“Thought without language, says Lavelle, would not be a purer thought; it would be no more than the intention to think. And his last book offers a theory of expressiveness which makes of expression not “a faithful image of an already realized interior being, but the very means by which it is realized.””

— Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Source: In Praise of Philosophy (1963), p. 8

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Maurice Merleau-Ponty 24

French phenomenological philosopher 1908–1961

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Sapir: Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.”

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Footnote at pp. 126-127; As cited in: Adam Schaff (1962). Introduction to semantics, p. 313-314
The Origins and Prehistory of Language, 1956

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Maurice Merleau-Ponty 24

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