Language further enables us to overcome, whenever this is necessary, the ambiguity of its own elements (the words) which results from the individual and historical conditions influencing the growth of speech. The meaning of words can be fixed by definition. Such words as circle, energy, freedom, have many different meanings (a circle of friends, the energy of style, the freedom of a city). The physicist defines energy as the capacity for performing mechanical work, excluding any and all other meanings. The philosopher defines freedom as the possession of the power to act in accordance with one’s inherent nature, independent of external causes. Because of the association between the defined and the defining words, the latter keep the defined word from being used wrongly, by entering consciousness when the defined word happens to be used in an improper connection. It is true that, in order to insure constancy of meaning, the defining words, too, should be defined again by others, and so on. A perfect definition is therefore an ideal which can be approached, but never reached. In spite of this, the value to human thought and knowledge of clearly defined concepts is immeasurable.
QUESTIONS
141. Why does generalization play such an insignificant part in the mental life of animals?
142. What are the four languages of educated normal people?
143. Which of these languages is acquired first by the child?
144. How does baby talk originate?
145. How are the reduplications of baby talk to be explained?
146. What is the origin of “a foreign accent” in speech?
147. Why does voluntary imitation of speech sounds by a baby develop at first very slowly?
148. Illustrate the inventiveness of children in learning to speak.