om the average
in a way peculiar to himself, and so on. What keeps the individual's
variations from rising to dialectic importance is not merely the fact
that they are in any event of small moment--there are well-marked
dialectic variations that are of no greater magnitude than individual
variations within a dialect--it is chiefly that they are silently
"corrected" or canceled by the consensus of usage. If all the speakers
of a given dialect were arranged in order in accordance with the degree
of their conformity to average usage, there is little doubt that they
would constitute a very finely intergrading series clustered about a
well-defined center or norm. The differences between any two neighboring
speakers of the series[122] would be negligible for any but the most
microscopic linguistic research. The differences between the outer-most
members of the series are sure to be considerable, in all likelihood
considerable enough to measure up to a true dialectic variation. What
prevents us from saying that these untypical individuals speak distinct
dialects is that their peculiarities, as a unified whole, are not
referable to another norm than the norm of their own series.

[Footnote 122: In so far as they do not fall out of the normal speech
group by reason of a marked speech defect or because they are isolated
foreigners that have acquired the language late in life.]

If the speech of any member of the series could actually be made to fit
into another dialect series,[123] we should have no true barriers
between dialects (and languages) at all. We should merely have a
continuous series of individual variations extending over the whole
range of a historically unified linguistic area, and the cutting up of
this large area (in some cases embracing parts of several continents)
into distinct dialects and languages would be an essentially arbitrary
proceeding with no warrant save that of practical convenience. But such
a conception of the nature of dialectic variation does not correspond to
the facts as we know them. Isolated individuals may be found who speak a
compromise between two dialects of a language, and if their number and
importance increases they may even end by creating a new dialectic norm
of their own, a dialect in which the extreme peculiarities of the parent
dialects are ironed out. In course of time the compromise dialect may
absorb the parents, though more frequently these will tend to linger
indefinitely as