ly, is easily made habitual among a large number
of speakers because it does facilitate speech. In the classic
example, pre-English, "habeda" and "habedun" became in
Old English, "haefde" and" haefdon," and are in present English
(I, we) "had."[1] In the same way variations that reduce
the unstressed syllables of a word readily insinuate themselves
into the articulatory habits of a people. In the production
of stressed syllables, the vocal chords are under high tension
and the breath is shut in. It is easier, consequently, to produce
the unstressed syllables "with shortened, weakened
articulations... lessening as much as possible all interference
with the breath stream."[2] Thus "contemporaneous prohibition"
becomes "kntempe'rejnjes prhe'bifn." Sound
changes thus take place, in general, as lessenings of the
labor of articulation, by means of adaptation to prevailing rest
positions of the vocal organs. They take place further in
more or less accidental adaptations to the particular speech
habits of a people. That is, those sounds become discarded
that do not fit in with the general articulatory tendencies of
a language. Of this the weakening of unstressed syllables in
English and palatalization in Slavic are examples.[1*]

[Footnote 1: Bloomfield: _loc. cit._, p. 211.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 212.]

[Footnote 1*: _Ibid._, p. 218.]

These changes of sound in language so far discussed are
made independently of the meaning of words. Other changes
in articulation occur, as already noted, by analogy of sound or
meaning. That is, words that have associated meanings
come to be similarly articulated. This is simply illustrated in
the case of the child who thinks it perfectly natural to assimilate
by analogy "came" to "come." Thus the young child
will frequently say, until he is corrected, he "comed," he
"bringed," he "fighted." In communities where printing
and writing and reading are scarce, such assimilation by
analogy has an important effect in modifying the forms of
words.

CHANGES IN MEANING. The changes in language most important
for the student of human behavior are changes in
meaning. Language, it must again be stressed, is an instrument
for the communication of ideas. The manner in which
the store of meanings in a language becomes increased and
modified (the etymology of a language) is, in a sense, the
history of the mental progress of the people which use it. For
changes in meaning are primarily brought ab