Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/273

VII.] processes may, for aught we can see, work on during an indefinite period in the future, with never-ending evolution out of each given form of speech of another slightly differing from it; even until every now existing dialect shall have divided into numerous descendants, and each of these shall have varied so far from its ancestor that their kindred shall be scarcely, or not at all, discoverable. Have we, now, any good reason to believe that they have not worked on thus indefinitely in the past also, with a kaleidoscopic resolution of old forms and combination of new, changing the aspect of language without altering its character as a structure? Or, are we able to find distinct traces of a condition of speech which may be called primitive in comparison with that in which it at present exists?

This question admits an affirmative answer. The present structure of language has its beginnings, from which we are not yet so far removed that they may not be clearly seen. Our historical analysis does not end at last in mere obscurity; it brings us to the recognition of elements which we must regard as, if not the actual first utterances of men, at least the germs out of which their later speech has been developed. It sets before our view a stage of expression essentially different from any of those we now behold among the branches of our family, and serving as their common foundation.

It must be premised that this belief rests entirely upon our faith in the actuality of our analytical processes, as being merely a retracing of the steps of a previous synthesis—in the universal truth of the doctrine that the elements into which we separate words are those by the putting together of which those words were at first made up. The grounds upon which such a faith reposes were pretty distinctly set forth in the second lecture (p. ), but the importance of the subject will justify us in a recapitulation of the argument there presented.

No one can possibly suppose that we should ever have come to call our morning meal breakfast, if there had not already existed in our language the two independent words break and fast; any more than that we should say