ABSTRACT
Reid speaks here of artificial and natural ‘language.’ This can be misleading, at least to modern ears, since we tend to associate ‘language’ with robust communication systems, replete with syntactical and semantic rules, like French or Chinese. But as we saw earlier, by ‘language’ Reid refers to all signs we use in order to communicate, not just the verbal signs associated with what we typically call a ‘language.’ So I will interpret his argument accordingly.
