of its more isolating cast.]

[Footnote 121: In a book of this sort it is naturally impossible to give
an adequate idea of linguistic structure in its varying forms. Only a
few schematic indications are possible. A separate volume would be
needed to breathe life into the scheme. Such a volume would point out
the salient structural characteristics of a number of languages, so
selected as to give the reader an insight into the formal economy of
strikingly divergent types.]

VII

LANGUAGE AS A HISTORICAL PRODUCT: DRIFT

Every one knows that language is variable. Two individuals of the same
generation and locality, speaking precisely the same dialect and moving
in the same social circles, are never absolutely at one in their speech
habits. A minute investigation of the speech of each individual would
reveal countless differences of detail--in choice of words, in sentence
structure, in the relative frequency with which particular forms or
combinations of words are used, in the pronunciation of particular
vowels and consonants and of combinations of vowels and consonants, in
all those features, such as speed, stress, and tone, that give life to
spoken language. In a sense they speak slightly divergent dialects of
the same language rather than identically the same language.

There is an important difference, however, between individual and
dialectic variations. If we take two closely related dialects, say
English as spoken by the "middle classes" of London and English as
spoken by the average New Yorker, we observe that, however much the
individual speakers in each city differ from each other, the body of
Londoners forms a compact, relatively unified group in contrast to the
body of New Yorkers. The individual variations are swamped in or
absorbed by certain major agreements--say of pronunciation and
vocabulary--which stand out very strongly when the language of the
group as a whole is contrasted with that of the other group. This means
that there is something like an ideal linguistic entity dominating the
speech habits of the members of each group, that the sense of almost
unlimited freedom which each individual feels in the use of his language
is held in leash by a tacitly directing norm. One individual plays on
the norm in a way peculiar to himself, the next individual is nearer the
dead average in that particular respect in which the first speaker most
characteristically departs from it but in turn diverges fr