pp. 5% x T796 Paperbound $1.15 8V2.

PIERRE CURIE, Marie Curie. Nobel Prize winner creates a memorable portrait of her equally famous husband in a fine scientific biography. Recounting his childhood, his haphazard educaand his experimental research (with his brother) in the physics of crystals, Mme. Curie life the strong, determined personality of a great scientist at work and discusses, straightforward terms, her husband's and her own work with radium and radioA great book about two very great founders of modern science. Includes Mme. Curie's autobiographical notes. Translated by Charlotte and Vernon Kellogg, viii + 120pp. T199 Paperbound $1.00 5% x 8V2. tion,

brings to

clear, activity. in

STYLES IN PAINTING: A Comparative Study, Paul Zucker. Professor of Art History at Cooper Union presents an important work of art-understanding that will guide you to a fuller, deeper appreciation of masterpieces of art and at the same time add to your understanding of how they fit into the evolution of style from the earliest times to this century. Discusses general principles of historical method and aesthetics, history of styles, then illustrates with more than 230 great paintings organized by subject matter so you can see at a glance how styles have changed through the centuries. 236 beautiful halftones, xiv + 338pp. 5 5/s x 8V2. T760 Paperbound $2.00

NEW VARIORUM EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE of the monumental feats of Shakespeare scholarship is the famous New Variorum edition, containing full texts of the plays together with an entire reference library worth of historical and critical information: all the variant readings that appear in the quartos and folios; annotations by leading scholars from- the earliest days of Shakespeare criticism to the date of publication; essays on meaning, background, productions by Johnson, Addison, Fielding, Lessing, Hazlitt, Coleridge, Ulrici, Swinburne, and other major Shakespeare critics; original sources of Shakespeare's inspiration. For the first time, this definitive edition of Shakespeare's plays, each printed in a separate volume, will be available in inexpensive editions to scholars, to teachers and students, and to every lover of Shakespeare and fine literature. Now ready:

One

KING LEAR, edited by Horace Howard Furness. Bibliography.

+

viii

503pp.

MACBETH,

+

xvi

Jr.

Bibliography. List of editions collated

5%

JULIET, edited by Horace Howard Furness. notes, xxvi 480pp. 53/8 x 8V2.

Bibliography.

+

OTTHELLO, edited by Horace Howard Furness. Bibliography. x

+

471pp.

53/s

x

notes,

in

notes,

T1001 Paperbound $2.25

ROMEO AND in

in

T1000 Paperbound $2.25

edited by Horace Howard Furness x 8V2.

562pp.

List of editions collated

x 8V2.

53/8

List

of

editions collated

T1002 Paperbound $2.25 List

of editions

collated

in

notes,

T1003 Paperbound $2.25

8V2.

HAMLET, edited by Horace Howard Furness. Bibliography. List of editions collated in notes. of 926pp. 53/8 x 8V2. T1004-1005 Two volume set, Paperbound $4.50

Total

THE GARDENER'S YEAR, Karel Capek. The author of best known in U. S. as the author of "R. U. R.," a

this refreshingly funny book is probably biting satire on the machine age. Here, genius finds expression in a wholly different vein: a warm, witty chronicle of the joys and trials of the amateur gardener as he watches over his plants, his soil and the weather from January to December. 59 drawings by Joseph Capek add an important second dimension to the fun. "Mr. Capek writes with sympathy, understanding and humor," NEW YORK TIMES. "Will delight the amateur gardener, and indeed everyone else," SATURDAY REVIEW. Translated by M. and R. Weatherall. 59 illustrations. 159pp. 41/2 x 6V2. T1014 Paperbound $1.00 his

satiric

THE ADVANCE OF from the year the it: Pasteur, Anton markable grasp of

THE FUNGI,

E. C. Large. The dramatic story of the battle against fungi, potato blight hit Europe (1845) to 1940, and of men who fought and won de Bary, Tulasne, Berkeley, Woronin, Jensen, many others. Combines refacts and their significance with skill to write dramatic, exciting prose. "Philosophically witty, fundamentally thoughtful, always mature," NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE. "Highly entertaining, intelligent, penetrating," NEW YORKER. Bibliography. 64 illustrations. 6 full-page plates. 488pp. 53/8 x 8V2. T437 Paperbound $2.25

THE PAINTER'S METHODS AND MATERIALS, discusses

the

Examining

48

A.

