Читать книгу Introduction to the study of the history of language - Benjamin Ide Wheeler - Страница 9

The sum of the words at the disposal of any individual connects itself with his ideas: and it thus follows that the entire store of words forming the stock of any community must adapt itself to the whole stock of ideas belonging to any community, and must change as these change. The meaning of the words, again, must adapt itself to the standard of culture attained from time to time by each nation. New words must be created for new objects and new relations and kindred, though novel meanings must become attached to the old words—as in the case of steel pen, properly, ‘a steel feather.’ And again, a quantity of unobserved changes are constantly passing on language which are hardly remarked as such, and are the immediate result of a change in the whole culture of a nation. Such are the words humility, talent, faith, spirit, and the numerous other words referred to before, to which Christianity has given a deeper and more spiritual significance. Then, again, progressive skill may have worked striking changes in objects essentially the same: we call a Roman trireme, a Chinese junk, and a British man-of-war by the same name, ship; but we must admit that the ideas attaching to it have changed considerably. And thus it is with all objects capable of improvement by skill, and again with purely mental or intellectual conceptions, which change according to the changing conditions of culture of the community which possesses them.