Thought-Symbolism and Grammatic Illusions: Being a Treatise on the Nature, Purpose, and Material of Speech, and a Demonstration of the Unreality, the Useless Complexity, and the Evil Effects, of Orthodox Grammatic Rules in General (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Thought-Symbolism and Grammatic Illusions: Being a Treatise on the Nature, Purpose, and Material of Speech, and a Demonstration of the Unreality, the Useless Complexity, and the Evil Effects, of Orthodox Grammatic Rules in General

The character of the audible thought-symbols we call words is first dealt with; and incidentally, the character of those other symbols, also called words, but which are visible representatives, indirectly, of thought, but directly of the audible words and the influences which have imparted to our language its present shape are referred to.

All the ideas which speech has hitherto proved its ability to express are either of things unitary or of things thereto attributable. Non-attributive ideas are shown to be essentially of one class, whilst attributive ideas are shown to be, for any practically useful purpose, divisible into not more than four sub-classes. Hence it appears that speech-building needs, at most, a fivefold material, and, in fact, uses in its constructions not more than five of those functionaries called parts of speech.

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