Читать книгу The Origin of Thought and Speech онлайн

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Language therefore is not as has been often imagined, thought plus sound; but thought is really language minus sound; words are the external symbols of thought, sounding symbols when we articulate in a loud voice, but mute when we confine ourselves to merely thinking them, since it is a fact that we think in words, and it is not possible to think otherwise. The possession of a language is shown even in the tracing of whole sentences by ideographic signs, which need not be pronounced at all, or as in the astronomical signs in our almanacks which may be pronounced differently in different languages: or we may substitute algebraic signs for words; we could as well calculate without numbers as apply our reason without words I have freely and fully admitted that thoughts may exist without words, because other signs may take the place of words between persons speaking different languages possibly between deaf and dumb people. Five fingers held up are quite sufficient to convey the concept of five, thus the hand may become the sign for five, both hands for ten, hands and feet for twenty. In America and Australia where many dialects are spoken this method has attained a great degree of perfection, but we notice that in all cases under review each one thinks in his own language and then translates his thought into pantomime.