Language

LANGUAGE. – In its proper and common meaning, l. is spoken language, the means by which thought is expressed and communicated in human beings. In a derived sense, l. also refers to the expressive means of feelings and passions in animals and, more generally still, to the expressive value that things assume through their very presence, for consciousness and thought. Finally, as the expression of being in consciousness, l. is the verb or logos of the mind: “word” then coincides with “concept.”

I. PHILOSOPHY OF L

Scattered elements of a philosophy of l. are present in Plato (Cratylus, 387 ff.) and also in early Christian thought. Theophilus of Antioch, using Stoic terminology, speaks (Ad Autolyceum, II, 10 and 22) of λόγος ἐν-διάθετος, the verb of the divine mind, God’s inner expression of himself, which becomes λόγος προσαρμόνως, that is, the manifested verb, first in creation: «Omnia per ipsum facta sunt» (Io. 1, 3), and then in the Incarnation: «Et Verbum caro factum est» (ibid. 1, 14). Medieval treatises on logic, in questions concerning the value of terms, their meaning, their «suppositio», their relation to the other parts of speech and to concepts and things, occasionally contain opinions and assessments that go beyond simple formal logic and belong to the philosophy of l. (cf. Guglielmo di Occam, Comment. in I librum Sententiarum, 2.4, M.; Summa totius logicae, I, 63-77).

A genuine philosophy of l., however, arose only in modern thought, and not in an autonomous form. In its brief history, it assumed now an idealistic, now a positivistic coloration, according to the general mentality within which it developed. In a first moment or period, toward the end of the eighteenth century, W. Humboldt, who was the first to use the term «Sprachphilosophie», consistently with his fundamental idealism, made great efforts to deduce l. from the creative activity of the transcendental Ego. In languages, he considered the activity of the subject more than the effect of this activity; the faculty and power of expressing oneself in words more than the result, the language, already existing within the realm of social coexistence. The philosophy of l. aimed to demonstrate dialectically how the transcendental Ego had to possess a means of expressing its own inner life. Humboldt asserted that the creative power of the Spirit is the very capacity to produce symbols, to symbolize its immanent content: without words, reality is chaotic; by creating symbols, one creates reality: «Die Sprache ist das bildende Organ des Gedankes», op. cit. in bibl., p. 64).

In a second period the philosophy of l. assumed a positivistic character, and l. came to be regarded as a datum, without regard to its causes. It was less a matter of the philosophy of l. than of linguistics: the history of words was constructed, and genealogical trees established, in order to trace the original stocks through their modifications. Applying the methods of experimental psychology, scholars then illustrated the mechanism of l. and analyzed the linguistic faculty and its functioning in order to explain its anomalies and associations.

This was followed by a revival of the idealistic interpretation. Cassirer (Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, I, Berlin 1923, pp. 3-51) developed extensively the symbolic conception of l. already devised by Humboldt. On the one hand, the ancient pre-Socratic philosophers and Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are supposed to have held that sensations and ideas were intellectual symbols of external objects, without bothering to determine whether the symbol corresponded to the reality symbolized; on the other, modern physicists, for example Enrico Herzl, are supposed to hold that space, time, mass, force, matter, energy, and so forth are merely symbols sketched by the human mind in order to master the world of sense experience. Arts, sciences, myths, and religions would be forms of the spirit, each creating its own symbols independently, differing in their mode of derivation but all proceeding from a single origin; and they would indicate the paths followed by the spirit in its objectification. The spirit transforms the passive world of bare impressions into the world of pure spiritual expression, by elevating the particularities of experience to a higher unity. The gods of Greece owe their formation to Eziodo and Omero: this was the aesthetic beginning of religious thought. The sign or symbol is not a chance covering for thought, but one of its essential and necessary organs. L. not only communicates the content of thought but represents that content itself and makes it distinct. Every thought is defined insofar as it is expressed in a word. The acquisition of the sign or symbol represents, in the development of the spirit, the passage to objectification. L., science, art, and religion provide the stones with which to build the world of «reality» and the world of the «self».

