Some Ideas about Language
This is a reading guide. It tells you what the assigned reading is, where to find it, and offers some guidance on how to read it.
For this first reading assignment, I am assigning a hodgepodge of texts, meant to get you thinking in several different directions about some basic questions about what language is and how it works.
John Locke, “Of Words” (1689)
Below are excerpts from Chapters 1 and 2 of Book III of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, first published in 1689. The text below is taken from Project Gutenberg’s version of the text. The standard academic version of the text is Locke ([1690] 1975).
CHAPTER I. OF WORDS OR LANGUAGE IN GENERAL.
§1. Man fitted to form articulated Sounds.
God, having designed man for a sociable creature, made him not only with an inclination, and under a necessity to have fellowship with those of his own kind, but furnished him also with language, which was to be the great instrument and common tie of society. Man, therefore, had by nature his organs so fashioned, as to be fit to frame articulate sounds, which we call words. But this was not enough to produce language; for parrots, and several other birds, will be taught to make articulate sounds distinct enough, which yet by no means are capable of language.
What, according to Locke, is the primary purpose of language? Do you agree that language is “the great instrument and common tie of society”?
§2. To use these sounds as Signs of Ideas.
Besides articulate sounds, therefore, it was further necessary that he should be able to use these sounds as signs of internal conceptions; and to make them stand as marks for the ideas within his own mind, whereby they might be made known to others, and the thoughts of men’s minds be conveyed from one to another.
Locke here claims that the primary use of language is to convey our thoughts to each other. Do you agree? What other uses do we make of language? Are there good reasons to think this use is the primary use?
§3. To make them general Signs.
But neither was this sufficient to make words so useful as they ought to be. It is not enough for the perfection of language, that sounds can be made signs of ideas, unless those signs can be so made use of as to comprehend several particular things: for the multiplication of words would have perplexed their use, had every particular thing need of a distinct name to be signified by. [To remedy this inconvenience, language had yet a further improvement in the use of GENERAL TERMS, whereby one word was made to mark a multitude of particular existences: which advantageous use of sounds was obtained only by the difference of the ideas they were made signs of: those names becoming general, which are made to stand for GENERAL IDEAS, and those remaining particular, where the IDEAS they are used for are PARTICULAR.]
What is the distinction between general and particular terms? Can you give examples?
§5. Words ultimately derived from such as signify sensible Ideas.
It may also lead us a little towards the original of all our notions and knowledge, if we remark how great a dependence our words have on common sensible ideas; and how those which are made use of to stand for actions and notions quite removed from sense, have their rise from thence, and from obvious sensible ideas are transferred to more abstruse significations, and made to stand for ideas that come not under the cognizance of our senses; v.g. to IMAGINE, APPREHEND, COMPREHEND, ADHERE, CONCEIVE, INSTIL, DISGUST, DISTURBANCE, TRANQUILLITY, &c., are all words taken from the operations of sensible things, and applied to certain modes of thinking. SPIRIT, in its primary signification, is breath; ANGEL, a messenger: and I doubt not but, if we could trace them to their sources, we should find, in all languages, the names which stand for things that fall not under our senses to have had their first rise from sensible ideas. By which we may give some kind of guess what kind of notions they were, and whence derived, which filled their minds who were the first beginners of languages, and how nature, even in the naming of things, unawares suggested to men the originals and principles of all their knowledge: whilst, to give names that might make known to others any operations they felt in themselves, or any other ideas that came not under their senses, they were fain to borrow words from ordinary known ideas of sensation, by that means to make others the more easily to conceive those operations they experimented in themselves, which made no outward sensible appearances; and then, when they had got known and agreed names to signify those internal operations of their own minds, they were sufficiently furnished to make known by words all their other ideas; since they could consist of nothing but either of outward sensible perceptions, or of the inward operations of their minds about them; we having, as has been proved, no ideas at all, but what originally come either from sensible objects without, or what we feel within ourselves, from the inward workings of our own spirits, of which we are conscious to ourselves within.
