Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/812

776 PHILOLOGY gods) ; he knows nothing of its structure and relations ; it never occurs to him to find fault with it, or to deem it insufficient and add to or change it ; he is wholly unaware that it does change. He simply satisfies his social needs of communication by means of it ; and if he has anything to express that is different from what has been expressed before, he takes the shortest way to a provision for the need; while any relaxation of the energy of utterance tends to a variation in the uttered combinations ; and thus changes come by his act, though without his knowledge. His sole object is, on the basis of what language he has, to make known his thought in the most convenient way to his fellow ; everything else follows with and from that. Human nature and circumstances being what they are, what follows actually is, as already shown, incessant growth and change. For it we have not to seek special disturbing causes in the history of the speakers, although such may come in to heighten and quicken the change ; we know that even in a small community, on a narrow islet, cut off from all intercourse with other communities, the speech would grow different as certainly, if not as rapidly, as anywhere in the world and only by the action of its speakers : not that the speakers of a language act in unison and simultaneously to produce a given change. This must begin in an individual, or more or less accord antly in a limited number of individuals, and spread from such example through the community. Initiation by one or a few, acceptance and adoption by the rest, such is the necessary method of all linguistic change, and to be read as plainly in the facts of change now going on among ourselves as in those of former language. The doctrine of the inaccessibility of language to other action than that of its speakers does not imply a power in the individual speaker to create or alter anything in the common speech, any more than it implies his desire to do so. What he suggests by his example must be approved by the imitation of his fellows, in order to become language. The common speech is the common property, and no one person has any more power over it than another. If there are, for example, a thousand speakers of a certain dialect, each one wields in general a thousandth part of the force required to change it with just so much more as may belong to his excess of influence over his fellows, due to recognized superiority of any kind on his part. His action is limited only by their assent ; but this is in effect a very narrow limitation, insuring the adoption of nothing that is not in near accordance with the already existing ; though it is also to be noted that he is as little apt to strike off into startling change as they to allow it ; since the governing power of already formed habits of speech is as strong in him as in them. That change to which the existing habits naturally lead is easy to bring about ; any other is practically impossible. It is this tendency on the part of the collective speakers of a language to approve or reject a proposed change according to its conformity with their already subsisting usages that we are accustomed to call by the fanciful name " the genius of a language." Dialectic On the relation of the part played in language-change by the individual to that by the community, in -combina tion with the inevitableness of change, rests the explana tion of the dialectic variation of language. If language were stable there would of course be no divarication ; but since it is always varying, and by items of difference that proceed from individuals and become general by diffusion, there can be uniformity of change only so far as diffu sion goes, or as the influences of communication extend. Within the limits of a single community, small or large, whatever change arises spreads gradually to all, and so becomes part of the general speech ; but let that com munity become divided into two (or more) parts, and then varia tion. the changes arising in either part do not spread to the other, and there begins to appear a difference in linguistic usage between them. It is at first slight, even to insig nificance ; not greater than exists between the dialects of different localities or ranks or occupations in the same community, without detriment to the general unity of speech. This unity, namely, rests solely on mutual intel ligibility, and is compatible with no small amount of individual and class difference, in vocabulary, in grammar, and in pronunciation ; indeed, in the strictest sense, each individual has a dialect of his own, different from that of every other, even as he has a handwriting, a countenance, a character of his own. And every item of change, as it takes place, must have its season of existence as a local or class or trade peculiarity, before it gains universal currency ; some of them linger long in that condition, or never emerge from it. All these differences in the speech of different sub-communities within the same community are essentially dialectic ; they differ not in kind, but only in degree, from those which separate the best -marked dialects ; they are kept down by general communication within the limit of general mutual intelligibility. Where that restraining influence ceases, the limit is gradually but surely overpassed, and real dialects are the result. From what we know of the life of language, we can say posi tively that continued uniformity of speech without con tinued community is not practicable. If it were possible to divide artificially, by an impassable chasm or wall, a people one for ages, and continuing to occupy the same seats, the language of the divided parts would at once begin to be dialectically different ; and after sufficient time had elapsed, each would have become unintelligible to the other. That is to say, whenever a community of uniform speech breaks up, its speech breaks up also ; nor do we know of any other cause of dialectic diversity. In applying this explanation of dialectic growth we have to allow for modifying circumstances of various nature, which alter not indeed the fact but the rate and kind of divarication. Some languages grow and change much more rapidly than others, with a corresponding effect upon divarication, since this is but a result of dis cordant growth. Usually, when there is division of a community, the parts get into different external circum stances, come in contact or mingle with different neigh bouring communities, and the like ; and this quickens and increases their divergence of speech. But the modify ing factor of by far the highest importance, here as elsewhere in the history of language, is civilization. Civilization in its higher forms so multiplies the forces of communication as to render it possible that the widely- divided parts of one people, living in circumstances and under institutions of very different character, should yet maintain a substantial oneness of speech ; of this there is no more striking example than the two great divisions of the English-speaking people on opposite sides of the Atlantic. On the other hand, a savage people cannot spread even a little without dialectic disunity ; there are abundant examples to be met with now of mutually un intelligible speech between the smallest subdivisions of a race of obviously kindred tongue as the different clusters of huts on the same coral islet. It is with linguistic unity precisely as it is with political unity, and for the same reasons. Before the attainment of civilization the human race, whether proceeding from one centre of dispersion or from several, was spread over the earth in a state of utter disintegration ; but every centre of civilization becomes also a centre of integration ; its influences make for unity of speech as of all other social institutions. Since culture has become incontestably the dominant power in human history, the unifying forces in language have also been