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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: may apprehend partially the laws by which speech is regulated: but we do
not know, and we seem as if we should never know, any more than in the
parallel case of the origin of species, how vocal sounds received life and
grew, and in the form of languages came to be distributed over the earth.
iii. Next in order to analogy in the formation of language or even prior
to it comes the principle of onomatopea, which is itself a kind of analogy
or similarity of sound and meaning. In by far the greater number of words
it has become disguised and has disappeared; but in no stage of language is
it entirely lost. It belongs chiefly to early language, in which words
were few; and its influence grew less and less as time went on. To the ear
which had a sense of harmony it became a barbarism which disturbed the flow
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