Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/75

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Linguistics in General

tuality of mankind with reference to social necessities. We learn what the signs are, what governs them; and by this means we perceive the more definite boundaries of linguistics, which occur inside the general scope of the science of signs.

To the psychologist falls the task of determining the scope of semiology; the linguist is concerned chiefly with the characteristics of speech or tongue, whereby a part is used with which to explain the whole. The sociologist is interested in the relations that connect the broad institution of language with associated conventions.

History shows that the psychologist devotes himself too exclusively to the metaphysics of the individual mind; also that usually the physiologist is too much engrossed with the working of the mechanism of the speech-centers, the muscles, etc., of the individual; and so forward in a different way with the grammarian, the philologist, and the others. Each neglects more or less some

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