Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/200

178 of which the falsity will have been apparent by the exposition already given; yet a brief additional discussion of the point will afford us the opportunity of setting in a clearer light one or two principles whose distinct apprehension is necessary in order to the successful prosecution of our farther inquiries.

It will be readily admitted that the difference between any given dialect and another of kindred stock is made up of a multitude of separate items of difference, and consists in their sum and combined effect; thus, for instance, words are possessed by the one which are wanting in the other; words found in both are differently pronounced by each, or are used in senses either not quite identical or very unlike; combinations and forms belong only to one, or are corrupted and worn down in diverse degrees by the two; phrases occur in the one which would be meaningless in the other. Now the gradual production of such differences as these is something which we see to have been going on in language during the whole period of its history illustrated by literary records; nay, which is even going on at the present day under our own eyes. If the Italian uses in the sense of 'truth' the word verità, the Spanish verdad, the French vérité, the English verity, we know very well that it is not because all these forms were once alike current in the mouths of the same people, till those who preferred each one of them sorted themselves out and combined together into a separate community; it must be because some single people formerly used in the same sense a single word, either coincident with one of these or nearly resembling them all, from which they have all descended, in the ordinary course of linguistic tradition, that always implies liability to linguistic change. We happen to know, indeed, in this particular case, by direct historical evidence, what the original word was, and who were the people that used it: it was vēritāt (nominative veritas), and belonged to the language of Rome, the Latin: its present varieties of form merely illustrate the usual effects of phonetic corruption. So, too, if I say attend! and the Frenchman attendez! our words differ in pronunciation, in grammatical form (the latter having a plural ending which the