That’s a complicated paragraph. It helps to start at the end: Locke claims to have proven (earlier in the book that this passage comes from) that all human ideas come from our outer senses, or from our inner awareness of our own conscious experience. In this paragraph, he seems to suggest that a common pattern in language is to borrow a word for outer sensible experience, and extend it metaphorically as a sign for an inner experience.
CHAPTER II. OF THE SIGNIFICATION OF WORDS.
§1. Words are sensible Signs, necessary for Communication of Ideas.
Man, though he have great variety of thoughts, and such from which others as well as himself might receive profit and delight; yet they are all within his own breast, invisible and hidden from others, nor can of themselves be made to appear. The comfort and advantage of society not being to be had without communication of thoughts, it was necessary that man should find out some external sensible signs, whereof those invisible ideas, which his thoughts are made up of, might be made known to others. For this purpose nothing was so fit, either for plenty or quickness, as those articulate sounds, which with so much ease and variety he found himself able to make. Thus we may conceive how WORDS, which were by nature so well adapted to that purpose, came to be made use of by men as the signs of their ideas; not by any natural connexion that there is between particular articulate sounds and certain ideas, for then there would be but one language amongst all men; but by a voluntary imposition, whereby such a word is made arbitrarily the mark of such an idea. The use, then, of words, is to be sensible marks of ideas; and the ideas they stand for are their proper and immediate signification.
§2. Words, in their immediate Signification, are the sensible Signs of his Ideas who uses them.
The use men have of these marks being either to record their own thoughts, for the assistance of their own memory; or, as it were, to bring out their ideas, and lay them before the view of others: words, in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing but THE IDEAS IN THE MIND OF HIM THAT USES THEM, how imperfectly soever or carelessly those ideas are collected from the things which they are supposed to represent. When a man speaks to another, it is that he may be understood: and the end of speech is, that those sounds, as marks, may make known his ideas to the hearer. That then which words are the marks of are the ideas of the speaker: nor can any one apply them as marks, immediately, to anything else but the ideas that he himself hath: for this would be to make them signs of his own conceptions, and yet apply them to other ideas; which would be to make them signs and not signs of his ideas at the same time; and so in effect to have no signification at all. Words being voluntary signs, they cannot be voluntary signs imposed by him on things he knows not. That would be to make them signs of nothing, sounds without signification. A man cannot make his words the signs either of qualities in things, or of conceptions in the mind of another, whereof he has none in his own. Till he has some ideas of his own, he cannot suppose them to correspond with the conceptions of another man; nor can he use any signs for them: for thus they would be the signs of he knows not what, which is in truth to be the signs of nothing. But when he represents to himself other men’s ideas by some of his own, if he consent to give them the same names that other men do, it is still to his own ideas; to ideas that he has, and not to ideas that he has not.
§3. Examples of this.
This is so necessary in the use of language, that in this respect the knowing and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned, use the words they speak (with any meaning) all alike. They, in every man’s mouth, stand for the ideas he has, and which he would express by them. A child having taken notice of nothing in the metal he hears called GOLD, but the bright shining yellow colour, he applies the word gold only to his own idea of that colour, and nothing else; and therefore calls the same colour in a peacock’s tail gold. Another that hath better observed, adds to shining yellow great weight: and then the sound gold, when he uses it, stands for a complex idea of a shining yellow and a very weighty substance. Another adds to those qualities fusibility: and then the word gold signifies to him a body, bright, yellow, fusible, and very heavy. Another adds malleability. Each of these uses equally the word gold, when they have occasion to express the idea which they have applied it to: but it is evident that each can apply it only to his own idea; nor can he make it stand as a sign of such a complex idea as he has not.
If my use of the word ‘gold’ stands for my idea, and your use of the word ‘gold’ stands for your idea, and those ideas are different, how is communication possible?
