ABSTRACT
Languages are not 'pure' in the strict sense of that term, argues Graham at the start of his essay. That is, languages are not freestanding, self-sufficient, and untainted by historical contact with other languages. In fact they interweave so tightly that one nineteenth-century linguist thought it pertinent to ask:
In some cases it might even be made a question when it was that the language properly began, at what point in the unbroken thread which undoubtedly connects every form of human speech with a succession of preceding forms out of which it has sprung, we are to say that an old language has died and a new one come into existence.
(George L. Craik, Outlines of The History of the English Language For The Use of Junior Classes in Schools, 1851)