PRINCIPLES OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE. 97 



add his own technical language, containing much which most English speakers 

 know nothing of. No small portion of the one hundred thousand words is made 

 up of such special vocabularies. The generally educated man learns much of 

 many of them, but no one learns them all. Everyone may find, on every page 

 of our rreat dictionaries, v/ords which he knows not how to deal with. There 

 are various styles of expression for tlie same thing which arc not at every one's 

 command. Even the meanings attributed to the same words by different speakers 

 are different. The voluptuary, the passionate, the philosophic, and the senti- 

 mental, for example, mean very different things by "love" and " hate." It is 

 no paradox to maintain that, AvhileAve all speak English, no two among us speak 

 precisely ihe same language, the same in extent, form, or meaning. 



What, then, is the English language 1 It is the aggregate of the articulated 

 signs for thought current among the English people ; or, it is their average, that 

 part which is supported by the usage of the majority — a majority counting not 

 by numbers only, but by culture. It includes varieties of every kind ; but it 

 has unity, from the fact that all who speak it may, to a considerable extent, and 

 on matters of the most general interest, talk so as to understand one another. 

 It is kept in existence by uninterrupted tradition, in which each individual takes 

 a part, handing down his portion of it, with his limitations and peculiarities — 

 books, a kind of undying individual, greatly assisting in the process. But all 

 traditional transmission is inherently and necessarily defective, and that of 

 language forms no exception. If English were a certain fixed body of words, 

 learned complete by every one, and kept intact, it might more easily be preserved 

 from alteration. As the case stands, it does not remain the same from genera- 

 tion to generation. 



Its most noticeable mode of alteration is that which is ever going on in its vo- 

 cabulary, especially its technical vocabularies. New processes ,and products, 

 new views and opinions, new knowledge of every kind, must find their fit ex- 

 pression. No well-informed man can write a chapter now upon what every one 

 . is thinking and talking of which would be intelligible to the well-informed man 

 of a century ago. There are also changes affecting rather the form than the 

 content of language, of slow progress, and in their inception, in great part, inac- 

 curacies of speech, opposed by the conservative forces, yet as inevitable in the 

 end as the others. They show the influence of the great numerical majority 

 who do not speak with correctness, but whose errors finally become the norm 

 of the language. Thus, we had formerly a special preterit form spake, and good 

 speakers would as soon have said " he come and done it" as " he spoke to me." 

 Now only sjwke is in common use. Three centuries ago we had only his as 

 possessive of both //e and it, but popular usage struck out a new possessive, 

 its, for the latter. You we employ not only as object, according to its ancient 

 usage, but as subject, instead of ye, &c., &c. The influences Avhich brought 

 about such changes are still to be seen in full operation about us, especially 

 among children and uninstructed persons, to whom the communication of the 

 language is imperfectly or incorrectly made. A child substitutes an easy for 

 a hard sound in pronouncing, drops out a syllable or two from a half-under- 

 Etood word, says "I bringed" or "Ibraug" for I brought, says "mansj" and 

 "mouses," says "gooder" and "goodest," and the like. Its own and others' 

 care corrects these errors ; but if the car6 be wanting, the error remains ; and 

 there arc ever in existence, among the lower strata of language-users, hosts of 

 these deviations from correct usage, always threatening, and sometimes suc- 

 ceeding in making their way to the surface, and securing recognition and gen- 

 eral adoption. The conservative forces arrayed against them, aided by school 

 instruction and reading, are now so powerful among lis that the language 

 changes but very slowly in this way, yet the examples given are truly typical, 

 and illustrate a force always in action. That, in these and other methods, lan- 

 guage actually undergoes notable change is palpably true. Go back only to 

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