Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Thomas , Lewis (2008-06-26), The Lives of a Cell, Retrieved on 2012-06-11Source Material [books.google.com]
Memes
11 JUN 2012
Language is Alive
Language is simply alive, like an organism. We all tell each other this, in fact, when we speak of living languages, and I think we mean something more than an abstract metaphor. We mean alive. Words are the cells of language, moving the great body, on legs. Language grows and evolves, leaving fossils behind. The individual words are like different species of animals. Mutations occur. Words fuse, and then mate. Hybrid words and wild varieties or compound words are the progeny. Some mixed word...It evolves, leaves fossils, speciates, etc.