26 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE 



or analogy establish themselves in language l differs no whit in kind 

 from that by which new pronunciations of words, that is, new sounds, 

 make their way to general acceptance. The process by which loan- 

 elements from an alien tongue adjust themselves to use in a given 

 language differs psychologically and fundamentally no whit from 

 either of the four processes mentioned. In fact, they all, all five, 

 are phenomena of " mixture in language. " 2 The process, furthermore, 

 by which a sound-change in one word tends to spread from word to 

 word and displace the old throughout the entire vocabulary of the 

 language is also a process of "mixture," 8 and depends for its mo- 

 mentum in last analysis upon a proportionate analogy after the same 

 essential model as that by which an added sound or a suffix is carried 

 by analogy from word to word. All the movements of historical 

 change in language respond to the social motive; they all represent 

 in some form the absorption of the individual into the community 

 mass. It has therewith become evident that there is nothing physio- 

 logical in language that is not psychologically conditioned and con- 

 trolled. So then it appears that the modern science of language has 

 fairly shaken itself free again from the natural sciences and from 

 such influences of their method and analogies as were intruded upon 

 it by Schleicher and his period (1860-80), and after a century of 

 groping and experiment has definitely oriented and found itself as 

 a social science dealing with an institution which represents more 

 intimately and exactly than any other the total life of man in the 

 historically determined society of men. 



Within the history of the science of language the beginning of the 

 nineteenth century establishes beyond doubt a most important 

 frontier. To appreciate how sharp is the contrast between hither and 

 yonder we have only to turn to any part or phase of the work yonder, 

 the derivation of Latin from Greek, or mayhap to be most utterly 

 scientific, from the ^Eolic dialect of Greek, the sage libration of the 

 claims of Dutch as against Hebrew to be the original language of 

 mankind, the bondage to the forms of Greek and Latin grammar, as 



1 Gustaf E. Karsten, The Psychological Basis of Phonetic Law and Analogy, 

 Public. Mod. Lang. Assoc. ix, 312 ff. (1894), first sought a unitary psychological 

 statement for the two impulses. We are here, however, speaking of the establish- 

 ment of the results of the impulses in linguistic use. 



z See O. Bremer, Deutsche Phonetik, Vorwort x ff . (1893) ; B. I. Wheeler, Causes 

 of Uniformity in Phonetic Change, Transac. Amer. Philol. Assoc. xxiu, 1 ff. (1901). 



1 A point of view involving the recognition of a more recondite form of speech- 

 mixture is that first suggested by G. I. Ascoli (Sprachunssenschaftliche Briefe, pp. 

 17 ff. 1881-86; trsl. 1887), whereby the initiation of phonetic and syntactical 

 changes in language, and ultimately the differentiation of dialects and even of 

 languages, may assume relation to languages of the substratum, as they may be 

 termed, that is, prior and disused languages of peoples or tribes who have through 

 the fate of conquest or assimilation been absorbed into another speech community. 

 Notably has this point of view been urged by H. Hirt (Indog. Forschungen, rv 36 ff , 

 1894) and by Wechssler (Giebt es Lautgesetze, pp. 99 ff.). With this point of view 

 the science of language will have largely to deal, we are persuaded, in the second 

 century of its existence. 



