SIGNIFICANCK OF ERRORS IN SPKKCH. 3 1 



of thingi^ are embodied in the forms of speech as they now are. 

 His tongue responds to all his intellectual wants and he sees 

 no room for further growth. He recognizes the new words he 

 acquires as mere accessions to his vocabulaiy : he does not see 

 or hear them grow. His language is so thoroughly himself 

 that its psychical motives and energies do not easily become 

 an object of his observation. It is only as a student, instead 

 of a speaker, that he appreciates the living language as the 

 contemporaneous expression of thinking — of thought in the 

 making and never finished. Any comprehensive view of our 

 subject, therefore, must begin with the process of thinking. 



Thinking becomes language when and because, with each 

 element and part of the thinking, rises to consciousness an 

 associated sound. This association of sound and meaning is 

 made and maintained by imitation of the speakers around us. 

 The imitative faculty alone is exerted b}^ the individual in 

 acquiring his langaiage. As his powers of thinking develop, 

 he finds ready at hand in his community the appropriate 

 sounds for expression. These he imitates until b}- repetition 

 the association of sound and sense is immediate, the thought 

 with its corresponding sound or the sound with its correspond- 

 ing thought coming to mind as one. If this imitation and 

 repetition were always perfect, language would not change. 

 The necessity for mutual intelligibility and the natural ten- 

 denc}^ of the individual to conform to established canons of 

 thought and expression ensure approximate accuracy in this 

 imitative process. 



In fact, however, this process of imitation and repetition 

 and resulting association of sound and sense is subject to 

 unstable conditions which produce variation. These condi- 

 tions are mental and physical. On its mental side, langTiage 

 expresses thinking, and thinking is a thing of life — it grows 

 or decays. The knowledge, experience, wants and ideals of 

 the individual and of the community are continually chang- 

 ing, becoming greater or less, higher or lower. The higher 

 thinking needs distinctive expression for its originality. The 



