Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/121

new thought and knowledge calls for new words and phrases, in order to its expression, so, when old thought and knowledge becomes antiquated, is superseded, and loses its currency, the words and phrases which expressed it, unless converted to other purposes, must also go out of use. It is sufficient that any constituent of language come to appear to those who have been accustomed to use it unnecessary and superfluous, and they cease to employ and transmit it; and, as tradition and use are the only means by which the life of language is kept up, it drops out of existence and disappears for ever—unless, indeed, it be maintained in artificial life by the preservation of records of the dialect in which it figured, or its mummy, with due account of its history and departed worth, be deposited, labelled "obsolete," in a dictionary. In part, things themselves pass out of notice and remembrance, and their names along with them; in part, new expressions arise, win their way to popular favour, and crowd out their predecessors; or, of two or more nearly synonymous words, one acquires a special and exclusive currency, and assumes the office of them all; in part, too, even valuable items of expression fall into desuetude, from no assignable cause save the carelessness or caprice of the language-users, and pass away, leaving a felt void behind them. Of course, those departments of a vocabulary which are liable to most extensive and rapid change by expansion are also most exposed to loss of their former substance, since the growth of human knowledge consists not merely in addition, but also in the supersession and replacement of old ideas by new: the technical phraseology of the arts, sciences, and handicrafts shows most obsolete words, as it shows most new words; yet, in the never-ending adjustment of human speech to human circumstances and needs, every part is in its own degree affected by this kind of change, as well as by the others. Rarely has any cultivated tongue, during a like period of its history, given up more of its ancient material than did the English during the few centuries which succeeded the Norman invasion; a large portion of the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary was abandoned; but this was only the natural effect of the intrusion of so many Norman-French