Explain the evolution of language with the involvement of musical theory which was contributed by Otto Jesperson which is called that language is evolved from the sounds of nature such as rain,fire,river,forest,waterfall etc.
Answers
Answer:
LANGUAGE: Its Nature. Development
and Origin. Demy 8vo. Third Impression.
"Chief among Professor Jespersen's many
qualities we would place not his erudition, vast
as it is, but the lively imagination with which he
plays upon the most unpromising of subjects
and extracts from it its maximum of human
interest."-Spectator.
"Dr. Jespersen is one of the most learned
linguists whom the nineteenth century produced."-Saturday Review.
HOW TO TEACH A FOREIGN
LANGUAGE. Crown 8vo. Fifth
Edition.
"This excellent book gives a lucid exposition
of the reform method. Should be most carefully
studied by every modem language teacher."School World.
CHAPTERS ON ENGLISH. Crown 8vo.
" A brilliant and suggestive essay on the
contemporary evolution of English grammar."
-Times.
-
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LANGUAGE
ITS NATURE
DEVELOPMENT
AND ORIGIN
BY
OTTO JESPERSEN
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT & COMPANY
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Printed in Great Britain
(A411 rights reserved)
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TO
VILHELM THOMSEN
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Glede, nir av andres mund
jeg hbrte de tanker store,
Glade over hvert et fund
jeg aelv ved min foreken gjorde.
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PREFACE
THE distinctive feature of the science of language as conceived
nowadays is its historical character: a language or a word is no
longer taken as something given once for all, but as a result of
previous development and at the same time as the starting-point
for subsequent development. This manner of viewing languages
constitutes a decisive improvement on the way in which languages
were dealt with in previous centuries, and it suffices to mention
such words as ' evolution ' and 'Darwinism' to show that linguistic
research has in this respect been in full accordance with tendencies
observed in many other branches of scientific work during the last
hundred years. Still, it cannot be said that students of language
have always and to the fullest extent made it clear to themselves
what is the real essence of a language. Too often expressions are
used which are nothing but metaphors-in many cases perfectly
harmless metaphors, but in other cases metaphors that obscure
the real facts of the matter. Language is frequently spoken of
as a 'living organism'; we hear of the 'life' of languages, of
the' birth ' of new languages and of the 'death ' of old languages,
and the implication, though not always realized, is that a language
is a living thing, something analogous to an animal or a plant.
Yet a language evidently has no separate existence in the same
way as a dog or a beech has, but is nothing but a function of
certain living human beings. Language is activity, purposeful
activity, and we should never lose sight of the speaking individuals
and of their purpose in acting in this particular way. When
people speak of the life of words-as in celebrated books with such
titles as La vie des mots, or Biographies of Words-they do
not always keep in view that a word has no 'life' of its own:
it exists only in so far as it is pronounced or heard or remembered
by somebody, and this kind of existence cannot properly be compared with 'life' in the original and proper sense of that word.
The only unimpeachable definition of a word is that it is a human
habit, an habitual act on the part of one human individual which
has, or may have, the effect of evoking some idea in the mind
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LANGUAGE
of another individual. A word thus may be rightly compared
with such an habitual act as taking off one's hat or raising one's
fingers to one's cap: in both cases we have a certain set of muscular activities which, when seen or heard by somebody else,
shows him what is passing in the mind of the original agent or
what he desires to bring to the consciousness of the other man
(or men). The act is individual, but the interpretation presupposes
that the individual forms part of a community with analogous
habits, and a language thus is seen to be one particular set of
human customs of a well-defined social character.
It is indeed possible to speak of 'life' in connexion with