Page:2015.396258.Vyasavali.pdf/123

Rh scope. Since the days of the early grammarians no study of the language of the Telugu Country has been made. In recent years the purpose of gammaticalgrammatical [sic] study has changed; it has been affected by the ideas of such sciences as biology and anthropology; it no longer prescribes rules regarding language as fixed unalterably but as ever slightly subject to ﬂux, being modiﬁed in sound and idiom from generation to generation; the grammar of one age is not that of the next; and in any one age a language may exhibit many different grammars according to class or caste or dialect; grammar varies regionally as well as secularly. So too does vocabulary. Moreover the enrichment of a language is mainly a popular affair. Meanings change, are widened, are limited, improve, deteriorate; words are used in various figurative ways and pass into the realm of dead metaphors. Foreign words are imported and reduced to the speech basis of the native tongue; learned words from other sources are invented for special purposes and may pass into the current body of speech and literature, or remain outside as special for the learned to employ in their particular arts and sciences. The literary language is always somewhat more formal than the colloquial, and the colloquial itself may be of the polite or formal or of the slangy variety. Speech is always in close contact with writing; in time, even slang may become elegant and pass into