Linguistics in General
lations and dry lingos with reasonable deductions alive with human interest.
Already a great deal has been done. The relations existing between effects of linguistic energies at play, have been discovered to be orderly. Wherever order is established, successful investigation is possible. The science of philology has not been idle; on the contrary, it long has been a favorite field of research. The mistake made by philologists, however, has been in assuming that philology is the principal means of understanding the phenomena of linguistics; whereas in truth it is only one means of studying them.
Modern philology may be said to have had its beginnings in the latter part of the 18th century; and its father was Friedrich August Wolf. The subject is broad, having to do with literature, criticism, history, interpretation, comparison, explanation, archaic researches, etc. Its great weakness has been a tendency to concern itself too much with written language and too little with the spoken forms.
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