The Theory of Speech and Language

Gardiner, Alan H. 1932. The Theory of Speech and Language. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Among the psychologists Karl Buhler is the writer on linguistic theory with whose views I find myself most in sympathy. Many of his conclusions, reached along quite different channels from my own, coincide almost completely with those to be expounded in the present book. (Gardiner 1932: 4)

Seeing as "channel" is the term that brought me to this book it is notable that this use of the word is more akin to the pre-communication-theory understanding of it (much as it is in Malinowski's Argonauts, left unquoted).

Less than anyone else can a competent student of Egyptian hieroglyphics believe that the language of his predilection will teach him anything of value concerning the origins of speech. The old Egyptian language, like Sanskrit and Chinese, is a highly developed and sophisticated tongue, on a long view little less modern than French or English. (Gardiner 1932: 4)

Concerning the primitiveness of particular languages, on which subject Jespersen has a passage very much to the effect of this one - no existing modern tongue is "primitive" in the "pre-conceived" view of naive observations (e.g. Malinowski's "Primitive Speech").

This, then, is my method: to put back single acts of speech into their original setting of real life, and thence to discover what processes are employed, what factors involved. For controversial reasons it seemed desirable to precede the analysis of a simple act of speech by some discussion of its essential factors, and I have [|] found surprising and encouraging confirmation of my views at a lecture recently given in London. On that occasion Professor Karl Bühler, of Vienna, wrote upon the blackboard the four factors, (1) the speaker, (2) the listener, (3) the things referred to, and (4) the linguistic material, the interrelations of which I had declared, nearly ten years ago, to constitute the whole mechanism of speech. (Gardiner 1932: 6-7)

These are the very same factors in Bühler own account as well as in Roman Jakobson's scheme of linguistic speech functions, though he replaces "the linguistic material" with the message pure and simple, it being given that the linguistic message is under discussion.

On the view here advocated, speech is a human activity demanding at least two persons possessing a common language and finding themselves in a common situation. The science to which linguistic theory thus ultimately owes allegience is neither logic nor psychology, but sociology. Logic is concerned with the relations of propositions to facts, and psychology with subjective states, observed or inferred. Sociology, on the other hand, has at least as a large part of its field intersubjective phenomena, the dealings of man with man, among which speech is one of the most important techniques. (Gardiner 1932: 7)

A rather extreme view of things, but nevertheless a good support for turning to actual sociologists, like Frankling Giddings, for support of the putative social function of speech.

My interest being primarily semasiological, i.e. concerned with the function of speech as an instrument for conveying meaning, I have paid but small attention to either its sounds or its aesthetic bearings. (Gardiner 1932: 13)

Are "semasiological" and "semiotic" synonymous? Note the subtle shift of emphasis between "conveying meaning" and the more popular and pronounced "communicating ideas".

The objection to formal definitions is that, while they are seldom positively wrong, they are so often unhelpful, if not actually misleading. Such is characteristically the case with the common definition of speech as the use of articulate sound-symbols for the expression of thought. With slight verbal variation, this definition is found throughout the whole range of general treatises on language, old and new alike. And indeed, if the term 'thought' be interpreted widely enough, there is little here to which one can take serious exception. Everything that is spoken of must, at all events in a metaphorical way, pass through the mind of the speaker before it is put into words. In this sense speech does really subserve the expression of thought. (Gardiner 1932: 17)

The footnote refers to G. de Laguna (1927), which is what oriented me towards Sapir. The expression of thought falls into my own inchoate list of such verbal constructions, i.e. the off-hand definitions of communication, specifically what it primarily does. Thought here is a laxer form of "ideas".

There are, however, cases where this description is both natural and appropriate, as when, for example, a lecturer is explaining some scientific discovery or analysing some philosophic subtlety. This gives us the clue to the source of the definition here impugned. Its academic origin is only too apparent, reflecting as it does the habits of the teacher, so different from those of the man in the street. The dislike of the ordinary mortal for serious thinking is proverbial, and yet speech is one of his commonest occupations. If any normal, semi-educated person could be brought to discuss the why and the wherefore of speech, he would probably say that it gives people the opportunity of talking about the things they are interested in, though he would admit that a good deal of conversation is about nothing in particular. (Gardiner 1932: 18)

"So acts every 'man-in-the-street' in our own society, so has acted the average member of any society through the past ages, and so acts the present-day savage" (Malinowski 1922: 327). Academic vs everyday origins. Note the archaic occupation - "any activity in which a person is engaged" (as opposed to "principal work or business". Conversation about nothing in particular: "Indeed there need not or perhaps even there must not be anything to communicate" (PC 9.3).

As a first approximation let us define speech as the use, between man and man, of articulate sound-signs for the communication of their wishes and their views about things. (Gardiner 1932: 18)

That's a first. Never seen such a simple construction before. It neatly side-steps the question of units, as "signs" cover units of a variety of sizes (the extreme being Peirce's book as an argument).

True, the ultimate basis must be the involuntary cry of the individual animal. This was, I suppose, at the outset little more than the audible result of muscular movements due to the incidence of some external stimulus. The squeal of the trapped rabbit provides the type. But such emotional monologue is very far removed from speech, nor could any amount of variety either in the stimuli or in the reactions ever have given rise to anything resembling a real language. (Gardiner 1932: 19)

Also a first. "Emotional monologue" captures the essence of the following: "Moreover, such instinctive cries hardly constitute communication in any strict sense. They are not addressed to any one, they are merely overheard, if heard at all, as the bark of a dog, the sound of approaching footsteps, or the rustling of the wind is heard." (Sapir 1921: 3)

Without indulging in any questionable speculations, we may be sure that the gradual building up of a well-stocked vocabulary, such as even the most primitive man possesses, advanced pari passu with the ever-increasing complexity of tribal life, and was the outcome of the growing demand for more precise information as to the exact facts perceived, as to the exact emotions felt, and as to the exact responses desired. (Gardiner 1932: 20)

Pari passu - "side by side; at the same rate or on an equal footing". In general, this amounts to similar statements about primitiveness: "no language should be condemned or depreciated, not even that of the most savage tribe" (Versch; in Jespersen 1922: 57); "Many primitive languages have a formal richness, a latent luxuriance of expression, that eclipses anything known to the languages of modern civilization" (Sapir 1921: 22), etc. In particular, the facts perceived, emotions felt, and responses desired are more verbose approximations of "ideas, ambitions, desires" (Malinowski 1922: 2) or ideas, feelings, and actions (ibid, 22).

