| 单词 | ding-dong theory |
| 释义 | > as lemmasding-dong theory ding-dong theory n. now chiefly historical (a humorous or mocking name for) the theory that human speech originated in phonetic expression naturally given to an idea as it is formed in the mind for the first time, this process being likened to something sonorous naturally making a ringing sound when struck.Similar names have been given to some other theories of the origin of human speech; cf. bow-wow theory at bow-wow int. and n. 2b, pooh-pooh theory n. at pooh pooh int. and n. Compounds 2, yo-he-ho theory n. at yo-he-ho n. Compounds. ΚΠ 1867 W. D. Whitney Lang. & Study of Lang. xi. 427 Professor Max Müller..adopts from a German authority (Professor Heyse, of Berlin) a third [theory], which is, abridged from his own statement, as follows: ‘There is a law..that everything which is struck rings... It was the same with man..’—and so on. Man possessed an instinctive ‘faculty for giving articulate expression to the rational conceptions of his mind.’.. This..has been very appositely termed ‘the ding-dong theory’. 1872 A. J. Ellis President's Addr. to Philol. Soc. 13 The Ding-dong theory has, so far as I know, received no other name; let us call it symphonesis. 1939 Amer. Jrnl. Psychol. 52 145 The ‘ding-dong’ theory is regarded as similar to the divine origin theory and as mysterious and absurd. 2013 Rev. Eng. Stud. 64 655 The faith Müller confesses here in an ‘essential, primordial psycho-physical nexus between sound and meaning’ was rapidly nicknamed the ‘ding-dong theory’, after the contemptuous nicknames he gave to rival theories that language originated in onomatopoeia (the ‘Bow-wow theory’), or in involuntary emotive interjections (the ‘Pooh-pooh theory’). < as lemmas |
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