Lemma | power |
---|---|
Categoria grammaticale | N |
Lingua | inglese |
Sigla | Whitney (1875) |
Titolo | The Life and Growth of language |
Sinonimi | |
Rinvii | |
Traduzioni | |
Citazioni | […] even the poorest language in existence is so much better than any one’s powers could have produced unaided, that its acquisition would imply a greatly accelerated drawing out and training of the powers of even the most gifted being […]. […] his [of child] power of noting resemblances and differences, the most fundamental activity of intellect, is from the first called into lively action and trained by the constant necessity of applying names rightly. […] individuals of every degree of gift are found using, each according to his power, the same identical dialect; and souls of kindred calibre in different societies can hold no communion together. […] the child is exercising his organs of utterance, and gaining conscious command of them, partly by a mere native impulse to the exertion of all his native powers, partly by imitation of the sound-making persons about him […]. […] the great and wonderful powers of the human soul would never move in this particular direction [language] but for the added push given by the desire of communication […]. It belongs to the highest development of speech that the word written and read should have something like the same power as the word spoken and heard […]. The human capacity to which the production of language is most directly due is [...] the power of intelligently, and not by blind instinct alone, adapting means to ends. The power of brain, the capacity of thought, is enhanced by speech […]. Whether, among the powers that contribute to the production of language, there is one or more than one, not belonging in any degree to a single animal below man, is a point which must be left to the psychologist to decide […] A heightened power of comparison, of the general perception of resemblances and differences; an accompanying higher power of abstraction, or of viewing the resemblances and differences as attributes, characteristic of the objects compared; and, above all else, a heightened command of consciousness, a power of looking upon one’s self also as acting and feeling, of studying one’s own mental movements- these, it is believed, are the directions in which the decisive superiority is to be looked for. |