P.

Laurie. Adviser to the

British

Royal

Academy

ills that paint is heir to and the methods most likely to counteract them. masterpieces by Fra Lippo Lippi, Millais, Boucher, Rembrandt, Romney, Van Eyck, Velazquez, Michaelangelo, Botticelli, Frans Hals, Turner, and others, he tries to discover how special and unique effects were achieved. Not conjectural information, but certain and authoritative. Beautiful, sharp reproductions, plus textual illustrations of apparatus and the results of experiments with pigments and media. 63 illustrations and diagrams. Index. 250pp. 53/8 x 8. T1019 Clothbound $3.75

CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS CHANCE, LUCK AND STATISTICS, H. C. Levinson. The theory of chance, or probability, and the science of statistics presented in simple, non-technical language. Covers fundamentals by analyzing games of chance, then applies those fundamentals to immigration and birth rates, operations research, stock speculation, insurance rates, advertising, and other fields. Excellent course supplement and a delightful introduction for non-mathematicians. Formerly "The Science of Chance." Index, xiv T1007 Paperbound $1.85 356pp. 5% x 8.

+

THROUGH THE ALIMENTARY CANAL WITH GUN AND CAMERA: A

Fascinating Trip to the Interior, S. Chappell. An intrepid explorer, better known as a major American humorist, accompanied by imaginary camera-man and botanist, conducts this unforgettably hilarious journey to the human interior. Wildly imaginative, his account satirizes academic pomposity, parodies cliche-ridden travel literature, and cleverly uses facts of physiology for comic purposes. All the original line drawings by Otto Soglow are included to add to the merriment. Preface by T376 Paperbound $1.00 Robert Benchley. 17 illustrations, xii + 116pp. 53/8 x 8V2.

George

to Students on Some of Life's Ideals, William James. greatest psychologist invests these lectures with immense personal charm, invaluable insights, and superb literary style. 15 Harvard lectures, 3 lectures delivered to students in New England touch upon psychology and the teaching of art, stream of consciousness, the child as a behaving organism, education and behavior, association of ideas, the gospel of relaxation, what makes life significant, and other related topics. Interesting, and T261 Paperbound $1.00 x 8V2. still vital pedagogy, x 146pp.

TALKS TO TEACHERS ON PSYCHOLOGY and America's

+

5%

WHIMSEY ANTHOLOGY,

collected by Carolyn Wells. Delightful verse on the lighter side: like decanters and flagons, lipograms and acrostics, alliteracharades, anagrams, linguistic and dialectic verse, tongue twisters, limericks, travesties, and just about very other kind of whimsical poetry ever written. Works by Edward Lear, Gelett Burgess, Poe, Lewis Carroll, Henley, Robert Herrick, Christina Rossetti, x 8V2. scores of other poets will entertain and amuse you for hours. Index, xiv + 221pp. T1020 Paperbound $1.25

A

logical whimsies, poems tive verse, enigmas and

shaped

5%

LANDSCAPE PAINTING, R. 0. Dunlop. A distinguished modern artist is a perfect guide to the aspiring landscape painter. This practical book imparts to even the uninitiated valuable methods and techniques. Useful advice is interwoven throughout a fascinating illustrated history of landscape painting, from Ma Yuan to Picasso. 60 half-tone reproductions of works by Giotto Giovanni Bellini, Piero della Francesca, Tintoretto, Giorgione, RaDhael, Van Ruisdael, Poussin' Gainsborough, Monet, Cezanne, Seurat, Picasso, many others. Total of 71 illustrations 4 in color. Index. 192pp. 73/8 x 10. T1018 Clothbound $6.00 PRACTICAL LANDSCAPE PAINTING, Adrian Stokes. A complete course in landscape painting that trains the senses to perceive as well as the hand to apply the principles underlying the pictorial aspect of nature. Author fully explains tools, value and nature of various colors, and instructs beginners in clear, simple terms how to apply them. Places strong emphasis on drawing and composition, foundations often neglected in painting texts. Includes pictorialtextual survey of the art from Ancient China to the present, with helpful critical comments and numerous diagrams illustrating every stage. 93 illustrations. Index. 256pp. x 8.

