Re: [xmca] Word Meaning and Action

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>]

On Jun 16, 2011, at 1:04 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:

> Martin, I have done my best. T&S is almost the only place where LSV talks explicitly about "word meaning" and in the other places he does not say anything different.

Andy, perhaps this is so for the texts included in the Collected Works. But LSV wrote of word-meaning as early as Pedagogical Psychology (1922), explicitly citing Potebnya’s notion that the word has three elements: sound, meaning, and inner form (so we see that the terminology was different at that point). The inner form is an image, a graphic motivation, comprehensible to all, the etymon  (cf. etymology). It is initially sensually perceptible, but dies as language grows. E.g. cherny = black. chernila = black ink. But now chernila is used for ink of any color.

And then in Psychology of Art (1925) he again writes about the inner form of the word, again explicitly citing Potebnya. Zinchenko, in the Cambridge Handbook, writes that “Subsequently, Vygotsky lost interest in the image as an element involved in the construction of inner form, which is what Potebnya was talking about." He continues by pointing out that Shpet criticised Potebnya for “reducing the inner form of the word to an image and etymology,” and so is seems that with Shpet's influence by T&S the notion of the inner form (or inner aspect) of the word has become less tied to an image, and becomes construed as word-meaning.

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