A school of philosophy fashionable at the present time equates aesthetics and linguistics, or in other terms asserts the identity of speech and self-expression. But it is significant that the protagonist of this view (Croce) undertakes no careful investigations into the nature of the word and the sentence, but is content with dogmatic and, if the truth be told, very slap-dash assertions. (Gardiner 1932: 21)

Likewise with Jakobson, actually, who ascribes the poetic function to the message and not to some further factor such as the receiver's leisurely appreciation of the verbal material. The emphasized phraseology here can equally describe the rash (slap-dash: "done too hurriedly and carelessly") and condensed statements of Malinowski (about PC), which have become dogmatic (and were held as such already in the 1960s).

Those who have the patience to read my book to the end will have to admit, further, that language is no personal creation, but a codified science built up by a myriad minds with a view to mutual understanding. (Gardiner 1932: 21)

Another common trope with a slight variation: "language is not only the instrument of literature, but itself a literature and poetry" (Jespersen 1922: 29); "language [...] is the most significant and colossal work that the human spirit has evolved - nothing short of a finished form of expression for all communicable experience" (Sapir 1921: 235).

Take, for example, the sentence Pussy is beautiful. From the standpoint just mentioned, what is spoken about is not merely Pussy, but the beauty of Pussy. (Gardiner 1932: 23)

Cumulative immature amusements: "Tracy (p. 139) gives the following forms through which the boy A (1.5) had to pass before being able to say pussy: pooheh, poofie, poopoohie, poofee." (Jespersen 1922: 111) - Going by how frequently it is used as an illustration, it's almost as if these an intrinsic (sound-symbolic?) aesthetic quality to this word.

But a much more cogent argument in favour of my contention is the fact that, as explained at the beginning of this section, a sample of genuine speech which does not deal with some 'thing' is impossible to conceive. (Gardiner 1932: 24)

This is very much akin to my frequent argument that there is (nearly?) no such thing as completely asemantic utterances, having to do with the contrast between the referential and phatic functions and what it means to utter words, "the meaning which is symbolically theirs" (PC 6.3). E.g. the semantic dimension of greetings (what does "Hey!" mean?).

Now the 'thing' which is referred to in speech is as much outside it as are the 'speaker' and the 'listener'. These three are, indeed, factors of speech, though not parts of it. Being such, it is no positive duty of the theorist of language to prove their existence or explain their nature, except in so far as they affect, or are affected by, speech. Those factors of speech which are not speech lie outside the philologist's province, and in seeking to determine their characters he incurs the risk of trespassing upon the domain of other sciences. (Gardiner 1932: 24)

As to the speaker's emotions and command of the listener's behaviour, a similar statement runs: "All this does not mean that volition and emotion are not expressed. They are, strictly speaking, never absent from normal speech, but their expression is not of a truly linguistic nature." (Sapir 1921: 40)

He may perhaps hazard the doubt whether in this connexion 'thing' means much more than 'terminus', a goal or ending behind which we do not look. (Gardiner 1932: 28)

Phraseology for the goal-orientedness of linguistic functionalism. PC and consummation.

Thus the speaker, the listener, and the things spoken about are three essential factors of normal speech. To these must now be added the actual words themselves. There has never, of course, been any risk that philologists would overlook this fourth factor. On the contrary, words have assumed such importance in the eyes of all who have dealt with speech and language that time and time again they have totally eclipsed the three other factors. This I believe to be the hidden fallacy lurking in the common definition of speech as the use of articulate sound-symbols for the expression of thought. (Gardiner 1932: 28)

Historically, it might be interesting to compare various proposals for the fourth factor or function. Here it is the linguistic make-up of the message; in Mukařovský's aesthetics it's the poetic value; in Malinowski and Richards it is the social factor.

The scholar's habit of attending too exclusively to books has probably done much to encourage this illusion. In books speaker, listener, and things are well out of the way. Words alone are seen on the printed page, and they carry their meaning apparently without recourse to the three factors which I would fain add to them. (Gardiner 1932: 29)

In Roman Jakobson's case it is even worse because only a single type of printed words on a page are considered: poetry. Let us not forget that in "Linguistics and Poetics" (1960d) the majority of words spent are due to poetry and the poetic function of language.

To take an example: if I say ball, this word comes to my listener charged with the possibilities of cannon-ball, football, tennis-ball, as well as a dance, and much else. It remains for the listener to select from the whole range of meaning offered that aspect or part of it which suits the context or situation. (Gardiner 1932: 35)

This is the principle of selection so familiar from Jakobson (de Saussure's paradigmatic axis, identifying the correct element of the code).

We can perhaps best picture to ourselves the meaning of a word such as horse by considering it as a territory or area over which the various possibilities of correct application are mapped out. Consequently, I shall often make use of the expression 'area of meaning'. If a short-sighted person points at a cow in the distance, and says Look at that horse! he will perhaps be understood, but no cow is among the things accepted as meant by the word horse. Cows are, in fact 'off the map' so far as the word-meaning horse is concerned, or, otherwise put, the meanings of cow and of horse do not overlap. (Gardiner 1932: 36)

This is probably what the modern expression, semantic domain, refers to. My task is to map the area of meaning for PC.

In this discussion I deliberately avoid the terms 'connotation' ('intension') and 'denotation' ('extension'), since these arise from a way of looking at speech different from my own, and accordingly bear only a superficial resemblance to my terms 'meaning' and 'thing-meant'. (Gardiner 1932: 37; footnote 2)

At this point it looks like every sensible person avoids these terms. Could it have something to do will Mills' rather impenetrable definitions and their more or less strict pertaining to names? Something like an answer somewhat later: "It need hardly be said that in holding this view Mill was not talking sheer nonsense, but I maintain that he was using the term 'meaning' otherwise than must be done by the theorist of language" (infra, 42).

In the Foreword I pointed out that the distinctions which we know by the incorrect name of the 'parts of speech' are really distinctions in the ways in which the things meant by words are presented to the listener. An adjective, on this view, is the name of a thing presented to the listener, not as a thing, but as an attribute. Beautiful, for instance, is a word displaying 'beauty' as the attribute of something else. Here, however, we are not discussing the things meant by words, but the relation of the words themselves to the things meant by them in speech, and we say that the words, or more precisely, the word-meanings, are adjectival to, i.e. presented as attributes of, the things-meant. (Gardiner 1932: 39)

This is relevant for dissecting the adjective word "phatic", the semantic core of this invented attribute, and what the something else is that it relates to, i.e. "communion" (original), "communication" (general), "function" (specific), and the whole host of modern constructions (infrastructure, labour, violence, qualia, etc.).

