Linguistic analogy

“ Our knowledge of linguistic processes is sufficiently wide to show that lexicographic borrowing may proceed to such an extent, that the substance of a language may be materially changed. As long, however, as the inner form remains unchanged, our judgment is determined, not by the provenience of the vocabulary, but by that of the form. ”

“ Scientific methods applied to linguistic research have separated the abstract entities from the concrete: the soul of a word no longer is confused with its form in sound or with its graphic sign; the spirit of a tongue is not confounded with its sustentacular principles. Many difficulties have been cleared away, which formerly obscured the unities of the concrete and the abstract phenomena of linguistics. Modern methods have enabled some of the more intelligent of our specialists to discuss, with a semblance of reason, such things as values, realities, entities, and identities. ”

“ No more curious chapter in the history of language could be written than one which should trace the violations of analogy, the transgressions of the most primary laws of a language, which follow hereupon ”

“ A new language, says the proverb, is a new sense; but a multiplicity of dialects means, for the possessors of the main language, an enlargement of the pleasures of the linguistic sense without the fatigue of learning a totally new grammar and vocabulary. ”

“ All cloudy meanings, most of the tautological forms, all trivial, mean, low, and contemptible words should be cut out and forgotten. This can not be done without knowledge; linguistic discipline is essential. Keenness of perception, sensitiveness to good and evil words and forms of speech are necessary to those who would conserve the best elements of their tongue whilst eliminating the unworthy elements. ”

“ The desire of clearness and emphasis, the second cause of change in language, is, like analogy, a creative and constructive power, and is often found at work in company with analogy. The object of speech is to communicate our thoughts to one another; where, therefore, our meaning is not clearly grasped, we begin to pronounce our words more distinctly than usual and to lay greater stress upon them. ”

“ If the most eminent speakers are not to direct our practice, where shall we look for a guide? The answer is extremely easy; the rules of the language itself, and the general practice of the nation, constitute propriety in speaking. If we examin the structure of any language, we shall find a certain principle of analogy running through the whole. We shall find in English that similar combinations of letters have usually the same pronunciation; and that words, having the same terminating syllable, generally have the accent at the same distance from that termination. ”

“ But analogies of language only deserve confidence when the enquirer, not resting in or dwelling on resemblances of sound in the roots, traces the analogies into the organic structure, the grammatical forms, and into all which in languages shews itself as the product of the human intellect and character. ”

“ The sound or symbol s, or rather the habit of adding such a sibilant to a word or words which state something about more than one object, in order to denote plurality, leads sometimes to its being used in cases where ‘correct’ grammar omits it. A child will form words by a simple process of analogy, which seem curious enough to us, but are really quite simple and natural formations. ”

“ We need give but a moment's attention to another process of linguistic change, whereby not letters, parts of words, formative elements, alone are lost, but whole words, signs of ideas, disappear from among the stores of expression of a language. ”

“ A linguist that insists on talking about the Latin type of morphology as though it were necessarily the high-water mark of linguistic development is like the zoölogist that sees in the organic world a huge conspiracy to evolve the race-horse or the Jersey cow. Language in its fundamental forms is the symbolic expression of human intuitions. ”

“ Thus, while language in general may be classed as a natural phenomenon, a particular tongue must be regarded as an acquired means to an end—an artifice of conventionality—one, therefore which is subordinate to the purposes of society—one that is superior but helpful to the individual ”

“ But, afterwards, when man turns his attention inwards, he sees distinctly those intellectual phenomena, of which he had previously had only a confused perception, and when he wishes to express those new phenomena of the soul and of thought, analogy leads him to apply the signs which he is looking for to the signs which he already possesses; for analogy is the law of every nascent or developed language ”

“ But, even the permutation of letters in different and the most rude dialects, has its rules, and follows, within its own compass, a spontaneous analogy, such as is indispensable for the easy and common practice of a society more or xxx less numerous. ”

“ It may seem strange that the verb which signifies existence should have been employed in so many different languages as the sign of predication, if there is no real connection between the two meanings. But languages have been built up by the extension of an originally small number of words, with or without alterations of form, to express new meanings, the choice of the word being often determined by very distant analogies. In the present case, the analogy is not distant. All our predications are intended to declare the manner in which something affects, or would affect, ourselves or others. ”

“ In the evolution of IN sounds a number of other forces bear sway, which operate in the way of influencing,furthering, hindering, crossing, etc., though they cannot be called “causes” or “conditions” in the strict sense. These are analogy, popular etymology,* the tendency towards differentiation, phonetic symbolism, onomatopoeia, euphem- ism, and the tendency towards disyllabism.
13. Analogy plays as great a part in the phonetic evolution of the IN languages as it does in the IE family. ”

“ If we speak of language as the outward realization of thought, we do not mean language as deposited in a dictionary, or sketched in a grammar; we mean language as an act, language as being spoken, language as living and dying with every word that is uttered. ”

“ But whatever necessity there may be for a great variety of modes and tenses in dialects, constructed upon arbitrary principles, it does not appear that any more than one is needful for a natural language, or that the modes of conjugating verbs or any other, are in fact expressible by human speech any otherwise than by the whole form or order of inflection and things. ”

“ The linguist, as we have already seen, is frequently or usually unable to discover the exact meaning of the word in the original language, and hence is uncertain as to the degree of development of any art or technique. ”

