wholes is the fact itself of language. It is important to note that
there is in all languages a certain randomness of association. Thus, the
idea of "hide" may be also expressed by the word "conceal," the notion
of "three times" also by "thrice." The multiple expression of a single
concept is universally felt as a source of linguistic strength and
variety, not as a needless extravagance. More irksome is a random
correspondence between idea and linguistic expression in the field of
abstract and relational concepts, particularly when the concept is
embodied in a grammatical element. Thus, the randomness of the
expression of plurality in such words as _books_, _oxen_, _sheep_, and
_geese_ is felt to be rather more, I fancy, an unavoidable and
traditional predicament than a welcome luxuriance. It is obvious that a
language cannot go beyond a certain point in this randomness. Many
languages go incredibly far in this respect, it is true, but linguistic
history shows conclusively that sooner or later the less frequently
occurring associations are ironed out at the expense of the more vital
ones. In other words, all languages have an inherent tendency to economy
of expression. Were this tendency entirely inoperative, there would be
no grammar. The fact of grammar, a universal trait of language, is
simply a generalized expression of the feeling that analogous concepts
and relations are most conveniently symbolized in analogous forms. Were
a language ever completely "grammatical," it would be a perfect engine
of conceptual expression. Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is
tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak.

Up to the present we have been assuming that the material of language
reflects merely the world of concepts and, on what I have ventured to
call the "pre-rational" plane, of images, which are the raw material of
concepts. We have, in other words, been assuming that language moves
entirely in the ideational or cognitive sphere. It is time that we