Thus the word file is applied both to the stiff, pointed wires on which documents are run for keeping and also to front-rank men followed by other men in a line straight behind them. The resemblance comes into view only when it is realized that file is derived from Latin filum 'a thread'. (Gardiner 1932: 43)

Interesting etymology.

The considerations set forth in the last paragraph make it evident that the meaning of a word is not identical with an 'idea' in the Platonic sense. At first sight it might seem plausible to describe the mechanism of speech as 'the indication of things by the names of ideas'; the scholastic formula runs Voces significant res mediantibus conceptis. Looking closer, we see that word-meanings possess nothing of that self-consistency and homogeneity which are characteristic of 'ideas'. Ideas, if attainable at all, are the result of long and toilsome search on the part of philosophers. (Gardiner 1932: 44)

Apparently the antique version of "communicating ideas". Lots of interesting stuff comes up when you google this Latin phrase (such as a book on Brentano - Marty used the phrase, it turns out, or whatever this is).

The mechanized elements in speech. It was hardly to be expected that in so old-inherited an art as that of speech one single explanation would account for all the instruments employed, or for all the operations [|] performed. To describe the words of a sentence as 'clues' is only part of the story. At this juncture it would be premature, however, to lay much stress on the other uses of words, and to do so could only distract attention from their primary function as clues. But I must anticipate one obvious objection to the previous trend of my argument; it cannot be denied that many of the words which we employ are relatively aimless and owe their place in speech mainly to historical reasons. The principle to be illustrated may be termed the mechanization of speech, though by another metaphor it might equally well have been characterized as the 'fossilization of words and phrases'. This topic will be considered under three heads. (Gardiner 1932: 44-45)

Finally the "meat" of the matter for me - the reason for reading this book. This is, I believe, the place of origin for Roman Jakobson's formulation of the phatic function. Aimlessness here amounts to the meaninglessness in Malinowsi's PC, fossilisation to the nature of "formulae".

Stereotyped formulas. In the traffic of daily life situations are constantly arising so closely similar that we do not hesitate to speak of them as the 'same situation'. Every language has its own fixed ways of coping with certain recurring situations. An expression of apology is met by the Englishman with Pray don't mention it! or Don't mention it! or the less refined Granted! In like circumstances the Frenchman will say Je vous en prie! and the German Ich bitte! or Bitte! or Bitte sehr! In effect, these formulas all mean the same thing, and to describe their component words as separate and successive clues, cumulatively working towards a given result, is obviously inappropriate. The like holds good of countless idiosyncrasies, for example that tiresome I mean, or the happily nearly obsolete Don't yer know? with which shy and foppish youths are prone to interlard their conversation. In social intercourse formulas are frequnt. So at a dinner-party: 'Have you been to the theatre lately?' 'We were at "Bitter Sweet" a few nights ago.' 'Rather good, isn't it?' [|] 'Perfectly topping!' The sentences certainly mean something, but from a shifted angle question and answer seem to follow one another like the mechanical utterances of automata. What is said is of little account. The topics are conventional, and their expression is merely a means of establishing contact. (Gardiner 1932: 45-46)

The traffic of daily life = free, aimless, social intercourse. Coping with the situation - "to get over the strange and unpleasant tension which men feel when facing each other in silence" (PC 4.6). The mechanical automata bit leads up to Jakobson's illustration of telephone conversations and the speech of the talking birds. And finally, establishing contact, which is the main crux of Jakobson's phatic function but entirely missing from Malinowski's phatic communion.

Set phrases. Words originally separate, and still found with their own indicative force and ultimately in other contexts, tend to combine and to form set phrases. Such phrases are to all intents and purposes compound words, and to describe the component parts as 'clues' would clearly be beside the mark. Thus attach importance to or lay store by are phrases nearly synonymous with (to) value in one sense of the latter verb; to hold one's tongue or keep silence is equivalent to the Latin tacere; to trample under foot is to disregard; to split the difference is to compromise; to set the ball rolling is to initiate some action. All these expressions come to the speaker ready-made. As composite units they are 'clues' which he can choose, but their component words are not 'clues' to anything except to the phrase itself. (Gardiner 1932: 46)

For comparison: "The first use of prepositions is always in set phrases learnt as wholes, like 'go to school,' 'go to pieces,' 'lie in bed,' 'at dinner.' Not till later comes the power of using prepositions in free combinations, and it is then that mistakes appear." (Jespersen 1922: 138) AND "[...] this may become a regular speech habit, more particularly in the case of certain set phrases, e.g. (Good) morning | (Do you) see? | (Will) that do? | (I shall) see you again this afternoon; Fr. (na)Turellement | (Je ne me) rapelle plus, etc." (Jespersen 1922: 273) - the relevant question being whether set phrases (or Whitney's holophrases) are comparable to what these days are called "phatic utterances"?

Do the phenomena here exemplified contradict the account hithero given of the nature of words and their mode of functioning? I think not. The mechanization of words is a phenomenon characteristic of human activities generally. Habits grow out of acts which at the start were deliberately pursped and then possessed a real utility. In their later stage such acts may become mere superfluities. In mechanized bits of language we can usually discern a rational intention at the outset. (Gardiner 1932: 47)

This is a rather interesting connection: mechanization qua habit-forming. This could potentially serve as a bridge between phaticity (as given here) and Peirce's (or James's) discussion of habit.

When a word is employed, both speaker and listener are able, by dint of their selective attention, to push far into the background all those potential applications of the meaning which are irrelevant to the immediate context. Similarly, though through force of habit and sheer linguistic skill the speaker automatically adapts his words to suit the listener's comprehension and status, he very often forgets the listener's presence altogether by reason of his deep absorption in his theme. (Gardiner 1932: 48)

The first instance here presents a question about the suppression of some "areas of meaning" in a printed text (in particular, the selective emphasis given to tropes in PC). The second instance is reminiscent of I. A. Richards' further development of the social function in his Practical Criticism (see also Les Perelman's phatic treatment of Lawrence of Aquilegia).

A slightly stilted or eccentric phrase may lead to consideration of the manner of speech rather than the matter. Such swift and unpremeditated shifts of the attention are the best testimony that the four factors of speech which I have enumerated and discussed are always present, though often only latently so. (Gardiner 1932: 49)

The "eccentric phrase" here is the equivalent of the poetic function, which, too, operates by making the phrase eccentric (in Russian Formalist lingo, making strange). "Latent" is the equivalent of "subservient" or "dominated" function in Jakobson's scheme.

