Linguistics in General
ises well when it proceeds from general laws to particular phenomena—from the history of language as a whole to the historic incidents of its parts or groups.
Linguistics has many tasks: First, it must limit and define itself. Then it must recognize the affinities between itself and many other sciences; and it must group the relations that pertain especially to each science, although these relations can not always be clearly separated. It must consider man not only as a biologic species but as a sociologic order, and it must accept language as a social fact. It must study not only the race, but the psychology of the race. It can ignore neither nervous structure nor nervous function. It must take note of the differences between oral and written speech, and it must find the law that correlates these differences. It must determine the points of contact between philology and linguistics—understand how one science varies from the other, and, at the same time, how one supports the other.
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