Collected Papers

Excerpt from Collected Papers

The first requisite is a knowledge of phonetics, or the form of language. We must learn to regard language solely as consisting of groups of sounds, independently of the written symbols, which are always associated with all kinds of disturbing associations, chie?y historical. We must then con sider language in its relation to thought, which necessitates Some study of the relation of language to logic and psycho logy. Such investigations, if carried out consistently, will greatly modify our views, not only of English, but of language generally, and will bring us face to face with many of the ultimate problems of language, which have hitherto been rather Shirked by philologists. Such problems are those which I propose to discuss in the present paper. I begin with the important question of sentence word and syllable division, beginning again with the purely formal, or phonetic criteria.