The situation. Not a factor of speech, but the setting in which speech can alone become effective, is what is here termed 'the situation'. All four factors must be in the same situation, that is to say accessible to one another in either a material or a spiritual sense. Some of the consequences of this doctrine are so trivial that they seem hardly worth mentioning. The speaker and listener must be in the same spatial and temporal situation. I in this room cannot speak to you in the country - save, of course, through the medium of writing or the telephone or the wireless. (Gardiner 1932: 49)

In Jakobson's scheme this is the context, the -text indicating (as remarked above on the subject of poetry) the shift in medium. The equivalence is strengthened by Jakobson's statements to the effect that the context must be available or accessible to both adresser and addressee.

I cannot insist too often upon the facts that words are only clues, that most words are ambiguous in their meaning, and that in every case the thing-meant has to be discovered in the situation by the listener's alert and active intelligence. (Gardiner 1932: 50)

Alternative phraseology for "neither the result of intellectual reflection, nor do they necessarily arouse reflection in the listener" (PC 6.4).

Everyone is familiar with the sensation of having something to say, but not knowing exactly what it is. And then the words come, and with them the feeling, not merely of expression, but even of creation. Words have thus become part of our mechanism of thinking, and remain, both for ourselves and for others, the guardians of our thought. (Gardiner 1932: 55)

Something akin to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: "the most rarefied thought may be but the conscious counterpart of an unconscious linguistic symbolism." (Sapir 1921: 15-16)

In every act of speech the four factors of speaker and listener, word and thing, are inevitably present, but, as we saw in §15, selective attention usually subordinates the first three to the matter in hand. While the thing spoken about stands forth luminously and in sharp definition, the speaker, the listener, and the words themselves are discerned, if at all, only ghost-like in the [|] surrounding penumbra. Subsequent reflection may, however, bring any one of them into prominence, witness such thoughts as 'Why did he say that to me?' 'How beautifully he spoke!' Now the form of speech I have just described is the normal variety, but it may happen that the words employed are so cunningly chosen that they awaken in the listener, either immediately or later, distinct feelings of aesthetic admiration. The quality in a sequence of words which evokes such feelings we call 'style', and it may arise in connexion with either the sound of the words or their meaning; good style takes care of both. (Gardiner 1932: 55-56)

A very poetic framing of the functional model and something approximating the aesthetic-poetic function of language. I should really include Herbert Spencer's Style in my upcoming readings.

To discuss the difference between prose and poetry is outside the scope of this work, but one trait must be emphasized. In poetry consciousness of the words is greater than in prose, for in poetry thought and expression are wedded in an indissoluble bond. You may change this sentence or that in prose without seriously affecting the whole. But alter a few words in poetry, and you no longer have the same poem. (Gardiner 1932: 56)

What would happen if one were to apply this inchoate theory of "word-consciousness" to the other factors, specifically the social factor? Wouldn't it turn out that in PC we are more conscious of the means of contact or of the situation than otherwise?

As a counterblast to such purely academic assertions I would commend Samuel Butler's brilliant and entertaining reply to Max Müller in his paper 'Thought and Language', in Essays on Life, Art, and Science, pp. 176 foll, from which I quote the following extract: 'It takes two people to say a thing - a sayee as well as a sayer. The one is as essential to any true saying as the other. A may have spoken, but if B has not heard, there has been nothing said, and he must speak again. True, the belief of A.'s part that he had a bonâ fide sayee in B. saves his speech quâ him, but it has been barren and left no fertile issue. It has failed to fulfil the condition of true speech, which involve not only that A. should speak, but also that B. should hear.' (Gardiner 1932: 57)

Butler's book is available on archive.org and the emphasized portion pertains to the following: "But though the hearing given to such utterances is as a rule not as intense as the speaker's own share, it is quite essential for his pleasure, and the reciprocity is established by the change of rôles." (PC 5.6)

In the first chapter I sought to show that speech is no mere bilateral affair, consisting of articulate sounds on the one hand, and thought or meaning on the other, but rather that it is quadrilateral, and requires for a true comprehension of its nature the four sides, or factors, of speaker, listener, words, and things. (Gardiner 1932: 62)

In this light it is rather odd that the random (German-origin) Four-sides model (based on Jakobson's scheme) has relationship where Gardiner has words (and Bühler Zeichen).

We shall see that the impulse to speech, at least in its more fundamental forms, arises in the intention of some member of the community to influence one or more of his fellows in reference to some particular thing. Speech is thus a universally exerted activity, having at first definitely utilitarian aims. (Gardiner 1932: 62)

This is the practical (sometimes communicative) function of speech/language. The concept of influence (or sometimes the modification of others' behaviour) is a frequent occurrence in such constructions.

These two human attributes, language the science and speech its active application, have too often been confused with one another or regarded as identical, with the result that no intelligible account could be given of their ultimate elements, the 'word' and the 'sentence'. Not the least important conclusion which [|] will emerge from our discussion is that the 'word' is the unit of language, whereas the 'sentence' is the unit of speech. (Gardiner 1932: 62-63)

Speech/language = science/application = word/language. This is the distinction Malinowki consciously "confused with one another" due to his pragmatic outlook on language as a mode of action.

In waking hours the mind of man is never at rest. His thoughts and musings flow on in unbroken sequence, showing a discontinuity only when some external event or interesting recollection stirs to greater alertness, perhaps ultimately evoking a deliberate reaction. But man is not always talking. When he is alone, the wayward reflections pursue their course in silence. (Gardiner 1932: 63)

The waking mind is never at rest due to the so-called default-mode network, which finding assures that "the resting brain is not resting at all but is extremely active, more active in fact (which for neuroscientists means more lighted brain regions seen during fMRI tests) than it is during task-related activities" (Priest 2018: 155).

Indeed, we can even say that an individual silently expresses to himself his thoughts by the mere fact of having them. In the absence of a companion it is difficult to see why speech should ever arise. And in fact, monologue is not natural to man. The mutterings of the deranged provide no argument to the contrary, and the babbling of children is not so much speech as the early private rehearsal of later conversational performances. (Gardiner 1932: 63)

Autocommunication, self-communication, intrapersonal communication, the questions that a mind puts to itsel (here, expresses to -self). The distinction between meaningless rehearsal and conversational performance could do well to distinguish the approaches to child language between La Barre (who sticks more to the emotional exclamation side) and Jakobson (who sees it more like rehearsal, or practice).

