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The Science of Language and the Language of Science
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
All through the physical world runs an unknown content, which must really be the stuff of our consciousness … We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! it is our own.—Eddington, Space, Time, and Gravitation.
The most significant aspect of the intellectual attitude of the twentieth century appears to be the fulfillment of Nietzsche's prophecy that the last achievement of the Occidental intellect will be to question all its achievements and, in the end, to doubt its own existence. Philosophers and logicians, as well as physicists, seem to have arrived at a state of extreme resignation, while those psychologists who can be called scientists have at least their moments of scepticism. It is hardly necessary to refer to Spenglerian pessimism, to what H. Leisegang writes about the crisis and catastrophe of logic, or to Einstein's views, as expressed, for example, in his speech given in honor of Planck in 1918, in which he pointed out the current tendency to seek a simplified synoptic view of the world—a picture comfortable to human nature—and to overcome the world by replacing it with this picture. How little psychology has as yet revealed, or can ever hope to reveal, can be gleaned from C. K. Ogden's enlightening account in The Meaning of Psychology.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1933
References
1 Cf. Denkformen (Berlin, 1928).
2 (London, 1926), 19 f., 178 S., 242 fi.
3 Cf. W. James, Pragmatism (1907), Watson, Behaviorism, p. 5.—The Gestalt psychologists, though opposed to behaviorism, often express quite similar views; cf. Koffka, Psyche v (1925/5), 80 f. For an efficient reductio ad absurdum of such doctrines see Wyndham Lewis, Time and the Western Man; C. D. Broad, The Mind and its Place in Nature; Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, i, 382 ff.
4 Cf. W. James' famous saying, “We are sad because we cry.”—In practice these views lead to such revolting pseudo-scientific nonsense as the use of a drug, called truth serum, or of a lie detector apparatus in order to convict defendants.
5 Cf. B. Russell, “Philosophy in the Twentieth Century,” Dial lviii (1924), 278: “The theory of the pragmatist is derived from the practice of the advertiser, who, by saying repeatedly that his pills are worth a guinea a box, makes people willing to give sixpence a box for them, and thus makes his assertion more nearly true than if it had been made with less confidence.”
6 Cf. K. Vossler, Geist und Kultur in der Sprache (Heidelberg, 1925), 112 f.; “Anders als mit gläubigen Künstleraugen kann man Lebenszusammenhänge überhaupt nicht sehen. Es ist Bergsons Verdienst, dass er dieses fromme Schauen, das dem modernen Verstandesmenschen durch abstrahierende Wissenschaften verkümmert war, erneut und gerechtfertigt hat.”—Vossler's attitude toward science, and especially toward linguistics, has gained him many adherents; but it has been irrefutably rejected by L. Jordan, Archiv. Rom. ix, 77 ff., Zeitschr. f. rom. Phil. xlvii, 219 ff., li, 368 ff.; by H. Pipping, Neuphil. Mitt. xxv, 125 ff.; and by O. Funke, Studien zur Geschichte der Sprachphilosophie, (Bern, 1927), p. 47 ff. See also G. Ipsen, Indog. Jahrbuch, xi, 1 ff.
7 Données immédiates de la conscience (1889), Matière et Mémoire (1896), L'évolution créatrice (1907).
8 Of late it has become their custom to adduce the quantum theory as proof that the universe is governed by impulse rather than by laws. Planck himself, in Physikalische Gesetzlichkeit im Lichte neuerer Forschung, protests vigorously against this misapplication of his theory.
9 It is Spengler's great merit that he has revived Goethe's insistence on this dualism. However, he relapses into mysticism when he regards civilizations as organisms. It need hardly be stated that the term ‘dualistic’ is not employed here in the old sense of the materialist-spiritualist controversy. The monistic fallacy is due primarily to linguistic inaccuracy; for example, as Ogden and Richards have pointed out (vide infra), “processes of perceiving caused in an interpreter by the action on him of external objects have been commonly called ‘perceptions,‘ and so, too, by a very intelligible confusion, have those objects themselves.”
