Oral Words, etc.
tures to serve the particular needs of each; and elements of these nomenclatures gradually infect the popular tongue. At first the result is in the nature of an infection; but in the course of time the system linguistic rids itself of the poison, retaining only the healthful residue—reacts favorably, in other words.
Besides, language as an institution is influenced by other associated institutions: the school, the church, the Academy, the military, the court, the press, and by the literature of the people as it circulates in books or is conserved in libraries. In our own English tongue it is especially notable that the tendency of popular idiom, with all its faults, is to invade the literary or book-field. Indeed in all first-rate languages, there are reciprocal influences between literary expression and current speech.
As to oral and written speech, we have two systems of signs,—one represents the other. The oral tradition may be wholly independent of the written; and examples of this fact still
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