Biological Analogy and Speech-Development. 



By Henry Cecil Wyld. 



Professor Paul, in the chapter headed " Sprachspaltung " of his 

 luminous book " Die Principien der Sprachgeschichte " (2 te Aufl : Halle 

 1886), places on record his astonishment that students of the science 

 of language do not oftener seek analogies for the phenomena of speech - 

 development from the processes of development which obtain in organic 

 nature. It is indeed to be lamented that philologists do not often 

 make themselves familiar with biological method, and with the main 

 results attained for evolutionary thought in this domain of science. 

 For, indeed, did students of language possess an organised system of 

 thought upon lines of evolution, as applied to speech, there can 

 be small doubt that not only would linguistic science be placed upon a 

 broader and more philosophic basis than it rests on at present, but from 

 the nature of the field of inquiry evolutionary thought as a whole would 

 receive a most suggestive contribution. It is indeed possible that many 

 general questions, upon which at the present moment the minds of 

 biologists are clouded with a doubt, would be set at rest one way or the 

 other, and this or that theory of the modes of evolution would be either 

 exploded or firmly established. For, whereas biologists have to trust 

 to an imperfect geological record for a large part of their evidence, the 

 philologist may observe in the course of five hundred years a change 

 in language, much more significant and considerable than the same 

 number of millenniums could effect upon species of animals or plants. 



Professor Paul then ventures upon an analogy, and a fascinating 

 one it is, between the factors and conditions which determine the 

 evolution of species and those which govern change in language. 



Unfortunately not only does this analogy share with others the 

 fate of containing a fallacy, but the whole passage is, in my opinion, 

 fraught with no small confusion of thought and phrase. His case is 

 briefly this — 



Development in animal life depends upon two main factors : first, 

 the characters of the parents ; second, the environment to which the 

 organism is subjected after its birth. The results of these factors are : 

 from the first (the hereditary group) similarity with the parents, and 



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