ABSTRACT
Linguistics and cognate sciences deal chiefly with speech circuit and similar forms of intercommunication, that is, with the alternate roles of the addresser and the addressee, who gives either an overt or at least a silent reply to the interlocutor. Common theoretical and methodological problems could be named as, for example, the concepts of symmetry and antisymmetry, which acquire a still more important position in linguistics and in natural sciences, as well as questions of temporal or morphic determinism and of reversible fluctuations or irreversible changes. The ultimate phylogenetic question of linguistics, the origin of language, has been proscribed by the neogrammarian tenet, but at present the emergence of language must be brought together with the other changes which mark the transition from prehuman to human society. In contradistinction to the context freedom of diverse formalized languages, the natural language is context-sensitive, and, in particular, its words display a variety of dissimilar contextual meanings.
