8 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE 



more or less in operation at all times. In cultivated tongues it is 

 exceedingly powerful, if not actually dominant. What it saves from 

 the wreck which has been brought about by the principle of analogy, 

 it clings to earnestly, and indeed will never let go, if it can be avoided. 

 Illustrations of this tendency need not be given here; for they will be 

 exemplified in the part of the subject with which we now come to 

 deal. 



These are some of the agencies which are always operating upon 

 the internal life of a language. They are largely responsible for the 

 changes which take place slowly or rapidly in methods of expression. 

 So far as we can discover, they are true of the speech of the most 

 illiterate and degraded races; they are certainly true of those which 

 have attained any degree of intellectual development. This leads us 

 to the next topic, the difference in the agencies which act upon 

 cultivated and uncultivated speech. 



It is a mere commonplace to say that every living language con- 

 stantry undergoes change. It may be little or it may be great; it may 

 go on very slowly or very rapidly. These are the accidents of cir- 

 cumstance. But so long as it has life, it must undergo modification or 

 alteration as do the persons who speak it. 



These changes belong generally to two classes, those affecting the 

 vocabulary and those affecting the grammatical structure. Both of 

 these agencies are always in operation; but they operate very dif- 

 ferently at different periods and under different conditions. Here 

 arises at once the great distinction which exists between the life and 

 growth of cultivated and uncultivated speech, or perhaps it would 

 be better to say more specifically between speech with a literature 

 and speech without one. The processes that are going on in each are 

 precisely the same. Changes are taking place in each both in gram- 

 mar and vocabulary; but they manifest themselves in ways essen- 

 tially distinct and they proceed at entirely different rates of move- 

 ment. The differences, indeed, are so marked that they may be called 

 fundamental. This is not to maintain that there will not be in each 

 class apparent and it may be real exceptions to the rule laid down; 

 it is only the general principle which is here stated. 



Now the first point is that in uncultivated speech changes in 

 vocabulary under ordinary conditions take place slowly and on a 

 somewhat petty scale. Very few new words are introduced into the 

 speech, and any extension of meaning in the case of those already 

 existing happens rarely. The reason for this lies on the surface. The 

 users of uncultivated speech are thernselves uncultivated. They have 

 comparatively little knowledge and few ideas outside of the range 

 of those which are brought to their attention by their necessities or 

 limited opportunities for observation. Their vocabulary is not ample, 

 to start with, and as time goes on they do not add to it many words. 



