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Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 30 Jul 2019

Taken: 30 Jul 2019

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Excerpt •
Language Evolution •
Second excerpt •
The Descent of Man •
Author •
Charles Darwin •

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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Language Evolution
4 years ago. Edited 3 years ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) in his later work cut through this nonsense: he denied that language assembles units that have any objective, immutable correspondence with reality. The meaning of the words depends on the context in which they are being used. Words are part of the means by which a speaker attempts to impart any idea from his or her mind into the mind of the hearer, but they can never fully express that idea, they always rely on assumed shared knowledge, they always depend on context, and the idea will always be changed in the process of transmission. ~ page 68 Excerpt: "The Matter of Facts" Authors: Gareth Leng & Rhodri Ivor Leng
3 years ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
As Horne Toke, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Horne_Tooke one of the founders of the noble science of philology, observes, language is an art, like brewing or baking; but writing would have been a better simile. It certainly is not a true instinct, for every language has to be learned. It differs, however, widely from all ordinary arts, for man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children; whilst no child has an instinctive tendency to brew, bake, or write. Moreover, no philologist now supposes that any language has been deliberately invented; it has been slowly and unconsciously developed by many steps. The sounds uttered by birds offer in several respect the nearest analogy to language, for all the members of same species utter the same instinctive cries expressive of their emotions; and all the kinds which sing, exert their power instinctively; but the actual song, and even the call notes, are learned from their parents or foster-parents. . . . `Page 89

Languages, like organic beings, can be classed in groups under groups; and they can be classed either naturally according to descent, or artificially by other characters. Dominant languages and dialects spread widely, and lead to the gradual extinction of other languages. A language, like a species, when once extinct, never, as Sri C. Lyell remarks reappears. The same language never has two birth places. Distinct language may be crossed or blended together. We see variability in every tongue, and new words are continually cropping up; but as there Is a limit to the powers of the memory, single words, like whole languages, gradually become extinct. As Max Muller has well remarked: “A struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and grammatical forms in each language. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand, and they owe their success to their own inherent virtue.” . . . Page 94
3 years ago. Edited 3 years ago.

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