The first articulate utterances of children are play activity, and consist simply in exercise of the organs of articulation. These utterances are without meaning, and are clearly to be distinguished from meaningful emotional cries. A few months later, however, the speech-sounds begin to share in the significant function of such cries. (Gardiner 1932: 63; footnote 1)

Hence the La Barrean side has "constellations of [emotional] meaning" while for Jakobson the child's babbling and cooing is a meaningless exercise of the vocal organs (as for Jespersen).

In fact, the occurrence of speech depends normally upon the presence of two conditioning circumstances: (1) the perception of something interesting enough to incite to action, and (2) the desire somehow to involve another person in that perception. The commonest motives inducing speech are the desires to inform somebody of something, to ask somebody about something, to exhort somebody to do something, or to win sympathy from somebody in respect of something. (Gardiner 1932: 64)

Several important points. Something interesting enough to incite action - "accounts of irrelevant happenings, comments on what is perfectly obvious" (PC 5.1). The desire to involve another person can be "obligatory" in the soft sense of there being a tension that is broken through (even meaningless) communication. The second part is another version of the trieda, here quadrilateral, of declarative, interrogative and commanding modes, with the social/phatic "relationship" dimension elaborated with sympathy (a rather complex notion). The latter is indicative of how the older layer of jargon (sentiments, sympathy, fellows) infrequently popus up in Gardiner's otherwise more idiosyncratic language.

It is difficult to find a general formula to cover all the things which desiderate speech for their communication. In rare cases words are employed to stress or enhance feelings shared at the instant of utterance by both parties; so in greetings, congratulations, and expressions of condolence. But apart from these exceptional kinds of utterance, the speaker usually assumes the listener to be ignorant of, or momentarily not concerned with, what he himself is wishing to make the object of common interest. (Gardiner 1932: 66)

This is an interesting take on the matter. Here PC is not emotional communication pure and simple (as in La Barre) nor is it "establishing common sentiments" (as in Malinowski) but shared feelings are already assumed to exist and both parties to be aware of this, hence such utterances only affirm or enhhance the common feeling. It's an oddly curved view of information or the lack of it (something you're not ignorant of).

The ultimate basis of speech is the fact that individual thoughts and feelings are, as such, entirely inalienable. One man cannot think the thoughts of another, or behold an object with another's mental vision. Nor can anyone take his enjoyment of a sunset and transfer it directly to a companion's mind. It is the penalty of individuality that the inner life is solitary, that perceptions and feelings cannot actually be shared. Sympathy and understanding are indeed possible, but two minds cannot interpenetrate one another in any literal sense. From this follows the important consequence that a physical substitute has to be found whenever anything intellectual or emotional is to be imparted. Such physical substitutes are called signs, are subject to the conditions (1) that they should have a pre-arranged 'meaning', or associated mental equivalence, and (2) that they should be handy objects of sense transferable at will. Any material thing which conforms to these two conditions will serve as a 'sign', and any system of signs is a kind of language. (Gardiner 1932: 67)

This is the problem of sympathy: "It would be even incorrect, I think, to say that such words serve the purpose of establishing a common sentiment, for this is usually absent from such current phrases of intercourse; and where it purports to exist, as in expressions of sympathy, it is avowedly suprious on one side." (PC 2.3 - In other words, it's the problem of definition between homogenous sympathy and heterogeneous sympathy; in "expressions of sympathy", by which is meant pity and condolences, feelings are not actually shared. Gardiner's solution is to turn to signs, though he doesn't yet treat the possibility of homogeneous sympathy, i.e. feeling what the other is feeling due to circumstances (e.g. the third person makes a good joke and the first two both laugh).

Since the signs had to be susceptible of production at will and without delay, it was likely that they would make use of the natural movements most nearly akin to reflex action. Such are facial expressions or grimaces, manual movements or gestures, and emotional cries together with such semi-volitional sounds as grunts and laughter. All these have survived as frequent accessories to speech, where their chief function is to indicate the nature and intensity of the speaker's feelings towards the things spoken about and towards his audience. (Gardiner 1932: 68)

Here we have nonverbal communication tasked with metacommunication, very much akin to I. A. Richards' social function.

It must be repeated that psychical life is completely inalienable. The impossibility of transferring thought is absolute and insurmountable. Only by an inference from his own thought can the listener conclude that the speaker has been thinking of the same thing. What passes in speech between the two persons concerned is merely sound, bereft of all sense. (Gardiner 1932: 69)

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? No, we don't have the same brain cells. But we might be setting our mental images in a string expressible in signs sufficiently conventional for exchange and evoke similar structures. Or, in Paul's phraseology: "The sentence is the linguistic expression, or symbol, for the fact that several presentations or groups of presentations have become combined in the mind of the speaker, and is the means of producing a like combination of the like presentations in the mind of the listener" (infra, 241).

The brevity of James's utterance, the incisiveness with which it has been spoken, and indeed the entire set of circumstances attendinc that curt exclamation upon that particular April afternoon, will already have convinced her (through previous experineces of the like) that he was referring to some obvious thing physically present in the immediate environment. (Gardiner 1932: 77)

Gardiner dedicates several pages to the illustration found condensed in Bühler: someone looks out the window and utters "Rain." Phraseologically this here is close to "accounts of irrelevant happenings, comments on what is perfectly obvious" (PC 5.1) and "comments on weather, affirmations of some supremely obvious state of things" (PC 2.2).

The ambiguity of the word 'meaning'. Those who define the sentence as a word or set of words revealing a complete meaning - and note that the Swedish term for sentence is mening - are etymologically nearer the mark than they themselves may be aware. For in its original sense, 'to mean' (Anglo-Saxon māēnan, modern German meinen) signifies 'to purpose', at the outset an exclusively human action. To this day, German draws a distinction between meinen said of persons, e.g. Er meint wohl etwas anderes, and bedeuten said of things, e.g. Dieser Satz bedeutet wohl etwas anderes. In English the verb 'to mean' signifies either to intend an act (e.g. I MEAN to go) or to [|] intend a reference (e.g. When I say a spade, I MEAN a spade). (Gardiner 1932: 99-100)

Another interesting and relevant etymology.

