You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The nature of language and its relation to psychology are discussed. Modern linguistics stress the fact that growth of language during the ages (phylogenetically) proceeds from a cumbersome and complicated way of expression to simplification, and thus from initial imprecision to a continually growing accuracy of expression. Among the diverse factors of lack of precision in primitive speech are the ambiguities caused by human ambivalence. Vestiges of the latter are abundantly deposited in all languages, and in no other sphere do these ambiguities appear in human speech with greater frequency than in negation and affirmation. This was stressed by the writer in a former essay in which the origin of verbal negation and affirmation was traced to the oral phase of earliest infancy. While the infant is suckled, opening and closing of the mouth are frequently accompanied by sounds, the former indicating readiness to receive food—by vowels; the latter indicating refusal of food—by the sounds m, b, p, and n, in accordance with Freud's 'formula', based on the pleasure principle.
Primal language serves a twofold purpose: individually, for expressing emotion; in community, as medium of intercommunication. Gradual