Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

traditional term and coin new ones. Marty himself is aware of its inadequacy for his own purpose and invites proposals for a better one (p. 157). He uses himself incidentally, as an auxiliary concept, the term 'Band der Assoziation'. Professor Funke takes this name up and also speaks repeatedly of 'das Bildhafte'. Both of these names are better than 'inner form', but not quite satisfactory. May I propose instead the term 'bridge (Brücke)'. This expression has the advantage of being applicable in two ways: as 'bridge meaning' (or 'bridge concept') for the auxiliary concept bridging the gulf between form and meaning, Marty's 'inner form'; and as 'bridge form' for the form which connects the old and the new meaning.10 It is inoffensive to those who want to classify it with either form or meaning. And it is not burdened with the superabundance of associations which stifles the old term 'inner form' as a whole and in its parts.

My definitions would therefore be: A bridge meaning is an auxiliary concept which serves to suggest to the hearer a new meaning for an old form. A bridge form is a form which either genetically or descriptively links two different meanings together." Its use as such may be individual or general, habitual or actual, usual or occasional,12 local or universal, adequate or inadequate. Its purpose may be esthetic or logical,13 momentary or permanent, serious or facetious; it may be a new, or more exact expression, or merely a variant for an old one.

To illustrate: In 'begreifen', 'comprehendere', 'to grasp', the concrete idea would be the bridge meaning between the sound-form and the abstract meaning; and the phonetic form would be the bridge form between the concrete and the abstract meaning. In 'he stood convicted', the form 'stood' is the bridge between the meanings of 'to stand' and 'to be convicted', and the auxiliary concept of 'standing' is the bridge between the form 'stood' and the new meaning it is intended to suggest, namely the result of an action.

8 Innere Sprachform 123.

• Sprachphilosophie 62, 129.

10 I owe this extended application to a discussion with Professor Curme, who accepts my term.

11 It will be noted that the term 'bridge' itself is such a bridge.

12 Paul's terminology, Prinzipien § 51. Cf. Marty's criticism, Untersuchungen 497 ff.

13 Professor Cassirer's incidental distinction between theoretical shades of meaning and emotional shades of appreciation (Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, 1. 273, Berlin 1923) might be developed into a fruitful extension of Marty's bridge principle.

There is one more bridge function, which is not taken into account by Marty.14 As Professor Jaberg indicates (Herrigs Archiv 136. 106), the hearer is sometimes confronted with a word which does not convey any meaning (or not a clear one) to him (let us say, 'adipose tissue'). In such a case the speaker-to stay within the theoretical conception of a conversation-has to stop to explain the word by another word used for suggesting the same meaning (say 'fat'). Here we have a meaning bridging the chasm between two forms, the intention being not, as usually, to associate a new meaning with an old form, but an old meaning (that of 'fat') with a new form ('adipose tissue'), the bridge serving traffic in both directions. In this group belongs translation from one language into another. The form 'father' conveys in English the same meaning as 'Vater' in German, 'père' in French, 'padre' in Spanish, 'pater' in Latin, etc. The meaning is a bridge of many arches connecting the forms of the different languages.

So much about the term 'inner form' in Marty's interpretation. To replace it in its value of 'inner correlate of the outer form', I think 'meaning' would be adequate, and this word would at the same time cover the 'formative power', since it is the meaning which governs the expression. For 'inner form' of a language denoting its 'spirit', I have recommended above the old term 'trend'. For the 'opposite of formlessness', 'inner form' would do. But since this expression is ambiguous beyond hope, it seems best to abandon it in this application too, tho it is a little hard to replace in English. In German I should suggest 'innere Geformtheit' as a means of avoiding misunderstanding. But upon closer inspection, 'inner form' in this interpretation comes very near to, or is even identical with, 'meaning'.

With the adoption of such terms, the present confusion would be cleared up, and the venerable term 'inner form' could be relegated to the museum of linguistic antiquities, as a witness of the struggle and progress in the field.

14 Where Marty speaks of definitions (see index in Untersuchungen), he thinks of circumscriptive or analytic definitions, not of synonymic ones.

BOOK REVIEWS

Éléments de la Grammaire Hittite (Manuel de la Langue Hittite II). Pp. iii + 188. By LOUIS DELAPORTE. Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1929.

The appearance of a systematic grammar is an important event in the history of Hittite studies. Hrozný's Die Sprache der Hethiter (Leipzig, 1917) was not so much a description of the language as an argument designed to show that certain grammatical forms and certain words had certain values. The treatises by Friedrich and Forrer (Zeitschrift der Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 76. 153-73, 202-15 [1922]) did not claim. to be more than preliminary outlines of the grammar. Delaporte's book will therefore form an essential part of the equipment of every student of Hittite.

The new grammar is severely descriptive, and that is altogether proper at the present stage of our knowledge. Many details of phonology and morphology must be investigated before a comparative grammar of Hittite can be written. Furthermore, the author has been content to do little more than compile the results of studies previously published; and here again he deserves praise for a decision which has given us a serviceable tool today rather than a better one some years hence.