The common practice of stating that a sign or symbol or symptom 'means' this, that, or the other, has led to an esoteric and, in my opinion, altogether baneful way of regarding 'meaning'. Signs, symbols, and symptoms are dead things, and as such can 'mean' nothing at all until [|] human agents come to the rescue. Some element of purpose and intention enters, not only into the act of speaking, but also into the act of interpretation; hence the verb 'to mean' may be applied to significant things, even if they do not owe their significance to active intention. For instance, the symptoms of a disease, which are but concurrent events the implications of which have been learnt by experience, can be said to 'mean' that the disease is present, but only because a doctor chooses to interpret them in that way. (Gardiner 1932: 100-101)

"Are words in Phatic Communion used primarily to convey meaning, the meaning which is symbolically theirs? Certainly not!" (PC 6.3) plays on this esoteric view of regarding meaning. But in that particular case it is more due to Ogden & Richards' treatment of "meaning" than anything else. The overall point here is very close to Peirce's view of things, according to which the interpreter is a necessary and inalienable part of sign-action.

'Signs' and 'symbols' are, on the contrary, psychical, i.e. imposed by human beings or other living creatures, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Symbols are a subclass of signs in which some natural connexion exists between the sign and the thing signified, e.g. the cross is a symbol of Christianity. Among words only those which are onomatopoeic are symbols. (Gardiner 1932: 101)

The exact opposite of how symbols are conceptualized today. It's almost as if he has icons in mind when describing symbols.

The units of speech are known as sentences, and their peculiarity was shown to be a manifest purposiveness, corresponding to the possession of a purpose by the speaker. The purposiveness diagnosed in the sentence was analysed partly as concern with some definite thing-meant, but principally as concern with the listener. Lastly, the word 'meaning' was found everywhere to involve the notion of human purpose. (Gardiner 1932: 103)

Thus, in the final analysis, "purposeless expressions of preference or aversion" (PC 5.1) do not "convey meaning" (PC 6.3) exactly because they are purposeless.

The section which dealt with the ultimate basis of speech (§23) is in effect a refutation of the assumption which has given to so many books the titles of 'Sprachpsychologie' and the like. Hardly anywhere is the slightest hint found that the authors know how insufficient psychology is to cover the entire field of linguistics. In choosing such titles they ignore the very reason for which language and speech exist, namely the fact that speaker and listener do not possess a common psyche, wherefore communication between them has to take place through the medium of sound. (Gardiner 1932: 104)

This is actually a point that could be turned around with regard to the problem of collective consciousness, particularly the character of a nation and other such jargon which lay a claim of common psyche upon a group of people, i.e. that people think alike. By and large this is the issue of communization, of not having to use the medium of signs to "convey meaning" because it's already present and has only to be evoked, called up.

In all these languages the equivalent of 'language' serves as a collective noun for an organized system of knowable linguistic facts, and the equivalent of 'speech' is a nomen actionis for the activity of which the most evident symptoms are articulation and audibility. (Gardiner 1932: 107)

Latin designation for communion in PC! A collective name - cf. language as creation, literature, science, etc.

By the time that a liquid at rest has been read the educated reader has already conjectured the trend of the sentence as a scientific formulation. Through 'selective attention', and without being aware that he is doing so, he will have taken a in the sense of 'any', and treated liquid and rest as substantives, not as adjective and verb respectively. (Gardiner 1932: 115)

Relevant for my long-standing interest in the article "a", which I'm very fond of as the first word in band names (Any trube of quest, Any Perfect Circle, Any Cat Called Fritz).

But now, when this stage has been reached, the speaker is able to communicate things much more remote than the things perceptible in the immediate 'Situation of Visible Presence' (die Situation der Anschauung). (Gardiner 1932: 126)

In "It is obvious that the outer situation does not enter directly into the technique of speaking." (PC 7.3) the outer situation is given in this sense of "visible presence".

The lilt and rhythm of speech, and the way in which speakers scurry over some words and dwell with emphasis upon others, give the lie to any assertion of equality among spoken words. (Gardiner 1932: 129)

Noun: "a characteristic rising and falling of the voice when speaking; a pleasant gentle accent." Verb: "speak, sing, or sound with a lilt."

I now come to a fact of high grammatical importance. The form of the word, like its meaning, is a fact of language, not of speech. Word-form belongs to a word permanently, and is no merely temporary qualification which becomes attached to it in the course of speaking. (Gardiner 1932: 134)

This is what most modern (particularl corpus-) linguists err against when they look for the phatic function of language (commonly in parts of speech they deem "meaningless" or without purpose in some sense or other) in contrast to phatic communion or speech as a mode of action. They're looking for something in language that is eminently in the domain of speech.

It is highly important to realize that all linguistic form arouses an expectation of use. The reason is that language is only a name for established habits of speech, built up out of innumerable repeated acts of the same type. A habit, once formed, excites in any observer the expectation that its owner will act in the same way on all new occasions. (Gardiner 1932: 138)

A pragmatic characterization of language if I've ever seen one. This is also in perfect sync with the beginning of the book where the mechanization of speech is dealt with. Note that the concept of habit can be very useful for discussing the historical nature of some phatic utterances, particularly vividly the cultural connotations of greetings (health in Estonian, subservience to God in Arabic, etc. - the semantic question of greetings being it is an appeal to what?).

The emergence of abstracts - attributes considered as things - is a comparatively recent development in linguistic history; I refer to definitely independent substantives, like beauty, poverty, goodness, as distinct from Nomina actionis or infinitives, which are of very ancient date. (Gardiner 1932: 139)

From this very technical point of view "phatic" is an abstract and "communion" is an infinitive?

[...] English lovely from love and an old Teutonic noun *likom 'appearance'; [...] (Gardiner 1932: 140)

Hence Johannes Aavik's word laik or laikimus.

Etymologically, 'function' is only a rather grand synonym of 'performance', but it is often used in a peculiar way to designate the capacity in which something acts in subservience to a certain aim. Thus a nail driven into the wall can function as, or have the function of, a peg to hang one's hat on. Two conditions govern this use of the word: first, that some particular type of service should be named to indicate the capacity in which the functioner acts; and secondly, that the aim or purpose subserved should be that of a human employer. These notions reappear in the linguistic use of the term, where it has reference to the results achieved in the course of a particular act of speech. In such an act the speaker's aim is to draw attention to something, and the words are, as it were, his functionaries whose office it is to present the thing-meant as possessing some particular formal character. (Gardiner 1932: 141)

Very necessary for discussing functional linguistics in general. A good point of reference and comparison would be Ernst Cassirer's "Structuralism in Modern Linguistics" (Word, 1945).

