Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/92

70 of sounds, and to get rid altogether of what is unnecessary in the words we use. All articulate sounds are produced by effort, by expenditure of muscular energy, in the lungs, throat, and mouth. This effort, like every other which man makes, he has an instinctive disposition to seek relief from, to avoid: we may call it laziness, or we may call it economy; it is, in fact, either the one or the other, according to the circumstances of each separate case: it is laziness when it gives up more than it gains; economy, when it gains more than it abandons. Every item of language is subject to its influence, and it works itself out in greatly various ways; we will give our first consideration to the manner in which its action accompanies, aids, and modifies that of the process of composition of old material into new forms, as last set forth. For it is composition, the building up of words out of elements formerly independent, that opens a wide field to the operation of phonetic change, and at the same time gives it its highest importance as an agency in the production and modification of language. If all words were of simple structure and brief form, their alterations would be confined within comparatively narrow limits, and would be of inferior consequence as constituting one of the processes of linguistic growth. Our adjective like, for example, is but slightly altered in our usage from the form which it had in the Anglo-Saxon (lîc) and the Mœso-Gothic (leik); while, in the compounds into which it has entered, it is mutilated even past recognition; in the adjectives and adverbs like godly and truly, it has been deprived of its final consonant; in such and which (A.-S. swylc, hwylc; M.- G. swaleik, hwaleik), it has saved only the final consonant, and that in a greatly modified shape. Our preterit did is, indeed, but a remnant of its older self, but in love-d it has reached a much lower stage of reduction.

The reason which makes phonetic change rifest in linguistic combinations is the same with that which creates the possibility of any phonetic change at all in language. It is inherent in the nature of a word, and its relation to the idea which it represents. A word, as we have already seen, is not the natural reflection of an idea, nor its description,