Kitap 7
1.56
For whatever produces an effect is body; and voice, as it proceeds from those who utter it to those who hear it, does produce an effect. Reduced to writing, what was voice becomes a verbal expression, as day; so says Diogenes. A statement or proposition is speech that issues from the mind and signifies something, e.g. It is day. Dialect (διάλεκτος ) means a variety of speech which is stamped on one part of the Greek world as distinct from another, or on the Greeks as distinct from other races; or, again, it means a form peculiar to some particular region, that is to say, it has a certain linguistic quality; e.g. in Attic the word for sea is not θάλασσα but θάλαττα, and in Ionic day is not ἡμέρα but ἡμέρη.
1.56
Elements of language are the four-and-twenty letters. Letter, however, has three meanings: (1) the particular sound or element of speech; (2) its written symbol or character; (3) its name, as Alpha is the name of the sound A.
1.57
Seven of the letters are vowels, a, e, ē i, o, u, ō, and six are mutes, b, g, d, k, p, t. There is a difference between voice and speech; because, while voice may include mere noise, speech is always articulate. Speech again differs from a sentence or statement, because the latter always signifies something, whereas a spoken word, as for example βλίτυρι, may be unintelligible— which a sentence never is. And to frame a sentence is more than mere utterance, for while vocal sounds are uttered, things are meant, that is, are matters of discourse.
