SIGNIFICANCK OF ERRORS IN SPEECH. 4I 



right." A similar process in French preserved a sound that 

 has now assumed a euphonic office in place of its old signifi- 

 cance. The Latin awat meant lie loves. The / conveyed the 

 idea of lu\ just as the .v of loves is the representative of an old 

 English termination of the same meaning. Pronouns came 

 into use with verbs in popular Latin, and the / then lost its 

 importance and necessity. The form ille amat represents the 

 late Latin form, wherein ille and / duplicated the same idea. 

 The corresponding interrogative form was amat ille. The 

 former becomes French // ai))ie and the latter aiiiie-i-il, the / in 

 the interrogative form being the continuously imitated / of 

 amat. In the differentiation of the pronominal and verbal 

 meanings formerly combined in amat, ille has appropriated the 

 full pronominal idea. Thus / became supei-fluous and disap- 

 peared from // aime. It has survived in aime-t-il because in 

 this phrase it was phonetically easier to keep it in than to omit 

 it. The modern French speaker regards it as a purely eupho- 

 nic contrivance, inserted, as his written form shows, to prevent 

 a hiatus. By analogy, he actually inserts it in all like verbal 

 forms of words that never existed in Latin. So, in English 

 now, the i' of loves has a tendency among the illiterate, be- 

 cause it is the form of the verb most frequently used, to become 

 a sign of the verb generally. We hear says I for say I and horses 

 runs for. horses run. The error is always in the same direc- 

 tion, that of using the .^ where it does not belong : it is never 

 omitted where it does belong. This process is an attempt to 

 increase the significance of language by utilizing a sound, of 

 which the former significance has been lost, to express a new 

 significance for which a need is felt. That the verb needs a 

 generally distinctive mark or character is suggested by the dif- 

 ference of pronunciation already obtained between advise, the 

 verb, and advice, the noun, compound' and com'pound, breathe 

 and breath, wreathe and ivreath, rise (5 as ") and rise (s as ss), 

 and record' and rec'ord. 



The analogical process is perhaps the most potent factor in 

 the orowth of language. It seizes some likeness in sense or 