5%

T1017 Clothbound $3.75 PELLUCIDAR, THREE

NOVELS:

AT THE

EARTH'S

CORE,

PELLUCIDAR, TANAR OF PELLUCIDAR,

Edgar Rice Burroughs. The first three novels of adventure in the thrill-filled world within the hollow interior of the earth. David Innes's mechanical mole drills through the outer crust and precipitates him into an astonishing world. Among Burroughs's most popular work. Illustrations by J. Allan St. John. 53/8 x 8V2. T1051 Paperbound $2.00

T1050 Clothbound

$3.75

MILLER'S JESTS OR, THE WITS VADE-MECUM. Facsimile of the first edition of famous 18th century collection of repartees, bons mots, puns and jokes, the father of the humor anthology. A first-hand look at the taste of fashionable London in the Age of Pope. 247 entertaining anecdotes, many involving well-known personages such as Colley Cibber, Sir Thomas More, Rabelais, rich in humor, historic interest. New introduction contains biographical JOE

information on Joe Miller, fascinating history of his enduring collection, bibliographical information on collections of comic material. Introduction by Robert Hutchinson. 96pp. 53/s x 8V2. Paperbound $1.00

THE HUMOROUS WORLD OF JEROME K. JEROME. Complete essays and extensive passages from nine out-of-print books ("Three Men on Wheels," "Novel Notes," "Told After Supper," "Sketches

in Lavender, Blue and Green," "American Wives and Others," 4 more) by a highly original humorist, author of the novel "Three Men in a Boat." Human nature is JKJ's subject: the problems of husbands, of wives, of tourists, of the human animal trapped in the drawing room. His sympathetic acceptance of the shortcomings of his race and his ability to see humor in almost any situation make this a treasure for those who know his work and a pleasant surprise for those who don't. Edited and with an introduction by Robert Hutchinson, xii 260pp. 5 3/8 x 8V2. T58 Paperbound $1.00

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CATALOGUE OF DOVER BOOKS GEOMETRY OF FOUR DIMENSIONS,

H. P. Manning. Unique in English as a clear, concise introduction to this fascinating subject. Treatment is primarily synthetic and Euclidean, although hyperplanes and hyperspheres at infinity are considered by non-Euclidean forms. Historical introduction and foundations of 4-dimensional geometry; perpendicularity; simple angles; angles of planes; higher order; symmetry; order, motion; hyperpyramids, hypercones, hyperspheres; figures with parallel elements; volume, hypervolume in space; regular polyhedroids. x 8. Glossary of terms. 74 illustrations, ix 348pp. S182 Paperbound $2.00

+

5%

PAPER FOLDING FOR BEGINNERS, W. D. Murray and F. J. Rigney. A delightful introduction to the varied and entertaining Japanese art of origami (paper folding), with a full, crystal-clear text that anticipates every difficulty; over 275 clearly labeled diagrams of all important stages in creation. You get results at each stage, since complex figures are logically developed from simpler ones. 43 different pieces are explained: sailboats, frogs, roosters, etc. 6 photographic plates. 279 diagrams. 95pp. 55/a x 8%. T713 Paperbound $1.00 SATELLITES AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, D. King-Hele. An up-to-the-minute non-technical account of the man-made satellites and the discoveries they have yielded up to September of

196L Brings together information hitherto published only in hard-to-get scientific journals. Includes the life history of a typical satellite, methods of tracking, new information on the shape of the earth, zones of radiation, etc. Over 60 diagrams and 6 photographs. Mathematix 8V2. cal appendix. Bibliography of over 100 items. Index, xii 180pp. T703 Paperbound $2.00

+

5%

LOUIS PASTEUR, S. J. Holmes. A brief, very clear, and warmly understanding biography of the great French scientist by a former Professor of Zoology in the University of California. Traces his home life, the fortunate effects of his education, his early researches and first theses, and his constant struggle with superstition and institutionalism in his work on microorganisms, fermentation, anthrax, rabies, etc. New preface by the author. 159pp. x 8. T197 Paperbound $1.00

5%

THE ENJOYMENT OF CHESS PROBLEMS, K. S. Howard. A classic treatise on this minor art by an internationally recognized authority that gives a basic knowledge of terms and themes for the everyday chess player as well as the problem fan: 7 chapters on the two-mover; 7 more on 3- and 4-move problems; a chapter on selfmates; and much more. "The most important one-volume contribution originating solely in the U.S.A.," Alain White. 200 diagrams. Index. Solutions, viii T742 Paperbound $1.25 212pp. 53/8 x 8.

