pointed out that the Anglo-Saxon inflectional system had already suffered considerable losses as contrasted with the parent general Germanic language or the grandparent Indo-European language. In comparison with later stages of English, however, the Anglo-Saxon inflectional system may be characterized as full, in both of the respects which have just been described. In the same way the term "lost inflections" as applied to the modern period of the English language must be understood only relatively. Modern English has not lost all of its inflections, but in comparison with the earlier periods, it may fitly be designated as a period of lost inflections. The term "leveled inflections" for the Middle English period indicates that the full inflections of the Anglo-Saxon period were all leveled under one form, the distinctive mark of which is the vowel e, representing all that remains in Middle English of the various vowels which appear with full phonetic value in the inflections of Anglo-Saxon. The explanation of the gradual simplification of the English inflectional system here presented relates the changes to specific causes in the social life of the English people. It does not assume that the English language was working out its own destiny, that with each successive loss of inflectional elements it was advancing nearer and nearer to the ideal of a perfect analytic language. The most striking changes were those that were made in the period of transition from Anglo-Saxon to Middle English, and an explanation has been given, at least for the acceptance of these changes, in the general upheaval in the social life of the Anglo-Saxon people at that time. What were the circumstances which made possible the acceptance of the changes in the transition from Middle Eng

lish to Modern English, the changes by which all the final e's of Chaucer's Middle English disappeared from the language? This change took place, roughly speaking, in the fifteenth century. But the fifteenth century was not notably a period of general social dislocation and turmoil in England. It was not a period of migration or of extensive foreign additions to the population. The higher cultural life, educational, religious, and political, was maintained with vigor throughout the century. In one important respect, however, the fifteenth century was a period in which the continuity of conservative tradition in language was interrupted. It was a period in which local and provincial customs tended to be replaced by national and standard customs. The literature of the Middle English and of the Anglo-Saxon period was written in a variety of dialects, but the literature of the Modern English period is all written in one dialect, the dialect of standard English. This dialect of standard English took form in the fifteenth century, under the pressure of new economic and social adjustments, and as a standard of this kind could be made only by the elimination of minor local variations or departures from the standard, the acquisition of it necessarily called for the formation of a great many new speech habits by a great many English speaking people. The immediate reason why the final e of the leveled inflections of Middle English should be lost in the formation of the new standard Modern English probably is to be found in the slight grammatical value of this final e. The final e of Middle English grammar stood for so many things that in the end it came to stand for nothing. Only an expert grammarian by the exercise of ingenuity can find system and signi

ficance in the final e of Middle English. The English of daily use, however, is never that of expert grammarians, and Middle English final e disappeared because, in the general apprehension, it had no meaning clear enough to sustain it.

Since the end of the Middle English period, no great changes have taken place in the inflectional history of the English language. The inflections of English today are substantially the same as the inflections of the year 1500. The old singulars of the second personal pronoun, thou, thine, and thee, and the old second and third singular present of the verb in -est, -eth have disappeared, except in archaic and special uses, and a few tense forms in the verb have varied, holp becoming helped, writ becoming wrote and so with others. But structural simplification in the language has not been carried appreciably further during the Modern English period. The opportunity has been there, for the language might as readily dispense with some of the inflectional forms it has retained as with those it has lost. But as the language became standardized in the fifteenth century, it fixed upon those forms which were then current in use, with little regard to the question whether the process of simplification had been carried as far as it might be or not. For the past four hundred years, the standard of the language with respect to structural form has remained unaltered. It has lost little and it has added practically nothing. And so far as the future may be seen from this present, no reason appears which leads one to think that the language will not continue as it has been for an indefinite time to come.

XIX

THE CAUSES OF STRUCTURAL CHANGE

THE discussion in the preceding chapter dealt primarily with the circumstances which permitted modifications of the traditional structural forms of English to become generalized and established in the customary practice of the language. But manifestly these favoring circumstances were not themselves the originating motive forces in the changes. Many new uses have become established as common practices of the language because the language at various times has passed through stages of popular disturbance when older customs were less tenaciously held than they had been. But though the general mental attitudes of these periods of social upheaval permitted the dissemination and the ready acceptance of innovations, they could not have been in themselves the direct causes of change. For it cannot be supposed that the popular mind is always in a state of unrest, always adjusting anew its cultural inheritance and always eager to reject older complex forms and reduce them to a new simplicity. It must be remembered that the primitive Indo-European speech was itself a popular speech, and that for many generations it maintained a much more highly elaborated structural form than that which appears in the relatively late manifestations of English within historical periods. All linguistic changes cannot be explained in lump under the heads of general sociological conditions, nor can they, on the other hand, be explained as the result of definite

reforming intentions and purposes. The specific causes of language changes lie between. No one determined that the traditional structural system of the English language should be simplified and then directed the work of simplification. While the changes were going on, no one realized how they would turn out or what the general drift of them was, whether for the better or the worse. Undoubtedly in stray instances, individuals rebelled against or supported particular modifications, but a general program with determining powers back of it was in the mind of no man. The causes of changes in language are to be found always in specific linguistic activities, yet not often in intentional purpose, and each set of details is to be explained only by examining the details themselves in the circumstances in which they appeared in the active use of the language for the practical applications for which the language exists. The general discussion of the favoring conditions which permitted new forms to become established must therefore be supplemented by a consideration of those immediate linguistic moments which brought the new forms into being.

In the examination of those linguistic processes which have given to the English language its characteristic structural forms, one might of course go back very far and attempt to explain first of all how the language in its remote beginnings acquired its fundamental inflectional elements. What were the linguistic processes which made the parent Indo-Germanic speech an inflectional language? The attempt to answer this question would carry the investigator back to many troubled matters in the very origin of language. It is, however, an endeavor which properly pertains to the comparative philologist