Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“Department of Philosophy University of Budapest (ELTE) sgvarga@osiris.elte.hu Preface According to the theory of Generative Anthropology, the ostensive form is the originary form of the linguistic utterance from which the imperative and then the declarative are derived. The first linguistic sign must have occurred in the originary event or scene. As Richard van Oort notes: “By presenting an explicit model of the origin of language–one based on the scene of the originary performative context of the first linguistic sign–we seek to introduce precisely what is lacking in metaphysical models of language, namely, the entire scene in which language must be conceived to have evolved. It is only with the advent of the declarative, a later development of linguistic evolution, that language can divorce itself from its context, and thus appear to be wholly independent of its scene of production.” (1) In our work we attempt to shed light on the process–in the course of historical time and space–in which the true declarative utterance grew out of more elementary forms of speech acts, stripping itself of the context of the actual speech situation. This development originally took place in early Greek culture, bringing into existence the linguistic prerequisites of formal logic and metaphysics. With our historical analysis we intend to underscore the importance of the originary hypothesis of GA according to which “the first occurrence of language was in the originary event or scene of language.””

— Eric Gans, Orality and Literacy : The Development of Philosophy into Logical Thought · Fall 1999 · Anthropoetics