§ 37. French consists of two great vocabularies of words :- (a) The popular vocabulary, developed slowly and unconsciously by the people during the first eleven or twelve centuries from spoken Latin, etc. (b) The non-popular vocabulary, formed deliberately from literary Latin. Such "learned" words, as they are called, date from the eleventh and twelfth centuries till the present day. They were made in large numbers during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but the manufacture has never really ceased. It is only to the popular vocabulary that the following remarks apply. French word-formation is too wide a subject to be treated here in anything but the barest outline. The subject is best studied in Diez's Grammatik der Romanischen Sprachen and in his Wörterbuch; in M. Gaston Paris's L'Accent Latin, etc. In the Introduction to his Etymological Dictionary, Brachet acknowledges his obligations to Mätzner's Französische Grammatik, but he gives nevertheless much that is not to be found in Mätzner's work. Unfortunately the various works of Brachet do not always agree together. The French edition of Brachet's Dictionary treats the subject of Derivation easily and well. The an edition of Racine of as late a date as 1799 (Paris P. Didot l'aîné). "Who was the inventor of the present system? Not the Academy, which simply followed the received usage; nor Voltaire, who was notoriously careless as to spelling, but who, if he had invented it, would at least have laid down a guiding principle. Beza used accents, but I have no means of consulting his book. The plan of Du Guez (an Introductorie for to learn French trewly London, no date, probably published about 1550) of writing accents below the line, is evidently a mere device for the use of foreigners." *—Meissner. § 57. Words in English with French Accentuation.— "Accent is the stress of the voice upon a syllable of a word. Syllabic accent is an etymological one, and in oldest English it was upon the root, and not upon the inflectional syllables. By the Norman Conquest a different system of accentuation was introduced, which towards the end of the twelfth century began to show itself in the written language."-MORRIS. "The vocabulary of the French language is derived, to a great extent, from Latin words deprived of their terminal inflexions. The French adjectives, mortal and fatal, are formed from the Latin mortalis and fatalis, by dropping the inflected syllable; the French words nation and condition, from the Latin accusatives, nationem and conditionem, by rejecting the em final. In most cases the last syllable retained in the French derivatives was prosodically long in the Latin origmal; and either because it was also accented, or because the slight accent which is perceivable in the French articulation represents temporal length, the stress of the voice was laid on the final syllable of all these words. When we borrowed such words from the French, we took them with their native accentuation; and as accent is much stronger in English than in French, the final syllable was doubtless more forcibly enunciated in the former than in the latter language."-MARSH. "French accentuation even affected words of pure English origin, and we find in Robert of Gloucester wisliche (wisely) for wis'liche; begynnyng', (endyng', etc.; and Chaucer rhymes gladnes'se with distres'se, etc. * Palsgrave (1530) employs the acute to point out the tonic syllable : Apportez moi un fagót. Parainsi lheretique se convertíst. Beza (1533) employs with the same object. He points out the advantages of accents for the help of learners, but does not employ them like Du Guez. Pelletier (1555) suggests the use of an accent to show the omission of s, and the length of the vowel. Henri Estienne employs accents as they were employed for a long time afterwards, on the final e only to show when it is not mute: verité. Spenser's accentuation exhibits the influence of French accent, and Shakespeare and Milton retain many words accented upon the final syllable, which are now accented according to the Teutonic method, as aspéct, convérse, accéss. As early as Chaucer's time an attempt was made to bring the words of French origin under the Teutonic accentuation, and in the " Canterbury Tales" we find mórtal, tem'pest, sub'stance; and many words were pronounced according to the English or French accentuation, as prison and prison', tem'pest and tempest'. In the Elizabethan period we find a great tendency to throw the accent back to the earlier syllable of Romance words, though they retained a secondary accent at or near the end of the word, as na'ti'on, sta'ti'on. 1. Many French words still keep their own accent, especially (1) Nouns, in -ade, -ier (eer), -è, -ee or -ine (-in), as cascade', crusade', etc.; cavalier', chandelier', etc.; gazetteer', pioneer', etc. (in conformity with these we say harpooneer', mountaineer'); legatee', payee', etc.; balloon', cartoon', etc. ; chagrin, violin', etc.; routine', marine', etc. Also the following words :-cadet', brunette', gazette', cravat', canal', control', gazelle', amateur', fatigue', anti'que, poli'ce, etc. (2) Adjectives (a) from Lat. adj. in us, as august', benign', robust', etc.; (b) in ose, as morose', verbose', etc.; (c) in -esque, as burlesque', grotesque', etc. (3) Some verbs, as baptize', cajole', caress', carouse', chastise', escape', esteem', etc., etc. In many words, mostly of Latin origin, a change of accent makes up for the want of inflectional endings, and serves to distinguish (a) a noun from the verb, (b) an adjective from a verb, (c) an adjective from a noun :— (a) augment tor'ment (b) ab'sent fre'quent (c) a com'pact an ex'pert to augment', to torment', etc. (MORRIS.) CHAPTER II.-VOWEL SOUNDS. 58. The vowel sounds are formed bythe voice, modified, but not interrupted, by the various positions of the tongue and lips: examples The union in one syllable of any two vowel sounds forms a double vowel sound or diphthong: ui in lui; oui in Louis; ouan in louange. SYMBOLS EMPLOYED TO REPRESENT VOWEL SOUNDS. § 59. There are more vowel sounds than there are distinct letters to represent them. Various expedients are employed to remedy in part this defect in the alphabet: 1. Accents are employed. 2. Two of the letters a, e, i, o, u, are employed in combination. 3. N and nt are employed in combination with a, e, i, o, u. § 60. There are in French about fifteen vowel sounds.* Nine of these vowel sounds can be represented by the simple letters a, e, i, o, u, sometimes with, sometimes without graphic accents. 1. a as in fatigue. * This number might be increased, but fifteen are enough for ordinary accuracy. In order to understand the following remarks on the permutation of consonants, it is necessary to study §§ 92, 93, where the consonant sounds are classified. It is also important to notice :— 1. That the initial consonants constantly remain unchanged. 2. That the medial consonants change oftenest. 3. That the finals more often drop off than change. 4. That the change often arises from assimilation; more rarely from dissimilation. 5. That the change is from mute to spirant; rarely from spirant to mute. 6. That the change is generally from hard to soft; rarely from soft to hard. 7. That the soft often sink into a vowel. 8. That the change of sound from one organ to another is almost unknown.* GUTTURALS. k, q, c, were equivalent symbols in Latin. k was extremely rare; q was employed only when followed by u or v; c was in common use. Those few French words in which k occurs are of quite modern manufacture, and are not from the Latin, but from the Greek kilomètre; kilogramme. : Both q and c sink into g, the soft guttural. French g from Latin c. gros, crassus; venger, vindicare; aigu, acutus. aigle, aquila. French g from Latin q. Sometimes the symbols q and c interchange; the hard guttural sound remaining queue, cauda; car, quare. *Examples occur in patois: amikié for amitié, ghieu for Dieu. (Parisian patois). Mékier, moikié, for métier, moitié (Canadian French). See Max Müller's Lectures, p. 185, note, and Student's English Language, p. 347. |