In an attempt to unite the two idealistic and positivistic tendencies, Carlo Bühler (Sprachtheorie: Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache, Jena 1934) undertook in Vienna, in 1934, a comprehensive study of l., considering it in its functioning and in its relations with the integral life of the spirit. He recognized in it a threefold function: the expressive function, which manifests the subject’s feelings and affections externally, and which may operate even without distinct articulation of words, being common to human beings, children, and animals; the appellative function, which provokes a reaction in the subjects to whom l. is addressed and arouses in the listener the concepts of the speaker; and a representative function, which manifests externally the complex rational and spiritual life exclusive to human beings. From these points of view, l. would represent the synthesis of the whole human being, in his affective life (expressive function), social life (appellative function), and spiritual life (representative function): the philosophy of l. could lead to a general philosophy of life and being.

In Italy, Giulio Bertoni, polemicizing against the «scientists» of l., maintained that the origin of l. is not a linguistic problem but a philosophical and theological one. Comparison of languages can serve only to discover affinities and similarities; and even if it succeeded in proving the unity of all the languages currently spoken on earth, there would still remain the doubt that beyond this unity there had existed linguistic conditions that no investigation could clarify for lack of data. Moreover, human expression is not merely articulated or auditory. Weeping is l.; laughter, pain, and joy are l. To perceive is to speak; to think is to speak. The search for the origin of l. is identical with the search for the origin of the human being. L. is the soul of language; it is language enlivened by feeling, imagination, and the soul. L. reveals itself in the accent, the timbre, and the music of language. The word is always accompanied by a movement of the soul. Whoever speaks reveals himself to himself and to others. Language is thought, experience, history. As much thought as language, as much feeling as l. When the soul is troubled, when one struggles in the effort to clarify the indistinct, then l. becomes language, and we are liberated from our torment. Thought constructs itself by constructing language... L. is creative activity..., it is an arcane fluid that penetrates words and draws its magic from them, leading the spirit to take form within them (Lingua e pensiero, Florence 1932, pp. 6, 9, 243). Cantoni does no more than develop the strictly idealistic interpretation of l. already given by B. Croce, attributing to l. only an aesthetic value and a purely expressive and objective meaning. For Croce, the science of art and the science of l. are not two distinct sciences but one; the philosophy of art and the philosophy of l. are the same thing; l. is sound organized for the purpose of expression; linguistics, insofar as it can be reduced to philosophy, is nothing other than aesthetics (Estetica come scienza dell'espressione e linguistica generale, Bari 1928, pp. 153-66).

All those contemporary interpretations of the nature of l. that derive from the movement known as the Vienna Circle, and that constitute the various centers of methodology established in the Old and New Worlds—Milan, Turin, London, Chicago—follow instead the direction of positivism. These centers, and the scholars belonging to them, aim at a positive analysis of l. that will purify it of every impurity and make it suitable for describing and transmitting objectively and impartially the observations made and the rigorously logical deductions that may be drawn from them. Words are often false divinities that reduce reason itself to slavery; l. often exercises a lyrical function and is frequently adulterated by an ingenuous anthropomorphism (S. Ceccato, Programma per un corso di metodologia, Milan 1946, pp. 3–8). C. Morris in the United States and A. G. Ayer in England reduce the activity of philosophy to determining the significance of assertions, excluding pseudopropositions, and analyzing significant propositions: significant are those propositions that are verifiable by an experience, whether actually realizable or at least logically conceivable (v. BIBLICA).

It clearly appears that in a positivistic or neopositivistic conception of l., in conformity with the fundamental anti-metaphysical position, there is not even the suspicion of a possible philosophical problematic of l. If, therefore, an analysis of l. is to be conceded, one that purifies it of surreptitious meanings and prevents alogical and uncritical influences; if the effort to create a philosophical and scientific l. is to be approved, one that adheres to the concrete conditions defining knowledge, all this nevertheless remains at the margins of an authentic philosophy of l. The latter asks what l. is, according to the various meanings of the term. Whether by it is understood the spirit’s faculty of expressing itself, and first of all the faculty of expressing itself to itself, the spirit’s intimate self-expression; whether l. is that phase of expression that precedes the very conceptualization of thought, or the very fragmentation of thought into the various modes of expression by which it realizes its act; whether it is lyricism, poetry, art, before it is concept, logic, words. In addition to the question of l. in general, there is that of human l.; what its content is, and of what spirit it is the expression; whether it is merely the aesthetic expression of the fleeting moment of a spirit in becoming, or whether, alongside aesthetic expression and incarnated in it, there is a content of universal and necessary value, a reflection of an absolute value. The problem of l. then coincides with the fundamental problem of all philosophy: what man is, and what his relationship to the absolute is.

