How
language changes through time, how it varies through space, how it differs from
one social group to another, and most of all how it worlds—
these things are
studied in linguistics. Because modern linguistics has roots which
go back to the early nineteenth century and beyond, many people
are familiar with some of
the things which interested linguists then and still
interest them today.
They find
it understandable that a linguist
should try to find the line which separates
those areas in New England where barn is
"barrn" (with r) from
those areas where it is "bahn"
(without r);
and they may even envy him a bit
when he goes to an Indian
reservation or South America or Africa to investigate
some hitherto undescribed tongue and thus add his little bit to
our meager knowledge of
the world's 2,000 to
4,000 languages. (No one knows
how many there are.)
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