portant tendency in the
history of speech sounds. Phonetic leveling and "splitting" counteract
it to some extent but, on the whole, it remains the central unconscious
regulator of the course and speed of sound changes.

The desire to hold on to a pattern, the tendency to "correct" a
disturbance by an elaborate chain of supplementary changes, often spread
over centuries or even millennia--these psychic undercurrents of
language are exceedingly difficult to understand in terms of individual
psychology, though there can be no denial of their historical reality.
What is the primary cause of the unsettling of a phonetic pattern and
what is the cumulative force that selects these or those particular
variations of the individual on which to float the pattern readjustments
we hardly know. Many linguistic students have made the fatal error of
thinking of sound change as a quasi-physiological instead of as a
strictly psychological phenomenon, or they have tried to dispose of the
problem by bandying such catchwords as "the tendency to increased ease
of articulation" or "the cumulative result of faulty perception" (on the
part of children, say, in learning to speak). These easy explanations
will not do. "Ease of articulation" may enter in as a factor, but it is
a rather subjective concept at best. Indians find hopelessly difficult
sounds and sound combinations that are simple to us; one language
encourages a phonetic drift that another does everything to fight.
"Faulty perception" does not explain that impressive drift in speech
sounds which I have insisted upon. It is much better to admit that we do
not yet understand the primary cause or causes of the slow drift in
phonetics, though we can frequently point to contributing factors. It is
likely that we shall not advance seriously until we study the
intuitional bases of speech. How can we understand the nature of the
drift that frays and reforms phonetic patterns when we have never
thought of studying sound patterning as such and the "weights" and
psychic relations of the single elements (the individual sounds) in
these patterns?

Every linguist knows that phonetic change is frequently followed by
morphological rearrangements, but he is apt to assume that morphology
exercises little or no influence on the course of phonetic history. I am
inclined to believe that our present tendency to isolate phonetics and
grammar as mutually irrelevant linguistic provinces is unfortunate.
There