“ With one foot language stands, no doubt, in the realm of nature, but with the other in the realm of the spirit. Some years ago, when I thought it necessary to bring out as clearly as possible the much neglected natural element in language, I tried to explain in what sense the Science of Language had a right to be called the last and the highest of the natural sciences. ”

“ It is hardly necessary to make any farther reference to an objection, already once alluded to, which some minds may be tempted to raise against our whole construction of the course of linguistic history out of the evidences of composition, phonetic corruption, transfer of meaning, and the other processes of linguistic growth, which we find in all the material of human speech. ”

“ And as I cannot suppose words to represent external things, I have said "A Word is one or more syllables spoken or written as the sign of some idea." But of what ideas are the words of our language significant? Are we to say, "Of all ideas;" and to recognize as an English word every syllable, or combination of syllables, to which we know a meaning is attached? No. For this, in the first place, would confound one language with an other; and destroy a distinction which must ever be practically recognized, till all men shall again speak one language. ”

“ This continual process is called the evolution of language. Slang is a strong element in the process.
As the servant of man, language has acquired a large part of his moral possessions as well as a stewardship of the most precious of his material property. Slowly through many centuries, language has assumed this power and made these acquisitions. The study of language must include, therefore, something more than orthographic change, grammatic loss, and historic speculation. It must deal with the phenomena of the mind, and it must approach them through the field of human interest. ”

“ Idiomatic expression, the soul of language, has its incipiency in the soul of a people, and may pervade it for centuries before the body of the language, the words in which its thoughts are clad, makes its appearance. ”

“ Every language in the world has its own phrase, fresh for the stranger’s fresh and alien sense of its signal significance; a phrase that is its own essential possession, and yet is dearer to the speaker of other tongues. ”

“ Every time that we consciously or unconsciously form words ‘by analogy,’ our habit of doing so is strengthened, and our confidence in the results is increased; and the more we enter upon domains of thought where we are comparative strangers, the more confidently and the more consciously do we proceed ‘to make our own words.’ In this process of word-making, we follow certain models; in fact, we derive one form from others which exist in our own vocabulary. ”

“ In comparison with idiomatic expression, the study of the roots of words and their derivation, it appears to me, is of but secondary importance; idiomatic expression being the kernel in which the tree of national expression had its incipiency, its origin. It is the life which pulsates through its veins, in which it has its stay and maintenance; the nerves which tingle with its intelligence, its genius, its soul. Take away this soul, and it ceases to exist. For every language there must have been a strong impulse making an impression before there could have been any expression at all. ”

“ Surely the mental habit of people who express their thoughts in so very different a manner, the one rapid, the other slow, the one plain, the other embarrassed, the one trailing, the other striding, cannot be essentially the same. The English language, strange compound as it is, with its want of inflections, and with all the difficulties which this want of inflections brings upon it, has yet made itself capable of being, in good hands, a business-instrument as ready, direct, and clear, as French or Latin. ”

“ From this state of grammatical numbness, languages recover by a secondary formation, which grows up slowly and imperceptibly at first in the speech of the people; till at last the reviving spirit rises upwards, and sweeps away, like the waters in spring, the frozen surface of an effete government, priesthood, literature, and grammar. ”

“ The integers of language are sentences, and their organs are the parts of speech. Linguistic organization, then, consists in the differentiation of the parts of speech and the integration of the sentence. ”

“ But whether the verb or the noun was the first to be invented is of little importance; nor is it possible for us, at the very beginning of our inquiry into the nature of language, to enter upon a minute examination of a theory which represents language as a work of human art, and as established by mutual agreement as a medium of communication. ”

“ Linguistic experience, both as expressed in standardized, written form and as tested in daily usage, indicates overwhelmingly that there is not, as a rule, the slightest difficulty in bringing the word to consciousness as a psychological reality. ”

“ As we do not think in words, but in sentences, and as language is the expression and embodiment of thought, it is clear that the unit of language must be the sentence and not the word. The words which compose a sentence are related to one another in the same way as the several elements of an idea, or of an action as reproduced in [86] thought, and can only be decomposed and separated by conscious analysis. ”

“ With the disguising and effacing effects of the processes of linguistic change fully present to our apprehensions, we shall not venture to conclude that those cases in which our historical researches fail to give us the genesis of both the elements of a compound form are fundamentally different from those in which it fully succeeds in doing so. ”

“ Is the language scientific, or is it, as we say, literary?—that is, the language of poetry and emotion, approximative language, thrown out, as it were, at certain great objects which the human mind augurs and feels after, but not language accurately defining them? Popular religion says, we know, that the language is scientific ”

“ But, though our modern philosophy did not know it, the ancient poets and framers of language must have known it. For in Greek language is logos, but logos means also reason, and alogon was chosen as the name, and the most proper name, for brute. No animal thinks, and no animal speaks, except man. Language and thought are inseparable. Words without thought are dead [pg 384] sounds; thoughts without words are nothing. To think is to speak low; to speak is to think aloud. ”

“ We can easily understand that the system of inflection, however useful in itself, prevents the possibility of one part of speech being used for another. In English, ‘love’ may be a noun or a verb; but in Latin or French, we must use ‘amare’ or ‘aimer’ for the verb, and ‘amor’ or ‘amour’ for the noun. This power of using one part of speech for another, exists to such an extent in English, that it may be almost said, that every word in the language may be applied in a variety of senses and grammatical constructions. ”