Speech
Speech is the vocalized form of human communication. It is based upon the syntactic combination of lexicals and names that are drawn from very large (usually about 10,000 different words) vocabularies. Each spoken word is created out of the phonetic combination of a limited set of vowel and consonant speech sound units. These vocabularies, the syntax which structures them, and their set of speech sound units differ, creating the existence of many thousands of different types of mutually unintelligible human languages. Most human speakers (polyglots) are able to communicate in two or more of them. The vocal abilities that enable humans to produce speech also provide humans with the ability to sing.
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Famous quotes containing the word speech:
“No speech can stain what is noble by nature.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)
“our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe
And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)