ossible
through this instrument, whereby achievements and traditions
are preserved and transmitted in precise and public
terms.

[Footnote 1: Human song is by some linguistic experts, including
Bloomfield, held to have originated in the chant of rhythmic
labor, as in rowing or threshing.]

Secondly, language is social in that, for the individual at
least, it is socially acquired. The child first imitates sounds
without any consciousness of their meaning, just as he imitates
other actions in sheer "physiological sympathy." But
he learns soon, by watching the actions of other people, that
given sounds are always performed when these others do given
actions. He learns that some sounds are portents of anger
and punishment; still others of satisfaction and pleasure. He
learns soon to specify his utterances, to use sounds as specific
stimuli, to attain through other people specific satisfactions.
The child is born with a flexible set of reflexes. In which way
they shall be developed depends entirely on the accident of the
child's environment. Whether he shall call it "bread" or
"pain" or "brod," depends on the particular social environment
in which he from the first hears that particular item of
experience referred to. A child of American missionaries in
Turkey picks up the language of that country as well as that
of his own. An English child brought up under a French
nurse may learn with perfect ease the foreign tongue, and to
the exclusion of that of his native country. Indeed, so completely
subject is one in this regard to one's early environment,
that it is not only difficult in later life to acquire a new
pronunciation, but one finds it impossible to breathe freely,
as it were, in the whole psychological atmosphere of a foreign
language. Its grammatical categories, its spelling, its logic
seem hopelessly irrational. It was perfectly natural of the
Englishman in the story, when he was told that the French
called it "pain," to insist, "Well, it's bread, anyhow." Many
a reader of a foreign language which has become habitual can
still not refrain from translating, as he reads, what seem to
him irrational idioms into the familiar, facile, and sensible
modes of his native tongue.

LANGUAGE AND MENTAL LIFE. The connection of language
with thought has repeatedly been noted. It has even been
questioned whether thought in any effective sense is possible
without words. In general it may be said that thinking demands
clean-