Language [antikvár]

PREFACE This book is a revised version of the author's Introdmtion to the Study of Language, which appeared in 1914 (New York, Henry Holt and Company). The new version is much larger than the old, because the science of language has in the interval made progress, and because both men of science and the educated public now attribute greater value to an understanding of human speech. Like its predecessor, this book is intended for the general reader and for the student who is entering upon linguistic work. Without such an introduction, specialized treatises are unintelligible. For the general reader an orderly survey is probably more interesting than a discussion of selected topics, for these, after all, cannot be understood without their background. No one will ask for an anecdotal treatment who has once opened his eyes to the strangeness, h)eauty, and import of human speech. The deep-rooted things about language, which mean most to all of us, are usually ignored in all but very advanced studies; this book tries to tell about them in simple terms and to show their bearing on human affairs. In 1914 I based this phase of the exposition on the psychologic system of Wilhelm Wundt, which was then widely accepted. Since tiiat time there has been much upheaval in psychology; we have learned, at any rate, what one of our masters suspected thirty years ago, namely, that we can pursue the study of language without reference to any one psychological doctrine, and that to do so safeguards our results and makes them more significant to workers in related fields. In the present book I have tried to avoid such dependence; only by way of elucidation I have told, at a few points, how the two main present-day trends of psychology differ in their interpretation. The men-talists would supplement the facts of language by a version in terms of mind, — a version which will differ in the various schools of mentalistic psychology. The mechanists demand that the facts be presented without any assumption of such auxiliary factors. I have tried to meet this demand not merely becau.se I believe that mechanism is the necessary form of scientific discourse, but also because an exposition which stands on its own vii