§4. Words are often secretly referred, First to the Ideas supposed to be in other men’s minds.
But though words, as they are used by men, can properly and immediately signify nothing but the ideas that are in the mind of the speaker; yet they in their thoughts give them a secret reference to two other things.
First, THEY SUPPOSE THEIR WORDS TO BE MARKS OF THE IDEAS IN THE MINDS ALSO OF OTHER MEN, WITH WHOM THEY COMMUNICATE; for else they should talk in vain, and could not be understood, if the sounds they applied to one idea were such as by the hearer were applied to another, which is to speak two languages. But in this men stand not usually to examine, whether the idea they, and those they discourse with have in their minds be the same: but think it enough that they use the word, as they imagine, in the common acceptation of that language; in which they suppose that the idea they make it a sign of is precisely the same to which the understanding men of that country apply that name.
Is Locke saying that when we do this, we are making a mistake? Or is he saying that we are able to communicate because we imagine (pretend?) that when I say ‘gold’ and you say ‘gold’, we are both using it “in the common acceptation”—that is, for an idea that we both share? (Can we share ideas? Isn’t my idea something in my head and your idea something in your head?)
§5. Secondly, to the Reality of Things.
Secondly, Because men would not be thought to talk barely of their own imagination, but of things as really they are; therefore they often suppose the WORDS TO STAND ALSO FOR THE REALITY OF THINGS. […] Give me leave here to say, that it is a perverting the use of words, and brings unavoidable obscurity and confusion into their signification, whenever we make them stand for anything but those ideas we have in our own minds.
Here Locke takes a strong stand against the view that words are not just signs for ideas, but also signs for things in the world. What do you think? When you use the word ‘Beyoncé’, does it stand for the person, Beyoncé, or does it stand for your idea of Beyoncé? Or both?
§7. Words are often used without Signification, and Why.
Though the proper and immediate signification of words are ideas in the mind of the speaker, yet, because by familiar use from our cradles, we come to learn certain articulate sounds very perfectly, and have them readily on our tongues, and always at hand in our memories, but yet are not always careful to examine or settle their significations perfectly; it often happens that men, even when they would apply themselves to an attentive consideration, do set their thoughts more on words than things. Nay, because words are many of them learned before the ideas are known for which they stand: therefore some, not only children but men, speak several words no otherwise than parrots do, only because they have learned them, and have been accustomed to those sounds. But so far as words are of use and signification, so far is there a constant connexion between the sound and the idea, and a designation that the one stands for the other; without which application of them, they are nothing but so much insignificant noise.
What sorts of examples do you think Locke has in mind, where someone “speak[s] several words no otherwise than parrots do”? In recent literature on Large Language Models, like ChatGPT, one prominent claim is that such chatbots are just “stochastic parrots”—that is, statistical mimics, generating strings of words without any real understanding (Bender et al. 2021).
§8. Their Signification perfectly arbitrary, not the consequence of a natural connexion.
Words, by long and familiar use, as has been said, come to excite in men certain ideas so constantly and readily, that they are apt to suppose a natural connexion between them. But that they signify only men’s peculiar ideas, and that BY A PERFECT ARBITRARY IMPOSITION, is evident, in that they often fail to excite in others (even that use the same language) the same ideas we take them to be signs of: and every man has so inviolable a liberty to make words stand for what ideas he pleases, that no one hath the power to make others have the same ideas in their minds that he has, when they use the same words that he does. And therefore the great Augustus himself, in the possession of that power which ruled the world, acknowledged he could not make a new Latin word: which was as much as to say, that he could not arbitrarily appoint what idea any sound should be a sign of, in the mouths and common language of his subjects. It is true, common use, by a tacit consent, appropriates certain sounds to certain ideas in all languages, which so far limits the signification of that sound, that unless a man applies it to the same idea, he does not speak properly: and let me add, that unless a man’s words excite the same ideas in the hearer which he makes them stand for in speaking, he does not speak intelligibly. But whatever be the consequence of any man’s using of words differently, either from their general meaning, or the particular sense of the person to whom he addresses them; this is certain, their signification, in his use of them, is limited to his ideas, and they can be signs of nothing else.
