Use the following passage to answer questions: (1) In order to understand the meaning of dialectical regeneration we must first see clearly what we mean by dialect. We saw before that language has no independent substantial existence. Language exists in man, it lives in being spoken, it dies with each word that is pronounced, and is no longer heard. It is a mere accident that language should ever have been reduced to writing, and have been made the vehicle of a written literature. Even now the largest number of languages have produced no literature. Among the numerous tribes of Central Asia,... Show more Use the following passage to answer questions: (1) In order to understand the meaning of dialectical regeneration we must first see clearly what we mean by dialect. We saw before that language has no independent substantial existence. Language exists in man, it lives in being spoken, it dies with each word that is pronounced, and is no longer heard. It is a mere accident that language should ever have been reduced to writing, and have been made the vehicle of a written literature. Even now the largest number of languages have produced no literature. Among the numerous tribes of Central Asia, Africa, America, and Polynesia, language still lives in its natural state, in a state of continual combustion; and it is there that we must go if we wish to gain an insight into the growth of human speech previous to its being arrested by any literary interference. (2) What we are accustomed to call languages, the literary idioms of Greece, and Rome, and India, of Italy, France, and Spain, must be considered as artificial, rather than as natural forms of speech. The real and natural life of language is in its dialects, and in spite of the tyranny exercised by the classical or literary idioms, the day is still very far off which is to see the dialects, even of such classical languages as Italian and French, entirely eradicated. About twenty of the Italian dialects have been reduced to writing, and made known by the press. Champollion-Figeac reckons the most distinguishable dialects of France at fourteen. The number of modern Greek dialects is carried by some as high as seventy, and though many of these are hardly more than local varieties, yet some, like the Tzaconic, differ from the literary language as much as Doric differed from Attic. <a id="x.89087">In the island of Lesbos, villages distant from each other not more than two or three hours have frequently peculiar words of their own, and their own peculiar pronunciation. (3) It is a mistake to imagine that dialects are everywhere corruptions of the literary language. Even in England, the local patois have many forms which are more primitive than the language of Shakespeare, and the richness of their vocabulary surpasses, on many points, that of the classical writers of any period. Dialects have always been the feeders rather than the channels of a literary language; anyhow, they are parallel streams which existed long before one of them was raised to that temporary eminence which is the result of literary cultivation. (4) What Grimm says of the origin of dialects in general applies only to such as are produced by phonetic corruption. 'Dialects,' he writes 'develop themselves progressively, and the more we look backward in the history of language the smaller is their number, and the less definite their features. All multiplicity arises gradually from an original unity.' So it seems, indeed, if we build our theories of language exclusively on the materials supplied by literary idioms, such as Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Gothic. No doubt these are the royal heads in the history of language. But as political history ought to be more than a chronicle of royal dynasties, so the historian of language ought never to lose sight of those lower and popular strata of speech from which these dynasties originally sprang, and by which alone they are supported. — Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language Show less
Use the following passage to answer questions:
(1) In order to understand the meaning of dialectical regeneration we must first see clearly what we mean by dialect. We saw before that language has no independent substantial existence. Language exists in man, it lives in being spoken, it dies with each word that is pronounced, and is no longer heard. It is a mere accident that language should ever have been reduced to writing, and have been made the vehicle of a written literature. Even now the largest number of languages have produced no literature. Among the numerous tribes of Central Asia, Africa, America, and Polynesia, language still lives in its natural state, in a state of continual combustion; and it is there that we must go if we wish to gain an insight into the growth of human speech previous to its being arrested by any literary interference. (2) What we are accustomed to call languages, the literary idioms of Greece, and Rome, and India, of Italy, France, and Spain, must be considered as artificial, rather than as natural forms of speech. The real and natural life of language is in its dialects, and in spite of the tyranny exercised by the classical or literary idioms, the day is still very far off which is to see the dialects, even of such classical languages as Italian and French, entirely eradicated. About twenty of the Italian dialects have been reduced to writing, and made known by the press. Champollion-Figeac reckons the most distinguishable dialects of France at fourteen. The number of modern Greek dialects is carried by some as high as seventy, and though many of these are hardly more than local varieties, yet some, like the Tzaconic, differ from the literary language as much as Doric differed from Attic. <a id="x.89087">In the island of Lesbos, villages distant from each other not more than two or three hours have frequently peculiar words of their own, and their own peculiar pronunciation. (3) It is a mistake to imagine that dialects are everywhere corruptions of the literary language. Even in England, the local patois have many forms which are more primitive than the language of Shakespeare, and the richness of their vocabulary surpasses, on many points, that of the classical writers of any period. Dialects have always been the feeders rather than the channels of a literary language; anyhow, they are parallel streams which existed long before one of them was raised to that temporary eminence which is the result of literary cultivation. (4) What Grimm says of the origin of dialects in general applies only to such as are produced by phonetic corruption. 'Dialects,' he writes 'develop themselves progressively, and the more we look backward in the history of language the smaller is their number, and the less definite their features. All multiplicity arises gradually from an original unity.' So it seems, indeed, if we build our theories of language exclusively on the materials supplied by literary idioms, such as Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Gothic. No doubt these are the royal heads in the history of language. But as political history ought to be more than a chronicle of royal dynasties, so the historian of language ought never to lose sight of those lower and popular strata of speech from which these dynasties originally sprang, and by which alone they are supported.
— Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language
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