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Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech by Edward Sapir
page 13 of 283 (04%)
instinctive cries is not, in our sense, language at all.

I have just referred to the "organs of speech," and it would seem at
first blush that this is tantamount to an admission that speech itself
is an instinctive, biologically predetermined activity. We must not be
misled by the mere term. There are, properly speaking, no organs of
speech; there are only organs that are incidentally useful in the
production of speech sounds. The lungs, the larynx, the palate, the
nose, the tongue, the teeth, and the lips, are all so utilized, but they
are no more to be thought of as primary organs of speech than are the
fingers to be considered as essentially organs of piano-playing or the
knees as organs of prayer. Speech is not a simple activity that is
carried on by one or more organs biologically adapted to the purpose. It
is an extremely complex and ever-shifting network of adjustments--in the
brain, in the nervous system, and in the articulating and auditory
organs--tending towards the desired end of communication. The lungs
developed, roughly speaking, in connection with the necessary
biological function known as breathing; the nose, as an organ of smell;
the teeth, as organs useful in breaking up food before it was ready for
digestion. If, then, these and other organs are being constantly
utilized in speech, it is only because any organ, once existent and in
so far as it is subject to voluntary control, can be utilized by man for
secondary purposes. Physiologically, speech is an overlaid function, or,
to be more precise, a group of overlaid functions. It gets what service
it can out of organs and functions, nervous and muscular, that have come
into being and are maintained for very different ends than its own.

It is true that physiological psychologists speak of the localization of
speech in the brain. This can only mean that the sounds of speech are
localized in the auditory tract of the brain, or in some circumscribed
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