Generally, l. is not studied as the point of departure of a philosophical system; rather, its interpretation is inserted into and framed within a system already constructed and formulated, and it is motives other than l. that determine an immanentistic and monistic conception of reality, or a transcendentalist, historicist, or existentialist conception. In every conception, however, the twofold aspect of the nature of l. may be accepted: the expressive aspect and the communicative aspect. If the second is more obvious, so much so that Aristotle already inferred from the existence of l. in human beings their natural sociability, it is nevertheless undeniable that l. would not be communication if it were not first expression, and above all expression of thought to itself, the ineliminable and irreplaceable fruit of thinking activity itself, that which it conceives, generates, and creates, even if it were not to communicate with anyone, even if it were only self-consciousness. In this sense l. precedes even the concept; it is the very capacity for conceptualization. The word, spoken or written, is then nothing other than the external counterpart of the conceptualization that has taken place; hence l. is specifically one for all human beings, just as intelligence and reason are specifically one in them, and consequently the concepts of being, substance, cause, etc. are identical in all human beings, while languages are multiple in their diversity. It may be said that l. is the fruit of the spontaneity of the spirit and of the spirit’s tendency to objectify itself; and if spontaneity is lyricism, poetry, intuition, in opposition to reflection, logicality, and reasoning, l. is art and not science.

All this may apply to l. in general. Human l., however, like the spirit of which it is the expression, has its own qualifications and characteristics. Confronted with the concept of the absolute, the human spirit, with its limitations, processes, and involutions, cannot attribute the characteristics of the absolute to itself. The only solution to the problem of its essence is therefore transcendental in nature. The characteristics of human l., both in its expressive and in its communicative aspect, confirm this metaphysical conception. In its expressive phase, human l. cannot claim absolute spontaneity for itself. Just as human intelligence is not the absolute and ultimate norm of truth, goodness, and beauty, and the values it can realize are not primary and absolute values, so the expressiveness of the human spirit is secondary in character, participatory in nature, measured and regulated by a measure and norm superior to II. The communicative aspect of l., the possibility and fact of dialogue, and the universality of the object communicated and understood raise the problem of the relations between the many and the one. This must be resolved by recourse to a higher unity, which cannot be of the same nature as the many. The twofold aspect of human l. confirms the testimony of the spirit, which apprehends itself as the expressive reflection of an objectivity that transcends II. The spirit and human l. are inserted into a universal reality and value.

Human l. is expressive and communicative only in the proposition. Croce had already noted that expression is an indivisible whole; the noun and the verb do not exist within it, but are abstractions fashioned by man through the destruction of the sole linguistic reality, which is the proposition

(Estetica, p. 138). Words are not communicated except within an affirmation or a negation. Affirmation, in turn, is the expression of being, which the human spirit does not create but apprehends according to its particular mode of knowing and in agreement with the fundamental requirements of rational objectivity—the first principles, which are the condition of the very possibility of dialogue and of l.

Articulated l. likewise has, as such, its own particular value. If the selection of spoken and written words is arbitrary and conventional (the case of onomatopoeic forms is an exception), once certain words have been established to indicate particular objects, l. assumes its own character of stability. The acceptance of words by many constitutes the very possibility of spoken and written l. The stability and acceptance of the meaning of words constitute what is usually called the juridical value of l., from which no one who intends to communicate his ideas with other thinking subjects can dispense. It contains a profound significance: words have acquired their value through the scrutiny of the centuries, in the crucible of collective human thought, and were accepted definitively only when their external meaning corresponded to the concept one intended to express.

Words are signs and symbols, but of thought. However diverse the many languages spoken by humankind may be, the unity of l. is manifest in them. The common features existing among them do not always depend, as Schuchardt showed, on mutual kinship; rather, they are due to that element common to the whole of humankind, which is thought (H. Delacroix, Le langage et la pensée, Paris 1930, p. 5).