10 Another case in point is Maeterlinck's work on scientific subjects. Even Belgian criticism is at last turning against him; cf. Maurice Lecat, Revue des questions scientifiques (Louvain, Sept. 1931): “Il est bien connu que Maeterlinck a écrit des extravagances dans le domaine de la science. Néanmoins, le public, même cultivé, ne se rend généralement pas compte du degré d'ineptie de ses ouvrages à prétention scientifique. …”
11 Concerning this tendency cf. I. A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism 3 (1928), 36 ff.
12 Cf. E. R. Curtius, “Abandon de la culture,” Nouv. Revue Franç, xx (1931), 854, “Comme les choses basses, inférieures, sont toujours plus faciles à atteindre que les choses élevées, ce n'est pas à la vision mystique mais à la barbarie de l'âme que l'irrationalisme fraye une voie—une voie qui pourrait bientôt tourner en cul de sac.”
13 Cf. F. de Saussure, Cours de Linguistique (1916), p. 32 ff.
14 A. Marty uses the term logisch in both senses throughout his work. His follower Funke substitutes, in the second meaning, the more precise gedanklich.
15 They were quite slow in doing so; witness the profound and unwarranted respect for the grammatical categories of the West European languages, shown as recently as the beginning of this century by eminent logicians like Sigwart (Logik, 1900), Meinong (Über Annahmen, 1902), Russell (Principles of Mathematics 1903), and others. Needless to add that in innumerable minor works, and in a hundred thousand schoolrooms the world over, the notion persists that logic and grammar are firmly linked parallel categories.
16 Cf. J. Rehmke, Logik oder Philosophie als Wissenslehre, Leipzig, 1923, Philosophie als Grundwissenschaft 2, 1929.
17 His main followers in England and France are G. E. Moore, B. Russell, and L. Couturat.
18 Cf. Zeilschr. f. rom. Phil. li, 355 f.—The attempt of Husserl's adherent Porzig, Festschrift f. Streitberg (Heidelberg, 1924), 129 ff., to establish mathematical laws of language is thus untenable.
19 Cf. primarily L. Jordan, Die Kunst des begriffichen Denkens (Munich, 1926); Les idées, leurs rapports et le jugement de l'homme (Geneva, 1926).
20 Cf. C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning (London, 1923: 2nd ed., 1927); a critical discussion of previous attempts to solve the problem will be found in chapter ii, part ii. See also H. Delacroix, Le langage et la pensée (Paris, 1924). Since this paper was written, W. Graff's excellent introduction to linguistics, Language and Languages (New York, Appleton) has appeared, where full use of Ogden and Richard's terminology is made.
21 “The meaning of A is that to which the mental process interpreting A is adapted.” (Ogden-Richards, chap. ix.)
22 Cf., e.g., Croce's conviction that a psychic experience is identical with its expression. A well-known consequence of this attitude is the contention of drawing-room linguists that only Frenchmen can have esprit and only Germans possess Gemüt.
23 Concerning the vast literature on this subject see the excellent bibliography in Niels Svanberg, “Studier i språkets teori,” Uppsala universitels årsskrift (1930). Cf. also P. Hankamer, Die Sprache, ihr Begriff und ihre Deutung im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (1927); H. Ammann, Die menschliche Rede I (1925), p. 12; H. Dempe, Was ist Sprache? Eine sprachphilosophische Untersuchung im Anschluss an die Sprachtheorie Karl Bühlers (Weimar, 1930); H. Güntert, Grundfragen der Sprachwissenschaft (Leipzig, 1925); R. Jaberg, Germ.-Rom. Mon. xiv, 1 ff.; O. Funke, Engl. Studien lxii, 47 f.