This is a curious paragraph. The first half appears to grant each speaker unlimited power to use any sound as a sign for any idea. But the second half appears to walk that back: “common use” is limited by “tacit consent”, and “unless a man’s words excite the same ideas in the hearer which he makes them stand for in speaking, he does not speak intelligibly.” Notice how this brings us back to the beginning—the idea that language is a tool for communicating our ideas to each other. And it also brings back the worry about how that is possible, if ideas are subjective, and so not actually shared between people.
John Stuart Mill, “Of Names” (1882)
This (much shorter!) excerpt is Chapter 2 of Book I of Mill’s System of Logic, published in 1882. The text is taken from *Project Gutenberg’s version of the text.
Here Mill argues, against Hobbes (and Locke), that names are signs of things, not ideas.
Of Names.
§ 1. “A name,” says Hobbes, “is a word taken at pleasure to serve for a mark which may raise in our mind a thought like to some thought we had before, and which being pronounced to others, may be to them a sign of what thought the speaker had before in his mind.” This simple definition of a name, as a word (or set of words) serving the double purpose of a mark to recall to ourselves the likeness of a former thought, and a sign to make it known to others, appears unexceptionable. Names, indeed, do much more than this; but whatever else they do, grows out of, and is the result of this: as will appear in its proper place.
Are names more properly said to be the names of things, or of our ideas of things? The first is the expression in common use; the last is that of some metaphysicians, who conceived that in adopting it they were introducing a highly important distinction. The eminent thinker, just quoted, seems to countenance the latter opinion. “But seeing,” he continues, “names ordered in speech (as is defined) are signs of our conceptions, it is manifest they are not signs of the things themselves; for that the sound of this word stone should be the sign of a stone, can not be understood in any sense but this, that he that hears it collects that he that pronounces it thinks of a stone.”
If it be merely meant that the conception alone, and not the thing itself, is recalled by the name, or imparted to the hearer, this of course can not be denied. Nevertheless, there seems good reason for adhering to the common usage, and calling (as indeed Hobbes himself does in other places) the word sun the name of the sun, and not the name of our idea of the sun. For names are not intended only to make the hearer conceive what we conceive, but also to inform him what we believe. Now, when I use a name for the purpose of expressing a belief, it is a belief concerning the thing itself, not concerning my idea of it. When I say, “the sun is the cause of day,” I do not mean that my idea of the sun causes or excites in me the idea of day; or in other words, that thinking of the sun makes me think of day. I mean, that a certain physical fact, which is called the sun’s presence (and which, in the ultimate analysis, resolves itself into sensations, not ideas) causes another physical fact, which is called day. It seems proper to consider a word as the name of that which we intend to be understood by it when we use it; of that which any fact that we assert of it is to be understood of; that, in short, concerning which, when we employ the word, we intend to give information. Names, therefore, shall always be spoken of in this work as the names of things themselves, and not merely of our ideas of things.
Lewis Carroll, “‘Haddocks’ Eyes”
When we start talking about words, things can get confusing.
For example, notice what happens when Mill says that even Hobbes calls “the word sun the name of the sun.” Here, he deploys the word ‘sun’ twice. In its first occurrence, it is being used to refer to itself, the word ‘sun’. In its second occurrence, it is being used to refer to an astronomical body.
This is known as the “use-mention” distinction. When you use the word ‘sun’, it refers to an astronomical body. When you mention the word ‘sun’, it refers to itself.
Mill uses italics to indicate that he is mentioning the word ‘sun’ rather than using it. This convention is still common among contemporary linguists. The convention in philosophy, which I expect you to use throughout this course, is to use single quotation marks whenever you want to mention rather than use a word.