Thought is the principle of objectivity and universality. Therefore, the passage from reality to thought and from thought to language assures the latter an objective value, which becomes juridical through common acceptance. Consequently, it would not seem impossible for philosophy to begin with an examination of language in order to reach the truth, following the reverse path to that by which the perennial spirit arrived at words. The analysis of the meaning contained in language is always of no little importance. In investigating this meaning, philosophy directs its inquiries toward the most intimate and profound work of thought which, although spontaneous in character, was no less reflective and penetrating in translating reality into words.

Language, even in its completeness and stabilization, entails, like thought itself, margins of uncertainty and indeterminacy, as well as the progressive evolution of forms. Human thought cannot attain total knowledge of reality, nor, therefore, will there be an expression perfectly adequate to the entire intelligibility of its object. This did not, however, justify a transition to forms of absolute anti-intellectualism and irrationalism. If human thought cannot claim exhaustive knowledge of the real—and therein lies the proof of the transcendent value of being—it nevertheless expresses its fundamental structure in the fabric of its concepts and forms.

A conception of language based on the principles set out above allows language itself to proceed toward a philosophy of the real. In every language there are words expressing the same concept, e.g., that of zostanza, of trasformazione, of obbligazione, and therefore indicating a universal derivation that can have no foundation other than in the objectivity of the concept itself. Words also clearly express the diversity with which thought translates reality into concepts. The distinction between abstract words and concrete words is full of meaning. “Humanity” and “man” do not indicate the same thing. “Humanity” is that which makes someone who is a man be “man,” but it is not man. The abstract term represents the fruit of an elaboration of thought; the concrete term refers directly to existing reality. Thus, from an analysis of the expressive content of words, precisely because words, thought, and reality stand together, one can derive, following the example of Aristotle and, earlier still, of Socrates, the general lines of a logic and a metaphysics.

It is Aristotle who defined words as « passionum animae signa », signs of the concepts of the soul (Peri

hermeneias, I, 1). S. Tommaso, commenting on the Aristotelian expression, states: « voces significant intellectus conceptiones immediate, et eis mediantibus res »: words therefore bear within themselves the imprint of the characteristics of particular human thought: they signify things, but through thought. Aristotle and s. Tommaso recognized the abstractive character proper to the human intellect and evident in the formation of language. On these data they constructed the theory of universal concepts, of transcendence, and of the analogy of the concept of being (cf. A. Mare, L'idée de l'être dans si Thomas, in Archives de philosophie, 10 [1933], fasc. 1, p. 85, and: A. Brunner, Sprache als Anfangspunkt der Erkenntnistheorie, in Scholastik, 12 [1933], p. 41). From the analysis of language, the highest and irreducible genera of beings existing in the corporeal world were determined. From the analysis of temporal expressions came the definition of time, the common element contained in them, just as the definition of motion, space, number, and quantity had been reached from their corresponding expressions. Through the analysis of motion and becoming and of their expressions arose the theories of matter and form (v. ILEMOREFISMO), of act and potency. Once the dependence between effect and cause had been recognized in motion, the principle of causality as applied to being was formulated; and from knowledge of finite being, knowledge of the existence and, within limits, of the nature of the infinite Being was made possible.

