Introduction

pp. 1-7

in: Bertil Malmberg, Structural linguistics and human communication, Berlin, Springer, 1967

Abstrakt

It would be a commonplace to say that language is the most important invention of man. In fact, it is more than that, because man and language are parallel developments. It is consequently of no use arguing about the priority of one or the other. If we say that primitive man invented language or that the invention of language made some intelligent primate into man, we say the same thing. Man is a talking animal; no other animal talks. It will be clear, I suppose, from later chapters that the so- called languages of some animals (bees, etc.) are not languages in the sense in which this concept is taken in structural linguistics (cf. particularly Chap. XI). So we could more suitably say that the making of man and the making of language are identical. Homo sapiens is homo loquens.