24 The difference between actual and potential communication may be disregarded: if I write a letter, I am communicating my thoughts, even though it may never reach its destination. On related questions cf. O. Jespersen, Mankind, Nation, and Individual from a Linguistic Point of View (Oslo, 1925), p. 20 ff.
25 It was primarily A. Marty who—in opposition to Wundt's and Humboldt's views—emphasized the communicative purpose of language; cf. Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie (Halle, 1908), p. 280 ff. It should be mentioned, by the way, that the distinction between speech (das Sprechen, la parole) = “the activity of speaking” and language (die Sprache, la langue) = “the means of this activity” is now generally employed by linguists.
26 Cf. Ogden-Richards, op. cit., p. 226 f. Two additional functions listed by the authors are omitted here since they are implied in (3). See also E. Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen i, “Die Sprache” (1923), 273 ff., on the distinction between theoretical differences of meaning and emotional nuances of appreciation.
27 The critic, then, must be above all a sound judge of values. Cf. Richards, Principles of Lit. Crit., p. 114. The author is, however, mistaken in thinking it possible to establish a hierarchy of values. The concepts utility and importance, which he introduces, are subjective in the same degree as value. Moreover, Richards himself rightly criticizes Kant, as do all modern psychologists, for assuming three separate mental faculties, Verstand, Urteil, Vernunft, by which we are supposed to apprehend the true, the beautiful, and the good as objective entities.
28 In his Allgemeine vergleichende Physiologie der Tiere H. J. Jordan has shown that all primitive reference is confined to the subject-object relation; the conception of object-object relations is primarily a human faculty. On primitive mentality cf. the fundamental work of L. Lévy-Bruhl; e.g., Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures, Paris, 1910, La mentalité primitive, 1923, L'âme primitive, 1928.
29 Vossler, Positivismus und Idealismus in der Sprachwissenschaft (1904), p. 16—as well as Svanberg, op. cit.—erroneously assumes the opposite.
30 Cf. W. v. Wartburg, “Das Ineinandergreifen von deskriptiver und historischer Sprachwissenschaft,” Berichte üb. d. Verhandl. d. sächsisch. Akad. d. Wiss., phil.-hist. Kl. lxxxiii (1931), i.
31 An excellent analysis of the process of learning will be found in H. Delacroix, “L'analyse psychologique de la fonction linguistique,” The Zaharoff Lecture (Oxford, 1926), p. 1 ff.
32 Wundt stressed this fact throughout his work (see especially Die Sprache 2 ii, 484 ff.), while his antagonist Marty disregarded it almost completely; cf. H. Güntert, Engl. Studien lxii, 80.—This does not mean, of course, that Marty's criticism of Wundt is not often justified and necessary. No linguist can afford to neglect the vast store of valuable observations found in Marty's works.
33 Even small children will do this when they invent sound symbols; cf. the interesting observations of L. Jordan, Zeitschr. f. rom. Phil. li, 363 ff.
34 Cf. E. Gottlieb, Language Dissertation viii, “A systematic Tabulation of Indo-European Animal Names” (Philadelphia, 1931), p. 29 ff.
35 In most Indo-European languages this can be done quite simply by substantiation of adjectives or by forming adjectives from nouns. But we are not now concerned with grammatical distinctions narrowly limited in space and time.
36 In L'année sociologique (1905/6), “Comment les mots changent de sens,” reprinted in Linguistique historique et linguistique générale 2 (1926), 230 ff.
37 Needless to say, this is not always the case. When we say that an aeroplane lands on the water, this constitutes merely a restriction of the reference “to come down on land” to the idea “to descend,” which enables us to apply the symbol to a greater number of contextual referents. Regarding the rôle of the emotive factor in semantic change cf. H. Sperber Einführung in die Bedeutungslehre (Bonn, 1923).
