Elements of Folk Psychology: Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of MankindWundt, Wilhelm Max
Science
Elements of Folk Psychology: Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
Wundt, Wilhelm Max
Ethnopsychology
But ideas of such acts and conditions as are in themselves of a
perceptual nature are also occasionally expressed by combining several
elements which are obtained by discriminating the separate parts of
a perceptual image. The idea to bring, for example, is expressed by
the Togo negro as 'take, go, give.' In bringing something to some
one, one must first take it, then go to him and give it to him. It
therefore happens that the word 'go,' in particular, is frequently
added even where we find no necessity for especially emphasizing the
act of going. Thus, the Togo negro would very probably express the
sentence, 'The angry teacher strikes the child,' in the following
way: 'Man-school-angry-go-strike-child.' This is the succession
that directly presents itself to one who thinks in pictures, and it
therefore finds expression in language. Whenever conceptions require
a considerable number of images in order to be made picturable,
combinations that are equivalent to entire sentences may result in a
similar manner. Thus, the Togo negro expresses the concept 'west' by
the words 'sun-sit-place'--that is, the place where the sun sits down.
He thinks of the sun as a personal being who, after completing his
journey, here takes a seat.
These illustrations may suffice to indicate the simplicity and at the
same time the complexity of such a language. It is simple, in that it
lacks almost all grammatical distinctions; it is complicated, because,
in its constant reliance on sensibly perceptual images, it analyses our
concepts into numerous elements. This is true not merely of abstract
concepts, which these languages, as a rule, do not possess, but even
of concrete empirical concepts. We need only refer to the verb 'to
bring,' reduced to the form of three verbs, or the concept 'west,' for
whose expression there is required not only the sun and the location
which we must give it but also its act of seating itself. In all of
these traits, then, primitive language is absolutely at one with
gesture-language.
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