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Pranav

· started a discussion

· 1 Months ago

1 (Question:128763.4)

Please review your explanation. It seems a bit off track.

Question:

DIRECTIONS: Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions given below them. Certain words/phrases have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering questions related to them: 


Language has two primary purposes, expression and communication. In its most primitive forms it differs little from some other forms of behaviour. A man may express sorrow by sighing, or by saying “alas !” or “woe is me !” He may communicate by pointing or by saying “look”. Expression and communication are not necessarily separated; if you say “look” because you see a ghost, you may say it in a tone that expresses horror. This applies not only to elementary forms of language; in poetry, and especially in songs, emotion and information are conveyed by the same means. Music may be considered as a form of language in which emotion is divorced from information, while the telephone book gives information without emotion. But in ordinary speech both elements are usually present.


Communication does not consist only of giving information; commands and questions must be included. Sometimes the two are scarcely separable: if you are walking with a child, and you say “there’s a puddle there”, the command “don’t step in it” is implicit. Giving information may be due solely to the fact that the information interests you, or may be designed to influence behaviour. If you have just seen a street accident, you will wish to tell your friends about it because your mind is full of it; but if you tell a child that six times seven is forty-two you do so merely in the hope of influencing his (verbal) behaviour.


Language has two interconnected merits : first, that it is social, and second that it supplies public expression for “thoughts” which would otherwise remain private. Without language, or some pre-linguistic analogue, our knowledge of the environment is confined to what our own senses have shown us, together with such inferences as our congenital constitution may prompt; but by the help of speech we are able to know what others can relate, and to relate what is no longer sensibly present but only remembered. When we see or hear something which a companion is not seeing or hearing, we can often make him aware of it by the one word “look” or “listen”, or even by gestures. But if half an hour ago we saw a fox, it is not possible to make another person aware of this fact without language. This depends upon the fact that the word “fox” applies equally to a fox seen or a fox remembered, so that our memories, which in themselves are private, are represented to others by uttered sounds, which are public. Without language, only that part of our life which consists of public sensations would be communicable, and that only to those so situated as to be able to share the sensations in question.


It will be seen that the utility of language depends upon the distinction between public and private experiences, which is important in considering the empirical basis of physics. This distinction, in turn, depends partly on physiology, partly on the persistence of sound-waves and light quanta, which makes possible the two forms of language, speech and writing. Thus language depends upon physics, and could not exist without the approximately separable causal chains which make physical knowledge possible, and since the publicity of sensible objects is only approximate, language applying to them, considered socially, must have a certain lack of precision. I need hardly say that I am not asserting that the existence of language requires a knowledge of physics. What I am saying is that language would be impossible if the physical world did not in fact have certain characteristics, and that the theory of language is at certain points dependent upon a knowledge of the physical world. Language is a means of externalizing and publicizing our own experiences. A dog cannot relate his autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest though poor. A man can do this, and he does it by correlating “thoughts” with public sensations.

As per the passage, physics and language are:

Options:
A) not related.
B) remotely related.
C) so related that knowledge of physics is required to understand the theory of the language.
D) commonly based on experiences.
E) none of the above
Solution:

Ans: (c) The last paragraph states and upholds option (c). Options (a), (b) and (d) are out of place as far as the passage is concerned.

Knowledge Expert

· commented

· 1 Months ago

Dear student,
It is correct.
Keep learning,
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