Page:The American Indian.djvu/338



, in the broadest sense, language is a trait of culture, its characters are so distinct as to require very different methods of investigation. The study of the different forms of speech in the Old World has become a separate learned pursuit and one in which the problems are so complex as to demand great specialization. The same is true of primitive languages in the New World, as well as in the less cultured parts of the Old. Consequently we have, under the head of New World linguistics, a fairly distinct division of our subject in which the most important investigations have been made by those who have specialized in it.

One of the first tasks in primitive linguistics is the classification of the existing forms of speech. The reader may need to be reminded that the national uniformity of language in Europe is a correlate of close political organization, one type of speech having been selected by the governing authority and its use perpetuated by enforced education. In the more primitive states of society, where political unity exists only for a single community and no legislative recognition of languages is taken, we may expect each such political unit to show some individuality in speech. In fact, so far as can be judged from the data at hand any separation of such a political unit into two or more parts will sooner or later result in different forms of speech.

Under such conditions, very unequal differences will exist. Between some groups we shall find but a small difference in vocabulary; in others, an additional phonetic change; and finally, variations in the grammatical structure. All degrees of these differences are found when we consider a very large number of political units, giving us an intergradation analogous to that we observed in the cultures of the same units. This