Examples:
- ‘The’ and ‘Two’ start with the same letter.
- ‘John Locke’ is the name of John Locke.
Here is a more maddening example, from Through the Looking Glass, the sequel to Alice in Wonderland:
[White Knight:] “The name of the song is called ‘Haddocks’ Eyes’.”
“Oh, that’s the name of the song, is it?” Alice said, trying to feel interested.
“No, you don’t understand,” the Knight said, looking a little vexed.
“That’s what the name is called. The name really is ‘The Aged Aged Man’.”
“Then I ought to have said ‘That’s what the song is called’?” Alice corrected herself.
“No, you oughtn’t: that’s quite another thing! The song is called ‘Ways And Means’: but that’s only what it’s called, you know!”
“Well, what is the song, then?” said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.
“I was coming to that,” the Knight said. “The song really is ‘A-sitting On A Gate’: and the tune’s my own invention.” (Carroll 1871, ch. 8)
Jonathan Swift, “The Grand Academy of Lagado”
Locke and Hobbes think words represent ideas. Mill thinks they represent things. In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift imagines a language that dispenses with words altogether.
In the book, Gulliver visits the Grand Academy of Lagado, and observes what the professors are working on there. One is trying to extract sunbeams from cucumbers, another is trying to reconstitute food from human shit, another is trying to build houses from the top down. You get the idea.
Finally, he visits the school of languages:
We next went to the school of languages, where three professors sat in consultation upon improving that of their own country.
The first project was to shorten discourse by cutting polysyllables into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because, in reality, all things imaginable are but nouns.
The other project was, a scheme for entirely abolishing all words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health, as well as brevity. For it is plain, that every word we speak is, in some degree, a diminution of our lungs by corrosion, and, consequently, contributes to the shortening of our lives. An expedient was therefore offered, “that since words are only names for things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were necessary to express a particular business they are to discourse on.” And this invention would certainly have taken place, to the great ease as well as health of the subject, if the women, in conjunction with the vulgar and illiterate, had not threatened to raise a rebellion unless they might be allowed the liberty to speak with their tongues, after the manner of their forefathers; such constant irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people. However, many of the most learned and wise adhere to the new scheme of expressing themselves by things; which has only this inconvenience attending it, that if a man’s business be very great, and of various kinds, he must be obliged, in proportion, to carry a greater bundle of things upon his back, unless he can afford one or two strong servants to attend him. I have often beheld two of those sages almost sinking under the weight of their packs, like pedlars among us, who, when they met in the street, would lay down their loads, open their sacks, and hold conversation for an hour together; then put up their implements, help each other to resume their burdens, and take their leave.
But for short conversations a man may carry implements in his pockets and under his arms, enough to supply him; and in his house he cannot be at a loss. Therefore the room where company meet who practice this art, is full of all things, ready at hand, requisite to furnish matter for this kind of artificial converse.
Another great advantage proposed by this invention was, that it would serve as a universal language, to be understood in all civilized nations, whose goods and utensils are generally of the same kind, or nearly resembling, so that their uses might easily be comprehended. And thus ambassadors would be qualified to treat with foreign princes, or ministers of state, to whose tongues they were utter strangers. (Swift 1726, pt. III Ch. 5)
Here Swift invites us to stretch the very idea of language. As he describes it, the new language is a language without words. You might instead describe it as a language where the words are things, and each thing is a name for itself. Are the problems with this proposal mostly practical, as Swift suggests, or are there more basic problems with the idea?
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins”
This essay, first published in Spanish in 1942, is not actually in the public domain. But it is widely available in English translation online:
Please read the essay by following the link. The linked site also provides the original Spanish. Obviously, if you can read Spanish, you should read that instead.
Note that, most of what is described in this essay is real, the “Chinese Encyclopedia” is not.