Preliminary Distinctions

Abstract

Before we take up the main themes of this book — grammar, meaning and the role of language in experience — it is the intent of this chapter first to introduce some preliminary distinctions. When we refer to ‘language’ in what follows, this is to be understood in the sense of a general expression covering all languages or all the languages taken into account in that particular context. We understand what a language is by example to begin with: In the discussions that follow we are referring for the most part to natural languages, i.e. languages that have had a historical development, such as German, English, Greek, Japanese, etc. Within these languages we can distinguish both various stages of development and various levels, such as the standard language, the level that has the status of norm and ideal, and is used in literature, the schools, radio and press, etc., and ordinary or everyday language, in which the norm represented by the standard language is relaxed and sentence structure, choice of words and expression handled more freely. Besides these we can further distinguish the dialect forms of the language and finally there are still further countless special forms, which depend, for example, on their users’ social status and often are differentiated only in small details.¹ All of these developmental forms, linguistic levels and variations must be specified when assertions about a natural language are made, if they are to be exact.