Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin

§ 1. Introduction. § 2. Former Theories. § 3. Method. § 4. Sounds. § 5. Grammar. § 6. Units. § 7. Irregularities. § 8. Savage Tribes. § 9. Law of Development. § 10. Vocabulary....

§ 1. Introduction. Sanskrit. § 2. Friedrich von Schlegel. § 3. Rasmus Rask. § 4. Jacob Grimm. § 5. The Sound Shift. § 6. Franz Bopp. § 7. Bopp continued. § 8. Wilhelm von Humbol...

§ 1. The Old Theory. § 2. Roots. § 3. Structure of Chinese. § 4. History of Chinese. § 5. Recent Investigations. § 6. Roots Again. § 7. The Agglutination Theory. § 8. Coalescenc...

§ 1. After Bopp and Grimm. § 2. K. M. Rapp. § 3. J. H. Bredsdorff. § 4. August Schleicher. § 5. Classification of Languages. § 6. Reconstruction. § 7. Curtius, Madvig and Specia...

§ 1. Emotional Exaggerations. § 2. Euphony. § 3. Organic Influences. § 4. Lapses and Blendings. § 5. Latitude of Correctness. § 6. Equidistant and Convergent Changes. § 7. Homop...

§ 1. The Substratum Theory. § 2. French _u_ and Spanish _h_. § 3. Gothonic and Keltic. § 4. Etruscan and Indian Consonants. § 5. Gothonic Sound-shift. § 6. Natural and Specific...

§ 1. Why is the Native Language learnt so well? § 2. Natural Ability and Sex. § 3. Mother-tongue and Other Tongue. § 4. Playing at Language. § 5. Secret Languages. § 6. Onomatop...

which are not due to transference to new individuals. The chapter on woman’s language has served as a kind of bridge between the two main divisions, in so far as the first secti...

As a first typical example of a whole class of languages now found in many parts of the world where people of European civilization have come into contact with men of other race...

masculine gender shall be deemed and taken to include females.” Third, the sexless but plural form _they_ may be used. If you try to put the phrase, ‘Does anybody prevent you?’...

§ 1. Women’s Languages. § 2. Tabu. § 3. Competing Languages. § 4. Sanskrit Drama. § 5. Conservatism. § 6. Phonetics and Grammar. § 7. Choice of Words. § 8. Vocabulary. § 9. Adve...

§ 1. Linguistic Estimation. § 2. Degeneration? § 3. Appreciation of Modern Tongues. § 4. The Scientific Attitude. § 5. Final Answer. § 6. Sounds. § 7. Shortenings. § 8. Objectio...

Some of the most typical childish sound-substitutions can hardly be supposed to leave any traces in language as permanently spoken, because they are always thoroughly corrected...

§ 1. Sound and Sense. § 2. Instinctive Feeling. § 3. Direct Imitation. § 4. Originator of the Sound. § 5. Movement. § 6. Things and Appearances. § 7. States of Mind. § 8. Size a...

The science of language began, tentatively and approximately, when the minds of men first turned to problems like these: How is it that people do not speak everywhere the same l...

Few things have been more often quoted in works on linguistics than Voltaire’s _mot_ that in etymology vowels count for nothing and consonants for very little. But it is now sai...

To learn a language it is not enough to know so many words. They must be connected according to the particular laws of the particular language. No one tells the child that the p...

In works of this period one frequently meets with expressions of pride and joy in the wonderful results that had been achieved in comparative linguistics in the course of a few...

We all know that in historical times languages have been constantly changing, and we have much indirect evidence that in prehistoric times they did the same thing. But when it i...

§ 1. Nominal Forms. § 2. Irregularities Original. § 3. Syntax. § 4. Objections. § 5. Word Order. § 6. Gender. § 7. Nominal Concord. § 8. The English Genitive. § 9. Bantu Concord...

In the preceding chapter, in order to simplify matters, we have dealt with sounds only, as if they were learnt by themselves and independently of the meanings attached to them....

A Danish philosopher has said: “In his whole life man achieves nothing so great and so wonderful as what he achieved when he learnt to talk.” When Darwin was asked in which thre...

Schuchardt has a story of a little coloured boy in the West Indies who said, “It’s _three_ hot in this room”: he had heard _too_ = _two_ and literally wanted to ‘go one better.’...

§ 1. Anatomy. § 2. Geography. § 3. National Psychology. § 4. Speed of Utterance. § 5. Periods of Rapid Change. § 6. The Ease Theory. § 7. Sounds in Connected Speech. § 8. Extrem...