We know that it is impossible to set up a limited number of types
that would do full justice to the peculiarities of thousands of languages 【M1】________
and dialects spoken on the surface of the earth. Like all human
institutions, speech is too variable and too elusive to be quite safely
ticketed. Even if we operate with a minutely subdivided scale of types,
we may be quite certain that many of our languages will need trim before 【M2】________
they fit. To get them into the scheme at all it will be necessary to
underestimate the significance of this or that feature or to ignore, for 【M3】________
the time being, certain contradictions in their mechanism. It would be
too easy to relieve ourselves from the burden of constructional thinking 【M4】________
and to take the standpoint that each language has its unique history,
therefore its unique structure. Such a standpoint expresses only a half
truth. Just as similar social, economic, and religious institutions have
grown up in different parts of the world from distinct historical
antecedents, so also languages, travel along different roads, have tended 【M5】_________
to converge toward similar forms. Moreover, the historical study of
language has proven to us beyond all doubt that a language changes not
only gradually but consistently, that it moves unconsciously from one
type towards others, and that analogous trends are observable in remote 【M6】_________
quarters of the globe. From this it follows that broadly similar study
must not have been reached by unrelated languages, independently and 【M7】_________
frequently. In assuming the existence of comparable types, however, we 【M8】_________
are not denying the individuality of all historical processes; we are
merely affirming that back off the face of history is powerful drifts that 【M9】_________
move language, like other social products, to balance patterns. 【M10】_________
【M8】
however—therefore
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