Disorders of the development of l. are: a) Audimutism, the absence or insufficiency of articulated speech in children with normal intelligence and hearing; the development is favorable, either spontaneously or under the influence of reeducation. It may depend on auditory agnosia or congenital auditory imperception, a very rare form; the essential disorder consists in an inability to understand spoken l., although the phonatory and articulatory organs are normal; articulated speech is absent and is replaced by gestures or by a language formed of simple sounds without grammatical rules (idioglossia). Or it may depend on delayed development of praxis functions (v. NERVOSO, SISTEMA); in this case, while verbal comprehension is perfect, in articulated speech there is an inability to put syllables together; there is no individual l., as in auditory agnosia, but the language of the environment is spoken, poorly and in a greatly deformed manner. b) Deaf-mutism due to peripheral lesion (v. SORDOMUTI). c) Abnormal pronunciation in spoken l., in the form of “lisping,” due to the persistence of a phonetic behavior belonging to a less evolved period in the integration of l.; or of “stuttering,” produced by motor incoordination of the different organs involved in phonation, so that the stutterer seems no longer to know how to breathe while speaking. The onset of this defect is generally gradual, around the age of 5, although it may sometimes be sudden (in that case it is attributed, at least by family members, to an emotional choc). Once established, stuttering presents “clonic” phenomena (repetition of syllables or phonemes, at the beginning of the word, or parasitic sounds) and “tonic” phenomena (temporary inability to emit even the slightest sound). The defect is generally intermittent, and emotions accentuate it; it is exceptional in sung speech. Various etiological factors have been invoked at different times: hysteria, neuropathic constitution, and impairment of the central gray nuclei. Stuttering generally does not heal spontaneously; thorough reeducation is necessary. Acquired l. aphasia (v.), a disorder of the expression or comprehension of verbal symbols, with unmistakable intellectual involvement, independently of any impairment of the instruments (if the cause is the latter, the condition is called dysarthria).

Of particular interest are the psychoneurological problems connected with the possible relationships between the psychic activity of language and the condition of specific areas of the cerebral cortex. In 1861 Broca localized the center of articulated l. in the foot of the third frontal convolution of the left cerebral hemisphere. Wernicke (1847) described another type of aphasia (sensory aphasia), caused by a lesion of the first temporal convolution and manifested by incomprehension of language, while speech, although full of errors, was free and abundant. With Bastian and Wernicke began the era of the diagram-makers (Head), that is, of those who described multiple image-storage centers in relation to a hypothetical higher “ideogenic center”; in this way, numerous varieties of aphasia (Kleist) were illustrated and arranged in schemes, all more or less artificial: those proposed by Kussmaul, Lichtheim, Charcot, and Grasset were the best known. In 1906, a memorable date in the history of aphasia, Pierre Marie, the “iconoclast,” overthrew the classical theory of the centers of verbo-acoustic and verbo-articulatory images; disorders of the comprehension of l. in Wernicke’s sensory aphasia are purely and simply disorders of intelligence, both general and specific. With Head, who denies the existence of verbal images and considers aphasia a disorder of “inner l.,” that is, of the symbolic formulation of thought, one passes clearly from neurology to psychology. In recent years, the opposition between noetists and antinoetists has become increasingly pronounced; on the one hand, it is held that a general modification of thought underlies aphasic disorders, while on the other the disorder of l. is regarded as primary, with merely a secondary repercussion on thought.

Among the principal noetists, following P. Marie, Gelb and Goldestein should be remembered above all; applying the principles of Gestaltheorie to the psychopathology of aphasia, they advanced the most important current noetic theory, according to which the aphasic is not simply “a man whose l. is modified,” but “a modified man” in his entirety, regressed toward a more primitive behavior. In aphasic patients, words with a generic meaning are chiefly lacking, while only proper names remain, that is, those names used to designate the singularities of things, not categories; the alteration of this fundamental function, called categorical behavior (Gelb and Goldestein), power of symbolic expression (Head), and function of mediatization (Van Woorkom), will determine an alteration of the representative function of l.

According to Goldestein, three different modalities are fused together in ordinary language: representative language (Jackson’s intellectual language), the first to be altered by cerebral lesions; expressive language (Jackson’s emotional language), the best preserved in cases of cerebral lesion; and verbal knowledge, comprising the very varied forms of motor and sensory memory, inner speech, etc. Set in motion by voluntary intentions, the operations dependent upon them subsequently continue in an automatic, or almost automatic, manner, because they are “commanded by the global psychic situation.” This last portion, namely verbal knowledge, seems to be connected with a precise cerebral localization, the language area, and represents a means of assistance when categorical aptitude has been lost; thus the word may be evoked either directly and in a wholly external manner by the presence of the object, or by means of a “detour,” through memories connected with perceptions by way of verbal knowledge. When the word has lost its value as a sign, an external verbal knowledge may, in certain individuals particularly gifted from the standpoint of speech, partly compensate for the loss of representative language. In motor aphasia, the distinctness of the disturbances of verbal knowledge makes it possible to see in this the result of motor learning. In recent years there has been a certain antinoetist reaction, although it cannot be said that properly constituted theories have been developed; the importance of the linguistic deficit has been effectively emphasized by Isserlin, von Kuenburg, and Lotmar. Indeed, Lotmar’s recent criticism (1937) of Goldestein’s conception shows with great clarity how difficult, if not impossible, it is to regard aphasia as resulting from the loss of categorical behavior.

