Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/31

I.] it has force to prove. We shall, in short, endeavour to arrive at an apprehension of the fundamental principles of the science. But we shall also find occasion to glance at the main results accomplished by its means, seeking to understand what language is and what is its value to man, and to recognize the great truths in human history which it has been instrumental in establishing.

In order to these ends, we shall first take up one or two preliminary questions, the discussion of which will show us how language lives and grows, and how it is to be investigated, and will guide us to an understanding of the place which its study occupies among the sciences. We shall then go on to a more detailed examination and illustration of the processes of linguistic growth, and of the manner in which they produce the incessant changes of form and content which language is everywhere and always undergoing. We shall note, further, the various causes which affect the kind and rate of linguistic change. The result of these processes of growth, in bringing about the separation of languages into dialects, will next engage our attention. This will prepare us for a construction of the group of dialects, and the family of more distantly related languages, of which our own English speech is a member, and for an examination and estimate of the evidence which proves them related. The extent and importance, historical and linguistic, of this family will be set forth, and its course of development briefly sketched. We shall next pass in review the other great families into which the known forms of human speech are divided, noticing their most striking characteristics. Then will be taken up certain general questions, of prime interest and importance, suggested by such a review—as the relative value and authority of linguistic and of physical evidence of race, and the bearing of language upon the ultimate question of the unity or variety of the human species. Finally, we shall consider the origin of language, its relation to thought, and its value as an element in human progress. And a recognition of the aid which it receives in this last respect from written and recorded speech will lead us, by way of appendix, to take a cursory