ABSTRACT
The discussion of language confined to terms of formal linguistics is inadequate, save for strictly limited purposes. For a fuller understanding its psychological underpinning must not only be recognised but actually explored, a task which pure linguists acknowledge but from which they habitually retreat. The marriage of the psychological and linguistic approaches to language, though difficult, raises fruitful issues, some of which will be pursued in subsequent pages. Though homologues and synonyms might be considered rather special if instructive features of language, polysemy is ubiquitous. The discussion has led to a view of the interconnection between psychological structures and the rules of language which it may be helpful to recapitulate, somewhat telegrammatically. Both elements and constructs are partially represented in language; the union of a verbal marker and the element or construct which it indexes.