+

SAM LOYD AND HIS CHESS PROBLEMS,

Alain C. White. Loyd was (for all practical purposes) the father of the American chess problem and his protege and successor presents here the diamonds of his production, chess problems embodying a whimsy and bizarre fancy entirely unique. More than 725 in all, ranging from two-move to extremely elaborate five-movers, including Loyd's contributions to chess oddities problems in which pieces are arranged to form initials, figures, other by-paths of chess problem found nowhere else. Classified according to major concept, with full text analyzing problems, containing selections from Loyd's own writings. A classic to challenge your ingenuity, increase your skill. Corrected republication of 1913 edition. Over 750 diagrams and illustrations. 744 problems with solutions. 471pp. 53/8 x 8V2. T928 Paperbound $2.25

—

FABLES IN SLANG & MORE FABLES IN SLANG, George Ade. 2 complete books of major American humorist in pungent colloquial tradition of Twain, Billings. 1st reprinting in over 30 years includes "The Two Mandolin Players and the Willing Performer," "The Base Ball Fan Who Took the Only Known Cure," "The Slim Girl Who Tried to Keep a Date that was Never Made," 42 other tales of eccentric, perverse, but always funny characters. "Touch of genius," H. L. Mencken. New introduction by E. F. Bleiler. 86 illus. 208pp. 5% x 8. T533 Paperbound $1.00

Prices subject to change without notice.

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(continued from front

flap]

Phrase and Sentence Dictionary of Spoken Russian, English-Russian and Russian-English. S2.75

Phrase and Sentence Dictionary of Spoken Spanish, English-Spanish and Spanish-English.

Si. 75

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THE GIFT OF LANGUAGE by Margaret Schlauch The Gift Of Language (originally published as The Gift Of Tongues) is a middle-level book about languages and their study that has become a work of enduring fascination for readers in all fields of interest. Written by a first-rate linguistic scholar, it avoids both superficiality and technical ponderousness as it reveals some of the perhaps unrealized potentials of linguistic study.

For example, the author makes the subject of family relationships among languages surprisingly interesting; she discusses grammatical processes, then illustrates them from such colorful languages as Aztec, Maya, and Ewe; she surveys the formation of words— their wanderings and disguises prior to their incorporation into modern English; and she analyzes historical changes in sounds, demonstrating them graphically by showing that Shakespeare, to the modern ear, would sound as if he were speaking Irish dialect. Furthermore, the book shows that linguistics need not be confined to the study of dry-as-dust inscriptions, but may be utilized very profitably in the study of modern literature. The author analyzes with great sensitivity the word-formation and deviations from modern English found in the work of such writers as James Joyce, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gertrude Stein, and

cummings. Finally, she discusses the social facets of language: linguistic taboos in civilized societies; the magical uses of language by the children of modern New York City; why P. G. Wodehouse's butlers speak impeccable

e. e.

English while their masters speak bad slang; and so on.

By showing us the world of color latent in even our commonest words, Margaret Schlauchs book has opened doors to many areas of investigation. Her book is vital reading for everyone interested in the romance of words, as well as for the sociologist, the anthropologist,

and the student of languages.

Revised edition. Index. Special index of 805 English words discussed. 62 thought-provoking puzzlers, exercises, diversions. 223 bibliographic references. viii

-f 342pp.

5%

x

8.

T243 Paperbound

A DOVER EDITION DESIGNED FOR YEARS OF

We

$2.00

USE!

have made every effort to make this the best book possible. Our paper is opaque, with minimal show-through; it will not discolor or become brittle with age. Pages are sewn in signatures, in the method traditionally used for the best books, and will not drop out, as often happens with paperbacks held together with glue. Books open flat for easy reference. The binding will not crack or split. This is a permanent book.