Suppose a man described a game of chess, without mentioning the
existence and operations of the pawns.
His description of the game as a natural phenomenon will be
incomplete.
On the other hand we may say that he has completely described a
simpler game.
In this sense we can say that
Augustine's
description of learning the language was correct for a simpler
language than ours.
Imagine this language:–
1). Its function is the
communication between a builder A & his man
B.
B has to reach A building stones.
There are cubes, bricks, slabs, beams, columns.
The language consists of the words “cube”,
“brick”, “slab”,
“column”.
A calls out one of these words, upon which B brings a stone
of a certain shape.
Let us imagine a society in which this is the only system of
language.
The child learns this language from the grown-ups by being trained
to its use.
I am using the word “trained” in a way strictly
analogous to that in which we talk of an animal being trained to do
certain things.
It is done by means of example, reward, punishment, and such
like.
Part of this training is that we point to a building stone, direct
the attention of the child towards it, & pronounce a
word.
I will call this procedure
demonstrative teaching of
words.
In the actual
2.
use of this language, one man
calls out the words as orders, the other acts according to them.
But learning and teaching this language will contain this
procedure: The child just “names” things,
that is, he pronounces the words of the language when the teacher
points to the things.
In fact, there will be a still simpler exercise: The child
repeats words which the teacher pronounces.