Dialect Notes, Vol. 2: Publication of the American Dialect Society (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

Excerpt from Dialect Notes, Vol. 2: Publication of the American Dialect Society

The real value, however, of such a collection of college words and phrases as the present is not that it is to add much, if at all, to the number of words or expressions in the permanent vocab ulary of the language not that it is to be permanent in itself, for many words and usages now common among students will probably disappear entirely in a few years, to be replaced by others of no less transitory life not that such a collection repre sents essentially new principles of word-formation. It is rather that the word-list exhibits the vocabulary of a living dialect, belonging to communities fairly distinct from the rest of the world and largely affected by similar influences. On this account it illustrates, as nothing else can do, the natural influences operat ing upon language and the natural effects to be expected, influ ences and effects which cannot be arrived at by a priori reason ing or with certainty from merely literary tradition. Besides, from seeing language as it actually exists, as it lives and grows, it is possible to make right inferences regarding language in the past, and to determine the probability or improbability of much that now rests wholly or largely upon conjecture. Such an investigation of language as it really exists is thus in line with the whole theory of modern linguistic study, and with that actual and minute examination of existing facts and tendencies by which the greatest advances in linguistic science have been made in this century.

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