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LECTURE V.

Erroneous views of the relations of dialects. Dialectic variety implies original unity. Effect of cultivation on a language. Grouping of languages by relationship. Nearer and remoter relations of the English. Constitution of the Indo-European family. Proof of its unity. Impossibility of determining the place and time of its founders; their culture and customs, inferred from their restored vocabulary.

Having previously considered in some detail the various modes of change in language—the processes of linguistic life, as, by an allowable figure, we termed them—we went on at our last interview to direct our attention to the circumstances and conditions which govern the working of those processes, giving prominence to the one or the other of them, and quickening or retarding their joint effects. We then proceeded to inquire into the manner in which the same processes operate to divide any given form of speech, with the lapse of time, into varying forms, or to convert a language into dialects. We passed in review the causes which favour the development of dialectic differences, as well as those which limit and oppose such development, and even tend to bring uniformity out of diversity. They are, we found, of two general kinds: the one, proceeding from individuals, and founded on the diversities of individual character and circumstance, tend to indefinite separation and discordance; the other, acting in communities, and arising from the necessity of mutual intelligence, the grand aim and purpose of language, make for uniformity and assimilation,