Language Study: An Introduction to Speech Mechanism

Contents: Preface. 1. Language defined. 2. The English language. 3. The problems of the science of language. 4. How each individual acquires his language: Life of language. 5. The conservative and alternative forces in language. 6. Growth of language: Change in the outer form of words. 7. Growth of language: Change in the inner content of words. 8. English inflections. 9. The elements of speech. 10. The speech sound. 11. Form in language: Grammatical process. 12. Form in language: Grammatical concepts. 13. Types of linguistic structure. 14. Language as a historical product: Drift. 15. Language as a historical product: Phonetic law. 16. How languages influence each other. 17. Language, race and culture. 18. Language and literature. Bibliography.

Quite aside from their intrinsic interest, linguistic forms and historical processes have the greatest possible diagnostic value for the understanding of some of the more difficult and elusive problems in the psychology of thought and in the strange, cumulative dirft in the life of the human spirit that we call history or progress or evolution. This book aims to give a certain perspective on the subject of language rather than to assemble facts about it. It has little to say of the ultimate psychological basis of speech and gives only enough of the actual descriptive or historical facts of particular languages to illustrate principles. Its main purpose is to show what we conceive language to be, what is its variability in place and time, and what are its relations to other fundamental human interests-the problem of thought, the nature of the historical process, race, culture, art.(jacket)