historic times, and that the story of Plato's Atlantis is not altogether a myth, but thus far there is no strong evidence of the probability of such contacts.42 42 R. D. Archer-Hind, M.A., in The Timaeus of Plato, London, 1888, laughs at the idea of Atlantis which Plato describes thus: 'In this island Atlantis arose a great and marvelous might of kings, ruling over all the island itself, and many other islands, and parts of the mainland; and besides these, of the lands east of the strait they governed Libya as far as Egypt, and Europe to the borders of Etruria. The island was greater than Libya and Asia together; and therefrom there was passage for the sea-farers of those times to the other islands, and from the islands to all the opposite continent which bounds the ocean truly named'. On the other hand, Konrad Haebler, in Dr. H. F. Helmolt's History of the World, Vol. I, p. 180, says: 'But men of science are not wanting who answer this question in the affirmative, and who see in a land-bridge over the Atlantic Ocean the way by which the first men came to the American continent. . . . . Geologists of note believe that they can prove that the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean was not always covered by water, and they think that it was by this way that man came from the Old World to the New, in times when the climatic condition of our part of the globe was still considerably different from those of history'. A CENTURY OF GRIMM'S LAW HERMANN COLLITZ JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY Grimm's Law having been given' to the world one hundred years ago, the present occasion2 would seem to lend itself to a critical review of some of its salient features. Grimm was by no means the first scholar to observe that in the Germanic languages consonants are often at variance with those of the cognate languages. Such discrepancies were especially noted and commented upon by students of Gothic from Franciscus Junius to the Swedish Professor Johannes ab Ihre1 and James Jamieson," the author of a well-known Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish language. Yet for a long time observations to this effect remained isolated, and amounted to little more than a mixture of truth and errors. Matters, however, took a different turn when, two years after the publication of Bopp's Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache, the great Danish philologist Rasmus Rask brought out his prize-essay on the origin of the Icelandic language. Like Franz Bopp, Rask is one of the pioneers in the field of Indo-European philology. He began to investigate in a systematic manner the changes which the Germanic consonants had undergone in comparison with those of the cognate languages, and arrived at results that have proved-with few exceptions-reliable. His results are of great interest to us, the more so, as they have undoubtedly exercised considerable influence on Jacob Grimm's work. Grimm became acquainted with Rask's Essay when he had nearly finished seeing the first edition of the first volume of his Grammar through the press. He hastened in the preface to that volume to voice his obligations to the author of the essay in the broadest and warmest 1 Deutsche Grammatik von Jacob Grimm I2 584-92, 1075-6 (1822); cf. I38 (1840); and esp. Geschichte der dt. Sprache I 392-434 (1848). 29, * Meeting of the Modern Language Association of America, Philadelphia, December 1922. Cf. R. v. Raumer, Geschichte der Germanischen Philologie 513. • Glossarium Suio-Gothicum. 2 vols. Upsala, 1769. • Hermes Scythicus, or the radical affinities of the Greek and Latin languages to the Gothic. Edinburgh, 1814. • Undersögelse om det gamle Nordiske Sprogs Oprindelse, Kjöbenhavn, 18 18. 174 possible manner: 'Meanwhile Rask's excellent prize-essay has furnished far-reaching information as to the many points of contact existing between the Germanic and the Lettic, Slavic, Greek and Latin languages.' As far as the mere facts of the first Germanic shifting are concerned, Rask, no doubt, was acquainted with most of the single paragraphs of Grimm's Law, and we may readily understand how the impression could obtain here and there that the law had actually been discovered by him. Nothing, however, could be a greater injustice to Grimm. Granted that Rask observed several consonant changes that play an important part in the shifting, we cannot possibly speak of Rask's Law in the singular. We might rather feel tempted, in comparing Rask's propositions with Grimm's, to quote the well-known lines from the first part of Goethe's Faust: Dann hat er die Teile in seiner Hand. Fehlt leider! nur das geistige Band. With Grimm the stress lies decidedly on the inner reason connecting the various parts of the shifting. He felt able to set forth a single law incorporating all its phases. His notion of such a law was based on the observation of a threefold uniformity: (1) the second or High German shifting proceeds in general on the same lines as the first or common Germanic shifting; (2) one and the same general formula is applicable to the various sets of consonants, whether they be labials or dentals or gutturals; (3) the shifting proves to imply a fixed sequence of the principal forms of the shifting, based on the arrangement of the three classes of consonants involved in the order of media, tenuis, aspirate. This order, as Grimm points out, differs from that (tenuis, media, aspirate) to which we are accustomed; but it is necessary that the media should precede the tenuis, and the latter be followed immediately by the aspirate. The aspirate on its part, is followed by the media, that is after we have reached the end of the line we must take it up again at the