The brain and the voice in speech and song / by F.W. Mott.

  • Mott, F. W. (Frederick Walker), 1853-1926.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The brain and the voice in speech and song / by F.W. Mott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    LANGUAGE AND GRAPHIC SIGNS sent a letter to a Spanish captain as follows : A man with extended arms, sign of greeting ; below to the left, the objects they have to barter—five big shells, seven little ones, three others of different forms ; to the right, drawing of the objects they wanted in exchange—three large fish-hooks, four small ones, two axes, two pieces of iron. Language of graphic signs and spoken language have progressed together, and simultaneously supported each other in the development of the higher mental faculties that differentiate the savage from the brute and the civilised human being from the savage. In spoken language, at any rate, it is not the vocal instrument that has been changed, but the organ of mind with its innate and invisible molecular potentialities, the result of racial and ancestral experiences in past ages. Completely developed lan- guages when studied from the point of view of their evolution are stamped with the print of an unconscious labour that has been fashioning them for centuries. A little consideration and reflection upon words which have been coined in our own time shows that language offers an abstract and brief chronicle of social psychology. Articulate language has converted the vocal instrument into the chief agent of the