ISBN: 9780217380645

[ED: Softcover], [PU: Cambridge Scholars Publishing], Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This… Mehr…

[ED: Softcover], [PU: Cambridge Scholars Publishing], Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: formation of speech. The truth of this position will, I hope, be still more clearly evinced by some of the following speculations. SECTION II.?OF ARTIFICIAL LANGUAGE. It was before remarked, that, as ideas multiply, the imperfections of natural language are felt, and men find it necessary to invent artificial signs, of which the meaning is fixed by mutual agreement. Dumb people, who associate much together, soon invent a language of their own, consisting of visible signs and the same thing happens in those convents and boarding- schools, where a severe discipline prevents a free communication by means of ordinary speech. Artificial signs may be divided into the visible and the audible. To the former class belong those signals by fire, which were so much in use among the ancients. The Greeks are even said to have invented a method of expressing, by the number and arrangement of torches, every letter of the alphabet, so that a guard on one eminence could converse with another at a distance, by spelling his words. A full and curious description of this method may be found in Polybius. Another instance of a visible language occurs in that system of signals which is said to have been introduced into the British navy by James II. and in the still more recent invention of the telegraph,?a contrivance which has been found to admit of a far more extensive and important application than could have been anticipated a priori and which is probably still susceptible of farther improvements, tending to enlarge and accelerate the mutual intercourse of mankind. If men had been destitute of the organs of speech, or of the sense of hearing, there can be no doubt that they might have contrived, by means of an alphabet of visible signs, to express all their ideas and feelings as we ...Versandfertig in 6-10 Tagen, [SC: 0.00]<