Perusing my previous articles on Thomistic Linguistics, I realized I would benefit myself and any future readers with a more concise articulation of the logic of how words and especially linguistic grammar function at a basic level. While my previous articles bear with them a significant philosophical bend that anticipates a reader’s objections, the following can be used as a logical summary of a language’s direct function.
As each word is received sensorially into the brain (phantasms), the mind abstracts from the sensory experience (generally, sound) the essence of the word (passio animae). To each his own degree of understanding and experience, but the presumption of meaning begins with a word to one meaning. Over time of learning the ability to string words together is learned. This is a difficult task because in a cohesive phrase or sentence words do not have the phonological equivalent of a space, as we use conveniently in writing. Therefore the brain must be responsible for processing and retaining memory of the sensory isolation of words, parsing, in order for the mind to adequately receive each unit. The mind, however, retains the capacity of abstracting the essence from each word. As an individual reads or hears a sentence, the mind adopts the essence of each of the words into a simplified essence that equates to the utterance as a whole (a single passio animae, more noble than the individual passiones animae received in communication). Successful communication requires a resemblance of the simplified essences conceived by the producer and understood by the recipient. We recall from Aquinas that the actualized intellect actually becomes the form it is understanding before passing it into the passive intellect, and therefore the simplified essence of a sentence is the actual form that the active intellect becomes for the purpose of understanding. As we do not physically become a two-dimensional triangle when we contemplate the essence of triangularity, we do not physically become the simplified essence of a sentence that we understand in real time. The fact that multiple words can combine to create an essence which is more simple, and not complex like a machine made of multiple parts, is understood in the very nature of reality. God, we recall, is not a being but the being itself. All manner of creation, whether angels or atoms, are derivations of that being brought about into particularity. Sentences, then, compose forms (passiones animae) that are simply higher on the metaphysical hierarchy and words are lower. Sentences are composed of more substantive being (more noble) while words are composed of more particular (less noble) forms of being.
Grammar is an interesting concept that is a result of historical development. It is clear in history that all grammar developments begin with implicit rules for phrasal construction. Some retain their clearly phrasal nature. Many simplified essences from sentences that occur with higher frequency in communication begin to adopt the nature of words. As the rest of a language develops and changes over time, those simplified essences retain a phonological connection to their etymological roots and resemble the words they came from. In some cases, like verb conjugation in romantic languages or prepositional conjugation in Irish Gaelic, it is not possible to permanently condense phrasal construction into one word and therefore modifications have to remain possible. There we see morphology occur, where condensed forms of grammatical phrases form singular words, according to the brain, but retain layers of meaning. Further historical research would be required to determine how long it takes phrasal rules to turn into morphological rules and what conditions foster and/or catalyze it.
