Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/96

74 difference between a synthetic combination, like I loved, and a mere analytic collocation, like I did love. It alone renders possible true grammatical forms, which make the wealth and power of every inflective language. We sometimes laugh at the unwieldiness of the compounds which our neighbour language, the German, so abundantly admits; words like Rittergutsbesitzer, 'knight's-property-possessor,' or Schuhmacherhandwerk, 'cobbler's-trade,' seem to us too cumbrous for use; but half the vocables in our own tongue would be as bulky and awkward, but for the abbreviation which phonetic change has wrought upon them. Without it, such complicated derivatives as untruthfully, inapplicabilities, would have no advantage over the tedious paraphrases with which we should now render their precise etymological meaning.

Change, retrenchment, mutilation, disguise of derivation is, then, both the inevitable and the desirable accompaniment of such composition as has formed the vocabulary of our spoken tongue. It stands connected with tendencies of essential consequence, and is part of the wise economy of speech. It contributes to conciseness and force of expression. It is the sign and means of the integration of words. It disencumbers terms of traditional remembrances, which would otherwise disturb the unity of attention that ought to be concentrated upon the sign in its relation to the thing signified. It makes of a word, instead of a congeries of independent entities, held together by a loose bond and equally crowding themselves upon the apprehension, a unity, composed of duly subordinated parts.

But the tendency which works out these valuable results is, at the same time, a blind, or, to speak more exactly, an unreflecting one, and its action is also in no small measure destructive; it pulls down the very edifice which it helps to build. Its direct aim is simply ease and convenience; it seeks, as we have seen, to save time and labour to the users of language. There may be, it is evident, waste as well as economy in the gratification of such a tendency; abbreviation may be carried beyond the limits of that which can be well dispensed with; ease and convenience may be consulted by the sacrifice of what is of worth, as well as by the rejection