Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/76

 characteristic of language as a whole for the characteristics of the tongue as a part. Specialists also seem to overlook the fact that there are traits of language no longer subject to the will; and other scholars over-emphasize the voluntary control of speech.

While the mysterious energies of language forever at play are many and diverse, the basic problem of linguistics is that of signs. It is from the study of signs that we borrow our most telling significations of a language. The sounds of words in themselves are of secondary moment since they serve mainly to distinguish one system from another of the same order. One only has to listen to a strange tongue to realize what a small part of a word is its sound; and at the same time, one is compelled to feel that language is a very large social phenomenon.

It is plain that words can not be regarded solely as symbols of ideas. One aspect presents their relations to each other; another side reveals them as pure sounds; again they