Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/126

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Orderly Relationships

ventional nature—the collectivity—of language has been contrasted with those of its elements which permit individual freedom of choice in the use of a tongue; and for that reason, the relations between language and the masses using it are better understood to-day than they were formerly.

It appears, moreover, that the values of words have both static and evolutionary elements. Sign-posts have been erected at the cross-roads leading from different directions to linguistic interpretation. Dual principles, external and internal to language, have been discovered at work in its evolution. Either phase of this phenomenon gives its own values—that is to say, equivalents found in two different orders. Indeed, language is regarded by some careful students as a system of pure values, complex in nature and most rigorously organized—a system which, considered as a scheme of synchronic solidarity of parts, promises perhaps the best results.

From opposing elements order has been

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