But the form in which the rain may be presented to Mary's mind differs according to James's caprice. If he says Look how it rains! the rain is presented as an action, as full of movement and activity. If, on the other hand, he says Look at the rain! then he presents the rain as a thing, i.e. as though it were a fixed object with a vague similarity in this respect to a table or chair. Hence we have to conclude that the things referred to in speech are always mentally conditioned, and that the conditioning of them is subject to the speaker's will. (Gardiner 1932: 143)

Here's a relevant question about PC: is it an active mode of action or a state of pleasant atmosphere? It might be possible to elucidate the active and passive way it is conditioned by various authors. In Malinowski's own essay it is certainly more "fixed" than the activity of "phatic communication".

But I maintain, not only that to assume intention in the speaker is essential for linguistic theory, but also that at the moment of utterance the speaker may not be aware of what he intends. On the common-sense plane intention is always presupposed by the listener, and a speaker can usually be brought by questioning to state 'what he really meant'. I do not dispute that speech is often nearly automatic. Habit provides short-cuts to many results which, despite all apparent absence of feeling, we really desire, and linguistic form is simply inherited habit. (Gardiner 1932: 147)

Thus, linguistic function is determined by the listener (and the linguist), not by the speaker. If this suggestion were taken seriously, i.e. PC seached for by what types or parts of speech are considered "merely social" as is, the resulting category of speech would be much different than those given by Mal-Jak.

In the first place, the inner form of words makes itself felt, sometimes with unpleasant insistence, in uses of them which are incongruent or wrong. (Gardiner 1932: 155)

Alternative for "the strange and unpleasant tension which men feel when facing each other in silence" (PC 4.6).

Intonational form is the name given to those differences of tone, pitch, stress, &c., with which combinations of words having a certain syntactic over-meaning are habitually spoken. Statements, questions, commands, and so forth have all their specific intonational forms, and it is a strange fact - to receive further comment in the next chapter - that intonational form always functions congruently. (Gardiner 1932: 160)

Jakobson terms thees intonation contours, reportedly after some early Russian linguists but strangely in congruence with American linguists with their spectographs in the 1960s.

Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book III, chap. iii, sect. 2-4: [...] Men would in vain heap up names of particular things, that would not serve them to communicate their thoughts. Men learn names, and use them in talk with others, only that they may be understood: which is then only done when, by use or consent, the sound I make by the organs of speech excites, in another man's mind who hears it, the idea I apply it to in mine when I speak it. (Gardiner 1932: 176)

"Communicating ideas" already in Locke!

In my preliminary account the sentence was viewed from a dramatic standpoint, with speaker and listener as the actors, and a given situation as the scene. But at the same time it was pointed out (§28) that the philologist as such is concerned only with the products of speech, and that the intentions, motives, and other psychical occurrences in the speaker, as well as the attitude of the listener, are proper objects of philological analysis only in so far as the spoken (or written) sentence is inexplicable without them. (Gardiner 1932: 181)

Interistingly, while Malinowski argues against the collective consciousness, his "pleasant atmosphere of polite, social intercourse" (PC 9.4) points to collective intentions, motives and psychical occurrences (tension, etc.).

It is only when, in a given situation, a word or words betray such a purpose, seem fired or galvanized by some reasonable communicative intent, that the dignity of sentence-rank can be conferred upon them. (Gardiner 1932: 182)

Curiously, PC is communication without communicative intent (cf. "purposeless").

On a broad survey there might seem hardly any limit to the variety of purposes with which a sentence can be uttered. Sometimes a speaker makes an affirmation with intent to persuade, protest, or even deceive; sometimes he may give a description for his own amusement or for that of his audience; or again, he may speak merely for the sake of speaking. His sentences may be aspirations, prayers, promises, threats, judicial verdicts, sarcasms, witticisms, sneers, teasings, exhortations, complaints, flatteries, and much else. (Gardiner 1932: 186)

As it stands this is the earliest instance I've found of this kind of characteristization of speech (e.g. talking for the sake of talking, comunication for the sake of communication, etc.).

The substitution advocated by Bühler of three for four classes has the approval of Kretschmer, but only because he has realized that the two equally important groups of 'questions' and 'desires' belong together as subdivisions of the larger class called by him Aufforderungssätze or 'demands'. His trio presents simpler names than those proposed by Bühler, namely, (a) Gefuhlssätze ('sentences of feeling'), (b) Aufforderungssätze ('demands'), and (c) Aussagesatze ('statements'). This appears to me a singularly neat arrangement, and fits in particularly well with my linguistic theory inasmuch as 'sentences of feeling' are those in which the part played by the speaker looms largest, 'demands' those in which successful achievement of the speaker's purpose depends upon an action to be performed by the listener, while 'statements' are most objective, lay no stress on speaker or listener, but concentrate their energies upon drawing attention to the thing or things spoken about. (Gardiner 1932: 188)

This is by far the treatment most in accord with Jakobson's expressive, conative, and referential functions, particularly in feeling being related to the speaker (as opposed, for example, to the attitude towards the listener, which is also related to feelings), vocative and imperative being oriented towards the listener and either commanding him (to do something) or commanding his attention (to pay attention), and though he borrows "referential" from Ogden & Richards it is eminently about objects (something referred to, e.g. "things" infra).

For it is my contention that in all speech whatsoever, except in a few border-line cases like involuntary ejaculations (§21), all four factors of speaker, listener, words, and things are invariably interacting, so that any type of sentence cannot fail to possess, at least in rudimentary form, also the characteristics of the other types. A statement, for instance, is an exclamation to the extent that it never fails to voice the speaker's real or pretended sentiments, and a demand to the extent that it looks forward, with greater or less eagerness, to the listener's reaction, verbal or otherwise. (Gardiner 1932: 190)

Likewise, Jakobson's functions interact: one dominates, others are subordinated, but present. Also: "The so-called emotive or "expressive" function [...] tends to produce an impression of a certain emotion, whether true or feigned" (Jakobson 1960d: 22).

The following sentences, however, illustrate my point that the fourfold classification is only a classification a potiori, i.e. having as its principle the quality which predominates over the others. (Gardiner 1932: 190)

The dominant function. A potiori - "(of an argument) from the stronger or more important; according to the majority."

An exclamation like Hi! is a demand upon some one's attention, without indicating whether the person addressed is to reply verbally or to perform some action. (Gardiner 1932: 190)

Hence "to attract the attention of the interlocutor or to confirm his continued attention" (Jakobson 1960d: 24).

The act of speech desiderates an intelligent act of understanding as its counterpart, and this, however much mechanized, is always a deduction from both the words and the situation. (Gardiner 1932: 198)

If words uttered "are neither the result of intellectual reflection, nor do they necessarily arouse reflection in the listener" (PC 6.4), are we dealing with speech, even?