A peculiarly valuable feature of the book is the inclusion of passages which illustrate the usage of the forms given in the paradigms. Indeed it would have been well to increase the number and variety of such citations. Our knowledge of the language is still so defective that new interpretations will inevitably render many of Delaporte's statements obsolete; but the texts upon which the statements are based will remain valid.

The author would be the first to admit that his account of the Hittite language is incomplete. The syntax (pp. 103-17) is particularly sketchy. For example, the only case constructions mentioned are apposition (including partitive apposition), the adnominal genitive, and the partitive gentive. This is not justified by any unusual regularity in the use of the Hittite cases: place where may be denoted either by the dative-locative or by the ablative; place whither by the accusative or the dative-locative; means by the instrumental or the ablative; etc.

In my opinion the most serious error in the book is the adoption of Forrer's theory of a locative case ending in a and denoting end of motion. As I have shown (LANGUAGE 5. 139-46), these forms are in part accusatives with loss of final n, and in part dative-locatives with change of prehistoric final ai to a before words bginning with a or e.

Other corrections that should be made by every user of the book are these:

§81: The nominative-accusative neuter of vowel stems often ends in n (see LANG. 5. 140). Neglect of this fact leads Delaporte (§294) to interpret idalun kuitki memiyan 'any evil word' as a personal substantive modified by a neuter pronoun. (Cf. Friedrich, Staatsverträge des HattiReiches in Hethitischer Sprache 1. 43).

§115 and § 124: The instrumental and ablative singular are confused. $170: The genitive singular and nominative plural are confused. §198: The participles in nt are active only when derived from intransitive verbs; ordinarily they are passive. See Friedrich, ZDMG 76. 168. §262: Dele lines 3 and 4; the first example given disproves the statement.

§264: The accusatives in the first example are surely direct objects. Misprints are frequent, but few of them will cause any serious difficulty.

E. H. STURTEVANT

Indogermanische Grammatik, Teil V: Der Akzent. Pp. xii + 411. By HERMANN HIRT. Heidelberg: Winter, 1929.

The present volume serves also as a revision of the author's volume, 'Der Indogermanische Akzent,' published in 1895 and long out of print. The revision is thoroughgoing; there is much new material and new bibliography, as well as many new views. The introduction (1-29) states the problems and defines them; then there is a long section (30198) discussing the accent in each of the important IE languages, and another long section (199-403) on the accent in primitive IE, in which each part of speech and each type of formation is discussed separately, and the accent of the phrase and of the sentence also finds its place. Indices (404-11) close the volume.

The volume is most stimulating. The wide learning and keen insight of Professor Hirt are everywhere evident. Of a number of items, I select for mention the interpretation of the accent of verbs (293 ff.) and his remarks on the stress accent of verse and the musical accent of the word in ancient Greek (33), which I here quote: 'Zunächst brauchen bekann

termassen in Griechischen Versiktus und Wortton durchaus nicht zusammenfallen. So schwer, ja fast unmöglich uns das Lesen der griechischen Verse mit Berücksichtigung beider Momente wird, so leicht bewältigen diese Schwierigkeit Menschen, die von Haus aus wesentlich musikalischen Akzent haben. Ich habe dies verschiedentlich in meinen griechischen Übungen mit Südslawen und Magyaren beobachtet.' It gives me pleasure to find this confirmation of the view which I have expressed elsewhere (TAPA 51. 19–29; Rev. intern. de l'Enseignement 45. 321-35), that there is no real difficulty in a similar method of reading Latin verse (pace Kroll, Glotta 16. 208).

On the other hand, I cannot follow Professor Hirt when he casts aside (72 ff.) the primitive Italic accent on the initial syllable, which has for decades been viewed as the cause of syncope and vowel weakening in non-initial syllables in Latin Unlike the French scholars, who maintain that there never was an accent of energy in Latin on any syllable until after the classical period, Hirt explains these phenomena of vowel loss or change as due either to the original IE accent or to the historic Latin accent. It is true that this will cover most of the instances, notably the changes in the second part of compounds, which was in IE enclitic to the adverbial 'prefix,' and the changes in the final syllable, which was always unaccented in Latin. For dexter, in comparison with the identical cognate Greek değɩTepós, Hirt assumes a new secondary accent on the initial syllable, due to distance from the primary accent. But there are other examples which will not come under his formulations: Achīvi from 'Axaifoi, olīva from èλaiƒā, balineum balneum from Baλaveiov, euntem from *eontem (cf. lóvra). The strong syllable, i.e., the syllable in which no change occurs, is in these words that which is unaccented according to the Greek from which the words are borrowed, or in the primitive IE, and was not accented in Latin according to the penultimate rule; and the syllable in which weakening occurs is precisely that which should receive the accent by the penultimate rule. In balneum, the initial accent has permitted a shortening in the penult, with the result that the Latin accent stays on the initial syllable. In my opinion, therefore, an initial accent must be posited for a pre-Latin stage of Italic.

Now some special items. 36, 15: The Athenians did not count was short in Tóλewv åvwyewv dúoepws; these words have analogical accents, or accents fixed before the working of the metathesis of quantity. 38 fin.: A short vowel plus liquid or nasal formed a diphthong in Greek, and therefore could be pronounced with the circumflex; but the circumflex

« ZurückWeiter »