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The Life and Death of Languages
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
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Although language is at least as old as mankind, its mysteries have as yet hardly been scratched and whatever we may hold as its ultimate nature, origin and destiny would remain at present highly speculative. Indeed, a bylaw of the Linguistic Society of Paris is mentioned to rule out of order any formal paper on the origin of language. What is more, socially accepted perspectives on language have altered in the course of ages and while it is true that a “scientific” study of linguistic phenomena has been confined to ancient India and recent times, it may very well be that the fundamental and really controlling level of these phenomena, as distinguished from the level of their habitual use and description, lies in that spontaneous power latent in the psychic reality whereby it is able to attain self-expression in lower media through inducing in them rhythm and pattern. Behind the pattern of the audible sound waves of speech lie the patterns of articulation and neural activity. Despite the operation of chance in the choice of convention in language and in its actual use, there are discernible in it patterns of a statistical and logical nature.
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- Copyright © 1965 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 E. H. Sturtevant, Introduction to Linguistic Science, p. 40.
2 Cf. Whorf, "Language, Mind and Reality," in Theosophist (Madras), 1942.
3 Cf. J. H. Greenberg, Essays in Linguistics, pp. 58ff; O. Jesperson, Language, pp. 71 ff.
4 Cf. Jesperson, op. cit., pp. 414ff; A. S. Diamond, The History and Origin of Language, pp. 263-264.
5 Greenberg, op. cit., p. 60; J. Whatmough, Language, p. 162.
6 Whatmough, op. cit., p. 181.
7 Hoenigswald, Language Change and Linguistic Recontsruction, p. 159; cf. R. H. Robins, General Linguistics, p. 318.
8 Cf. L. F. Brosnahan, The Sounds of Language, pp. 22ff.
9 G. Herdan, Type-Token Mathematics, pp. 33-36.
10 Ibid., p. 37; cf. Whatmough, op. cit., pp. 192-94, 229.
11 Cf. L. Bloomfield, Language, pp. 389ff.
12 Martinet, L'Economie des changements phonétiques; cf. J. P. Hughes, The Science of Language, p. 250.
13 Cf. Hoenigswald, op. cit., p. 98.
14 E. H. Sturtevant, Linguistic Change (Phoenix ed.), pp. 44ff; Hoenigswald, op. cit., pp. 73-74.
15 Sturtevant, op. cit., p. 62; Hoenigswald, op. cit., p. 75.
16 Hoenigswald (I. c.) refers to the "unavoidable typological restriction imposed by the fragmentary nature of known historical and reconstructed materials." He also quotes E. P. Hamp's pointed remark "The difficulty lies in judging what is typologically plausible in a given language."
17 Herdan, op. cit.
18 Probably first pointed out by Bopp-Hughes, op. cit., p. 80.
19 Schleicher's standard formulation. Cf. Jesperson, Language, pp. 76ff; Greenberg, op. cit., p. 60.
20 Cf. Sturtevant (against Mill), op. cit., pp. 165ff.; Jesperson, Progress in Language with Special Reference to English.
21 Cf. Diamond, op. cit., pp. 196ff.
22 Cf. L. R. Palmer, The Latin Language, pp. 61, 68, 72, 178ff.
23 Diamond, op. cit., pp. 196ff.; Cf. Martinet, L'Economie des changements phonétiques, pp. 134ff.
24 Hoenigswald, op. cit., p. 66.
25 Cf. Weinreich, Languages in Contact, p. 84.
26 Republic, 4.424.
27 E Sapir, "Speech as Personality Trait," American Journal of Sociology, 1927.
28 Cf. Whorf, "Segmentation of nature is an aspect of grammar," Language, Thought and Reality (ed. Carroll), p. 240; Cf. Language in Culture (ed. Hoijer), pp. 235ff.
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