Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/123

III.] of one another: a word may suffer modification of form in any degree, even to the loss or mutation of every phonetic element it once contained, with no appreciable alteration of meaning (as in our I for Anglo-Saxon ic, eye for eage); and, again, it may be used to convey a totally different meaning from that which it formerly bore, while still maintaining its old form. Yet, upon the whole, the two must correspond, and answer one another's uses. That would be but an imperfect and awkward language, all whose expansion of significant content was made without aid from the processes which generate new words and forms; and the highest value of external change lies in its facilitation of internal, in its office of providing signs for new ideas, of expanding a vocabulary and grammatical system into a more complete adaptedness to their required uses. But change of meaning is a more fundamental and essential part of linguistic growth than change of form. If, while words grew together, became fused, integrated, abbreviated, their signification were incapable of variation, no phonetic plasticity could make of language aught but a stiff dead structure, incapable of continuously supplying the wants of a learning and reasoning people. If for every distinct conception language were compelled to provide a distinct term, if every new idea or modification of an idea called imperatively for a new word or a modification of an old one, the task of language-making would be indefinitely increased in difficulty. The case, however, is far otherwise. A wonderful facility of putting old material to new uses stands us in stead in dealing with the intent as well as the form of our words. The ideal content of speech is even more yielding than is its external audible substance to the touch of the moulding and shaping mind. In any sentence that may be chosen, as we shall find that not one of the words is uttered in the same manner as when it was first generated, so we shall also find that not one has the same meaning which belonged to it at the beginning. The phonetists claim, with truth, that any given articulated sound may, in the history of speech, pass over into any other; the same may with equal truth be claimed of the ideas signified by words: there can hardly be