Language and the Study of Language

Language And The Study Of Language by William Dwight Whitney presents a historical, scientific treatment of how languages are studied. It frames language as a social, living institution maintained by tradition and use, not a fixed product of solitary genius. The work advocates analytic, historical inquiry, beginning with contemporary speech and tracing its development through etymology, word formation, and phonetic change. It covers the mother tongue, the diffusion of dialects, and the formation of language families (notably Indo-European), while emphasizing writing as a later complementary development. It argues that language is a public system shaped by communal usage and that phonetic shifts drive broader grammatical change. The plan of the lectures outlines questions about how language grows, how dialects relate to the concept of language itself, and how linguistic science intersects with ethnology, culture, and history. It also discusses authority, standardization, and the limits of linguistic reconstruction, aiming to establish a rigorous, historically grounded understanding of language as a fundamental human phenomenon.