As regards nosographic classification, for Marie aphasia is one and only one, namely Wernicke’s aphasia; disturbances of articulated language belong to “anarthria,” a purely articulatory disorder; Broca’s aphasia is nothing other than total aphasia, that is, Wernicke’s aphasia plus anarthria. Dejerine and his school, on the other hand, retain an aphasia with motor predominance, Broca’s aphasia, and an aphasia of comprehension, or sensory aphasia, Wernicke’s aphasia; total aphasia represents the association of the two types. Mingazzini seeks to reconcile the classical conceptions with those of Marie.

Today the most important classification of disturbances of language is that of Head, whose classification is purely phenomenological. He speaks of: a) verbal aphasia, corresponding to the classical motor aphasia, caused by the impossibility or difficulty of forming words or describing them; the evocation of the word is difficult, the vocabulary limited, and inner language affected; there is a disturbance in understanding the content of sentences read silently; verbal expression is deficient, but this is not a simple case of anarthria (or pure motor, subcortical aphasia); b) syntactic aphasia, clinically corresponding to Pick’s agrammatism; it is a disturbance in the distribution of words in the formation of sentences; speech is not impeded; relational words are lacking (articles, conjunctions, etc.); the resemblance to infantile language is clear; silent reading and writing are little affected; comprehension is variable; complex commands may not be understood; c) aphasia nominum or amnestic aphasia, a disturbance in understanding the nominal value of spoken and written words; the patient is incapable of naming familiar objects, although able to describe their use or composition; d) semantic aphasia, a defect in the complete recognition of words and sentences; there is no difficulty in forming or repeating words, but, in the course of conversation, sentences are incomplete, as though what was to be said had been forgotten; individual words or sentences are understood, but the meaning of the whole escapes the patient; reading is possible, but the meaning of the words read is not completely grasped; writing is often altered.

With regard to anatomical problems, agreement has now been reached on two points: the importance of the left hemisphere, whose lesions are those that most often produce disturbances of language; and the existence of two “language areas”: one anterior (Broca’s region), whose lesions produce disturbances of the expressive function of language, and the other posterior (Wernicke’s region and the region of the angular gyrus), whose involvement produces predominantly disturbances of comprehension.

The classical authors, following Charcot, divided the anterior area into two centers: the “Broca center” (the center of motor images of articulation) and the “Exner center” (the center of graphic motor images); in the posterior area, they distinguished the “center of auditory images” and the “center of visual images”; these centers were supposedly connected to one another by association fibers. Whereas sociocortical aphasias or pure aphasias were thought to result from lesions of the projection fibers, transcortical aphasias were attributed to lesions of the association fibers between the centers or of those fibers connecting these centers with the hypothetical “ideogenic centers.”

Modifications have been introduced into this classical conception, both in terminology and with regard to the anatomical location of the centers; the very notion of a center (v. LOCALIZZAZIONI CEREBRALI) was subsequently rejected, because it implies a preformed static character, and it was preferred to speak of “aphasic areas.” Nevertheless, both Head and the “Gestaltists” (Goldstein) admit the importance of anatomical location in determining the characteristics of the morbid process.

As regards causes, aphasias may depend on vascular events, neoplasms, cranial trauma, or abscesses; aphasia may arise in organic dementias, as also in progressive paralysis (v. DEMENZA), especially in the form described by Lissauer; in presenile dementias (Pick’s disease and Alzheimer-Perusini’s disease), aphasia represents one of the typical and fundamental symptoms, together with agnosopraxic symptoms (Reich’s alogic syndrome).

On superficial examination, an aphasic patient, especially a sensory aphasic, may be mistaken for a demented person; but careful observation of the subject’s behavior, both spontaneous and in response to stimuli, will suffice to avoid the diagnostic error.