100 PRINCIPLES OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE. 



from that of the others, but ouly that we have not at command the evidence 

 which would explain it. 



The same examples show not less clearly that alteration, corruption, and 

 mutilation of the products of combination is a rule of the life of language. 

 The reason of this corruption lies in great measure in the fact that, having 

 once struck out a compound, we are not solicitous to keep up the memory of 

 its descent. We accept the word coined as a conventional sign for the idea 

 which it conveys, and give our attention mainly to that. Hence ease and con- 

 venience in the use of the word are consulted ; a long vocable is contracted ; a 

 hard combination of consonants is mouthed over into more ntterablc shape ; 

 subordinate elements arc defaced into conformity with the inferiority of their 

 consequence. So the sailor says hos'n for boatswain, t&gaVnts'ls for topgal- 

 lantsaUs, &c. This is a part of the wise economy of speech, a sign and means 

 of the integration of words, contributing to conciseness and vigor of expression. 

 But it is also a blind tendency, and its effect is in part destructive. It leads 

 to waste as well as economy; ease and convenience being consulted by the 

 sacrifice of what is valuable as well as the rejection of what is unnecessary — 

 if, indeed, it can truly be said that a people not undergoing degradation of 

 character ever sacrifices anything of its language which is really valuable with- 

 out providing an equivalent. A language may thus, at any rate, become greatly 

 altered, giving up much which in other tongues is retained and valued. Our 

 own English offers one of the extremest examples known of the prevalence of 

 these wearing-out tendencies. 



Thus, for instance, the primitive language from which our own is descended 

 had a full set of terminations for the three persons plural of the vei'b, viz : jnasi, 

 tasi, nti — e. g., lagamasi, lagatasi, laganti, " we lie, ye lie, they lie." In 

 Latin they appear shorn of their final vowel, as vius, tis, nt. In Gothic, the 

 oldest Germanic language, they are reduced to their initial consonants only, 

 m, th, nd — thus, ligam, ligith, ligand. They arc still, in this form, pretty 

 distinctive, and sufficient for their purpose. But the prevailing custom of ex- 

 pressing the pronouns along with the verb lessened their necessity; and in 

 Anglo-Saxon they are all reduced to a single form, ath in the present, on in 

 the imperfect. We, finally, have cut them off entirely, and say ice lie, ye lie, 

 they lie, without any endings designating the person. 



In the declension of nouns we have effected a revolution not less thorough. 

 Our ancient mother-tongue declined every noun substantive in three numbers, 

 with eight cases in each, and every adjective in three genders besides. With 

 us all adjective declension has disappeared, and of substantive declension Ave 

 have saved only a genitive and a plural ending, both s. In a few plurals, lis 

 men, mice, teeth, M'C have seized npon a distinction at first euphonic and acci- 

 dental only, and have made it significant. So also in the conjugation of our 

 " irregular" verbs, as sivg,sang, sung ; the change of vowel was at first merely 

 euphonic, then became, as in most German dialects it still continues, auxiliary 

 to the sense, and finally, with us, it is in many cases the only means of dis- 

 tinction of present, preterite, and participle. 



In one remarkable case, the Avcaring-out processes have led to the total 

 abandonment of a conspicuous department of grammatical structure. A dis- 

 tinction of gender in nouns, as masculine, feminine, or neuter, marked by dif- 

 ferences of termination and declension, has ever prevailed in the family of lan- 

 guages to which ours belongs. Even in the Anglo-Saxon, noims were still 

 masculine, feminine, or neuter, not according to their natural character, but in 

 conformity with the ancient tradition, on fanciful grounds of difference, which 

 we find it excessively difficult to trace out and recognize. But in the exten- 

 sive decay and ruin of grammatical* forms attending the elaboration of modern 

 English from Anglo-Saxon and Norman French, this whole scheme of artificial 



