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The Sacred Books of the Jainas . such an import should be recognizable from such and such a significant sound'. Or, we may hold that we take the meaning of words from its use in a particular sense by previous users?.
In this connection we may remember the conclusions arrived at by scholars dealing with the science of language regarding sematology or the science of meaning of words. “The phenomena with which sematology deals are too complicated, too dependent on psychological conditions ; the element of chance or conscious exertion of will seems to enter into them, and it is often left to the arbitrary choice of an individual to determine the change of meaning to be undergone by a word. Still this meaning must be accepted by the community before it can become part of language; unless it is so accepted it will remain a mere literary curiosity in the pages of a technical dictionary. And since its acceptance by the community is due to general causes, influencing many minds alike, it is possible to analyze and formulate these causes, in fact, to refer significant change to certain definite principles to bring it under certain definite generalizations. Moreover, it must be remembered that the ideas suggested by most words are what Locke calls ‘mixed modes. A word like just or beauty is but a shorthand note suggesting a number of ideas more or less associated with one another. But the ideas associated with it in one mind cannot be exactly those associated with it in another ; to one man it suggests what it does not to another. So long as we move in a gociety subjected to the same social influences and education as ourselves we do not readily perceive the fact, since the leading ideas called up by the word will be alike for all ; but it is quite otherwise when we come to deal with those whose education has been imperfect as compared with our own. A young speaker often imagines that he makes himself intelligible to an uneducated
1. Sehra Tera spermat elgan gazatoareita: Efte:
Tarkasangraha, 48. 2. etapa a gé gaan afwanca: 1" Šabdaśaktiprakāsikā
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