38 On semantic analogy cf. Schwob-Guieysse, Mém. de la soc. de Ling., vii, 33 ff.; Kroesch, Language, ii, 35 ff.
39 A number of linguists nowadays prefer the term inner form; cf. Funke, Innere Sprachform (Reichenberg, 1924). Funke himself, however, once uses the much less vague term Band der Assoziation (p. 123). Cf. the criticism offered by W. Leopold, Language, v, 254 ff. It is curious, by the way, that the expression inner form—though it is much older—corresponds closely to the term Gestalt by which Koffka's and Köhler's school of psychology designates the instinctive ties of association that enable us to perceive an experience as a complete whole. Leopold now suggests the excellent term bridge (Brücke),—see Anglia lvt, 1 ff.
40 Hesperia, Schriften zur germanischen Philologie No. 13 (Göttingen, 1923).
41 Cf. H. Delacroix, Traité de Psychologie, ii, 127.
42 Cf. E. Hoffmann, Die Sprache und die archaische Logik (Tübingen, 1925).
43 This type of expression must not be confused with the phenomenon of nexus, e.g., in “the whiteness of the snow dazzles me.” Cf. Jespersen, The Philosophy of Grammar (1924), p. 135.
44 Cf. L. Bloomfield, An Introduction to the Study of Language (New York, 1914), p. 64.
45 Cf. E. Sapir, Language (New York, 1921), p. 105.
46 This question, as well as the problem of the origin of various grammatical categories, I have investigated in greater detail in several recent papers; cf. Language, vii, 229, the studies quoted there, and Language, viii, 255 ff.
47 In many primitive languages such affixes appear on all words; cf. Wolof (West African dialect) baxe-na “goodness—of him” = “he is good;” sopa-na “love—of him” = “he loves,” Greenlandic niaq-a “head—of him” = “(it is) his head;” takuw-a “seeing—of him” = “he sees.”
48 Cf. Jespersen, Philos, of Gram., p. 214.
49 Cf. C. Meinhof, Grundzüge einer vergleichenden Grammatik der Bantusprachen (Berlin, 1906).
50 H. Paul had this principle in mind when he called an attribute a “weakened” predicate (“degradiertes prädikat”); cf. Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte 7 (Halle, 1909), p. 140 ff.
51 Cf. K. Brugmann, Kurze vergl. Gram. d. indogerm. Spr. (1902), p. 330. See also my papers, “Sur l'évolution du genre, des cas et des parties du discours,” Bull. de la soc. de Ling. xxxiii (1932), 212 ff. and “Sprachliche Analyse,” to appear in Idg. Forsch.
52 It is of interest to note that the category of class tends to reappear just when it seems to have been discarded to the point of extinction. The numerous homophones of Chinese are nowadays more and more frequently distinguished by means of nouns added as classifiers; e.g., i tso shan “one site mountain,” i kien shan “one article shirt.” Cf. Karlgren, Sound and Symbol in Chinese (London, 1923), p. 34 f. J. de Angulo makes a similar observation regarding some Central American dialects, Language, ii, 46 ff.
53 Cf. L. Jordan, Zeitschr. f. rom. Phil. xlv, 338 ff.; xlvii, 219 ff.
54 Even A. Marty, who saw this clearly, fell into the mistake of basing his categories (Untersuchungen, 227 ff.) on F. Brentano's antiquated classification. As an example for the type of hypostatizing found throughout Brentano's work, cf. the definition in Psychologie ii, 15, Gutes = “etwas, was unmöglich richtig geliebt werden kann”; or the distinction between sensuous concepts, such as red, cold, swift, and supersensuous, such as good, willing, cause (which are declared to be directly apprehensible by the mind), in The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong, pp. 12, 46.
55 A case in point is grammatical nomenclature. Cf., e.g., the controversy as to whether there is a dative in English or not. There is no such thing as “the dative”; no two languages employ it alike. The only question that is debatable is whether it would be practical to designate certain English prepositional phrases as datives. Too many teachers treat such subjects dogmatically. Cf. F. Brunot, La pensée et la langue (Paris, 1927), Introduction.