010_College lectures; Page 7

usage is the rule of speech; is of supreme
and uncontrolled validity in every
part and parcel of every human tongue,
and each individual can make his
fellows talk and write as he does just in
proportion to the influence which they are
disposed to concede to him."

"The case is not otherwise with those gradual
changes which bring about the decay of
grammatical structure, as the metamorphosis
of a phonetic form, in a language. Though
they go on in a more covert and unacknowledged
way than the augmentations
of a vocabulary, they are due to the action
of the same forces."

"In this sense is language a growth; it
is not consciously fabricated; it increases by
a constant and implicit adaptation to the
expanding necessities and capacities of men."
(Page 47)