Page:An introduction to Dravidian philology.djvu/97

Rh all the stages of evolution, that the laws which operate in human evolution are also found at work in the process of the acquirement of languaage by the child. This view finds few supporters at the present time, because it has been demonstrated that a child born of parents speaking a particular language does not show any tendency to take to the language of its parents if removed from that speech atmosphere at an early age and acquires a completely new language in altogether different linguistic surroundings. But so far as I am aware, no one has attempted to know if in the language which the child acquires, some of the changes undergone by sounds in the history of that particular language are reflected or not. This is a point worth investigation at the hands of philologists. I have a suspicion that the changes, at least some of them, can be observed in the gradual yet rapid transition which the child's lan-