flämmen, Sax. ausdampfen; ausräuchern, beschmocken; schweissen; schwebeln, Styr. abselchen; absieden, and Edial. burn. Now the meaning 'deceive' certainly did not develop in each individual case spontaneously, but through borrowing, either from another dialect or from another word of the same dialect. For once the association 'burn, scorch: deceive' became general in one case, other words meaning 'burn', etc. were used to express the idea 'deceive.' Thus even foreign loan-words will have grafted on them through analogy a development of meaning that is current in the native tongue, as is the case with Swiss flambieren from Fr. flamber, 'singe, flame,' which developed the meaning 'deceive' in the Swiss because native words like flämmen, etc., had already preprepared the way, even though at an earlier period flämmen itself probably developed its meanings analogically from some other dialect. In the words listed above, therefore, probably the majority have developed the meaning 'deceive' analogically, and this is true of many other groups. This accounts also for the fact that the larger semantic groups representing a certain development of a particular meaning include such a variety of dialects and of words. Wherever a particular semantic development in a word is known to have occurred before, until proof to the contrary is furnished, there is always the possibility, nay, rather, the probability that the development is analogical.24 In the large majority of cases in which a particular semantic development goes back to an historical period, the ultimate source of the development will in all liklihood remain undiscovered. Whether the sequence 'grasp: comprehend' first developed in the Skt. lábhate, lámbhate, ‘fasst; erfährt; nimmt wahr, erkennt, weiss' or in the related Gk. λaußávw, 'seize, grasp: understand' or in some earlier form will never be known, but the particular semantic sequence illustrated in these, and especially in the Lat. capio, concipio, percipio and prehendo, has undoubtedly given rise to many analogies in words in many modern European dialects showing this same development. The importance of analogy as a factor in semantic change can scarcely be overestimated. The possibilities of semantic change are, theoretically, limitless; but thanks to the workings of analogy, they are in reality decidedly limited, for just as the action of analogy in the phonetic form tends towards the unification of the grammatical system and the simplification of the mechanism of speech, so a similar tendency of group association of meanings through analogy makes for a simplification of the infinite number of possible semantic changes. * Cf. Wellander, op. cit. 133. THE DEVELOPMENT OF AFFIXES IN A GROUP JAIME DE ANGULO The languages considered1 are: ZAPOTEK, MIXTEK, CHINANTEK, MAZATEK, CUICATEK, CHATINO, Сносно. The thesis of this paper is that all these languages are essentially monosyllabic, that they are undergoing an evolution toward the development of a system of pronominal suffixes, that these suffixes can be traced through a series of dialectical variations all the way from a mere repetition of the pronoun after the verb, through agglutination, to fused "inflection" of verbal endings. It is, however, necessary to bear in mind that in the primary isolating stage of such languages, the burden of the relational is carried by the grammatical process of order. A consequence of this is the clustering around the semantema expressing the main act of the predication, of the other semantemas, the names of the actors. These are of course the subjects and objects of the action. In this type of language they are all straight, bare, monosyllables, and their relation to each other and to the action is indicated by their position, by order. These objects and subjects of the action are all the objects and animals of creation, including "I" and "thou." These two pronouns are semantemas like all the rest. And there can be no mistake about their content. But when it comes to the third person which is often invisible to both speakers, there arises soon an impulse towards classification. It is not absolutely necessary to do so, since one can mention the very semantic name of the subject or object. For instance one may say to relate what one's father has said about his mare having eaten some apples: "father I father speak past father say horse female horse father horse eat past apple plural." This may sound funny and exaggerated but it is singularly close to the facts of actual speech in monosyllabic isolating languages. 1 The material for this study was collected in various parts of the State of Oaxaca in the course of a linguistic survey of that region for the Department of Anthropology of Mexico under the Direction of Manuel Gamio. Soon, however, the awkwardness of such a construction drives the speakers of a language to classify the world into categories. And the choice of these categories is the result of an intuitional apprehension of the world, not of a logical sifting. Thus you may classify the world into male and female; or far and near; or animate and inanimate; or as in Tewa into the three classes of plants, animated beings, and things; or as in this group of Mexican languages into persons, animals, and things. This is of course "grammatical gender," and when used to fix the relations of the actors of the drama inter se and to the action, it is a mixed relational concept (in Sapir's classification). This is exactly what we have at one end of this series of languages, while at the other end the relational is treated in a pure fashion. Compare in Zapotek the dialect of the Southern Mountains with the dialect of the Little Valley. The derivational concepts are also present, in the form of temporal prefixes (almost detachable in some dialects) which indicate aspect rather than tense, but are in no way mixed up with relation. The evolution of this system of temporal prefixes will be considered in a subsequent paper. Now, as to pitch tone, in the primary stage of this type of monosyllabic languages, it is used semantically to distinguish the different words of the language, that is to say