The Very Special Place That A Language

In The Lives Of Individuals And Societies, Language Is A Factor Of Greater Importance Than Any Other. For The Study Of Language To Remain Solely The Business Of A Handful Of Specialists Would Be A Quite Unacceptable State Of Affairs.

Nearly All Institutions, It Might Be Said, Are Based On Signs, But These Signs Do Not Directly Evoke Things.

In General, The Philological Movement Opened Up Countless Sources Relevant To Linguistic Issues, Treating Them In Quite A Different Spirit From Traditional Grammar; For Instance, The Study Of Inscriptions And Their Language. But Not Yet In The Spirit Of Linguistics.

Any Psychology Of Sign Systems Will Be Part Of Social Psychology - That Is To Say, Will Be Exclusively Social; It Will Involve The Same Psychology As Is Applicable In The Case Of Languages.

It Is Useful To The Historian, Among Others, To Be Able To See The Commonest Forms Of Different Phenomena, Whether Phonetic, Morphological Or Other, And How Language Lives, Carries On And Changes Over Time.