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Oral Words, etc.

guage regarded as an organism, and speech as fluid expression, can not be studied from the same viewpoint, notwithstanding their obvious intimate relationships.

Again, language regarded as a system, so well shown by de Saussure, has two equally important elements—external and internal. The external elements of a tongue, naturally, are those which affect it from without; and the internal, are those which affect the system of language in any degree whatever. Just where the external series of phenomena ends and the internal series begins, is not essential to this discussion; but what has an important bearing, is the vital fact of a great multitude of linguistic phenomena connecting the simplest parts of speech with each other and with the complex whole. Some of these elements comprise the influences of ethnological groups including the reciprocal relations between the history of the group and the history of its tongue—the morals of the people reflected in their speech—and con-

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