ABSTRACT
THE analysis we have thus far made of the different parts of language can convey only a fragmentary and incomplete idea. It is an artificial distinction that we have drawn between the three elements to which the preceding chapters are devoted—sounds, grammatical forms, and words. Different as they may seem, they are intimately connected, and have no separate existence. They melt into the unity which is the language itself. The task of the linguist, therefore, is still incomplete when he has made an analysis of these elements. It remains for him to study these elements as they are when united in a complete whole; in a word, how language operates.