that a certain tone, high, low, rising, etc., is an essential part of the phonetic reality of that word. But tone has also a functional value. It may be used to express, by variations of the fundamental tone proper to the particular semantema, any sort of linguistical concept; negation, interrogation, gender, tense, mode, case, etc. In particular it may be used to express person, as it does in all these languages. Of course it cannot express everything, any more than internal modification of the vowel of the radical can express everything in a language. Nor must one imagine that such functional changes would interfere with the semantic identity of words, any more than the change from foot to feet in English causes any confusion with the word feat. And in the case of functional tone as in the case of any 2 It must be clearly understood that I do not mean for a minute that the language of primitive peoples is monosyllabic and isolating, and then evolves towards structural complexity. This is what happens to any language, at whatever may be the cultural stage of the people speaking it, when such a language has been reduced to monosyllabic isolatism through the meaninglessness of old and too complex forms. And it must also be remembered that such a tendency or state may very well not apply to a whole language but only to a part of it. In other words one part of a language may be traveling towards a certain point while another part of the same language is traveling away from it, presumably because it has already passed it. other grammatical process, we may expect to have to witness the interplay of different uses. This is precisely what happens when the movement toward affixation sets in. Because the relations are now being more and more set off into classes, the animal-class, the person-class, the thou-class, the I-class, etc., the tendency is to adopt for each class a certain tonal pattern (we may call it pattern since we are no longer dealing with isolated monosyllables but with associated groups of syllables). It is usually the fundamental tone of the semantema, now reduced to a mere suffix, which determines the pattern, but it is not always so. There are other factors. There comes in especially the characteristic tendency to play with the vice-versa or mirror-image variations of theme in pattern, a thing most laboriously analyzed logically but very quickly apprehended by intuition. The case of the "my" and "thy" in Zapotek will bring this into relief. Fundamentally the "I" relation is high in tone, and the "thou" is low. This will apply quite well if the fundamental tone of the word qualified is in the middle tone: it will rise for "mine," and it will fall for "thine." If the fundamental tone is high to start with, then it remains high-high for "mine" and falls high-low for "thine." But now, if the fundamental tone of the word qualified is low to start with, it assumes a vice-versa position and becomes low-high for "mine," and high-low for "thine." It is not necessary to point out the difficulties of analysis that arise with the tones which fundamentally rise or fall, rise to the middle, rise from middle to high, etc. I have not been able to do more than merely to break ground in the analysis of tone in the languages of this group. In order to enable the reader to test the theory of suffix development herein advanced it has seemed best to present the material for each language and dialect under four heads in every case: 1) the independent pronouns, 2) the typical paradigm of conjugation, 3) the "conjugation" of essential possession, 4) the method of expressing accidental possession. The last two divisions demand a word of explanation. In all these languages there is a distinction between what may be termed essential and accidental possession. The first applies to persons, parts of the body, and even things, which are an inseparable part of the individual. In this sense a "head" or an "eye" or a "father" or even a "home" must belong to someone, to me or to you, or to an animal, or to a person. It is impossible to mention a "head" without placing it, without indicating whose it is, in other terms without relating it. But there are many things which are related to somebody by possession only accidentally and for the nonce. Their status of relation is indicated by means of an independent word, something like our "of" (or a fused combination "this-is-of"). A very striking result is that the two words for "home" and "house" assume very different appearances: "my home" liiza, "my house" ru'u ctenya. In the case of essential possession, its parallelism to the verb conjugation is evident. The material presented here represents only a small part of the dialectical variations collected. Even so it is unfortunately too large for the reader's patience. However, I was afraid that I could not reduce it more without weakening my evidence. The orthography is based on the phonetic system adopted by the American Anthropological Association. In order to make the text easier to print and to read, certain simplifications have been adopted. These simplifications have all been made with due regard to preserving the integrity of the significant sound-pattern of each language, both in the language itself and in its relation to the phonetic pattern basis of the whole group.3 Special remarks on the phonology are appended at the end of the paper. ZAPOTECO There are a number of dialects. These can be reduced to three main types, as follows: I. Dialect of the Valley: a) Sub-dialect of the Big Valley (Type: Zaachila) II. Dialect of the Northern Mountains: a) Sub-dialect of the Basin of Ixtlan (Type: Xaltianguis) III. Dialect of the Southern Mountains: (Type: Lagueche) (District of Miahuatlan) A consideration of all these types is necessary to understand the drift of linguistic evolution, not only in Zapotec proper but in all the languages of the group. Inasmuch as the Dialect of the Southern Mountains has remained the most true to the (supposedly) primitive monosyllabic structure, it will be considered first. For the significance of sound-pattern in language, cf. E. Sapir, LANGUAGE 1. 37-52 (1925). |