Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/146

124 to which he sets an example for others to follow, and an example which will be followed in proportion as the changes are accordant with already prevailing usage and naturally suggested by it: the general structure and character of language are out of his reach, save as he can raise the common intellect, and quicken and fertilize the minds of his fellows, thus sowing seed which may spring up and bear fruit in language also. If he attempt anything like innovation, the conservatism of the community will array itself against him with a force of resistance against which he will be powerless. The commanding intellect has much the better opportunity to act effectively in a cultivated and lettered people, inasmuch as his inciting and lifting influence can be immediately exerted upon so many more of his fellows, and even upon more than one generation.

Especially is it true that all form-making is accomplished by a gradual and unreflective process. It is impossible to suppose, for instance, that, in converting the adjective like into the adverbial suffix ly, there was anything like intention or premeditation, any looking forward, even, to the final result. One step simply prepared the way for and led to another. We can trace the successive stages of the transfer, but we cannot see the historical conditions and linguistic habits which facilitated it, or tell why, among all the Germanic races, the English alone should have given the suffix this peculiar application; why the others content themselves without any distinctive adverbial suffix, nor feel that their modes of expressing the adverbial relation are less clear and forcible than ours. And so in every other like case. An aptitude in handling the elements of speech, a capacity to perceive how the resources of expression can be applied to formative uses, a tendency toward the distinct indication of formal relations rather than their implication merely—these, in their natural and unconscious workings, constitute the force which produces grammatical forms, which builds up, piece by piece, a grammatical system, more or less full and complete. Every language is the product and expression of the capacities and tendencies of a race as bearing upon the specific work of language-making; it illustrates