ABSTRACT
The Greeks, in their philosophical discussions, gave evidence of a point of view which, translated into modern terms, would have placed them among the supporters of the social science view of language. The first real hint that linguistics should be treated as a physical science comes with the mechanistic position of the Neogrammarians and the creation of the Lautgesetz. Even the psychological aspects of language can be physically classified if we interpret psychology as a part of neurology and therefore of physiology. The fact that the full psychological process has not yet been fully described in terms of the physical nervous system does not mean that it may not be so described at some future date. Stalin, the layman in the field of linguistics, won an easy victory over Marr, the professional, because he recognized the fundamental fact that so-called class languages are nothing but unimportant superstructures on the basic edifice of language.
