Marxism and Problems of Linguistics - From Marx to Mao

slowly than the basic word stock. With the lapse of timeit, of course, undergoes changes, becomes more perfected,improves its rules, makes them more specific and acquiresnew rules; but the fundamentals of the grammatical systemare preserved for a very long time, since, as history shows,they are able to serve society effectively through a successionof epochs.Hence, grammatical system and basic word stock constitutethe foundation of language, the essence of its specificcharacter.History shows that languages possess great stability anda tremendous power of resistance to forcible assimilation.Some historians, instead of explaining this phenomenon,confine themselves to expressing their surprise at it. Butthere is no reason for surprise whatsoever. Languages owetheir stability to the stability of their grammatical systemsand basic word stocks. The Turkish assimilators strove forhundreds of years to mutilate, shatter and destroy thelanguages of the Balkan peoples. During this period the vocabularyof the Balkan languages underwent considerablechange; quite a few Turkish words and expressions wereabsorbed; there were “convergencies” and “divergencies.”Nevertheless, the Balkan languages held their own andsurvived. Why? Because their grammatical systems andbasic word stocks were in the main preserved.It follows from all this that a language, its structure, cannotbe regarded as the product of some one epoch. The structureof a language, its grammatical system and basic word stock,is the product of a number of epochs.We may assume that the rudiments of modern languagealready existed in hoary antiquity, before the epoch of slavery.It was a rather simple language, with a very meagre stock24