32 H. L. BROOM ALL : 



lower thinking fails to use the full powers of the language it 

 imitates. Here, then, we have a mental energy, or lack of 

 energy, as the case may be, ever varying, and ever interfering 

 with the accurate perpetuation of the language as it comes to 

 us. It modifies the imitation. This motive toward variation 

 in language we may call Increasing Significance, because 

 under it language becomes more truly significant of the 

 changed thinking by becoming less accurately imitative. 



The physical instability is more apparent because it directly 

 affects the sound rather than the meaning. It takes far more 

 time to articulate a word, phrase or sentence than it does to 

 think it and recall mentally the associated sounds. Thus the 

 course of a communication, as it runs from the mind of the 

 speaker to the mind of the hearer, is slowed up when it comes 

 to the point of actual vocal utterance in order that the articu- 

 lating organs ma}- have time to enunciate each particular 

 phonetic element — to disintegrate, as it were, the words and 

 phrases as thought in the mind into a succession of meaning- 

 less sounds — meaningless until regrouped into words and 

 phrases by the hearer. There is therefore a continual pressure 

 upon the articulating apparatus to keep up with the mental 

 process. Here, in the actual process of speaking, the two 

 elements of speech, the mental and the physical, have inher- 

 ently different rates of speed. x\s the salient points of a sen- 

 tence must be within reasonable time of one a.nother, so that 

 the continuity of the thought may not be lost, there results at 

 intervals a re-adjustment for which the thought is restrained 

 and the articulation is hurried. Under this condition, sounds 

 not absolutely necessary for intelligibility tend to be omitted 

 and others slurred, weakened or jammed together. Distinct- 

 ness is sacrificed for rapidity. This consequent failure of per- 

 fect imitation may be termed Decreasing Effort, because what- 

 ever phonetic change here results is due to insufficient effort at 

 the particular point of articulation where the loss or connip- 

 tion of the sound occurs. 



To these specific causes of variation should be added the 



