the metamorphosing effect of constant change has been too
great to allow it. In point of fact, taking languages as they
now exist, only those have been shown related which possess
a common structure, or have together grown out of the more
primitive radical stage, since structure proves itself a more
constant and reliable evidence than material. And this is
likely ever to be the case; at any rate, to trace all the world’s
languages so far back toward their beginnings as to find in them
evidences of identity is beyond the wildest hope. We must
be content with demonstrating for those beginnings a unity of
kind as alike a body of formless roots. But, on the other hand,
since this unity is really demonstrated, since all structure is
the result of growth, and no degree of difference of structure,
any more than of difference of material, refuses explanation as
the result of discordant growth from identical beginnings, it is
equally inadmissible to claim that the diversities of language
prove it to have had different beginnings. That is to say, the
question of the unity of speech, and yet more that of the unity
of the race, is beyond the reach of the student of language;
the best view he can attain is the hypothetical one, that, if
the race is one, the beginnings of speech were perhaps one—but
probably not, even then. This negative conclusion is
so clearly established as to leave no excuse for the still oft repeated
attempts to press language into service on either side
of the controversy respecting human unity of race
That all making and changing of language is by the act of its speakers is too obvious to call for discussion. No other force capable of acting and of producing effects is either demonstrable or conceivable as concerned in the work. The doctrine that language is an organism growing by its own inherent powers Unconscious Growth through individuals. exempt from the interference of those who use it, is simply an indefensible paradox. Every word that is uttered is so by an act of human will, at first in imitation of others, then more and more by a formed and controlling habit; it is accessible to no change except by influences working in the speaker’s mind and leading him to make it otherwise. Not that he is aware of this, or directs his action knowingly to that end. The whole process is unconscious. If any implication of reflective or intended action can be shown to inhere in any doctrine of linguistic science, it vitiates that doctrine. The attitude of the ordinary speaker towards his language is that of unreasoning acceptance, it seems to him that his names for things are their real names, and all others unintelligent nicknames, he thinks himself to possess his speech by the same tenure as his sight or hearing, it is “natural” to him (or, if he reasons about it, he attributes it to a divine origin, as races beginning to philosophize are wont to ascribe their various social institutions to their 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 “ay 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 accordantly 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, ensuring 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.”
On the relation of the part played in language-change by the individual to that by the community, in combination with the inevitableness of change, rests the explanation 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 diffusion 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 community become divided into two (or more) parts, and then 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 insignificance; 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 intelligibility, 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 over passed, and real dialects are the result. From what we know of the life of language we can say positively that continued uniformity of speech without continued 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
