Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/66

44 in the past or in the future, that mutation has its full course. New dialects are wont to grow up among the common people, while the speech of the educated and lettered class continues to be what it has been. But the nature of the forces in action is the same in the one case as in the other: all change in language is the work of the will of its speakers, which acts under the government of motives, through the organs of speech, and varies their products to suit its necessities and its convenience. Every single item of alteration, of whatever kind, and of whatever degree of importance, goes back to some individual or individuals, who set it in circulation, from whose example it gained a wider and wider currency, until it finally won that general assent which is alone required in order to make anything in language proper and authoritative. Linguistic change must be gradual, and almost insensible while in progress, for the reason that the general assent can be but slowly gained, and can be gained for nothing which is too far removed from former usage, and which therefore seems far-fetched, arbitrary, or unintelligible. The collective influence of all the established analogies of a language is exerted against any daring innovation, as, on the other hand, it aids one which is obvious and naturally suggested. It was, for instance, no difficult matter for popular usage to introduce the new possessive its into English speech, nor to add worked to wrought, as preterit of work, nor to replace the ancient plural kye or kine (Anglo-Saxon cy, from cu, 'cow') by a modern one, cows, formed after the ordinary model: while to reverse either process, to crowd its, worked, and cows out of use by substitution of his, wrought, and kine, would have been found utterly impracticable. The power of resistance to change possessed by a great popular institution, which is bound up with the interests of the whole community, and is a part of every man's thoughts and habitual acts, is not easily to be overestimated. How long has it taken to persuade and force the French people, for instance, into the adoption of the new decimal system of weights and measures! How have they been baffled and shamed who have thought, in these latter days, to amend in a few points, of