The present paper is an introduction of Professor Joshua Whatmough of Harvard University and his theory of Selective Variation, which is his original contribution with regard to the linguistic change and the structure of language. The definition of his theory which he has worked out recently is as follows:
The theory that a linguistic status (e. g. metastable-Modern English, stable-Classical Latin), the universal existence of which is known statistically, is produced by coherent selection from all possible or actual inconsistency of variation, thus giving a consistent and significant pattern. The mathematical formula is-1, corrected for any given language and date at extremes of rank frequency of occurrence of any given feature, e. g. meaning.
Mathematical Linguistics, the discipline of which he leads and in which the mathematical tools for linguistic analysis are developed and applied to the study of the structure of spoken and of written language, and to the analysis of the problem of meaning, is expected to be fruitful, and to attain: great and important discoveries in stock.
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