nounce any syllable that is found in the name of a near male relative. But these are special usages, temporary fashions, and have nothing whatever to do with the structure of the language. Then, again, we witness the creation of new words every day, but these words are always formed according to analogies with already existing words. They may be happy inventions or awkward attempts, but they are never pure creations or wholly fanciful.
A second objection to the classification of linguistic among scientific studies rests upon the fact that whole peoples, and even races, are capable of abandoning their own language and adopting another. The fact is undeniable; but it is also undeniable that language is independent of history; and, to take one example among many, we have seen Latin go on in its evolution in Gaul, Spain, and Roumania, after having been adopted by the barbarians.
It is proper to say something here about so-called mixed languages, which are, however, not at all hybrid in their structure, but have simply admitted foreign words into their vocabularies. With all the Persian and Arabic words it contains, the Turkish language is evidently and only Altaic. The Araucanian language, although it has received a host of Spanish words, is a purely American idiom. English is Germanic, although its vocabulary is loaded with words of Latin origin. The French language was introduced into England by the Norman conquest in the eleventh century. From the two languages which were then found in the presence of one another, the Anglo-Saxon and the French, it has been usually said that a mixed language was formed the—English. This assertion is very inexact, from the morphological point of view. French, after the conquest, became the language of the court and of justice, while it entered into the popular language, the Anglo-Saxon, only as to its vocabulary; but there it made a deep impression. Of 43,000 words in the English language, as they occur in the dictionary, more than 29,000 are of Roman origin, while only 13,000 or 14,000 are of Germanic origin, or Anglo-Saxon; yet the English language is wholly Germanic in its structure. The remains of the declensions of nouns and of the conjugations of verbs are Germanic, with no Latin about them. Another example of the kind is found in the Basque language, three quarters of the vocabulary of which is to-day Romanic; yet the fact does not prevent the language from having a peculiarly individual structure and form wholly free from Romanic elements in its grammar.
In short, the processes of linguistic study—which have nothing in common with those of the study of philology—demonstrate that the linguist studies the anatomy of forms just as the botanist and zoölogist do.
Another objection to the scientific view of linguistics is more specious, but not more solid. It is that, since articulate language can not be produced without vocal organs, it can not be regarded as an
