singular preterit; there, it was still possible to say if thou love, if he love, if thou loved, instead of thou lovest, he loves, thou lovedst. But the second persons have become of so rare use with us that they could render little aid in keeping alive in the minds of speakers the apprehension of the subjunctive: it virtually rested solely upon the single form if he love. No wonder, then, that the distinction, so weakly sustained, became an evanescent one; in if they love, if we loved, and so on, forms apparently indicative answered sufficiently well the purpose of conditional expression; why not also in the third person singular? Under the influence of such considerations, it has become equally allowable to write if he loves and if he love, even in careful and elegant styles of composition, while the latter is but very rarely heard in colloquial discourse. Only in the verb to be, whose subjunctive forms were more plainly, and in more persons, distinguished from the indicative, have they maintained themselves more firmly in use: to say if I was, if he was, for if I were, if he were, is even now decidedly careless and inelegant.
What has been given must suffice as illustration of the abbreviation of forms, the mutilation and wearing out of formative elements. But this, though a fundamentally and conspicuously important part of the phonetic history of a language, is only a part: the same tendency, to economize the time and labour expended in speaking, to make the utterance of words more easy and convenient, shows itself in a great variety of other ways. None of the articulate elements of which our vocables are composed are exempt from alteration under the operation of this tendency; while a word continues to maintain its general structure and grammatical form, it is liable to change by the conversion of some of its sounds into others, by omission, even by addition or insertion. The subject of phonetic change in language is too vast, and runs out into a too infinite detail, to be treated here with any fulness: we can only attempt to direct our attention to its most important features and guiding principles.
Each one of the sounds composing our spoken alphabet is produced by an effort in which the lungs, the throat, and the organs of the mouth bear a part. The lungs furnish the
