ABSTRACT
Language is first and foremost a depressive achievement involving both the concession of what cannot be articulated— and the giving up of the symbiosis with another by acknowledging him or her as a distinct subject. There are various ways of negating language; two of them will be focused: the first is the emptying of the object from the desire; the second is the emptying of the desire from the object. The author suggests three essential functions of early motherhood which enable the child to establish an individual language. The first function relates to the primary role of the mother-tongue as a non-persecutory context that dilutes the objects' threatening being, therefore enabling their naming as well as their linkage to other objects. The second function has to do with the mother endowing the child with his or her proper name. The third function relates to the mother-tongue's willingness to present the father as a non-traumatic object.
