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Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1986), pp. 212-223

If we turn now to the actuating principles that determine the general changeability of human speech habits, we shall find that the moving power everywhere is an impetus starting from the individual, and that there is a curbing power in the mere fact that language exists not for the individual alone but for the whole community. The whole history of language is, as it were, a tug-of-war between these two principles, each of which gains victories in turn (Jespersen 1964: 261).