The first thing to point out in connexion with 'intonation' is its essentially formal character. By this I mean that it falls into different types due to similar repetition in similar conditions. For example, ordinary affirmative statement in English has its own appointed mode of intonation. If that intonation be heard without hearing the words, the conclusion is at once drawn that the speaker is affirming something. (Gardiner 1932: 201)

Thus expressing "affirmation and consent" (PC 5.3) doesn't even require intelligible words.

Beside showing the relation of the speaker to the listener or to the things spoken about, intonation brings to light all manner of emotional attitudes, irony, pathos, argumentativeness, menace, and so forth. (Gardiner 1932: 202)

Paralinguistic metacommunication.

To turn to the auxiliaries of intonation already mentioned in passing, namely manual gesture, facial expression, and the like. It seems impossible to assign these various non-intellectual elements of speech to watertight compartments, each having its own sphere of semantic influence. (Gardiner 1932: 203)

Nonverbal becomes non-intellectual.

The purpose may be extremely tenuous, and there are all manner of border-line cases which it would be tedious to discuss at length. It may, however, be useful to cast a rapid glance at some. The listener need not be a living person, but a dog or a cat; a child may address a doll, and a poet apostrophize nature. Under the term 'utterance' writing must be included; authors address an unknown public, and a diarist may speak to his future self. Even in soliloquy utterance is not bereft of purpose. (Gardiner 1932: 206)

Self-communication, specifically Peirce's version: "His thoughts are what he is "saying to himself," that is, is saying to that other self that is just coming into life in the flow of time" (CP 5.421).

Aposiopesis is a totally different phenomenon, and has great [|] rhetorical effectiveness. The menace of Neptune in Virgil's Quos ego - ! leaves to the imagination the awfulness of the punishment to be inflicted on the aggressive winds. Aposiopesis can be combined with incompleteness, as when a person says But - ! and, on second thoughts, decides tha tit is better not to formulate his objection. (Gardiner 1932: 206-207)

Aposiopesis - "the device of suddenly breaking off in speech." Isn't the newlyweds' "Well..." in Dorothy Parker's short story a case of this?

In polite [|] conversation too great terseness is considered barely courteous. Locutionally longer form is socially good form. (Gardiner 1932: 213)

Terse: "neatly or effectively concise; brief and pithy"; "sparing in the use of words; abrupt." - "To the primitive mind, whether among savages or our own uneducated classes, taciturnity means not only unfriendliness but directly a bad character." (PC 4.3)

Wundt's formulation is so abstract that I return with relief to my own more workaday distinction of 'things' and 'words'. Intermediate between them are, no doubt, 'presentations', the reflections of things within the mind, but it has been seen that linguistic theory has no difficulty in dispensing with these troublesome intervening factors, except when word-form and word-function are under consuderation. (Gardiner 1932: 245)

If words in PC "they [do not] arouse reflection in the listener" (PC 6.4), how far does this negation go? Is "the hearing given to such utterances" (PC 5.6) only a show? A display of listening without understanding?

To do full justice to realities, equal stress must be laid upon the liberty of speech and upon its dependence. No pressure from without can compel a man to open his lips, if he is determined to keep them closed. But when he does speak, what he says is a matter of his individual choice; le style c'est l'homme. On the other hand, only the words of a raving lunatic fail to have relevance to the situation wherein speech arises. Out of that situation the speaker [|] extracts those things-meant which appeal to his personal caprice and particular purpose. Taciturn and loquacious alike are restricted by a dependence upon the situation. Seeing a shooting star, I should find it extremely difficult to bring any of the words discipline, oxygen, or pig into my comment; in fact, I am not free, or at least as a practical man I am not free, to say what I like. The things to which I am entitled to refer must in a sense be dug out of the situation. (Gardiner 1932: 253-254)

A counter-argument to the rather obtuse statement that "The whole situation consists in what happens linguistically." (PC 7.7)

This is true of mere thinking, and if so, still more must it be true of speech, for we do not speak unless something interests us or has meaning for us, and apart from those portions of speech which are completely mechanized and not specifically willed, every word spoken necessarily insists with greater or less emphasis upon the proximate things-meant. (Gardiner 1932: 264)

"Throughout the Western world it is agreed that people must meet frequently, and that it is not only agreeable to talk, but that it is a matter of common courtesy to say something even when there is hardly anything to say" (Mahaffy 1888), and "Indeed there need not or perhaps even there must not be anything to communicate." (PC 9.3)

The predication Splendid! itself is at least comparatively indispensable, since it reveals that the speaker is attending and interested, and aims at creating or reinforcing the same effect in the listener. (Gardiner 1932: 266)

Alternatives for the intensity of "the hearing given to such utterances" (PC 5.6).

Primitive, emotional man was doubtless prone to blurt out his reaction to things without reflecting that the listener could not understand him unless he knew what was being reacted to. (Gardiner 1932: 276)

"Clearly a very explosive nature - such as that of the Bushman - is unfit for social union; and, commonly, social union, when by any means established, checks impulsiveness" (Spencer 1876: 12).

The generalization that all statements assert should not be confounded with the logical doctrine that statements must be either true or false. That is a very different thesis, and one which, in the light of our previous conclusions, can only signify that the particular things referred to by statements must either be, or not be, in conformity with the facts of the universe. But this conformity of things with reality is a relation lying completely outside speech, which is concerned solely with communication to a listener. (Gardiner 1932: 296)

Cf. "genuine or verifiable statements about the structure of the universe" (La Barre 1954: 58) and "information about the structure of the universe" (ibid, 165).

The essence of exclamations is that, whether by way of description or only through implication, they emphasize to the listener some mood, attitude, or desire of the speaker, in extreme cases to the exclusion of all else. Thus they approximate more closely than any other kind of sentence to the spontaneous emotional cry. From the listener's point of view, indeed, such a cry cannot fail to be regarded as a kind of speech. The quality of the sound awakens in him the memory of past experiences, and points to some present experience of similar quality on the part of the utterer. (Gardiner 1932: 315)

So there is, in some sense, "the purpose of establishing a common sentiment" (PC 2.3)?

In his effort to influence the mind of others, man has learnt to instruct his own. Whilst elaborating a sentence, the speaker does not completely divest himself of the receptive listening attitude which alternates so regularly and easily with his creative role as speaker. He is, in fact, always a fellow-listener, and hence also a fellow-learner. From this necessity arises the possibility of employing language as the instrument of silent thought. (Gardiner 1932: 326)

The final word: in communicating with others one simultaneously communicates with oneself.