beginning. In accordance with Grimm's theory the shifting of consonants has been aptly likened to three cars revolving at equal distances around a centre, after the fashion of the horses or cars of a merry-go-round. The first car is marked M, meaning 'media', the second T, i. e., 'tenuis', the third A, i. e., 'aspirate'. Should there be any danger of our forgetting the regular order of the three cars, we may call to mind the Greek preposition META which contains the three letters M T A in the order 7 Vorrede p. xviii = Kl. Schriften 7.39. * See R. v. Raumer, Sprachwissenschaftl. Schriften 68. postulated by Grimm's Law. This preposition will prove a convenient help to our memory, and all the more so as it embodies, e. g. in the word 'metamorphosis', the idea of transformation. The cars move in the direction of M to T. In distinction from the merry-go-round there is no obligation involved as to speed. Slowly perhaps, but surely, the car M is certain to arrive in due time at the point formerly occupied by T, whereas T has meanwhile reached the place formerly held by A, and the latter that at first held by M. If the movement be continued until the circle is completed, each car will have returned to its starting point. In order to illustrate the possibility of a complete rotation of a sound affected by the shifting, let us confront the Germanic words for 'father', 'mother', 'brother' with their Latin equivalents pater, mater, frater. In Latin the tenuis t of the IE suffix -ter- is seen unchanged, whereas e. g. in Gothic bropar and in Eng. brother it appears regularly shifted to a spirant, or as Grimm puts it, an aspirate. An additional shifting, due to the fact that in IE the accent rested on the suffix is found in Goth. fadar and OSax. modar. The shifting had reached this point when the second or High German shifting set in to give both the spirant of the word bropar and the media of fadar and modar an additional turn. As a result of this additional shifting we find OHG fatar and muotar (MHG vater and muoter, NHG Vater and Mutter) plainly a return, as far as the dental of the suffix is concerned, to the IE condition. Such then is Grimm's Law: not merely a set of observations on consonant changes resulting from the first Germanic shifting, but rather a general theory as to the mutual relation between certain consonant changes, occurring as a rule in combination with each other. However much Grimm may be indebted for details to his predecessors, the law remains his own, and is something very different from what others had noticed beforehand. Let us cast a rapid glance now at the history of Grimm's Law, in other words at the work done in connection with it from 1822 to the present day. By the discovery, in 1875, of Verner's Law, this period is divided into two sub-periods of nearly equal length. The time from Grimm to Verner need not occupy us long. As the most important contribution made during Grimm's life-time to the law bearing his name we must regard a treatise entitled 'Die Aspiration und die Lautverschiebung' written in 1837 by Rud. v. Raumer, and reprinted later on in his Gesammelte Sprachwissenschaftliche Schriften.9 Frankfurt a/M and Erlangen, 1863 pp. 1-104. In 1863, the year of Grimm's death, there appeared in the twelfth volume of Kuhn's Zeitschrift an article1o by Hermann Grassmann, the wellknown mathematician and Sanskritist. Grassmann undertook to remove an apparent irregularity in the shifting of the IE media by advancing the theory that IE possessed a number of roots containing both an initial and a final aspirate. I shall have occassion to refer to Grassmann's article again in this paper. We reach very nearly the end of this period with the first volume, issued in 1874, of Paul and Braune's Beiträge z. Gesch. d. dt. Spr. u. Lit. This volume opened with an article by Braune on the Franconian dialects and the High German shifting" which has deservedly met with pretty general approval and remains to this day the most instructive study of the second sound shifting. I regret to be unable to pass a similar favorable judgment on Paul's article Zur Lautverschiebung12 contained in the same volume, notwithstanding the indorsement it has received on the part of many scholars. But I feel that on this occasion I must refrain from specifying my objections. With another article by Braune, in the same volume of the Beiträge, on what he calls 'The Grammatical Change in the Inflection of the German Verb'13 we are led to the very threshold of Verner's Law, because Braune is concerning himself with phenomena for which Verner furnished an explanation. Verner's own exposition of his law is found in the 25th volume of Kuhn's Zeitschrift. It appeared under the heading: 'An Exception to the First Shifting'. As a matter of fact, it was generally hailed with delight, chiefly on account of its offering an unexpected explanation for a set of puzzling exceptions to Grimm's Law. Relieving, as it did, the latter as far as the first Germanic shifting is concerned-of the last heavy incumbrance of weighty exceptions, it has played no insignificant part in support of the theory that phonetic laws do not admit of any real exceptions. Hardly less important, however, are the services rendered by Verner's Law toward ascertaining the working and the nature of Grimm's Law. The instances covered by Verner's Law constitute an exception to Grimm's Law only in the sense of an accelerated action of the latter, 10 Ueber die Aspiraten und ihr gleichzeitiges Vorhandensein im An- u. Auslaut der Wurzeln' 81-138. " 'Zur Kenntnis des Fränkischen und zur hochd. Lautverschiebung.' PBB 1. 1-56. 12 Ib. 147-201. 13 Ueber den grammatischen Wechsel in der deutschen Verbalflexion, ib. 513–27. |