Significance of the Study of Languages

27 Pronounds are few in number. Prepositions even in the richest languages are not nearly so many as they used to seem when we faced the [?] of prepositions governing special cases in Latin or [Greko?] German and had to learn them by heart; while conjunction are fewer stillyet it is by means of pronouns, prepositions, conjunction, the copula, and the copulative [power?]

28 of verbs in general, and by the order of words together with some little help from our [scanty?] supply of inflectional forms that we must express all the varying relations that we have recognized in the universe of things and in thr world of thought. It is with these instruments that we must reproduce the logical structure of our thought in the conjuctions of sentences. It is equally true that

29 it is thoughs the language constructions thus shaped in the speech and writing of others that we must detect and follow the logical structure of their thoughts, discover the truth of things as it appears to them, build again the universe of fact and truth, of thought and emotion in which they live. To study language therefore in any serious sense

30 is to follow the thoughtd [process?] in all its [subtlest?] windings. It is to get a severe and rigid training in thinking. We must not forget that language is a set of arbritary symbols. Except for a very limited number of words that suggest by their very sound the thing they stand for, the words of a language are as arbitrary fitted to their meaning as are the symbols

31 of the [more?] alphabet, and the constructions expressive of relations and shades of meaning are as arbitrary as [are?] single words. To handle arbitrary symbols and arbitrary structural forms in such a way that they shall carry to another exactly the thought that is in our own mind demands on the oart of the speaker and listener an exact knowledge of the symbols, their special meaning and carrying power