ABSTRACT
The mental processes and language are necessarily general, being partly affective. A slow, progressive precision of meaning results from application to specific situations. Mind sees only aspects, and language expresses only impressions; and the application of speech is necessarily the naming of a situation in terms of one impression or aspect of it. Looked at more narrowly, as a functional-linguistic process, this is a process of the same nature as that fundamental advance when a word changes from verb to noun. Max Muller described it as the process by which ‘all words expressive of immaterial conceptions are derived by metaphor from words expressive of sensible ideas. We speak to impress the minds of others. Directly and fundamentally, we do so in the request for action; but indirectly this is the whole purpose of language, and indeed all language is a request for help.
