Individual and Society.—It is a simple consequence of the intrinsic nature of all language and the way in which each indi vidual gradually learns his own language that no one's linguistic education is ever finished. The form of correct speech is not given in the form of a set of fixed rules, but has to be worked out in the subconscious mind of the individual from what he hears every day from other individuals who have acquired it in the same way. One never hears the "average," but always in dividual utterances adapted to the needs of each moment. A sharp distinction is made by some linguists (de Saussure, Palmer) between "speech" (parole), i.e., the individual's linguistic activ ity, of which he is sole master, and "language" (langue), which belongs to the community and is independent of the individual, to whom it gives the norm from without, but this sharp distinction cannot be maintained in the face of a realistic linguistic psycho logy, which sees the social side of speech-activity in the constant action and reaction of individuals on one another. Every adult person retains some traces of the imperfection of his early ac quisition of his native language, however imperceptible they may be to a superficial observer, and everyone is apt to be influenced by the speech of those who surround him, though the strength of influence varies very considerably, some people being easily affected and quickly adopting new turns of expression, nay even catching the inflection of another dialect after a short stay in a new district, while others are in such respects very conservative. Size of Vocabulary.—How many words does the vocabulary of an individual comprise? On this question erroneous beliefs are curiously current, even among psychologists. Careful enumer ations have been made of the words used by children at various ages; but it is evident that the difficulties of counting increase as the child grows older, and an exact calculation of a grown-up person's vocabulary is practically impossible. Still we have some
data to go on. One six-year-old boy used more than 2,600 words. A Swedish peasant, according to the minute investigation of Smedberg, possesses at least 26,00o words.
Much, however, depends on what is counted as a word. Are I, me, we, us one word or four? Is teacup a new word for those who already know tea and cup? And so for all compounds. Is box (a place at a theatre) the same word as box (workbox) or as a box on the ear? Investigators do not always distinguish be tween words that are understood and words that are actually used by the individual examined—two entirely different things. So all such statistics should be used with some diffidence.
Prof. E. H. Babbitt found that most of his (American) col lege students reported a little below 6o,000, and thinks that people with an ordinary school education would possess from 25,000 to 35,00o words. The vocabulary of savage tribes is also surprisingly rich ; a missionary in Tierra del Fuego was able to compile a dictionary of 30,00o words in the Yaagan language. Such indications are easily reconciled with the fact that the con cordances to Shakespeare's and Milton's dramas and poetical works give only 20,000 and 8,000 words respectively; a vast number of words of daily life are seldom or never required by a poet, especially by a poet with such a comparatively narrow range of subjects as Milton; as a matter of fact, every page of his prose works show words not found in his poetry (Jespersen, Growth and Str. of the Eng. Language, c. ix.).